I preached this sermon in Cathedral Park in Buffalo, on the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost.

Ezekiel 2:1-5
2 Corinthians 12:2-10
Mark 6:1-13

As many, if not all of you have puzzled out, being an Episcopalian means allowing that there are parts of the Christian experience that remain mysterious, that seemingly contradictory experiences and understanding can form paths to the  same God.  Our Anglican tradition has a comfort with paradox, with accepting that the God who threatens vengeance also embraces us as a loving parent, that the Church that Christ instituted is both perfect and flawed.  We believe that God speaks to us through science and through Scripture, through our reason and through the traditions of the historic Catholic church, through individuals and through communities.  We accept among our heroes and saints a French woman that the English burned as a witch, a bishop who nobody really liked and so got beheaded, an apostle who vehemently denied knowing Christ in order to save his own skin.

We also have an appreciation for paradox in the spiritual life.  St Gregory of Nyssa, on writing on the spiritual life of Christians, explains a bit of the shape of this paradox, that we are both creatures of a perfect Creator, but also free to choose for ourselves.  We can accept the will of God in our lives, having faith though we don’t understand God’s will completely, or we can go our own way.  God is our parent, and calls Himself Father, but as St Gregory of Nyssa wrote in the fourth century:

We are in a sense our own parents, and we give birth to ourselves by our own free choice.

It should not be a surprise, I guess, that paradox has such pride of place in the Christian life.  Christ repeatedly tells His disciples that He comes among them as one who serves, that His followers will be hated by their families, that the powerful will be overthrown, and that the meek will inherit the earth.  Of course, Christ’s followers assumed He was merely speaking metaphorically, or maybe that those who are meek on occasion, say, just on Tuesdays and Fridays in Lent would inherit the earth.  And that service to those in need meant more like talking in polite conversation with one’s peers about the social policies that should be enacted to ensure that there is improved access to education for those of lesser means, as long as their children don’t actually go to school with our children.  And when Christ preached that he would be destroyed so that he would be raised, and that his disciples would follow after Him?  Best not to think of that.

But today, in the lessons we’ve heard, any doubt we may have about the role of paradox should be swept away.  From the Old Testament, we read that God called Ezekiel for a really thankless job.  Ezekiel was a member of the priestly caste, a Kohen, part of the upper class that had been captured and sent into exile in Babylon.  From a position of privilege, as a hereditary member of the priesthood, tied to the Jerusalem Temple, Ezekiel was sent to be a prophet among those in exile, to a people whom God Himself describes as “a nation of rebels.”  Terrible job that Ezekiel received.  And what did this priest prophesy?  The destruction of the Temple, the harrowing of Jerusalem.  He was not a popular guy.  But Ezekiel was faithful, accepting that, even though it would be difficult, he would step out in faith, allowing God to be divine, and accepting that though destruction and violence was being preached, grace and restoration would follow.  Ezekiel, against his better judgment, against the cultural mores and priestly prejudices in which he was raised, Ezekiel stood up, on his feet, as God had commanded, and spoke in prophecy.

Then, in St Paul’s second epistle to the Corinthians that we heard read by Michael Bonilla, we move from Ezekiel’s call to a strange episode in the life of our own patron, the Apostle Paul.  He writes that, in a vision, he is swept up to the third heaven, and was given a message that he was to repeat to no one.  And, upon being lifted into Heaven itself, upon receiving a secret and intimate message from God Himself, St Paul’s immediate response is not to boast.  He takes no credit, desires no attention, even refuses to name himself as the visionary.  If I received an invitation to tea with God in heaven, I would tell everyone both before and after, and ensure that the entire conversation was on Facebook within three minutes.  I was unbelievably excited when I ran into Senator Schumer in Spot Coffee on Delaware a few weeks ago, I posted about it immediately, and he’s nowhere near as important as God Almighty.  At least, in my opinion.

But needless to say, St Paul dwelt on God’s power and his own weakness, St Paul allowed paradox in his life, he allowed there to be gaps in his full understanding of how the world worked.  Like Ezekiel, St Paul allowed God to be God, to be the one who directs the path of our lives through the cosmos.  As one of our Eucharistic prayers confesses, St Paul, like Ezekiel, witnessed that Christ is the author of our salvation.

In the passage we heard of St Mark’s Gospel that recounts the reception Christ received in Nazareth, we encounter a familiar story.  So familiar, then, that it is easily (and somewhat tritely) summarized with the paraphrasing from St Luke’s and St Mathew’s gospels: “No prophet is accepted in his own country.”  And in the portion of St Mark’s Gospel from today, the rejection that Christ encounters in Nazareth left Christ in disbelief.  And Christ’s response to the rejection?  Well, if Nazareth was too good for Him, well, he had followers!  So, Christ sends them out, two by two, traveling lightly.  He sends them out with a mission: Proclaim repentance, cast out demons, anoint, and heal.  When Christ had work to do, and when those to whom He came rejected Him, what did He do?  He sent out His followers.  He sends out flawed, silly men and women for the most important task, for the very reason He became flesh: to proclaim the Kingdom, and to heal those who were suffering.  That is a potent reminder for us, who sit around praying, maybe, for God to do something about the poverty we see around us, or for God to address injustice or violence or apathy.  Paradoxically, it is not a perfect omnipotent Christ who always is the means by which God will confect His will: sometimes, it is through flawed, tired, often whiney people.  Sometimes, God will raise up prophets and apostles among us.  Sometimes, God calls us to listen, to stand up on our feet, and to take steps forward in faith, though we do not know where we are being led.

It is not always given to us to know and understand all the pieces of our lives.  It is not always given to us to see that the seeds we plant will flower in our own time, that the roads we begin will be complete before we move on.  It is our place, however, to step out in faith, trusting that our works, begun in Christ, will be completed in Him, as well, though maybe by other hands. The beauty, and the paradox of our faith enshrined in our Anglican tradition, is that we are called into the harvest, called to be prophets and to be apostles, though we will likely never see the final fruits of our work.  We harvest the fields that others sowed, and those that follow will reap what we have laid down.  When the cornerstones of the great Gothic cathedrals were first laid, the artisans, clergy, and townspeople who witnessed the first beginnings of construction knew that they would never live to see the building in its finished form.  But that didn’t make them find a reason never to start, nor to rush, nor to despair.  They had faith that others would pick up after they were gone, that God would continue to provide, that the completion of the cathedral may not have been as important as their participation in the construction of it.  Trust in ourselves, and in the Christ who captains us, is what allowed them, and allows us to live in this way, to step out in faith, and to follow the path God lays out for us because it is a beautiful thing so to do, not because it’s something to add to our CV.

And because we will not always see the pattern of Christ’s hands in our lives, and because we live in paradox, it is more important than ever to take chances, to step out in faith, to sow seeds without the expectation that we will be the ones who will benefit from them.  It is more important than ever to take risks, allowing God to fill the gaps of our own inadequacies and flaws.  In the fall of this yearwe’ll be instituting a new alternative service, a different way for those in our community to experience the divine mystery of our incarnate God, a different way for Christ to break through into our world in the Eucharist.  We may see the fruit that such a move will bear, but we may not.  We may completely revolutionize the religious landscape of Buffalo, converting tens of thousands, instituting a new, modern and Episcopal Great Awakening that will sweep across our nation, lead to  millions of new Episcopalians, and forever alter the course of Anglican history.  Or we may not.  But, maybe someone in Spokane who reads about it online will be inspired to take risks in her own life, and will begin a ministry to those who are on the outskirts of her community.  Maybe a young grad student who attends the new service at the Cathedral once or twice before graduating will hear Christ’s call to serve through a life of community action.  Maybe a recently married couple will feel energized by what they hear happening at St. Paul’s and will encourage their own parish to try something new, to explore a new ministry in their community.  Maybe those who are faltering will be strengthened, maybe those who are doubting will learn to believe again, maybe those who have been damaged by the Church will experience that a new thing is happening.

The point is: it is not our job to step out so that we can be the planters, so that we can be the tenders, so that we can be the harvesters, so that we can be the gleaners.  It is our job to step out in faith so that Christ’s glory, not our glory, may shine.  Frankly, if we are too concerned with results, then we are not letting God be God, we are not living in paradox and tension with divine mystery, we are not being Anglican, and we are not listening to the Gospel: the Dean has reminded me before that Christ’s call is to feed His sheep, not to count them.

When the Blessed Virgin Mary said yes to a wandering angel’s invitation, she had no idea that her acceptance of God’s work in her life would forever change the path of human history.  She did not know that she would be the New Eve, the first Christian, and it was not even until later in her pregnancy that she was inspired to finally acknowledge that all generations would call her blessed.  Every single generation, all peoples, all languages, call this young girl blessed.  And why?  Because she accepted the invitation to step out in faith, and because she allowed God to be God through the course of her life and her actions.  Our model for Christian perfection, for peerless grace, power, beauty and vision is the most unlikely and paradoxical person imaginable: a young pregnant girl in a dusty backwater province of an ancient empire.  How amazing is our God that such an unlikely, insignificant, and unremarkable person is exalted as Mother of God, Queen of Heaven, Mother of all Christians?

From the example of the Blessed Virgin Mary, from the example of the prophet Ezekiel, and from St Paul, we can learn that God’s work in human lives can be unpredictable, and contain hidden mysteries even to the most holy and saintly of those who seek to do God’s will.  The gap that remains between human understanding and the will of God in the human story is the realm of mystery.  We participate in that mystery through the sacraments, most especially the sacrament of Holy Eucharist.  We participate in that mystery by faithfully accepting that God’s ways and designs are larger than our understanding, larger than our greatest dreams, and that we cannot possibly know all the ways that the life of grace intersect and tie together.

During the vestry retreat this January, the members of vestry each shared their own individual spiritual heroes.  While the stories were all unique, there were some interesting parallels: in many cases, the persons who were heroes would never have known that their actions influenced others.  We do not ever understand the full impact of our actions, actions done in union with God’s plan or in contradiction.  We never fully understand the impact of the love that we give to strangers, to family, to fellow parishioners.  We never fully witness the ripples that are formed when we act in faith.  And if we expect to always see those results, to always realize the dividends of our efforts, not only will we be sorely disappointed, but we will wither and shrivel.  With such in mind, we ought to consider how we can better accept the grace that God offers us to step out in faith, and to do so in our personal lives, in our spiritual lives, in our communal life as a Cathedral parish.  We need to rethink what success is, we need to embrace the paradox of God’s mystery, we need to remember that our mission is the same as that given by Christ to His followers when he sent them out from Nazareth: to proclaim the Gospel, to offer healing, and to trust with faith in God’s work in the world and in our lives, for the sake of the world’s salvation, and for God’s greater glory.

Goris-Kolb Wedding

This last weekend, on July 21, 2012, I had the honor to officiate and preach at the wedding of Rob Goris and Donny Kolb, two of my closest friends.  Following below is the text from St John's Gospel that was proclaimed, and the homily I preached.

John 15:9-12

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

I’ve had a number of surprises that I’ve experienced, thanks to Rob or to Donny.  I was surprised one evening when Rob shoved me down a wooded hill in Letchworth Park.  I was surprised I could fall and roll so far down a hill without getting a twig in my eye.

I was surprised that Donny could spin so much without  falling off the stage as I recorded him with my iPhone in a MJ dance-off to Billy Jean at a Michael Jackson Memorial at Roxy’s.

I was surprised when Rob and Donny and I met for our premarital sessions, that Rob didn’t broach the idea of beginning the ceremony today to Can’t Be Tamed.

And, I was surprised that Donny didn’t suggest that Kody carry in the rings in some ecologically friendly, recyclable, biodegradeable, or post-consumer container.

I am sure, however, that nobody here this evening is surprised that we all find ourselves gathered for this occasion.  We all know what Donny and Rob are like: we all know how perfect they are for each other, and we all knew that it was only a matter of time before one of them put a ring on it.  None of us is surprised to be here, because we know what Rob and Donny already know: rarely are there two people who are better suited, more prepared, and exactly what the other one needs.

But there are other surprises.  At this time last year, this evening wouldn’t have been possible for the state or for the church. There was no Hotel at the Lafayette.  And New York State and the Church are not known for their quick turnaround times and speedy responses to equality.  An adjective used to describe them all might be glacial.  But I, for one, am proud this evening to be here at the Lafayette, proud to be a New Yorker, proud to be here in the Church’s name, proud to be a Buffalonian.

This evening, Donny and Rob will be doing two things: entering into a new legal contract and folding themselves into a sacred social context. Rob and Donny have already shown their love and commitment over the last several years, and marriage isn’t going to change that.  They don’t have to get married to show that they mean it when they say I love you.  It’s not like marriage is simply the next logical step, the move in taking their relationship to the next level.

Marriage is a gamechanger.  This evening, the relationship that Rob and Donny have had together is not going to leave this room.  It is going to be altered.  By the exchange of vows, the giving of rings, the promising of their entire selves, and the binding of their hands, Donny and Rob are asking the community gathered here, and asking the grace of God of surprises to forever bind the two of them together, to make of them a new thing, a thing never before seen: a Goris-Kolb!

They will offer their vows to one another, now in the presence of all of those who are here this evening.  We are here as witnesses to their past love, and to the new life that they begin today.  We are witnesses to a divine mystery, an act that will surprise and transform Donny and Rob, and, if we allow it, to surprise and transform all of us, too.

Their marriage is for their mutual edification and growth, but is also a gift that they give to us and to their community.  The gift of their marriage shows us the total commitment and self-emptying possible when two people are willing to give everything for each other.  Their marriage shows that together, we are stronger than when we stand alone.

We also have a responsibility to be there for Donny and Rob, not just today at their wedding, but all through their marriage.  We all have the responsibility and singular privilege of helping them learn from their mistakes and from their triumphs, and sharing our own with them.  Whether we are friends, family, or here for the open bar, we are responsible to laugh with them, to celebrate with them, and to look to them as an example of love.  We can offer them advice, like how to file your state tax return as a couple and your federal one as singles, or how to live together in compromise and mutual joy.  Those of us here who are already married have had some of these experiences, and we are enjoined to share our joys with you, Donny and Rob.  And you, likewise, are a model to all of us, reminding us of what love looks like, just as Christ is a model of love to us, as St John’s Gospel recorded: that we love one another as totally as Christ has loved us.

In Japanese pottery, there is a practice called kintsugi.  When Japanese porcelain is broken or cracked, instead of throwing it out or discarding it, potters repair the break using a gold lacquer.  In that way, the defects and flaws of the piece are transformed into beauty, rather than hidden.  Instead of imperfections being shameful, they become opportunities to shine.

You come to each other today with cracks, with gaps, with things that you’d like to change about yourselves.  In your marriage, if you permit yourselves to be vulnerable and open to one another, each of you will transform the other’s cracks into gold.  Moving from independence to interdependence can be rocky, but you will nurture and benefit each other if you permit your love to triumph and to transform the things that hold you back into the things that will be your most shining triumphs.  And from this day, you will undertake this for and with each other.  Now, the decisions that affect each of you most intimately will be decided together: sacrifices and compromises will be made.  The surprises that vulnerability will bring you will be as varied and exciting as the surprises you’ve already had.

We know that you two have already grown together, have begun  a common life.  Donny has better taste in clothes because of Rob, and will now eat cheese.  Rob still has a Droid instead of an iPhone, but Donny’s working on that.  We know that you’ll continue to complement each other, to bind up each other’s damage with gold, and to make each other happy for many years. 

But you’ve also made us who are gathered here with you into better persons.  You’ve shown all of us how wonderful and surprising it is to be in love and how adorable matching pink bowties can be.  And, as my dearest friends, you two have made me a better man, and a better husband.  Thank you.  Thank you for inviting all of us into your love, thank you for renewing us and reminding us that love always triumphs.

Donny and Rob, what I can give you, I give you with my whole heart.  I can give the State’s license, and God’s grace through the Church’s blessing.  But both of those things pale compared to what you give each other.  In your vows, you’ll give to one another your very lives. 

You, Donny and Rob, will forever bind yourselves together, and generate a new and holy creation through your marriage. You will place seals on one another’s hearts, and tie bands to each other’s souls.  You will give everything to one another, and forever be different men.

Rob and Donny, please rise and join me. 

I had the honor of preaching on the Fourth Sunday of Easter 2012 at St. Paul's Cathedral, Buffalo.  The text is as follows:

 In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

All across the world, Christians from Anglican, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed and other Protestant traditions are all listening to the same Gospel that we heard proclaimed this morning: St John’s metaphor of the Good Shepherd. Also, all across Christendom, preachers are gearing up for sermons about animal husbandry. In a bizarre phenomenon, literally ten of thousands of sermons will be preached today about sheep. It’s a 4H heyday!

 So, some congregations will learn about how sheep are dumb. Some will learn how they’re much smarter than you’d think. Other parishes will be thrilled to learn about the esoteric shepherding practices of first-century Semitic cultures. There will be hundreds of references to King David, thousands to the 23rd psalm, and all across the globe, images of petting zoos, of sheep-filled moors, and Australian sheering barns will be conjured up in order to preach a la Good Shepherd Sunday.

 When I was a child, my family had goats. So, I’m not interested in preaching on sheep. No wooly imagery this morning!

 And hopefully you’ll be able to muddle through without the sheepish instruction. It gives all of us an opportunity to consider the other characters in this morning’s Gospel. First, we have a good shepherd. And second, some hired hand guy. And finally, we have the scary, terrible bloodcurdling wolves. Who cares about sheep when you can talk about wolves?

 And so, first, the Good Shepherd. St John’s Gospel includes this metaphor as part of a longer discourse in which Christ is confronting the religious leaders of His nation, and, frankly, telling them that they’re really bad at their jobs. Christ had just healed a man born blind, and the investigation by the Temple authorities brought Christ into direct conflict with the Temple He had come to replace.

Christ tells the most fervent of the followers of the Temple, the Pharisees, that they are in the most dire spiritual blindness. No friends were made that day.

 And then, Christ contrasts Himself with the Pharisees, proclaiming the words I AM the Good Shepherd. Christ uses the same phrasing that the divine voice employed when the Lord called Moses to leadership, when that same voice named Himself I AM WHO AM. Jesus calls Himself Yahweh.

And in so doing, he removes from the Pharisees any authority they may claim to hold to lead the nation of Israel. Christ claims that authority as His own, claims that the voice who called Himself I AM WHO AM is now speaking among them again, declaring I AM the Good Shepherd. Christ sunk the pharasiacal Battleship.

And thus the story continues with The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away. Well, not to put too fine a point on it, that’s the Pharisees and their sequelae. They’re the help that God hired to tend the flock in His stead. They’re unreliable. They’re weak. They’re more concerned about themselves then the sheep. Off they go!

And now the good part: the wolves! The wolf snatches them and scatters them. Finally, some action! Finally, it’s like The Hunger Games, Gospel style. Wolves among sheep, snatching! Scattering! Pop the popcorn! It’s the Romans! It’s Satan! Run from the evil Roman Satan wolves with their scary toga cloven hoofed muzzles! 

This little exercise of assigning out parts to different historical groups is a time-honored one, and venerable in the history of Christian exegesis. It’s an nice tidy package, right?: Jesus is the Good Shepherd, the nation of Israel are the sheep, the hired hand are the lax religious authorities, the wolves are political and spiritual menaces embodied in the Romans and the Devil.

And it’s true that Christ was using this metaphor to describe a situation in His own day; but the Gospel is not a document that only sheds light on first-century Roman-occupied Palestine. The Gospel is a living, breathing, heart-beating work of redemption that carries Good News out from Jerusalem to all the world, spanning millennia, cultures, and the stony hearts of men through all times.

This Gospel is also about us.

If you think that you’re a snowy white sheep, lovingly tended by the Good Shepherd, you’re right. But not entirely right. All of us, me included, are also the wolves. We’re also the hired hands who get going when the going gets tough. We are the doe-eyed ewes, the ravenous wild pack, and the cowardly and treacherous help.

We are wolves when we care more about our own comfort than the basic needs of persons living on the East Side, less than three miles from where we worship right now.

 I am a wolf when I lie and I tell someone living on the street that I don’t have any change in my pocket.

I am a craven hired hand when I gossip, when I tear down rather than build up, when I’m lazy at prayer, when I give in to the temptation to give up.

 I am a wolf when I thwart God’s plans in my life and in the lives of others.

When being right is more important than being holy, I am a wolf. I abandon the sheep when I choose to follow my own way, rather than the way of the shepherd.

Within us, we sometimes allow the wolf to run free, and at other times, we allow the sheep in us to follow our good shepherd. We are constantly struggling to do both good and evil: to be selfless and selfish. We are our own wolves in sheep’s clothing and sheep in wolves’ clothing.

Our Patron, St. Paul, giant of the faith, great apostle of Asia Minor, Martyr in Rome, St Paul knew himself to struggle with being a wolf. In hiss epistle to the Romans, to the community among whom he would eventually be beheaded in 67 AD, he writes “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” St. Paul desired to be led by the Lord who called him to greater and holier life, but wrestled with wanting to run away from helping others just like the currish hired hand, and grappled with sin and temptation like a wolf that snaps at the heels.

In his novel, The Chosen, Chaim Potok writes of a Hasidic family in Brooklyn in the 1950s. Reb Isaac Saunders had led his community from Russia to a four-block radius in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. His leadership literally saved the lives of hundreds of his people, and they flourished in mid-century New York.

His son, Danny, was to take his father’s place as Rebbe and to ensure that the people lived in peace and faithful obedience to the Lord of the Universe who had sheltered them and brought them to a place of safety.

Danny, though, felt called in another direction. He heard within his deepest self an invitation to study and to learn psychology. He heard a clarion call to do other than his father’s deepest wish.

The discussion about that went poorly.

Reb Saunders had sacrificed everything for his people, had dutifully raised his son and given Danny the finest education in the Law of Moses possible. Father and son spent hours studying the Law, learning together how God had saved their people, and called them from hopelessness to unfathomable joy.

It took Reb Saunders a long while to think, to ponder what his son was doing. About how hard it had been for Danny to quietly say no, to turn down becoming Rebbe. At first blush, our good shepherd metaphor today would likely have cast Danny as the hired hand, running at the first chance. But the novel doesn’t end there. For you see, not only did Reb Saunders know and love the Law, he knew and loved the Author of the Law. He slowly recognized that his desire to see his Hasidic community continue in safety was blinding him to what God was calling Danny to do. The Rebbe wanted Danny to succeed him. The Almighty had other plans.

And because He loved the Living God, Reb Saunders gave Danny his blessing, though it meant forsaking his heir, leaving his scion to go another way.

Reb Saunders was a wolf. He was driving Danny away from the One who was leading him. Even with the best intentions, Reb Saunders was harassing the plans of God for the destiny of one of his sheep. Once he realized it, Reb Saunders killed the wolf inside his heart and did the unthinkable, he blessed his son, and permitted God to be God, and to take Danny on another path.

In our own tradition, and in our Scriptures, we heard this morning the example of St. Peter recorded the Acts of the Apostles and his declaration of Jesus Christ: There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved. St. Peter knew who his own Good Shepherd was. He pointed to Christ as his Lord, as the one who called him to pasture, to joy, to completeness. Peter was able to lead the Church as an apostle because he sought Christ first.


We are still shepherded by those who followed in the ministry of the apostles. We, as the Church, are led by bishops, laypersons, deacons and priests who are true and faithful leaders because they seek not their own glory, but the glory of Christ who saves us from eternal death. The best leaders among us are those who silently, solemnly, and humbly point to Christ. To paraphrase a sermon from Fr. Andy Newbert this past Advent, we should leave church humming the tune of Christ, not singing the praises of the one who led us in worship.

And just as we are still shepherded by Christ’s abiding presence among us in the leadership of His Church, most preciously also are we guided by Christ through His presence among us in the sacraments. These sacraments reveal our wolfish ways, and help us convert from lupine to ovine.

We are shepherded by the Eucharist, wherein the shepherd lays down His life for His sheep, and becomes the very sustenance and pasture to which He led them. He is our true Lord, our Good Shepherd, and our daily bread. He calls us to cling to Him, to hold fast to Him, to never lose sight of Him as He guides us to lush fields.

And this morning, the life He gave for us is given to us again in the Eucharist we will share.

On Easter morning, St Augustine, the fifth century bishop of Hippo in North Africa, preached to the adults who had been newly baptized the evening before at the Great Vigil. He preached about Christ’s call to them to be changed, to be conformed to Christ’s image. St. Augustine told those newly baptized, that as they receive Christ in the Eucharist, they were to pray that they would become what they receive. They were to pray that they themselves were to become Eucharist to others. Like Christ in the Sacrament, like Christ as the Good Shepherd, they were to lay down their lives for others. They were to be broken and shared. They were to communicate the grace and power of Christ’s presence under the veil of their ordinary lives. Eucharist was not just a personal gift to them, nor is Eucharist just a personal gift to us: it is grace to be communicated to others. We are to take that grace to a hurting world, a world of running wolves, and to bring Christ to the darkest places. We are to think not of the cost to ourselves, but are to think of the gain to Christ.

Christ tells us that he came into the world for those who are in need, that he came for the sick, not the healthy. We are among the sick. Christ comes to us as our shepherd in the Sacrament of His Body and Blood, and sends us out to be sacraments to others. Like St Peter, it is our call to confess that Christ saves, that Christ heals, that there is no other name under heaven for healing and for life.

And in the Eucharistic Prayer, we are reminded ”Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Sacrament for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal.” It’s time to form a deeper and more meaningful relationship with Christ, and to meet Him in the Sacrament He gives us. It’s time to get Him off retainer and get Him into our lives. We all have wolves prowling around in our hearts, and without Christ, we will continue to hurt others and hurt ourselves.

Christ comes in the Eucharist this morning to rip the wolfskin off each of us and to bring us to a safe and holier place, a place of glory, of awe, of service to and unity with the poor and forgotten. This is the day of our salvation, the Eucharist is the nexus between Heaven and earth, and this morning to each of us, Christ extends healing, joy, and the loving leadership as the Good Shepherd whose life is given for our life.

 Amen.

April 18 noonday Eucharist

I officiated at the daily noon, and led Communion from the Reserve Sacrament. My homily is as follows:


In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

One of the great joys of being an Episcopalian, of worshipping according to the Anglican tradition, is the beauty of the language of our Book of Common Prayer. The phrasing in our prayer book is intentional: each word chosen for its layers of meaning, for the richness and depth of its imagery, an in cadence with the words with which it joins to form a melodic prayer to Our Father. The form and flow of the words in the prayer book are the product of some of the most talented and gifted men and women who work their art in the English language.
And it’s even on purpose! Many people describe the language of the prayer book as being beautiful, of being fluid and soothing, and it’s no accident. Our collects are designed not only for the beauty and simplicity of their language, but for the number of syllables, for the repetition of consonant and vowel sounds. The language is not just subjectively beautiful, but is objectively crafted to repeat sounds, is structured to have balance of syllables in its phrasing. It is objectively ordered toward harmony.
Part of what makes so much of the prayer book memorable is that structuring of its language. Consider the prayer book words and phrases that have entered our common language: “dearly beloved, we are gathered here”. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” “The quick and the dead.”
Our reading from the Acts of the Apostles refers to a part of the life of the early church that also passed down to us a simple and beautiful phrase. But first the background. It is soon after the death and resurrection of Christ, and His followers have been galvanized by the miraculous life He lived, energized by the love He showed to them and to others, both in His living of His life and in His leaving of it. These men and women who followed Him have been changed, and their lives will never again be the same. They go out into the public places and tell others of the changes inn their lives because of Jesus of Nazareth, telling their neighbors, telling strangers of the life, the death, and the glorious resurrection of this man whom they’ve come to know as God among them. And, like the prayer book would do hundreds of years later, they told that story in language that was direct, simple, vivid, and beautiful. This period of the spreading of the Gospel, of the beginning of the growth of those who knew Jesus to be the God of Israel, is termed in Greek kerygma, which simply means proclaiming. Among the first kerygmas, among the first ways that the early Church proclaimed this thing we now call Christianity was in the simple phrase Jesus is Lord.
This phrase, Jesus is Lord, like the prayer book phrases mentioned earlier, is rich in its layers. It communicates all of the following: a specific man, Jesus of Nazareth, who was named with a common name and whom many of us here knew and loved, this Jesus was a man among us whom, through the living of His life, was special. We witnessed that He was different. Through the beautiful life He lived, through His terrible death, and when on the third day He rose from death, through all of these things, we knew this Jesus to be Lord. We knew him to be Lord, the Lord who created Eden, who revealed Himself to our fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who led Moses and our forefathers from bondage in Egypt, who prepared the Law for us, who sent the prophets to us, who loved and sheltered us. This Jesus is that Lord.
That message that was first told in Jerusalem, that kerygma, has continued from those days down to the present. Each day, all across the globe, in churches, in chapels, in homes, in cars, on sidewalks, millions of Christians, some alone and some in groups, proclaim that Jesus is Lord. For millennia, Christians have told the story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and confessed that Jesus is Lord. We do it here today, now in this place. The storytelling of the first apostles continues now: we come to share the story that Jesus is God’s love for us, given in His entirety, given simply, given beautifully, and given in love. We tell the story of the love of God for us, and of our love for Him.
And, we tell others. Evangelism isn’t just the work of missionaries in foreign countries, it’s our work. We can also proclaim that Jesus is Lord as the first apostles did, using words that are simple, beautiful and powerful. We can speak to our families, our neighbors and friends about how we have felt the love of God by knowing that Jesus came among us so that nothing would ever separate us from God’s love. We can evangelize by living lives of love for ourselves and others, showing that Jesus’ love completely pervades all that we do and are.
More than any beautiful phrase, more than any harmonious sentence, the proclamation that Jesus is Lord can change our lives so that we ourselves become testaments to the beauty and love of God. Let us pray that we might know more completely how we can accept God’s love into our own lives, and that we might be given the strength and grace to accept God’s invitation to make us living examples of His eternal proclamation of love. Amen.

God Friday

This may have been one of my favorite sermons to preach since last year's Holy Name sermon. I had the honor to preach on Good Friday this year at St. Paul's Cathedral, Buffalo, NY:


In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.

When I was in seminary, I took a series of courses on the works of the New Testament attributed to St. John: his Gospel, his three epistles, and the Book of Revelation. The Lutheran pastor who taught those courses had us read the entire set of St John’s works all together, as if they were a single series of pieces. And by reading them as a single corpus, the themes that united them began to emerge, and the one theme that the pastor carried throughout the coursework was that St. John was teaching that the entire arc of God’s work and encounter with humanity is toward blessing. The Book of Revelation, in particular, though filled with terrifying and nightmarish imagery, is ultimately a book of hope. St John is showing that, as Genesis stated, God created the world out of love, and that creation was good, that it pleased God, that we lived in blessing. Then, the curse of sin, of rejection of God’s love led to human suffering, pain, loss, and death, and the original blessing that God had intended withered into a curse. But St John does not end there, with a lost humanity and a disenfranchised Creator. Through God’s action among humanity, through his coming among us as Jesus of Nazareth, the curse that humanity introduced is changed, changed into a blessing greater than the original one laid out in Eden.
And one of the most remarkable things about this action that God undertook, this action of pulling us from a cocoon of sin and hopelessness and out into a new life of deeper blessing, of moving further up and further in, one of the most remarkable things about it is that God accomplished this work as a man.
This is what we call the Incarnation: God becoming one of us, becoming human at a manger in Bethlehem, given a human name, actually a very common name: Jesus. In the Incarnation, God truly came among us in the form of a slave: poor, powerless, unwelcomed. But, the Incarnation also illustrates that things which are seemingly useless, people who are weak, creation even when weighed down by sin, by death, by a self-invited curse, even in our most dire and pitiable state, even then, ordinary things can be extraordinary. When we look at the ties that bind creation to its creator, we see that all is beauty, even the least remarkable. All is redeemable, even the greatest sinner, all is intended for joy, even the most destructive hate. Hard wood and piercing iron can lead to salvation. A manger can shelter God.
We can also be led to see that our pain and sufferings cannot be separated from our joys and triumphs. The curse that humanity placed upon itself was not transformed into blessing by God without first God entered into pain. This day, Good Friday, the day on which humankind commits the most abominable, destructive, and self-destructive act possible, this day is still named Good. The paradox of our vicious rejection of God’s love offered in the Incarnation, the very day on which we put God to cruel death, we still call Good. We acknowledge that in Jesus’ life, and in our own, our pain and our joys are not discreet unconnected events, but bound tightly together, united, like St. John’s writings, into a single mystery, a single a capella hymn of curse transformed into blessing. In the Book of Common Prayer, we use almost mirror language at baptism when we welcome a new member into the household of God and when we commit the body of a loved one to the ground at a burial. New beginnings and the end of a life are tied together as a single mystery, humanity lives in both pain and joy. As the burial service reminds us, In the midst of life we are in death.
That pain and joy is not unique to us alone, for not only humankind moves through blessing to curse on this Friday we call Good. All of creation is reset, is redeemed. The Gospels of St Matthew, St Mark, and St Luke tell us that for three hours, darkness fell over all of Judea as Christ hung dying on the Cross. Creation itself enters into the mourning of God’s death, every stone cries out in sorrow, but also cries out in the joy of the movement from curse to blessing. The clock gets reset at the cross, and the Book of Genesis is set anew. Genesis opens with the words: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.”
Genesis tells us that it was light that God first called forth. That was his first motion in Creation, in setting forth goodness and blessing. But before the light? Darkness. Not a darkness of absence, though. Before God began His work of creation, God dwelled alone in darkness. Not a darkness of absence; a darkness of divinity. That darkness of divinity falls across Judea, as God begins again his work of creation. As Christ hangs from the cross, Creation begins again. As God on the Cross breathes his last, God says let there be light. Christ’s death and the return of light to the land are tied together as a new act of God in resetting creation. This death is the new first day, and the garden of the cross and tomb is the new Eden.
Good Friday, then, is not given to us to shame us, to create a bank of guilt in order to pay our debt. When we hear the Reproaches, when we think how we have rejected the blessing that God offers and have chosen a curse instead, chosen to deny God’s love and to torture and murder him, it is not guilt for our actions that God desires to well up in us: it is gratitude and love for His actions that he wants us to know. That is part of the category distinction between us and our Creator: we expect retribution for our crimes, we expect vengeance, wrath, payback. But the Incarnation, God coming among us, was never about our actions being able to move us from curse to blessing. The Incarnation was always about love, about God’s love for us, and the beauty of that love shown in the first day recorded in the Book of Genesis, and the new first day begun on the Cross. Today truly is a Good Friday, for it’s not about what we can accomplish, but about thankfulness for what God has done for us in Christ, in transforming our curse into a new and greater blessing, changing our shame into feasting.
George Herbert, a 17th century Anglican priest writes of the paradox of our guilt and of God’s love in his poem entitled Love, where Herbert describes his conversation with Christ on Good Friday:
LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.

'A guest,' I answer'd, 'worthy to be here:'
Love said, 'You shall be he.'
'I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on Thee.'
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
'Who made the eyes but I?'

'Truth, Lord; but I have marr'd them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.'
'And know you not,' says Love, 'Who bore the blame?'
'My dear, then I will serve.'
'You must sit down,' says Love, 'and taste my meat.'
So I did sit and eat.
For Herbert, and for us, sin and guilt can make us shy away from Love, from the God who welcomes us into life shared with Him. The sin that can create the chasm between us and our God is bridged today through Christ’s selfless outpouring on the Cross. At the conclusion of the service today, we will continue that conversation with God, just like Herbert did in his poem, as we address our Creator with the words:
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, we pray you to set your passion, cross, and death between your judgment and our souls, now and in the hour of our death.
When we offer this prayer, think carefully and joyfully on the words, on the petition we ask of God. We do not pray that Jesus set our guilt between judgment and our souls, but we pray that the cross is placed there. Our guilt, though understandable and real this day, is not the point of Good Friday: the blessing of a new creation through Christ’s passion, cross and death is the point. And we are not the ones who set the cross there, but God. Good Friday is not about bewailing our evil, or making up for the terror of the crucifixion, it’s about letting God be divine, accepting that our paths of vengeance and pain do not stop God from being holy, and that it is God’s love, even as he gasps dying on the cross, that grafts us onto the tree of salvation. God is never more divine then when He dies as a man. We humbly, gratefully, and in awe and wonder, adore the mystery of the cross, and give what we can, our love and worship, our service and our lives, to one who gave everything to us. Though Good Friday may seem like a day in which God is absent, distant, he is closer than on any other day. Even as we torture and murder him, he cares for and comforts us in our sorrow over our monstrous act of destruction. He knows that we are truly only hurting ourselves. Let us with Creation sing out today: both a dirge for the dying Lord and a hymn of joy for the breaking of the new first day. Amen.

Lent III

At St Paul's Catedral, Buffalo, for Lent III:


In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

When he was in his mid-thirties, David Finch encountered a life-changing revelation: his doctor diagnosed him with Asperger’s syndrome, a condition on the autism spectrum that explained his atypical reactions, his lack of understanding of the emotions of others, and what he had always thought were just quirks and strange habits. That diagnosis forever modified David’s understanding of his life and worldview. In his memoir related to that diagnosis, David’s wry and dark humor peeks out. He entitled his biography The Journal of Best Practices, and explains in his book how his revelation of Asperger’s made him see that his life didn’t have to be the way it was. For you see, David’s relationship with his wife had become strained, and was now so far different than when they had been dating and newly married. Now, with work pressures and two young children, David’s inability to understand his own needs and desires, let alone those of his wife and children, and his frequent overreactions at small things and underreactions at important things was no longer tolerable in his family system. It wasn’t ok anymore that David spent an hour looking at himself in the mirror trying to discern if his face was symmetrical, or that his inability to help his wife get the kids ready in the morning because the noise was just too much for him was causing his wife to want to poison him.
But his diagnosis changed everything. He had never before thought about changing, he had never thought about working to be different. His diagnosis didn’t mean that he was a bad man or had an undesirable personality; but his diagnosis allowed David to consider that he was not acting the way he felt that he could act at his best.
And The Journal of Best Practices poignantly tracks David’s struggle and humorous progress in his change. He found that he had to learn lessons that did not come naturally to him, and he catalogued and studied these lessons, trying to put them into practice. Included in the Journal of Best Practices are the insights that: his wife is not lazy because she spends an hour three times weekly to wash, dry, and fold the clothes for the entire family, but expects David to put them away. David also wrote down in his journal: don’t change the radio station in the car when my wife is singing to the song playing. The alternate personalities that David created at work in order to deal with clients in sales situations should not be also employed with his wife to try to convince her to do what he wants; she can see through it. When a friend is talking to you at a party and you’re not interested in what he’s saying, don’t just turn and walk away in the middle of his sentence and go get yourself another beer. David wrote that if a close friend were to come up to him and tearfully tell David that she had only 24 hours to live, David’s reaction would be to ask her if she knew how long he had to live?
And David learned that when you’re working on improving your marriage, and you’re excited about a new insight, don’t immediately wake your wife up in the middle of the night and tell her how you’re going to be more sensitive about her busy schedule, or don’t insist that she give you a full performance review with Powerpoint like she would to an employee, and certainly don’t spring the idea on her when she’s trying to relax in the bath and have some personal time, and absolutely don’t demand that she prepare for the review immediately. David taught himself each of those lessons the hard way. And the lesson that he had to keep learning over and over? It’s not an apology if you yell it.
As much as I cringed often, as well as laughed hysterically (trying to keep my own voice down, lest I be insensitive of those around me), it’s also remarkable to reflect on the entire process David Finch undertook: thorough self-examination, adaptation, and acceptance of who he was, who he could be, and what change would mean for him and for his life, both the good and the bad, the falling in love again, and the screamed apologies.
David chose to no longer be disenfranchised from himself and from the person he wanted to be, for himself, and for his family. It took dedication, work, patience, and an open heart until David could begin to feel that his self-identification was now in parallel to the man he could be at his best.
All of us know individuals who are remarkable for the integrity of who they are at all times, and we admire those who strive to always be coherent, always be themselves. And no person has ever been more coherent, has ever been more Himself, than the Lord Christ.
So, it may seem odd that this Gospel today recounts a violent event in Christ’s life that is so brusquely dissimilar to the calm, the peace, the meekness of Christ’s demeanor and behavior in the rest of the Gospel. Is Christ throwing a tantrum? David Finch might have related to Christ’s seeming overreaction to the moneychangers. But Christ’s apparent erratic and over the top behavior is entirely explainable, and that explanation comes immediately in the discussion that follows between Christ and those gathered in the Temple precincts. In that conversation, Christ immediately compares the Temple to His own Body. Those listening don’t understand, hence their confusion about which temple it is to which Christ is referring. And those same people probably weren’t in the most understanding frames of mind, anyway, since Jesus had just ransacked the merchants’ booths, and there were likely a lot of turtledoves flying around, freed from their cages, landing everywhere, and doing their business on the shoulders of the bystanders.
Christ’s reaction, though, flowed from his intimate and coherent association of Himself, of His own Body, with God’s love in the world. Christ knew Himself to be the Temple. It was not the newly-built Temple that would be the source of grace, love, and sanctity in days to come, but it would the very heart and Body of Christ standing among them that would be their Holy of Holies. Christ saw those changing money, earning profit, disregarding the Temple’s call to prayer, God’s call to amendment of life and the invitation to always seek to be the best one can be, and Christ immediately overthrew it, for it did not belong alongside the coherence and beauty in His own heart.
Overturning the tables in the Temple, though an atypical and dramatic scene, was also not an action frozen in time, nor did it apply just to that morning in Jerusalem. Christ, as the Temple we worship, as the very Holy of Holies, bids us to overturn the tables that we place in the shrines of our own hearts, to overturn the distractions and inconsistencies that keep us from being truly ourselves, and ourselves at our best.
In the 1712 addendum to the English Book of Common Prayer regarding the hallowing of graveyards and consecration of churches is included this prayer: sanctify us, we pray thee, that we may be living temples, holy and acceptable unto thee; and so dwell in our Hearts by Faith, and possess our souls by thy grace, that nothing which defileth may enter into us; but that being cleansed from all carnal and corrupt affection, we may ever be devoutly given to serve thee in all good works, who art our Saviour, Lord and God, blessed forevermore. So, now, like when David Finch realized that his life could take a different path, we see the point of today’s Gospel for us: we, too, are temples, and Christ is overturning the tables in our lives, bidding us to turn away from the things that distract and detract, and to turn toward Him, and to turn toward a more complete and healthy version of ourselves.
Christ offered His ministry, His life, His Blood and Passion for the conversion of our hearts, for the health of our minds and the quiet of our lives, and for the eternal salvation of our immortal souls. He overturns the tables that we fill with worldly needs, and then forces us to stand in front Him, to stand and face Him in the shrine he has built in our hearts, and to accept His invitation to live our lives more abundantly.
This is the third Sunday of Lent, and in just a few short weeks, we will enter into Holy Week. We will start that journey on Palm Sunday, and on that morning, as we gather here in St. Paul’s Cathedral and as Christians gather around the world, we will witness these walls of Medina sandstone melt around us as we process with Hosannas, and the sunblasted walls of Jerusalem rise to take their place. We will join in proclaiming Christ with shouts of joy, in welcoming Him into our homes, and into the temples of our hearts. Here, in the Jerusalem that will surround us, and here, in our own hearts, we will receive from Our Lord the life he instituted for our life in the Holy Eucharist; on Maundy Thursday, we’ll hear the choirs sing the words written by St Thomas Aquinas: He gives Himself with His own hand. And, receiving Christ in the Eucharist, we will welcome Him again into the temple he has built in our hearts.
Lent is not only given to us so that we can think about skipping that third martini, or avoiding carbs. Lent is given us to reevaluate who we want to be, who Christ dreams we could be. Lent is given us to prepare, to firmly and resolutely name the ties that bind us to infirmity, and to grasp strongly the edges of the tables cluttering our souls with needless anxiety, with purposeless worry and empty pleasure, with white lies and with darkest sin, to grasp the edges of those tables and fling them over, kick them flying, throw them across and out of our hearts, to do violence to our imperfections.
As we continue to prepare together for Holy Week and the unfolding of the great work of God in Christ, let us prepare our hearts as Christ prepared Jerusalem, by overturning the tables in our hearts that inhibit us from being completely ourselves, by cleansing the Temples Christ has built in our souls, and by standing, together, adoringly, before the Christ who bids us to follow Him, to grow into greater life and joy in Him, and then to stand in vigil at the Cross with Him, for the healing of our hearts and for the salvation of our immortal souls. Amen.

Epiphany III

I had the pleasure of preaching on Epiphany III, 2012, at St. Paul's Cathedral, Buffalo:



In his poem, A Psalm of Life, Longfellow wrote:
Lives of great men all remind us 

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us 

Footprints on the sands of time.
He was, I think, ruminating on the indelible impact that a good example can impress on our own memories. A good example in another person sticks with us, it remains marked as footprints on the sands of time and can lend itself to our need when we feel weak, in need of inspiration or comfort. Good examples inspire us to be good examples; good examples are rampantly reproducing like bunnies.
On the same topic, though, Mark Twain opined: Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. In this case, Twain seems to be alluding to the self righteousness that can sometimes accompany a good example. Or, this may also refer to the words all of us with siblings have heard from our parents on at least one occasion: why can’t you act more like your sister? She doesn’t do X, Y or Z.
So, the examples of others matter; the examples of others stand the test of time and can be hearkened to to gauge our own actions and examples.
In my very first course on sermon preparation, on day one we all received a list of topics to avoid in sermons. And on the top of that list, in capital letters was spelled out THEOLOGICAL MUSINGS. Prepare to watch me break the rules.
In the First Epistle to the Corinthians this morning, our patron St. Paul writes of a beautiful theological conundrum, and I believe it merits some thinking about. He presents the question of Christians who are eating meat sacrificed to idols. These Christians know that the idols are just stone and gold and paint, and that there is no divine power behind the idol. And who wants to waste good filet? So, knowing that the idols are hollow promises, they dig in and thank their pagan brethren for their generosity. But what do others think when they see this? Avowed Christians partaking in sacred rites of idol worship, even if there is A1 sauce? That can’t be right! What will people say? Taking part in sacred rites seems to give credence to the assertions made by that religion, doesn’t it? So, Christians must be idol worshippers, so Christians must either believe in pagan gods and their Christian God, or be charlatans and believe in nothing at all.
This describes a very real problem: when one’s actions or inactions lead others to actions or thoughts contrary to the Christian truth. All of those faithful Christians who are off eating meat sacrificed to idols know that the actions mean nothing, but to observers, it looks like apostasy.
In The Freedom of a Christian, Martin Luther wrote: A Christian man is the most free lord of all, and subject to none, a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to every one. This brings us to some more theology about what St. Paul is introducing in this Epistle to the Corinthians. He claims that those who would eat meat sacrificed to idols should think not only how their actions impact themselves, but of how their actions impact others. In response to the question that Cain asked God when Abel went missing: Am I my brother’s keeper?, St. Paul answers with an emphatic YES.
So what does this mean to us? Well, first of all, we should be thinking twice the next time we’re invited by a coworker to barbecue some sirloin sacrificed to Demeter or are asked to participate in a block party Bacchinalia, for sure. But we’re not very likely to be encountering pagan temptations too often.
But it should impress on us the need to think about the examples we set to those around us. For instance, I’m terrified of putting a sticker on my car that reads “The Episcopal Church Welcomes You”, since I sometimes am visibly demonstrative when people cut me off, and that seems to be a bad time to advertise the Episcopal Church. But, if Longfellow is right, and if our examples are imprinted like footprints on the sands of time, then starting to own our behavior, not only for our sake but for the sake of others becomes more pressing.
I knew, for example, that when my mother caught me as a child using language that was a bit mature, I could easily get out of punishment by saying that I had heard Daddy say the word just the day before. And I’ve heard many stories of parents cringing when they hear their young children innocently repeating the things that they overheard their parents say about their neighbors, relatives, or even their bosses. Ouch.
So, if we know to watch ourselves around impressionable young children, why do we assume that the middle-aged people around us aren’t impressionable? That’s the theology St. Paul is trying to impress on the Corinthians by talking about meat sacrificed to idols: we are all here together, and we are shepherds to one another on our journey to redemption, wholeness, and completion in Christ. And we’re just as impressionable as adults as we were as children.
But the good news that St. Paul and Longfellow have for us is that good examples persist, too. This weekend the members of the Cathedral vestry gathered together for the annual retreat and first meeting of the year. On Friday evening, all of us present were asked to talk a little bit about people in our lives whom we considered our spiritual heroes. And it became very evident that the good examples of people in our lives persisted with us, and still cast their light on our lives today, though those examples were decades or even centuries in the past. It is a comfort to remember, also, that even though both good and bad examples can shape us, it is the good that stays the longest, and the bad examples that fade. Bad examples cause harm, to be sure, but are absolutely less powerful than the good examples. In the Book of Common Prayer, this is touched on beautifully in the Rite of Reconciliation of a Penitent, or what we commonly would refer to as Confession. After the confession of sins, the priest, after pronouncing absolution assures the person: The Lord has put away all your sins. Or to rephrase it, bad examples are not footprints on the sands of time, for the Lord sweeps them away.
Being part of a community, being bound together in a common life, we all feel the joys and pains of those around us. Our liturgy each week also reminds us and reinforces that we are knit together as one people, and that we do not face challenges and opportunities all by ourselves. We do it all together. In the Eucharist, Christ comes among us anew as Incarnate God and Lord. And we sing together: One body are we, alleluia,
for though many, we share one bread.
Be known to us, Lord Jesus, in the breaking of the bread.
We strive to set good examples, but should humbly accept that we sometimes miss the mark. But we have the good examples of those around us and those who went before us to give us the courage to try again, to improve, to become more completely the persons Christ had called us to be.
In a sermon he preached last year, Fr Julian Browning, at All Saints Church, Margaret St, London told a story about an encounter he had with a visitor who wandered into the church for a service. I asked Fr. Browning’s permission to share the story that enfolded after the service. All Saints, Margaret St , as some background, is an historic AngloCatholic parish in London, and has been a leader in celebrating the historic tradition of Catholic Christianity in the Church of England for close to 150 years. It celebrates that heritage through its liturgy, through its beautiful and stunningly-appointed building, and through the richness of its arts and devotion. The newcomer in this story was a Low Church Anglican who wandered into All Saints during Solemn High Mass on the Feast of the Annunciation that included a procession of the church’s statue of the Blessed Mother being carried around the aisles of the church as flowers were strewn on the floor as the procession passed. Our poor newcomer in the story was aghast at the sumptuous building, the jewel-like windows, and certainly, the life size plaster Mary trouncing about the nave. After Mass, this newcomer approached Fr Browning, and still a bit shell-shocked and maybe hallucinating from the incense, he decided to unload to Fr. Browning all the things he thought were just terrible about what he had witnessed. But, being overwhelmed with horror, he could only stammer out how he felt that the windows were too bright and showy, and that seeing dozens of two-dimensional dead apostles and medieval nuns and martyred Reformation bishops staring out at him from the lead and glass of the windows, the newcomer couldn’t imagine how anyone could worship with all that gaudy glass around! And with a beatific smile, Fr Browning replied: Sir, the windows aren’t there for us to judge them. The windows are there to judge us.
What I think Fr. Browning was pointing out is that we need to be reminded, to be judged, if you will, by the good examples of those who have gone before us in faith. The generations of holy women and holy men whose lives were lived for Christ have set their footprints in the sands of time, and those footprints still show us a path. That great cloud of witnesses, as we call them, still pray for us here at the Cathedral each day, as we work out how to become better, how we can set better examples. Just like we are not alone because we have one another, we are not alone because we have the saints to pray for us, to encourage us with their examples, and to show us that a life lived for Christ brings wholeness, brings peace, brings completion. Amen.

Advent I

I preached this sermon at St. Paul's Cathedral in Buffalo, NY for Advent I, 2011:


In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This morning, if you were not already tuned into it, you likely noticed the changes in the Cathedral: the appearance of the Advent wreath, and the switch to blue vestments. But, if you still haven’t figured it out, I’ll clue you in: today is the first day of the season of Advent, those weeks of preparation before Christmas.
And today in particular is a special beginning. This first Sunday in Advent marks the beginning of another church year. For church geeks all around the world, today is New Year’s Day. Most of us, though, probably did not celebrate last night as the church’s new year’s eve in the same way we celebrate on Dec 31. We didn’t have a countdown, or raise flutes of champagne, there were no Auld Lang Synes for the passing of another church year. The closest some of us may have come was attending the world’s largest disco last night at the convention center.
And even though we didn’t mark this new year with great fanfare like we do for the secular calendar, we still shouldn’t miss the opportunity to consider why Advent is the beginning of the new year. Why isn’t Christmas the first day of the church year? Christmas marks the entrance of God into human life in a dramatic and unique way, opening a new chapter in our history. Why is the first Sunday in Advent so special?
The entire season of Advent, beginning this morning, is a time of preparation and of expectation. We are given four weeks to reflect on the entire period of time spanning from the first moments of Creation to the birth of Christ in Bethlehem on Christmas morning. Literally billions of years are crammed into these four weeks. We heard today in Isaiah that the heavens are torn open by God’s entrance, that the mountains quake at his approach. We heard that all of the universe, our fragile earth, and the lands and seas it contains are the very handiwork of our God. We heard in the psalm that God was the shepherd of his people, the one to whom Israel looked for sustenance and restoration. After God fashioned humankind into his likeness and called Israel into a covenant, we hear of his faithfulness and love for them. These four weeks will be a crash course, a very quick summary of the entirety of human history leading up to the eruption of God into the world in a manger in Bethlehem. During these four weeks, we will wait with expectation, wait with longing alongside the nation of Israel, as we pray with them that the Messiah might be sent to us, that a redeemer might be given to us, that our crying out for God might be heard and answered. During Advent, we sojourn with all of humankind as we wait for the appearance of God wrapped in flesh, first given to us on Christmas morning.
That longing that Israel felt as it awaited its savior is the longing of billions of souls who have turned to their God for redemption, for being made complete and whole. The first epistle to the Corinthians this morning referred to this longing when it described how God has enriched us, how God calls us into fellowship with him. That longing is the tugging on human hearts down the long march of our common history, as we have sought our God in silent whispered prayer, as we have sought our completion that can only be obtained by entering into relationship with the God who created us out of love. Advent unites us to countless generations who walked the pilgrim path of longing, of searching for God’s embrace to surround them more completely.
Our longing for God to make us whole, to make us more completely ourselves, has been written of by our prophets, by our poets, by our musicians and by our mystics. That longing has been described by innumerable lips, incalculable words, and limitless prayers.
That longing has been the soundtrack in each generation in new and unique ways that speak to the pattern and experience of each society. Throughout history, different people have spoken of this longing in the language of their own cultures. For example, the prophet Isaiah wrote of this longing with the words of the famous Advent hymn Rorate Caeli, Drop down, ye heavens from above and let the skies pour down righteousness. St Augustine told us that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. Julian of Norwich described this longing: Our natural will is to have God, and the good will of God is to have us, and we may never cease willing or longing for God until we have him in the fullness of joy. Christ will never have his full bliss in us until we have our full bliss in him. Teresa of Avila in her book on spiritual growth wrote The feeling remains that God is on my journey, too. A few years ago, Fr. Ethan Cole told the Cathedral 20s30s of a God-shaped hole in our hearts that no beer could fill.
In all times and places, women and men have sought through their own personal Advents, to cleave more closely to the God who called them into love. The changes and journeys in individual hearts match the changes and journeys of the nation of Israel as it struggled to understand its covenant, and as it lived for the coming of the promised Messiah. These four weeks of Advent are a gift given to us. This gift is time: time to reflect on our own longing for wholeness offered by Christ’s presence in our lives, time to reflect on the need to offer Christ as healing and wholeness to those around us, time to name the God-shaped hole in our own hearts, and begin honestly to ask the Messiah to come and make his home there.

This morning’s collect bid God to

give us grace to cast away the works of
darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of
this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit
us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come
again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the
dead, we may rise to the life immortal

give us grace that we may cast away the 
works of darkness, and put upon us the armor of light, now 
in the time of this mortal life in which thy Son Jesus Christ 
came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when 
he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the 
quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal

Advent is the gift of time that is extended to us to cast away the works of darkness lingering in our souls. Christ, the great light of the world, is coming as the breaking dawn. Light strengthens, warms, and renews. Light also shows us things that had been hidden, maybe even some things that we wish would remain hidden. Christ, as the perfect light, shines perfectly, and nothing is hidden. In Advent, we are to cast away our works of darkness, through the grace and strength that God gives us to do so, so that we can be prepared for Christ to complete us, to fulfill our longing, and to make us more entirely ourselves.
The wonderful call to wholeness and fulfillment is not given to us as private treasure. It is a public invitation. Christ did not spring on the world alone, solitary, entirely of his own power. Christ came to us on Christmas morning through the love and service of Mary of Nazareth, his mother. The willingness of one young woman to accept the call to wholeness, to allow God’s grace to fulfill her waiting for the Messiah, brought not only her own personal longing and Advent to a close, but brought to a close the longing and Advent of the whole nation of Israel, the longing and Advent of the entire human race, the longing and Advent of all of creation. Mary’s single yes when asked to bear the Messiah was the model for the yes we should give.
The Messiah is given to us to make us complete, to fill the God-shaped holes in our hearts, but we are not asked to keep Christ to ourselves. We are asked, like Mary of Nazareth, to be Godbearers, and to carry the promised Messiah to those who are still awaiting him, those who long for him, those who may not even yet know that their hearts will remain restless until they rest in Christ.
The world is not going to know Christ unless I bring Christ to the world. Unless you bring Christ to the world. Wholeness, healing, fulfillment, completion in our very souls and beings will not be offered to our friends and neighbors, to strangers and enemies until we cooperate in bearing that wholeness, in bearing the Christ to those who wait in their own longing and Advent.
Most of us work and move in secular environments, so it is not often that we speak the name of Jesus to those around us. I’m an epidemiologist, and spend much more of my day talking about colonoscopies than I do talking about Christ. Most of us make small talk about how nice the weather has been, we may politely avoid talking about the Sabres or the Bills especially this year; we ask how our coworkers’ weekends were, and tell people about how ours were filled with errands and making Christmas cookies. But how often do we tell our neighbors and coworkers that we went to church, that we heard the good news of our redemption? How many of us even tell our spouse about how God is churning in our own hearts, calling us to perfection and union with him? How often do we even say the name of Jesus aloud?
So, here’s this week’s homework: sometime in the next seven days, think about your own personal spiritual Advent, and how you long for wholeness, peace, and completion. Think about how Christ is calling you to love him more, and calling you to bear him to others. And then, in this coming week, with your actions and kindness to others, bear the Christ to those around you through charity, works of mercy and love, patience, and forgiveness. If you feel particularly daring, invite someone to church next week. If you want extra credit, speak the name of Jesus to another person. And don’t worry, I will come up with different homework for the Dean, since she has an unfair advantage in the opportunities she’s given by her work.
And for your own sake, take the time this week to name your longing, to sit with it, to accept it, and to pray for the grace and patience to accept Christ into your heart, to more completely fill the God-shaped hole. Take the time to name your Advent, to pray that God will make this a fruitful Advent that you will grow in love, and bring others to grow in love. Advent is a gift that God gives to us, a gift of time. Accept it gratefully, use it wisely, and enter into it honestly and with love. Use this Advent to prepare for the birth of Christ in your heart, and, like Mary, bear Christ out into our world, a world of longing and disquiet that is so in need of the tender love of our God. Amen.