Happy Sheep

"I came that they may have life, life beyond measure" (John 10:10b)

Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof

Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth

Clap along if you know what happiness is to you

Clap along if you feel like that's what you wanna do.

Are you happy? I hope so. Why else did you get up on a Sunday morning, but to hear the one we call our Lord saying, "I came that they may have life, life beyond measure"? What could make one happier than a life overflowing with friends and the beauty of holiness that spills over into the rest of your life, overflowing into our laps so much that we just have to share it? So for Jesus to speak of abundant life beyond measure is another way of saying that Jesus wants us to be happy, in this life and the next. So, Jesus wouldn't disagree with Williams that "Happiness is the truth." I do suspect that Jesus would then ask where one's happiness comes from. Does it come solely from within each individual? That would imply that there is no one right way to happiness. Some might decide that whatever makes them happy is right for them regardless of the consequences to anyone else. At the other extreme, certain people or institutions would have the power to dictate to people what they must do to be happy.

Then I suppose we'd be like sheep, with sheepdogs barking at us and nipping at our tails to keep us in line. Some shepherd. Which bring us to the Gospel for today. At least one view of sheep is that they not the brightest bulbs in the world and have to be led around. But sheep are good at some things. Their hearing and their memory are much sharper than most city folk know. They learn very quickly the voice of their shepherd. In Jesus' time, shepherds would bring their sheep into the village and lead them into a corral that was actually connected to the house by a wall for the night. If the sheep saw someone climbing over the wall instead of coming through the gate, they would know that wasn't their shepherd, and would bleat accordingly. Even if an imposter got in through the gate and called them, they would remember their shepherd's voice and would not follow the imposter.

As Jesus says, the sheep know their shepherd's voice. They know the name their shepherd has given them. They don't follow their shepherd because they're scared of him, or crave his approval. They follow their shepherd because they are happy to hear the shepherd's voice. That voice comes from the outside. But it strikes the most pleasant chords in their hearts, and they are happy to follow their shepherd.

Hearts on Fire

It was 42 years ago this week, on Easter Sunday, April 22, 1984, that Laura and I walked into Saint Christopher's Episcopal Church in our college town of Spartanburg, South Carolina. It was in The Episcopal Church that I could truly taste and see that The Lord is good. In the Sacraments, “outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace,” that I could taste and see the amazing grace of God that has brought me safe thus far. As Cleopas and his companion did nearly 2,000 years ago, I came to recognize the risen Jesus in the breaking of the bread.

But my life as a Christian began at the First Baptist Church of Vero Beach, Florida. And at the center of that life was the Word of God who spoke through the Holy Bible, with sermons of at least 20 minutes. When I was bored I would read my Good News Bible, with its simple illustrations. It was there that the first spark was ignited, the same spark that Cleopas and his companion felt. "Weren’t our hearts on fire when he spoke to us along the road and when he explained the scriptures for us?” Nearly 2,000 years ago, the risen Jesus made himself known to his disciples in the same way that he makes himself known to his disciples today. Jesus the Word makes himself known to us in the story of God's conversation with God's people in Holy Scripture. Then Jesus the risen makes himself known to us by feeding us with himself in the Sacrament of his body and blood, the foretaste of that risen life which we shall share with him.

As an Anglo-Catholic Episcopal parish, our appreciation of that second way of presence is clear. But it is the Word of God, spoken through Holy Scripture, which sets us up to perceive that other presence in the Sacrament. We hear and respond to the Word of God before we recall Christ, crucified and raised, in the Sacrament. We are a Biblically based people every bit as much as we are a Sacramentally based people. We proclaim the Good News of God’s love in Christ Jesus by a way of worship and prayer that has been handed down to us from the ancient and timeless church. We are also a Biblical people, proclaiming the Gospel, the Good News of God's infinite patience as it is found in that Holy Conversation.

Who’s Your Author?

The most important verse in today's 2nd Sunday of Easter Gospel isn't specifically about Thomas: “But these things are written so that you will believe that Jesus is the Christ, God's Son, and that believing, you will have life in his name.” (Jn 20:31)

Here is the purpose, the central thesis of the Beloved Disciple’s Gospel, that those who, in the words of 1 Peter, believe even though they haven't seen the risen Jesus face to face, will have life in Jesus' name. The corollary is, “I came so that they may have life, and may have it beyond measure.” (Jn 10:10b). However many years the first Act of this life lasts in this physical world, so long as it is lived in trust of the risen Christ, it is a life beyond measure, beyond our accounting standards.

To live this immeasureable life is to recognize and accept that none of us is the author of our life-story. Jesus is, in the words of one of our Eucharistic prayers, “the author of our salvation.” If Christ Jesus is our author, then none of us has any authority over each other or even ourselves. All authority belongs to our Messiah, our Chosen King, Christ Jesus, because He is the author, and we are characters in the story that He and the Father and the Holy Spirit have authored/created.

What Else Is There?

The message I give you today is not my own, nor was it Peter’s when he spoke it nearly two millennia ago: “We are witnesses of everything he did, both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him up on the third day and allowed him to be seen, not by everyone but by us. We are witnesses whom God chose beforehand; who ate and drank with him after God raised him from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead.” In addition to Saint Peter, Saint Paul writes that over 500 of Jesus’s disciples saw him resurrected. Their eyewitness testimony has been handed down to me, and I hand it on to you today.

If you accept it, then you will begin a journey with twists and turns and detours that you cannot imagine, as was the case with Peter. Here he is delivering the Good News to a Roman Centurion named Cornelius, in the home of a Gentile, which was forbidden for Jews following the Law of Israel as Moses received it . And yet, here he was, because a day earlier, he had been up on the roof of another house, praying at Noon, and getting hungry. Then he saw a vision of every kind of animal coming down from the sky, and a voice saying, “Get up, Peter! Kill and eat.” But since some of those animals were forbidden for a Jew to eat, Peter had protested, “Absolutely not, Lord! I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.” The Voice’s reply called up short Peter’s attempt to place categories of humans in the “Other,” and has done so since to anyone who has tried to make others “Other.” — Never consider unclean what God has made pure.

Marching Orders

In this year of Matthew’s Gospel, on Palm Sunday, we were told that the chief priests and Pharisees went to Pilate and said, “Sir, we remember that while that deceiver was still alive he said, ‘After three days I will arise.’ Therefore, order the grave to be sealed until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people, ‘He’s been raised from the dead.’” But when Jesus said exactly this to his disciples earlier in this Gospel, what was their reaction? “Then Peter took hold of Jesus and, scolding him, began to correct him: ‘God forbid, Lord! This won’t happen to you.’” And when Jesus predicted his crucifixion, and resurrection again, just one chapter later, we are told, “They were heartbroken,” as if they could only hear crucifixion, but not resurrection.

Apparently, Jesus’s enemies understood him better than his friends. They knew what his game plan was. They didn’t believe he could pull it off. But they understood Jesus’ stated purpose better than those who proudly called them themselves his disciples. And of course, when their plans don’t work out, Jesus’ enemies have a fallback, at least according to Matthew, in what immediately follows our reading tonight:

“Now as the women were on their way, some of the guards came into the city and told the chief priests everything that had happened. They met with the elders and decided to give a large sum of money to the soldiers. They told them, ‘Say that Jesus’ disciples came at night and stole his body while you were sleeping. And if the governor hears about this, we will take care of it with him so you will have nothing to worry about.’ So the soldiers took the money and did as they were told. And this report has spread throughout all Judea to this very day.”

The Only Words that Count

On this day of all days for the Church, what words count against all our fears? The only words that can count are those that we hear today from the cross.

“Mother, there is your son … There is your mother.” There is no human fear of loss or abandonment that the Son of God has not known. Yet, even on that cross, He is able to think beyond his immediate suffering and reach out to others, in this case his mother who without a husband or son would have no one to care for her. So Jesus gives her a son, and in giving that child to her, gives all us children to her as our Mother. So even in our fear we too can think beyond ourselves, reach out to others, and find new parents and siblings deeper than blood. So, let us also share the love that flowed between Jesus, His mother, and the disciple whom He loved.

“I thirst.” Of the scripture fulfilled by Jesus one is reminded of Psalm 69:23, “when I was thirsty they gave me vinegar to drink.” This psalm was quoted earlier in John’s Gospel, “Zeal for your house has eaten me up.” It is a psalm of abandonment. There is no human experience that God in Christ Jesus has not experienced in full. Therefore we are never alone in our suffering because with the eternal God there is no time when God was not, nor a time when God will not be. We live in time, where what has been is no more, and what will be is a blank. But God is timeless, with no past or future, no yesterday or tomorrow, but an eternal present; it is always today with God. So what God in Christ Jesus experienced in our time, He experiences with you today, right now. You are not alone. Just breathe that prayer whose only name is Jesus, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” until you know that you are not alone.

“It is finished,” or more accurately, “It is accomplished.” Matthew, Mark and Luke tell us that Jesus cried out just before his death. John tells us what he cried, “It is accomplished!” Jesus’s death actually confirms his divinity for no human died on the cross with enough breath to cry out. Jesus does not despair at his death, for it is his greatest accomplishment. He has endured the worst that human beings do to each other out of our fear and anger, but has not reacted with fear and anger, but with acceptance. Therefore we have nothing to regret or fear about approaching our God, for through God’s Son, God accepts us as we have been. And therefore, we can accept whatever is to come, knowing that we are not alone in our acceptance, however resigned that acceptance may feel. When we accept whatever comes, we can trust that on the other side of our acceptance is the acceptance of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, whose acceptance gives eternal life. And what a change that will be!

These words count.

Broadcasting the Passthrough

It might end up just the latest passing fad, or it might become the most radical change in the Church’s worship since the time in which Paul wrote to the Corinthians, as in the Latin root radix — root — the Church returning to its roots. It is called Dinner Church, where Christians gather for The Holy Eucharist, as we have this night and as the Corinthians in Paul’s time gathered. But instead of a ritualized, more symbolic community meal, they share a full meal together, as Jesus shared a full meal with his disciples on a Thursday night, and as the Corinthians initially tried to recreate.

Presumably within that meal, the Corinthians repeated the words that Jesus had said on that Thursday night. “This is my body for you; do this for the recalling (Gk anamnesis) of me … This is my blood of the new covenant; do this for the recalling of me.” That is closer the Greek word translated as “remembrance.” The ancient Greeks saw time as a circle not a line, so events could come back around. Thus, in what the Church calls the Words of Institution, Jesus’s saving death and Resurrection would be recalled from that Friday, Saturday and Sunday centuries earlier. And in those words and the sharing of bread and wine, he would be as present with his disciples now as he was with his first disciples.

It makes sense that the first Christians would have wanted their Lord’s Supper to be as close to the actual experience of that first Lord’s Supper as possible. They would have wanted to experience the same fear and awe that Jesus’s first disciples had felt on that night and in the days after as they understood what Jesus had meant by connecting the most satisfying thing in this life – food and drink – to the experience of a death and eternal life that Jesus had made one thing and given them a taste.

The Shadow in No Man’s Land

With all of his citations of the Old Testament, Matthew’s is the most Jewish of the four gospels. Sadly, that also made him the most embittered of the four gospellers at most of his people’s refusal to accept Jsus as the Messiah. That, I believe, is what’s behind the people’s acceptance of responsibility for Jesus’s execution, not just for themselves, but for their descendants. When we all say, “His blood be on us and our children,” we canowledge that all of us who clam to be human are complicit in the judicial murder of Jesus. The religious leaders may have wanted Jesus dead, but only the Romans could legally execute someone. And just having just taken our parts in this drama, we acknowledge that had we been there, we would have been complicit in this act of judicial murder. Having just acclaimed him as our King for all time, we now stand in The Shadow of the Galilean.

In that book of “Narrative Theology” by Gerd Theissen, a fictional Jew named Andreas finds himself blackmailed by the Romans into spying on Jesus. He tries to protect Jesus from the Roman suspicion that he is a political threat to them. But on that Friday Andreas stands from a distance peering at those three crosses and says: “We were standing in the shadow of the Galilean … But the sun did not go dark, and the earth remained at rest. It was a normal day and the darkness was only in me. Only in me did the foundations of life shake; only in me did the voices whisper: ‘You’re guilty. You’re guilty.’”

But according to Matthew, it wasn’t just Andreas standing in that symbolic shadow. “When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and what had just happened, they were filled with awe and said, ‘This was certainly God's Son.’” Indeed, however much the so-called rulers of this world blind themselves to it, Jesus the Christ, the Chosen King, persists in turning our world upside down.

What Yet Lives

A frantic messenger arrives from Bethany — Jesus, your dear friend Lazarus is dying, you must go to him as soon as you can — And so Jesus … stays where he is for two days.

Now if you count the day it took for the messenger to get to Jesus by the Jordan river, plus the two days that Jesus stayed, plus the day it took Jesus to get to Bethany, you get four days. So, Lazarus would already be dead by the time the messenger got to Jesus. But then again, in chapter four of John’s Gospel, we see Jesus heal the son of a royal official from at least a day’s walk. One of my buddies in Education For Ministry compared Lazarus to a little ball that Jesus seems to play with. Similar to the man born blind, Jesus focuses more on the future purpose of Lazarus’s sickness —This sickness will not lead to death, but is for God’s glory so that through it the Son of God may be glorified. But I believe that there is another reason for Jesus’s seeming reluctance to go to Bethany.

Much has been speculated about why Jesus publicly broke down in weeping. But the eyewitness author of this Gospel drops a clue in the next chapter, when he reports that the religious authorities opposed to Jesus resolved to have him killed. And just a few verses later, we are also told that they decided to have Lazarus killed, to bury the evidence. We’re not told any more. But I see no reason that those who successfully plotted Jesus’s death would have been less successful in bringing about Lazarus’s death. Nor does it make sense for the author to even mention Lazarus unless it actually happened. This means that at the same time Jesus was killed, Lazarus was too, just weeks after having died and been raised, only to die again. Perhaps there are worse things than dying, like dying twice, the second time by premeditated murder.

Believing is Seeing

When Jesus’s disciples ask if the man born blind was so born because of his sin, they’re doing what many of us have done at least once. We’ve come against a situation so overwhelmingly tragic that we say something to relieve our secondhand grief without considering how the person actually experiencing the grief will experience our explanation. Jesus puts it another way: We want to know the cause of something that is already in the past, and therefore something we can’t change, although it might temporarily make us feel better if we know who to blame. What matters, Jesus tells his disciples, isn’t the cause, but its purpose, over which we still have some control. I know something of this.

When I was seventeen, my mother (a school principal) took a trip to the Southwest with a friend and teacher at her school. They came to a lookout point at the Grand Canyon. She got too close to the edge, lost her balance and fell. At a memorial service in my large Baptist church, the Pastor — who was close to Mom and normally a wise preacher willing to puncture easy assumptions — said that she had at least died while appreciating God’s gift of the natural world.

Truly I say to you that for most of my college years I was spittin’ mad at God. But as more and more people came into my life who loved me, and in the years since have continued to come into my life, I have found the love of God that remains and endures the randomness of this crazy world. I do not believe in God as puppet master, for God has created this world in freedom, with people and things bouncing off of each other in seemingly random ways. But I do believe in God as the great improviser, always able to open a door in our lives where love can come in. I no longer ask the cause, but I have found the purpose.

The Need Within

It’s good to have a bishop who, in the words of our Baptismal Covenant, exercises the “apostles’ teaching” in such a way that the priests under her authority, and all the people of our diocese, can benefit from her teaching. In her Thursday email, Bishop Mariann articulated the question that many in the time of the American Revolution and perhaps our own time have asked. “Across time and place, people caught in violence ask the same question: Where is God in all of this?

“In church this Sunday, prior to a gospel passage about Jesus as living water, you’ll likely hear the story of the people of ancient Israel struggling to make their way through the wilderness. Having escaped slavery in Egypt, the Israelites are a long way from the promise of freedom. Food and water are scarce, and where we meet them in the text, the people rightfully wonder if Moses had led them into the wilderness to die.

“God then provides water for them, and they keep going, by stages, through the wilderness. Before they continue on, however, they mark the place where they had given up hope, where they had asked one another Is the LORD among us or not? Like Jesus on the cross, where he felt God had forsaken him, I wonder if the places where we lose hope are the most holy of all. There are no easy answers in places of intense suffering; no spiritual platitudes that can take away the pain…When people are asked what enabled them to keep going, sometimes the answer is an experience of God, rescuing them or providing what was needed to carry on. More often, however, the answer is the kindness of another person who stayed with them in the darkest hour. Choosing not to look away is itself an act of faith.”

Mission Reconciliation and Restoration

One of the most important passages of the entire Bible is in today’s reading from Genesis — The LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I shall bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you; and in you all the nations shall be blessed.”

Around four millennia ago, a man and woman we know as Abraham and Sarah heard an unseen God who didn’t claim partial sovereignty of the sun or the sea or the soil telling them to leave their country, their clan for a destination they would only know when they got there. But free from the demands of country and clan, they would be free to claim all the peoples of the earth as their own under the one and only God who has sovereignty over everything.

A 4,000 year line runs from that passage to the only mission statement we need as a church — Q. What is the mission of the Church? A. The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ. Our mission from Abraham to today is restoration and reconciliation.

But in our particular country today are a people whose history is officially recognized in the month of February, but I’m not sure how honored it really is, because to runs counter to the majority history. Most of us might see a connection to Abraham and Sarah in our ancestors who chose to come to an unfamiliar land because that seemed better than the alternative of staying where they were. But for African American people, they were brought here, brutally, and then treated brutally for the better part of four and-a-half centuries, with perhaps 1964-65 being the turning point, maybe.

So, when we consider the Church’s mission in that historical context, reconciliation is the end result of restoration. Where unity has been broken, those who broke the unity, or who benefitted from the broken unity, must pursue the restoration of what was broken. Just as our Catechism states that the Church can only “pursue” its mission, not accomplish, so we can only pursue restoration. Some broken things can be put back together; others cannot.

When we as individuals, as families, as dioceses, as parishes, as nations, acknowledge what has been broken — even when we cannot fix it — then like Nicodemus, we are closer to understanding Jesus when he says, “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” The Greek can also be translated, “born again,” the more familiar and much misunderstood.

Holy Insecurity

To focus on whether the creation of human beings and their fall into sin historically “happened” just as the story is told in Genesis is an adventure in missing the point. It happened that one species of animals evolved to such intelligence that they could see the world around them, and those they loved, and say in whatever language they had, “How beautiful is all this creation. There must be a Creator.” But then came the moment of choice. Could they trust this Creator? Could they trust their fellow humans? Clearly the answer was no.

The truth of the Genesis creation myth is written in the heart of every man and woman, as it was written on the hearts of the first man and woman who were created in the image of God the moment they realized that they had been created. The truth of Genesis is that the fall from innocence to sin happens to every one of us. Whenever we refuse to accept the gracious limits that our Creator and loving Parent has placed on us, we fall into distrust and sin as surely as the first man and first woman. But in accepting the same human insecurities, and the same earthly limits, Jesus Christ proved for all time that we can trust our loving and most gracious Creator.

Even as the LORD God gives to the first human being the earth “to till it and keep it,” a limit is placed on human power. For the Hebrew word used here literally means "to serve." Human beings are commanded to serve the earth that God has given them. And amid the abundance that God gives us, God gives just one command: Accept your limit, and do not try to gain the same knowledge as God by eating from the tree of knowledge. But God doesn’t say that if they don’t eat of the tree of knowledge, they will live forever. In fact there is a tree of life in the Garden of Eden. And after their fall into sin, God chases the man and woman out of Eden because God is afraid that if they eat of that tree, they then will become physically immortal and be sentenced to an eternity of toil and pain.

And of course, the man and the woman are naked, to each other, to the world around them, and to God. Their knowledge is limited. Their life is limited, and their bodies are limited. They are helpless before God. And yet what a responsibility has been laid on them. Care for the earth, and trust God. Helpless, yet responsible, the man and the woman live in a state of holy insecurity. And into this insecurity comes a very clever snake. You will not certainly die, the snake says to the woman; it’s not certain that you will die: a vague enough promise to divert the woman’s attention away from God’s warning. And then the snake promises that you will be like God. But “like” isn’t good enough when it comes to God. Knowledge they will have, but not the wisdom or power to use it as only God can.

For this man and this woman, as for every man and woman since, it is a question of limitation and trust. Can we accept the limits of our knowledge and power? Can we trust that in life and in death, we are always held in God’s hand? This man and this woman gave the wrong answer. Note that the man has apparently been there the whole time. And so have we. Even our recent history is full of human beings refusing to accept their limits. “Ever since the days of old / Men would search for wealth untold / They’d dig for silver and for gold / And leave the empty holes.” So saith John Anderson in his song Seminole Wind. Many who grew up in the 1960s and early 70s remember the personal happiness that was promised if we followed our bliss and threw off all social restraints. What were they smoking to think that everybody could pursue their own personal happiness without anybody getting hurt in the process? Whether it’s limitless wealth or limitless pleasure, holy insecurity can lead us to reach for them.

Of course, living with the knowledge of our limitations is frightening. To know the limits of our knowledge and power is to know that we live up in the air. If we presume that our homes, our wealth and our lives stand on a firm foundation of our own creation, then we’ll have no idea we are falling until we hit the ground. So, what’s the alternative to a life of illusion, a landscape we paint for ourselves and call reality? Look around you. Look up and see the empty sky above you. Look down and see the ground. And then remember what the Son of God himself said when tempted by the devil to jump off the pinnacle of the Temple: “Do not test the Lord your God.” When you are afraid of not having enough to live on, remember what the Son of God himself said when tempted by Satan to turn stones into bread: “Do not love only by bread, but by every word spoken by God.” When you feel the need to control others, remember what the Son of God himself said when tempted to gain worldly power by worshiping him: “You will worship the Lord your God and serve only him.”

And finally, when you are afraid of the ultimate limitation, remember what the Son of God said on the cross: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Every human limitation, every human insecurity, Jesus knows first-hand, that we might know his Resurrection first-hand.

Dissemblers, Pretenders, or Confessors

Another Ash Wednesday, another liturgical cycle, the wheel turning round again from last year, the same readings, the same invitation to a holy Lent, the same ashes, the same reminder of our dying, the same litany of penitence, the same confession. I understand if it might seem like the same old same old. Does Lent feel like fighting the same fears, the same sins, year after year; or does it seem as though old sins just get replaced by new ones? Has that liturgical wheel turned you forward, or do you feel like you’re spinning in place? Do you feel a little hypocritical? Perhaps we’re all like the hypocrites that Jesus seems to set up as a straw man. But that may not be near as bad as we think it is.

Our English word — hypocrite — is not so much a translation as a transliteration of the Greek word — hupokrates — which literally means — actor. Some actors you can’t trust. They want you to think that they agree with you when they really want to take advantage of your trust and you are simply an object for them to manipulate and betray to their own advantage. Those are dissemblers and are what we generally think of as hypocrites.

But other actors might be sincerely trying to learn their lines, hoping to become the role they’re playing. You might also call them pretenders, pretending to be something that they want to be. I suspect the praying hypocrites that Jesus referred to were more pretenders than dissemblers. I suspect that’s what most of us are. I like to think that Jackson Browne sang for all of us: I wanna know what became of the changes / We waited for love to bring / Were they only the fitful dreams / Of some greater awakening?…Caught between the longing for love / And the struggle for the legal tender / Where the sirens sing and the church bells ring / And the junk man pounds his fender…Are you there / Say a prayer for the Pretender.

This Ash Wednesday, and every Ash Wednesday, our Lord invites us to become more than pretenders. This Ash Wednesday, and every Ash Wednesday, our Lord invites us to go into our room, shut the door, and pray to our Father who is present in that secret place,, so secret that it is often a secret to ourselves, our breaking and wondering hearts, trying to understand who we really are to the One who made us. This Ash Wednesday, and every Ash Wednesday, our Lord invites us to cease dissembling, and move beyond pretending. This Ash Wednesday, and every Ash Wednesday, our Lord invites us to begin becoming a confessor.

Our Lord invites us to begin unveiling our selves, as best we understand our selves, and in that unveiling, trust that our one Father who sees us in secret will look back at us, not to condemn, but to enlighten, and forgive. “And if,” in the words of The Exhortation from the Book of Common Prayer, “you need help and counsel, then go and open your grief to a discreet and understanding priest, and confess your sins, that you may receive the benefit of absolution, and spiritual counsel and advice; to the removal of scruple and doubt, the assurance of pardon, and the strengthening of your faith.” Scruple, by the way, is that specific pain of the conscience, from which God gives us relief.

In traditional religious language a penitent is the person who confesses, and the “confessor” is the one who hears, and pronounces God’s forgiveness. As we unveil our selves more and more to our self, and to our God who sees in secret, then the more we shall all be able to unveil our selves to each other, our hopes, our disappointments, our burdens, our fears. And those who come to us searching, with all those same feelings and scruples, will find reason to say, as the Romans said of the Christians, “See how they love each other!”

Pretenders we may be, but that’s a lot better than dissembling. This holy Lent, let us trust more deeply our Father who sees all in secret, and who loves us in secret, to make us all confessors.

Acknowledging the Holy

To be clear, this last Sunday after Epiphany is not the Feast of The Transfiguration. That’s on August 6th. The Episcopal Church always appoints the Transfiguration on the Sunday before Lent because of what happened six days earlier. Jesus acknowledged for the first time that he was the Messiah, the Christ, the Chosen King of Israel. Then shockingly he also said for the first time that he would go to Jerusalem, be killed, then raised.

For Jesus’ first disciples, this combination of events was both incomprehensible and terrifying. Perhaps we the latest generation of disciples have heard this story enough times that we can hold on to the happy ending. But I suspect that knowledge doesn’t necessarily lessen our apprehension of the coming Lenten journey with Jesus to Jerusalem and the cross, as we prepare to examine ourselves and wonder what we might have to give up besides chocolate. So on this last Sunday before Ash Wednesday we are given a glimpse of the fullest reality of Him who is leading us to Jerusalem so that along this journey we will recognize him with us wherever we are, not just in this holy place of worship.

You might think that Moses was getting ready to go up the mountain and receive the Ten Commandments on those “tablets of stone.” Actually, God has already given Moses the Decalogue and the Law governing the people of Israel. Over the next forty days Moses will receive detailed instructions on the construction of the Ark of the Covenant, the tabernacle, or portable sanctuary carried under a tent that will go wherever the Israelites go until a temple is finally built hundreds of years later. The rest of the story is that after a while the Israelites got antsy waiting for Moses and decided to make their own holy object to assure themselves of God’s presence, the golden calf, really a bull.

Completing the Covenant

My New Testament professor in Seminary highlighted ch. 5, v. 17 — Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill — as the key verse in Matthew’s Gospel. Nearly 50 times Matthew either quotes or alludes to what we call the Old Testament. Matthew mentions himself as the tax collector who would have been estranged from the Jewish community, a collaborator with the Roman Empire and idolater wallowing in Roman coinage with Caesar’s image. And yet Jesus reached out to Matthew, went to his home for dinner. Jesus welcomed Matthew without strings attached and then called him to repentance as he called other tax collectors and “sinners” to repentance after being their friends without strings attached.

No other disciple would have felt within himself the chasm between his previous estrangement and his reconciliation to the people of Israel that only Jesus could bridge. Thus, no other disciple would have wanted as much to emphasize the continuity between that community’s teaching, or “law” and the Good News of God’s love revealed by Christ Jesus. And more so than Paul, who many Jews felt had turned his back on the Judaism in which he was raised; while understanding that Jesus’ Good News was for all people – even Roman centurions – Matthew wanted those Gentiles who came to Christ to understand the story of Israel that Jesus came to fulfill, and into which we have been adopted.

“Once you were not a people,” according to 1st Peter, “but now you are God’s people.” There are many peoples with their stories of triumph and tragedy, rise and decline. But there is only one people in whom all those stories can be redeemed from their futility; a people who began with a man and a woman named Abraham and Sarah, to whom God said, “all nations on Earth will be blessed because of you.” We need to understand the law and the prophets of the Hebrew Bible because it was Jesus’s Bible, the purpose of which he came to complete.

When Jesus said to his then-Jewish disciples, “You are the salt of the earth…you are the light of the world,” who else would he be referring to but the nations of the earth that God had promised their ancestor Abraham would be blessed because of him? Not just In Matthew’s Gospel is it clear that Jesus had a harsh critique of the Judaism of his time. He believed that the religious leaders of his people were sitting around in their chosenness waiting for their God to destroy their Roman enemies when they should have been reaching out to them as Jesus reached out to the “sinners.”

Nearly two millennia later, the movement that Jesus started has changed. The late Reverend Richard Halverson, Chaplain to the U.S. Senate from 1981 to 1995, summarized those changes thus: In the beginning the church was a fellowship centered on Jesus. Then the church moved to Greece, where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome, where it became an institution. Next, it moved to Europe, where it became a culture. Finally, it moved to America, where it became an enterprise. To these descriptions I might add words like empire, civilization. And in truth, we have been as overly self-protective as Jesus felt his community had become.

But always lurking, ready to critique our pretensions and hypocrisies, is the Covenant that God first made with Abraham then Moses, and the Prophets who keep calling us to renew that Covenant. “Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers [who themselves couldn’t fast because they were serving their masters who were fasting]. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist…Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?…Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.”

Here are the Law and the Prophets that Jesus came to complete. Here Is the tasty salt and the warm light that Jesus calls us to be for all the peoples of the world, not just ourselves. This is the Christ Jesus of the Old and New Covenant, one and the same, that Matthew knew him to be.

Congratulations

Jesus’s beatitudes are neither impossible imperatives, nor irrelevant idealization. They are indicatives of what God has done that retain their prospectiveness. Between the indicative and prospective is where we are truly blessed.

“Blessed” translates the Greek markorios which translates the Hebrew asher, “happy.” So, “Happy are the poor in spirit” — But as these “blessings” are prospective, we should also hear, “Congratulations to those who know their need of God, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven (a paraphrase of “poor in spirit” that captures the more personal meaning). Congratulations to the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth…Congratulations to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and justice, for they shall be filled…Congratulations to those who are persecuted in the cause of righteousness, for the kingdom of Heaven is theirs.”

When we invest our financial resources, we get a prospectus. These beatitudes are a prospectus for prospective blessings, for Jesus as much as for us. This is only chapter five. He would respond to provocation after provocation with gentleness or meekness. He would hunger and thirst for righteousness and justice as no other human could. No human before or since would be as persecuted as he was in the hope of God’s kingdom. Jesus has received the reward of resurrection, but his success in bringing us into the kingdom of Heaven remains prospective for him precisely because it remains prospective for us.

I wonder if some of us of a certain generation presumed the continuation of material blessings, or equated the successes of our liberal political and economic order with the kingdom of Heaven. Did we forget how utterly we need God? Did we think we might avoid persecution in the cause of righteousness and justice? Did we suppose, as one author speculated in the 1990s, that History would end with us?

Apology for Paul

In case you haven’t heard this before, according to the Outline of Faith in our Book of Common Prayer, the Church’s mission is to “restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” Seems clear, even obvious. But is it?

Looking only at the four Gospels: Jesus certainly seems to have envisioned an outreach to the nearby Samaritans, but they claimed descent from Jacob, which made them at least partial Israelites by blood. He occasionally commended the faith of Gentiles, the Roman Centurion whose servant Jesus healed, the Syro-Phoenician woman whose daughter Jesus healed after he called the Gentiles dogs. But when he sent the Twelve Apostles on mission trips, he ordered them not to go to the Gentiles but only to the lost sheep of Israel. It is clear from the Book of Acts that the earliest disciples of Jesus, all Jewish, stayed in Jerusalem because they assumed that what Jesus wanted them to do was to get all their fellow Jews to accept that Jesus was the Christ, God’s Chosen King, and then go to the Gentile nations.

Apparently, Jesus didn’t think they were moving fast enough. So, he chose the most unlikely person: Saul, whose “zeal,” by his own admission, to wipe out the Jesus movement was torturous and murderous — Saul, Saul, it must hurt you to kick against those spiked sticks like an ornery cow. What are you so afraid of? In one blinding instant, Saul realized that everything he thought God wanted him to do was wrong. What else had he been wrong about? Who else had he dismissed as “other?” (And if Jesus could get through to Saul, then we can pray that Jesus might yet to get through to some Immigration officers who will hear in the blinding light, “This is Jesus whom you are persecuting. But get up for I shall send you.”)

“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female – for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). This is the core of the Gospel that Jesus gave the man who, when he began his mission travels outside of the Holy Land, became known as Paul. It was Paul who pushed the Church beyond the boundaries of ceremonial laws, like circumcision, because those could not be justified by the new covenant that Jesus made with all people and sealed by his blood. And within the hierarchal and patriarchal strictures of his world, Paul pushed against them as best as he thought he could get away with.

Recognition Equals Peace

“And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. I have told you this so that you may find peace in me. In the world you will have hardship, but take courage: I have conquered the world.”

Among the “Various Occasions,” for which a collect and readings are provided in the Book of Common Prayer, is For Peace. Throughout this day we have fasted and prayed for peace in, and among, the nations. As one body we have just prayed that God will kindle in every heart the true love of peace. The true love of peace is more than claiming a prize for a temporary ceasefire. It is also more than the gratification of righteous anger. The true love of peace is kindled in every single human heart recognizing the image of its creator in every other human heart.

The catch is recognition. In chapter one, John writes, “He was in the world and the world came into being through him, and the world did not know him.” The Word who was with God and was God, through whom all things were made, came to their human creatures, and they failed to recognize their Creator. Why? We trust the surface of what we see more than the unseen “maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.”

The Rock of Love Prevails

We have bookend Feasts this Sunday and next. Today, January 18th, is the Feast of the Confession of St. Peter. Next Sunday the 25th is the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. Since 1908, the week between these feasts has been observed in many churches including ours, as the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, that we might do better in working toward Jesus’s prayer to his Father before his arrest: That we might be one as he and the Father are one.

Today, we honor the confession that you have heard from the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus has taken his disciples far from their home among their own people to a city built by Gentiles for Gentiles, originally named Panion, for the Greek God Pan, half goat half man. Caesar Augustus gave the city to the same Herod who would try to have Jesus killed. Then, Herod’s son, Philip, rebuilt the city and renamed it Caesarea Philippi, for the then-current Caesar, Tiberius, and himself. See how “tight” they were?

So, when Jesus of Nazareth, Son of Jospeh, asks his disciples, “But who do you say that I am?” They are in Caesar’s shadow. It took courage for Simon, Son of Jonah, to answer, “You are the Messiah,” God’s Chosen King and, “the Son of the living God.” No one else has had the guts to use the “M” word. Simon had to be standing on something other than his personal opinion. And so Jesus says, “You are rock, and on this rock I will build my church,” the rock being the faith and courage that Jesus makes clear was entrusted to Peter by Jesus’s Father, not his personal possession