Masonic Tombstone Dedication Address

Tonight, the brothers of William J Sherman council #141, Allied Masonic degrees will dedicate a new tombstone honoring Worshipful Brother James Wilson, the first Master of Lancaster Lodge #57, Free and Accepted Masons, Operating under the Grand Lodge of Ohio.  Brother Wilson served as a surgeon in the War of 1812 and as an early town council member.  He died in 1823 at the age of 43.  His original tombstone was destroyed by vandals some years back.  What follows in my address from the event:

FREEMASONRY: AN INTRODUCTION

 



Freemasonry is the world’s oldest and largest fraternity. It is dedicated to the promulgation of those ethical values which are shared by so many of the world’s great religions, and to the idea that all men are created equal. It is our belief that people of different religions and political persuasions ought to be able to live in peace and work together to make the world a better place.

While the origins of freemasonry are lost in time, modern freemasonry dates to the early 1700’s in England, Scotland, and Ireland. It was there that gentlemen who did not make their living in the building trades sought to join the free stone mason’s guilds to share in their fellowship and to experience the ethical lessons which were taught in their initiation ceremonies. Those ceremonies, called degrees, are three in number. The first introduces a man to the great truths of natural law and holy Scripture as the bases for a life lived well. The second teaches the importance of education and equality, and calls all men to work for the common good. The third is more reflective in nature, and calls us as Masons to consider those things which are truly important in life, such as fidelity, courage, and faith.

While Freemasonry requires belief in God from all her members, she is not a religion, because she does not teach a way of salvation. Rather she encourages all men to practice faithfully the religion they profess, and to work for the betterment of society with all men of good will, whatever their religion. Freemasonry certainly has proprietary information, mostly modes of recognition which stretch back to the days of the cathedral builders' guilds, or unions. But she is not a secret society, because her meetings and buildings, and her basic teachings, are public knowledge. The great secret of freemasonry is not a buried treasure or a conspiratorial meeting, but relates more to how good men seek to better themselves and live for the good of others.

Brother James Wilson, like many of the builders of our county and town over the years was a faithful freemason who served his nation in war and his community in peace. We are proud today to honor him, and we hope that one day, it might be said that we have followed faithfully in his footsteps. Thank you for joining us today as we dedicate this stone to his memory.

The Garments of God: Sermon Proper 13 C RCL, Colossians 3:1-17

Sermon: Proper 13 C Revised Common Lectionary
To be Preached at St. John's Lancaster on August 4, 2013

Hosea 11:1-11
Psalm 107
Colossians 3:1-17
Luke 12:13-21

The heart of Psalm 107 is found in four stanzas which relate the experiences of four types of people who followed their own desires to destruction, and who then “cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress.” (NEB) The Psalm opens with a call to respond to God’s love with thankfulness, and it ends with a catalogue of his blessings to his people. As I have said from this pulpit before, not much really changes in the world. People are pretty much the same wherever you look. Have you ever made a bad decision, I mean a really bad decision, which has threatened to cost you dearly? I don’t mean a bit of anxiety. I mean a decision which has threatened to cost you your family, or your job, or your health, or your enrollment in school, or a huge amount of money, or your physical safety. Most of us can probably remember such a time in our lives. Remember the discomfort, the growing sense of dread, and the abject fear that followed that first rush of adrenalin or anger? I don’t want to repeat, or even remember those times in my life, but the fact that I am still here makes the psalmist’s point. For some reason known to God alone, he did save me from my distress. And for that I am thankful.

Today’s proper lessons, slightly expanded, provide a ready catalogue of the types of things that are likely to get you and me into trouble in our lives, and call us to avoid most of those situations by living our lives as if we are truly thankful to God. The psalmist indicates that our bad choices get us into trouble, and then we call on God and he delivers us, and then we are thankful. Conversely, the lessons today would seem to indicate that if we live lives directed by genuine thankfulness to God, we are much less likely to need delivering from our own bad choices. Today’s lessons give us a sort of check list of what not to do, and the Gospel, together with the extension of Colossians, tells us what we should do if we have truly been transformed by thankfulness to God for the salvation he has given us through the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ, our Saviour and our Lord. We must not forget the lesson from Hosea, which gives us an extensive list of those types of things which get us into trouble with each other and with God, but it is to Paul that we turn for the specific list that will not allow us to escape honest introspection and self-evaluation.

Here is his first list. “fornication, indecency, lust, foul cravings, and ruthless greed which is nothing but idolatry.” (NEB Col. 3:5) While I am confident that Paul never read Freud, it is obvious that he understands those urges which drive us to preserve ourselves and those like us, and how they tend to get out of control with some regularity. I also find it interesting that blessed Paul mentions “ruthless greed”, which is the focus of our Lord’s comments in today’s Gospel, alongside of sexual sins. Our news today seems to be dominated by lust and money, or by someone’s demand that they be able to pursue the same in any way they wish. Everything seems to be viewed through those twin lenses. Perhaps Paul was onto something here. Perhaps he understood something about himself and about all of us. Perhaps he realized that those good things that God gave us to produce families and provide for them are likely to be perverted. He understood that the opportunity to produce children from within that creative union between a man and woman which demonstrates the true nature of Christ‘s relationship with his Church is likely to be discarded in the name of pleasure or control. He knew that those gifts which enable the kind of security which lets children grow into the image of Christ free of want, privation, and brutality, are often thrown away or demeaned because of excessive emotion, self centeredness, or “ruthless greed.”

And then St. Paul continues. “…you must lay aside all anger, passion, malice, cursing, filthy talk- have done with them! Stop lying to one another, now that you have discarded the old nature with its deeds and have put on the new nature, which is being constantly renewed in the image of its Creator and brought to know God.” And then comes that famous verse about Jew and Greek, slave and free, and the like. This message is for all of us. But I digress. Remember that time you were in real trouble that you thought about at the beginning of this sermon? What did you do when you got caught? Were you angry? Did your passions become enflamed? Did malice cause you to blame someone else? Did you curse like a drunken sailor, or a frat boy with too much to drink, or an adolescent coed trying to convince the world that she was more grown up and worldly than she really is? Did you lie to yourself or to someone else in a vain attempt to get out of the situation? You see, St. Paul could also be called Dr. Paul, because he really does get it. Like the good Rabbi he was trained to be, he understood human nature as well as any Psychiatrist that ever lived. Sex and money, and their friends pleasure and power, lead in the end to most of our problems with ourselves, with each other, and with God. But as Paul says, we have put all of that away, because we are signed with the cross, and marked as Christ’s own forever. Our sins have been washed away in Holy Baptism, and we have committed ourselves to Jesus and his way in confirmation. And then, Paul describes for us what a Christian looks like, and he challenges us to step up to the kind of disciplines which help the world to see the very nature of God writ large upon our lives.

“Then put on the garments that suit God’s chosen people, his own, his beloved: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience. Be forbearing with one another, and forgiving, where any of you has cause for complaint: you must forgive as the Lord forgave you. To crown all, there must be love, to bind all together and complete the whole. Let Christ’s peace be arbiter in your hearts; to this peace you were called as members of a single body. And be filled with gratitude. Let the message of Christ dwell among you in all its richness. Instruct and admonish each other with the utmost wisdom. Sing thankfully in your hearts to God, with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Whatever you are doing, whether you speak or act, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” (NEB Col. 3:12-17)

That is a very different picture from the picture of a life dominated by sex and greed, by pleasure and power, by self-absorption and demands that I be accepted as I am. It is a picture of a life given to thanksgiving and praise, a life which understands the nature of forgiveness and transformation, a life which demonstrates to all people the truth and reality of Jesus Christ. Might we all aspire to such a life, and might we all so walk in harmony with the clear teachings of God in the Bible that we find the humility and daily reliance upon his grace to live as did Jesus when he was in this world. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. AMEN.

Musings on Worship

A Teaching About Worship
Offered in lieu of a sermon at St. John's Lancaster
28 July, 2013

Summer Worship at St. John's
Photo courtesy of Mike and Wendy Garbrandt

When I looked at today’s lessons, it occurred to me that we have covered the themes involved pretty well this month. The first lesson employs graphic language about Hosea’s personal life to make the point that we have all strayed from God, individually, and as a people. The Psalm makes it clear (as does the rest of Hosea) that God is willing to heal and restore us in his mercy and by his love. The Epistle could really get me wound up for a first class rant, but I don’t think any of you really came to church to hear that today. And the Gospel makes it very clear that we have a God given responsibility to the people around us. You’ve heard a good bit of that from this pulpit as well. But the Gospel also contains St. Luke’s account of that day when Jesus taught the disciples to pray by giving them the Lord’s Prayer. And that is where I would like to go today. Why do we worship the way we do? Why does our service and our music come together as it does?

Many in the church today speak about seeker friendly services, or modern family style worship, or blended services. I suppose that is ok, and I think an argument can be made that God looks on our hearts and receives our offerings when they come from a pure heart. But we should also remember that there are many times in the Bible when God rejects sincere offerings because they depart from what some have called the faith received. There were those in Israel who offered “strange fire” and were consumed by the earth. There were those like marked Cain whose offerings were rejected because their pride and condescension to others led them to believe that what they wanted, or what they enjoyed was as good as anything God might have commanded. And then there were those like the prophets of Baal whose offerings were rejected because their rites and ceremonies were entangled in a system of beliefs so perverse that they stank in the nostrils of God. Anglicanism attempts to establish norms for worship in the Book of Common Prayer which avoid these pitfalls by paying distinct attention to the teachings of Scripture, to the heritage and practice of the Church through the ages, and to the Conciliar nature of the Church of Jesus Christ throughout the world- that is, that we all have a responsibility to preserve together the traditions of the church, and to not change things just because they are more meaningful to us as individuals or as individual denominations.

Have you ever noticed that when you visit a Roman Catholic, Lutheran, or Orthodox Church, the service is very much like our own? It begins with acts of praise to God, contains Bible readings, the Creed, a Sermon, Prayers, a confession, and then moves on to Holy Communion. In like manner, when you attend a Baptist, or Presbyterian, or Methodist service, it looks very much like our Morning or Evening Prayer. There is praise to God, Bible reading, a Sermon, prayers, a call to confession or commitment, and the opportunity to offer one’s self to God’s service. This is no accident. It is a part of the deposit of faith, that patrimony of all Christians whereby we share in forms and ways of doing things which go back to the earliest days of Christianity, and often beyond that to the worship patterns of early Judaism (because remember that Jesus and all of the Twelve were Jews.) So it might be said that we attempt in our worship to continue in that faith received from Jesus and the Apostles by worshipping in forms that largely correspond to their own forms of worship.

There are also some cultural quirks in our forms of worship which may seem out of place to some, but which tie us to the broader Church, or which celebrate the heritage of our own particular branch of Christ. Consider the foreign language elements in our worship as an example. The 39 Articles of the Church of England make it abundantly clear that our worship should, indeed must be in the language of the people. But if you look through the prayer book, you will find lots of wonderful Latin titles like Magnificat, and Nunc Dimmitis, and Sursum Corda, and Gloria Patri. There is even a bit of Greek in terms like Kyrie Eleison. There are certain hymns, certain parts of the liturgy, which are so valued and embedded in the ancient patrimony of Christians that even as the liturgy modified to insure that people could understand it, the older forms were retained as a sort of reminder that God himself is unchanging, and that his love is eternal. We share these forms with other Christians to remind us that we are not alone with Jesus, but that we are a part of his body, which contains people and communities in many places and throughout time. In the same vein, some of our musical selections and traditional prayers retain specific linguistic forms which remind us of our own unique heritage, and call us to remember that our Creator comes to every people and culture in terms that make God’s love understandable to all people. For instance, occasionally you will hear an anthem in German or a carol in French; and we regularly employ the old Scottish Psalter, even though no one here, except perhaps myself and Robin Leonard, can understand anyone from the Scottish lowlands anymore, much less in their language from 300 years ago. But those foreign language artistic expressions of love to God remind us of where we have come from, and that we are now one in Christ, even though our ancestors once fought each other. Jesus has made peace between our peoples, and we are one Church, gathered as the prophets foretold.

And so when we pray, we seek to embody all of that faith we have received from those who have gone before. We realize that we are one people, but also that we each bring our own particular heritage as we offer ourselves to God. A proper understand of this symbolism and diversity of our common worship, of our Common Prayer, ought to guide us into that humility, that mutual interdependence, and that ultimate reliance upon God that Jesus commended to the disciples when they asked how they ought to pray. I encourage you today to think on these things as you experience our worship of God, and as we come to this holy altar to receive the body and blood of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. I pray that God will teach us all to pray more sincerely, more profoundly, more honestly, and more regularly in the days to come. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. AMEN.

　

　

　

　

Sermon for Proper 10 C Revised Common Lectionary

Sermon for Proper 10 C, Revised Common Lectionary
To be preached at St. John’s Lancaster 14 July 2013
Amos 7:7-17

If any of us had lived in the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the eighth century Before Christ during the reign of King Jeroboam II, we would probably have been as upset with Amos as most of them were. Imagine with me. What business does this uneducated foreigner have dressing us down for how we worship our God and live our lives? He wasn’t even properly ordained. It seems pretty obvious to me that God has blessed our King and our Kingdom. We are after all enjoying unprecedented prosperity is very volatile diplomatic times, and if our religion is a little more open minded than that of the southern kingdom, it works for us, and who is this insulting hillbilly from down south to tell us how we ought to live? I’ll grant you that I liked some of his early sermons. There have been some major social inequities in our system as we have moved from a more rural and labor based economy to a more technologically advanced and urban culture, but in all fairness, we have been working on them and have made some real progress. After all, a rising tide floats all boats. And as for those charges of compromised religion and sexual immorality, he needs to realize that we are not a tribe wandering in the wilderness anymore. History moves on and if we wait for people like him, we will never see real progress in this land. And another thing, I take real offense at his implication that just because we have a strong work ethic here and believe in rewarding people who work hard and smart, somehow we don’t trust God. I wish he would go back to where he came from if he doesn’t like the way we do things here.

Such an argument could have been heard on any of the talking, or should I say yelling head news and opinion shows last week, but it was heard clearly twenty eight hundred years ago at the eastern end of the Mediterranean basin. People really don’t change that much after all.

Before we proceed with our examination of this passage, I would like to clear up one very common misunderstanding. That is that the passages in the Bible which refer to ancient Israel and Judah were aimed primarily at nation states, and that they ought to be directly applied to nation states today, particularly our own. While God’s Word does apply to all people and to all associations of people, when the prophets and patriarchs addressed Judah and Israel, they were primarily addressing the people of God, and whether that people was organized into a family, or a tribe, or a kingdom, or a diaspora was essentially secondary to the point at hand. In short, the comments we discuss today are not necessarily addressed to Israel, or to the United States of America, or the UK, or France, or Germany, or Canada, or Nigeria, or Uganda, or Argentina, or any other political jurisdiction. They are addressed to the people of God, the Church, one, holy, little “c” catholic, and apostolic, wherever she is found and whatever denominational name she may call herself. In short, God still speaks to us through Amos and all the others.

What is it that he says? Let’s take a look.

The first set of judgments was directed against the neighbors of the Jews, most of whom were their cousins, and against the Jews themselves.

1. Your business, military, and diplomatic practices do not consider the basic human needs of your neighbors.

2. You pushed your neighbors out of their homes for your own security and profit.

3. You broke your word and betrayed your neighbors.

4. Your anger and fury are often unchecked in warfare and in politics.

5. You have ripped open pregnant women and killed the unborn.

6. You are merciless to your enemies and showed no human kindness.

7. You have spurned God’s law and disobeyed what he commanded, and you choose to follow false gods more to your liking.

8. You oppress the poor with your lending practices and value profit above people. You grind the heads of the helpless into the dust and push the humble out of their place in the name of power and profit. Your religion is characterized by sexual perversion and gluttonous license of your own choosing. You have forgotten the blessings by which I delivered and established you in the past. Your clergy have been effectively silenced by their own compromised and immoral behaviour and beliefs.

That is chapter one and two. Now Amos gets serious:

1. I chose you as my own for the sake of the entire world. I shared my wisdom and plans with you. I gave you a purpose and a mission. But you ignored me and spurned the vocation to which I called you.

2. Therefore, I’m going to get your attention says the Lord. I will destroy your beautiful houses with all of their expensive art work, because you built them with money that you made oppressing the poorest in your communities. I will destroy your places of worship because they are polluted with the philosophies of the world and the practices of other religions, practices which dishonour me. I will break the power of your families and parties, because that power is based on oppression and greed and misuse of power.

3. Then he directs a particularly dire and graphic threat against the women of Samaria, who he calls the “cows of Bashan” that I will leave you to read in chapter 4, because it is a bit too graphic for mixed company and children. Their main sins seem to have been oppression of the helpless and the poor to support their own luxurious lifestyles. And because their religion was fraught with pride and hypocrisy and show.

4. The remainder of chapter four and the beginning of chapter 5 are given over to a classically balanced address which basically says, “we’ve been here before. My judgment, which basically consisted of giving you enough rope to hang yourselves, seemed to get your attention before, but now you have forgotten and here we go again.” And then the list gets very, very specific: You justify your unrighteous behaviour by legal technicalities and make all sorts of excuses to favor the guilty over the innocent. You build your great projects with money effectively stolen from people who don’t have enough money to live on. You are bullies and coerce people to get your way, especially if those people lack resources or are marginalized.

5. Then comes a heartfelt exhortation to “Seek good and not evil, that you may live, that the Lord, the God of Hosts, may be with you, as you claim he is. Hate evil, and love good; establish justice in the courts; it may be that the Lord, the God of Hosts, will show favour to the survivors of Joseph.”

6. And then he is off again. I despise your fake piety, and when you pray and seek the day of the Lord, you have no idea what you are asking for. Your splendid liturgies and your elaborate church services I loathe. Spare me the songs and the ceremonies, “instead, let justice flow on like a river and righteousness like a never failing torrent.”

7. Your luxurious lifestyle, and your living for the day and for pleasure blinds you to the needs around you and leads to arrogance and failure to consider the consequences of your actions. I detest all of this and will abandon you to your fate, the fate that you have brought upon yourselves.

That outburst brings us to chapter seven, and the visions of Israel’s judgment, one of which we heard in today‘s first lesson. “I will stretch the plumb line of my law and will judge my people, says the Lord. Judgment is at hand.”

Then in chapter 7 verse 10 the priest of Bethel, who could be thought of as a bishop or an archbishop, rejected the authority of Amos, the un-ordained prophet from another country and told him to go home and preach to his sheep. Amos replied, “God called me, and it won’t be long until you see that what I have said is true, because judgment is come upon you and everyone like you.” Then he tells another parable and again condemns the people of God for talking a good religious talk but not walking the walk, for failing to care for the poor and for maintaining systems that are unjust and unrighteous, and for practicing a religion of their own making instead of that which God handed down through revelation to Moses.

And this brings us to the ultimate question. “How do we in the modern church stack up against this prophesy? Are we guilty of doing the same types of things they did back then? If so what things? What do we need to change as Christians, as Episcopalians, as members of this parish, as individual people trying to serve God faithfully? Do we act like Christ says his followers ought to act, or do we sometimes find ourselves playing at a religion which is designed primarily to make us feel good about ourselves? Do our lives reflect the teachings of Jesus about how we ought to view and treat our neighbors, about how we should discipline our lives, and about how we should practice our faith? Folks living in Israel 2,800 years ago probably didn’t get up in the morning and say, “how can I be a hypocrite today? How can I oppress my neighbors and live selfishly for my own pleasure? How can I pervert justice and maintain societal structures which will make me wealthy at the expense of others? How can I make my religion into a hollow performance of beautiful but meaningless ceremony?” In all likelihood, they just never thought about things like that. They just did what everyone else was doing, and over time they grew farther and farther from God, and less and less able to hear his Spirit calling them to change. It can still happen that way today. Might each and every one of us consider seriously today whether we are listening to God’s voice, and let us examine our opinions and our behaviours in the light of God’s teaching, lest our religion be found wanting as was theirs. If we truly follow our faith, it must impact what we think and how we act.

Lest we end on a serious downer, jump ahead with me to the last stanza of Amos, chapter 9, verse 14. “I shall restore the fortunes of my people Israel; they will rebuild their devastated cities and live in them, plant vineyards and drink the wine, cultivate gardens and eat the fruit. Once more I shall plant them on their own soil, and never again will they be uprooted from the soil I have given them. It is the word of the Lord your God.” God calls us to introspection and to behavioral and attitudinal modification because he loves us, and he has promised to us, to the church, that the gates of hell shall not prevail against us as his people. So take hope this day. Do the hard work of self examination. Change where it is warranted. And live in the knowledge that God loves you, and that he will never leave you or forsake you, even though he may do some pretty dramatic things to get your attention if the situation warrants. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN.

　

A Cure for the Summertime Blahs

Rector’s Rambling, August 2013

Summer is here with a vengeance. Today it is 95 degrees and the humidity is dripping. (The electric is out and we are on generator power.) We have had thunderstorms for seemingly weeks on end, and the ground has that swampy smell from which there is no escape. It is not my favorite time of year.

But when I think about the good things in my life, I realize how much they overshadow the bad things, and even on the hottest day of the year, I can find reason to give thanks and find contentment where I am. Here is a sampling:

1. Our nation is free of civil unrest.

2. My children and grandchildren are safe and happy.

3. My bird dog starts training next week.

4. The peppers and tomatoes are almost ready to pick.

5. The eggplant and squash are ready to pick.

6. I love my wife and she loves me.

7. Jesus lives in my heart and my name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.

Of course, the list goes on, but I think you get the idea. When we face a situation or time which is not our first choice, it is good to count the blessings we do enjoy. God never leaves us alone or comfortless, and when we think about it, we are much more likely to recognize his blessings all around us. Here are a few of the blessings in my life. I hope they will help you to develop your own list of things for which you can give thanks.

Helen Grace

 

George Ambrose

Margaret Rose

Our Church

Goofy Little Dogs



Ill Tempered Horses

Rebecca and Me