thecountryparson

What Do They Want?

2012-02-11T14:34:00.000-08:00

Sixth Sunday After Epiphany, Year B

Preached at St. John’s Lancaster, 12 February, 2012

II Kings 5:1-19

Just what do they want from us? It is a fair question. Some would say that I must put aside the position held by our holy Mother the Church through the ages that no man comes to the Father save through Jesus Christ. They would say that to hold Christianity as uniquely true while saying that other religions when believed sincerely will not lead to God is a hateful and narrow minded doctrine. Others would say that whatever my own beliefs might be, I must be willing to put them aside for a higher good. That is essentially what the government has been telling our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters over the last two or three weeks. Still others would say that if I say that only the baptized should be permitted to receive Holy Communion, I am excluding people from the kingdom of God and proving myself to be mean spirited and into controlling others. Others would say that if I refuse to redefine that understanding of marriage which has been held by Christians and Jews- and Muslims and Zoroastrians and Hindus and even Pagans throughout human history- that I am judgmental and arcane, and even hateful. There are those in our own denomination who would ask those questions or make those statements. And yet as your priest, as a priest of Jesus Christ, I must answer with Article XX of the Articles of Religion that “it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God’s Word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it may be repugnant to another. Wherefore, although the Church be a witness and keeper of Holy Writ, yet,… it ought not to decree any thing against the same.” And with St Paul in his second Epistle to the Thessalonians I would say “stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught.” (II Thessalonians 2:15)

Today’s first lesson from Second Kings Five is most instructive regarding what others may want from us and what God wants from us. Naaman was a very successful Syrian general who was highly favored by his master, who like Naaman was a pagan, or one who worshipped the old nature gods. While the Scriptures are not explicit with details, some Jewish and early Christian scholars believed that God had employed Naaman’s military prowess to destroy the power of Ahab and Jezebel as a punishment for their ravages against the prophets of God. But while Naaman was blessed, he had a major problem. He had leprosy, that dreaded skin disease which in all of its forms rendered the sufferer unclean and eventually led to their rejection by human society in that era. His wife had a young Israelite slave girl who said to her mistress, “there is a prophet in my homeland who could heal your husband.” Now in those days, it was common for people, especially rich people to travel to foreign places to seek medical treatment. We have documents which show the precise nature of such travel and the diplomatic protocols which accompanied such trips. But when the King of Israel received the letter from the King of Syria paving the way for the trip, he was terrified because he thought the Syrians were just looking for some excuse to invade their Israelitish neighbors. When Elisha heard about the king’s dilemma, he sent a message to the king and said, “Let him come to me that he may know that there is a prophet in Israel.” Naaman arrived in all of the glory attendant upon his office, and came with faith that this Israelite prophet would pray for him or do some thing which would bring about his healing. He was furious when Elisha refused to receive him, and merely told him to go and wash seven times in the River Jordan. The General exploded! He was not accustomed to being treated in such a fashion. He named the rivers of his own homeland, all larger and clearer and more beautiful than the Jordan, and the Bible tells us that “He went away in rage.” But his staffers spoke to him and said, “My Lord, if the prophet had demanded of you some great quest, you would have complied, so why not do this simple thing?” And he did. “and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.”

Most modern scholars see this passage of Scripture as part of a larger group of stories having to do with the power of God, and so it is, but the Fathers of the Early Church saw it as much more. Ephraim the Syrian, writing in the mid-fourth century, notes that Naaman’s pride filled him with a spirit of rebellion, which is a sin against God and the leprosy of the soul. Indeed, Naaman, like all of us needed to be healed and delivered from that disease by Christ’s power, and therefore he is sent to Jordan, which is a prophetic pre-figuring of the coming baptism into Jesus Christ which is to bring all nations to purification “through the bath of regeneration, whose beginning was in the river Jordan, the mother and originator of baptism." Naaman offered the prophet rich gifts, because in his pride, he could not imagine that deliverance was the free gift of a loving God. (ACCS V 167-68) Origin, writing in the early third century in Alexandria, points out that a man like Naaman does not, could not understand the great mystery of the Jordan, because true healing comes from the Lord Jesus alone, and Naaman persisted in the error of his pride. (Commentary on John in ACCS V 168) Bishop Caesarius of Arles, writing in the early sixth century, points out that Naaman is a representative of all of us gentiles, who presume “on our own free will and …merits; but without the grace of Christ” we cannot possess health. It is as we submit to the way of Christ in humility and are baptized that we listen to the advice of Elisha and are “freed from the leprosy of the original and actual sins… Gentiles, although old by reason of their former sins and covered with the many spots of iniquity as with leprosy, are renewed by the grace of baptism in such a way that no leprosy of either original or actual sin remains in them. Thus, following the example of Naaman, they are renewed like little children by salutary baptism, although they have always been bent down under the weight of sins.” (Sermon 129:4-5 in ACCS V 168-69)

And so you see, according to our holy Mother the Church, Naaman, and all of us have received the grace of God because some prophet of God stood firm against our demands that the Gospel message be changed to become more palatable to us who wandered about in our own pride and sin. But because there was a man, or we might say a people, who was faithful to the revealed Word of God, the leprosy of sin was done away and healing came to the nations. Whatever people may want us to say or do, our hearts and our minds, our beliefs and our actions and our words must be carefully conformed to the Word of God, which is the authentic eyewitness account of the acts of God in this world. It is there that we find the record of the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, who is our salvation. My brothers and sisters, in this age there are many who would have us to change, or at least substantially modify, this Good News which has been entrusted to us. This we must never do. Might we, like those who have gone before proclaim the Faith we have received with love and respect for all people, knowing that true healing, real deliverance, and genuine salvation are found only in the Name of Jesus. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. AMEN.

Remembering Milt Senior

2012-02-05T18:23:00.000-08:00

On Saturday, we buried Milton Taylor Senior, 86, a faithful Christian and generous philanthropist. He will be well remembered and deeply missed by all of us at St. John's and here in Lancaster. With his family's permission, I post my homily on the day. May God receive him into the arms of his mercy and comfort those he has left behind.

Milt Taylor Funeral

I first came to Lancaster in the mid 1970’s to visit my then girlfriend and now wife. It was snowing heavily, and as we came into town on route 33, My heart was thrilled to see a huge American flag flying at the local Chevrolet dealership. In those days, very few people flew the flag, but Milt Taylor did. Later, when I moved to Lancaster, I learned more about this man who flew the flag when so few others did. I learned about how he supported local charities and projects for the betterment of our community. As a Scout leader and later as a priest, I saw his extensive charity in action, and the people I served benefited directly from his generosity, which was always accompanied by instructions that he didn’t need his name all over everything. And Milt Taylor did another thing or two that I always respected immensely. He was a hard driving, “Type A” man of business, and at the end of the day he provided employment for a lot of my neighbors; and in one of the toughest and most competitive businesses around, He and his sons and their employees always made sure that I was treated fairly and honestly, even before I was a priest.

But it would be wrong to stand here and paint my friend Milt Taylor Senior as some sort of a plaster saint. He was tenaciously “type A”, and my guess is that he like most of us could be exasperating and frustrating to live with or work with on occasion, perhaps even more so from time to time. Milt was a human being, subject to the tempers and temptations that all of us know throughout our lives.

But I saw another side of Milt Taylor, one that few other people were privileged to see, because I was the one who served him Communion when he was here in Lancaster. I looked into his eyes and saw him as he came face to face with the living God on Wednesdays, just about two thirds of the way back on the inside aisle on this pulpit side of the church. You can tell a lot about a man when you serve him Holy Communion on a regular basis. His demeanor, the depth of his soulfulness, the temper of his eyes fill volumes about his view of the world and perception of his relationship to God the Father, through Jesus Christ the Son, and in the Power of the Holy Spirit. And I tell you today that Milton John Taylor had a deep and abiding faith in Jesus Christ. It informed who he was and what he did. He was no more perfect than you or I, but he acknowledged Jesus Christ and accepted him as Saviour and Lord. His personality, so aptly suited for the highly competitive business which was his life, was informed and moulded to a great degree by his faith. Where he succeeded in life, he gave God the glory and gave back to his community, and when he stumbled or fell, he sought the forgiveness and grace of his Lord.

And that is why on this day, as we gather to remember the life of Milt Senior and commend his soul to God, we can rest in the words of Jesus, who said, “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” You see, Isaiah knew whereof he spoke when he said, “He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it.” You see, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble…The Lord of Hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.” Indeed, “The tabernacle of God is with men.” For Milton John Taylor “there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” And Jesus Christ, “he that sat upon the throne” says, “Behold, I make all things new…It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.”

Thank you Father, for receiving your son Milton into the arms of your mercy, for guiding him throughout life, for forgiving him, and for offering that same forgiveness to us all. Now send your Blessed Holy Spirit upon all those who mourn his passing. Grant unto them consolation and an abiding sense of your presence, and accomplish in all who seek to know you the saving and transforming work of God, through your Son Jesus Christ our Saviour and Lord, in whose Name we pray. AMEN.

Honouring My Own Time, And That of Others

2012-01-30T11:37:00.000-08:00

It was a wonderful respite from modernity. For several days, our church website, and with it my church e-mail account, was down. I know it was inconvenient for several people. They called to tell me that they were unable to reach me or the church, or to ask for information they usually acquired from the church website. But for me it was quite refreshing to avoid daily about thirty or forty spam messages designed to make me feel better, or laugh, or convince me, or sell me something. And it was a blessing to escape the self-induced deception that I am so important that everyone on earth must have immediate access to my wisdom and expertise. Knowing that at least one of my electronic leashes was inoperative, I found that my life seemed to take on a more ordered and peaceful existence. I read more (the Book of Luke in one sitting! and a goodly portion of JB Bury's History of the Reformation in the England and Scotland.) I took walks in the woods with the terriers and Pat, the faithful old white hound. In a very real sense it was as if I went back in time. It wasn't that long ago that we did not have access to such instant communication, and then, it simply cost too much to send out so much to so many who already had more than they needed or wanted.

But now I am back, saddled with the conveniences that our world demands, and obviously employing them to enter the lives of others. But perhaps my forced hiatus from the world will help me to understand to a greater degree what is truly important. Just perhaps I will walk away from the opportunity to keep others on such a short leash and only push myself on them when I have something meaningful to say or ask. Just perhaps I will design my communications to to reach individuals who are interested in hearing from me instead of broadcasting them to be received involuntarily by those who really have no interest in what I have to say. I noticed on my blogspot dashboard the other day that there is now an option which allows readers to be notified by e-mail whenever I decide to be eloquent. Just perhaps I will find the self-control to refrain from adding that most egotistical of all buttons to this blog. Just perhaps.......

"The Peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord: And the Blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, be amongst you, and remain with you always. AMEN." taddled from The Book of Common Prayer

Conference Videos Now Available

2012-01-27T04:56:00.000-08:00

Many thanks to Anglican TV for posting the presentations from Mere Anglicanism 2012. The presentations may be viewed here: http://anglican.tv/category/tags/events/mere-anglicanism-2012

Evangelism, True Repentance, and Obedience: A Formulae for Success

2012-01-21T19:20:00.000-08:00

Rector’s Rambling- February 2012
Pictures from Charleston- Text Follows

Archbishop Kwashi of Jos, Nigeria

St. Philip's- The Mother Church of The Carolinas and the Carribean

Bishop Lawrence of South Carolina

The High Altar at St. Philip's

Bishop Chartres: The Lord Bishop of London

The Great East Window: Ecce Agnus Dei

Bishop Nazir-Ali of Rochester

Last month before Rebecca and I left for “Mere Anglicanism,” a friend asked where we were going for the conference. When I answered “Charleston,” he responded, “West Virginia?” I was puzzled and replied, “Why would anyone go to West Virginia in January?” But Charleston, South Carolina is another story. She is truly a beautiful city any time of year. Described by locals as that place where “two rivers meet to form the Atlantic Ocean,” I can understand why the locals love their home, and why so many have stayed here for so many generations.

But sightseeing was not my purpose in Charleston- renewal and revival were. The speakers and preachers were wonderful and included the Principal of Wycliffe Hall Oxford, the Lord Bishop of London, the Vice-Chancellor of Sewanee (my alma mater),the Bishop of Rochester, the Bishop of South Carolina, The Dean of Trinity School for Ministry, and the Archbishop of Jos Nigeria. The worship was magnificent. Evensong featured the Choir of St. Philip’s Charleston singing George Dyson’s Mag and Nunc and Parry’s “ I Was Glad.” Bishop Chartres challenged us to open our lives and our institutions to the leadership and infilling of the Holy Ghost, who was without doubt present in the service. The festival Eucharist featured the choir of St. Helena’s Beaufort, accompanied by the Charleston Brass. Archbishop Kwashi brought tears to our eyes with his godly exhortations to evangelism and Bishop Lawrence shone like Moses as he consecrated and delivered to us the Body and Blood of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. By the time the third of five Communion Hymns rang out the words “Rise Up, O Saints of God,” we all were on our feet, rejoicing in the power of God and filled with what Son-in-Law Matthew calls “South Carolina Happy.” God was in our midst, and the entire conference was transformative. The message was unified and simple.
1. From the time of Augustine and Cuthbert to the great reformers of the 16^th, 18^th, and 19^th centuries, to today, men and women who answer the call of Jesus to turn from their former ways and follow God have been used to transform not only lives, but societies.
2. As those same people forsook their sinful ways and conformed their lives to the clear teaching of Scripture, which is the example of our Lord, God used them, and he will use us, to bring the most obdurate sinners to personal confession, repentance, and moral transformation.
3. The cost of following Christ in this way is high, but the results are far-reaching, and ultimately eternal.
4. We who name Christ as Saviour are called to follow him in the knowledge that through us, through our hard work and sacrifice, God will transform the world and to bring all people to himself.
5. It is for this reason that he has called us and redeemed us by his blood.

As we move through the season of Epiphany and into Lent, I pray that we will always see our personal introspection and repentance in light of the call of Jesus Christ for us to evangelize others even as we have been evangelized. Our raison detre, our great purpose in life, is to glorify God by bringing all people to a saving knowledge of Jesus the Christ, who is God’s sole plan for our salvation. We can only do this effectively as we follow Jesus Christ in humility, acknowledging our sins, changing our ways, and working to conform our behaviour to the clear teachings of God’s Word, the Holy Bible. May He send his Holy Spirit upon us anew in the days to come that we might be faithful and obedient servants, bring our friends and neighbors to a saving experience with Jesus Christ, and in turn transform our society into a more just and righteous family, one filled with the hope of heaven.

To Christ- the True King!

Bill+

Rector's Report 2011- St. John's Lancaster

2012-01-13T19:57:00.000-08:00

The numbers look good this year at St. John’s. Eleven Baptisms, a good list of confirmations receptions and transfers, a strong pledge base and small surplus going into December, and an Average Sunday Attendance (there is the real number for any church) of 110, up 15 from last year. But cautious thanksgiving, not jubilant self-congratulation is in order. After all, we have buried some very active members and seen good friends and members of our parish move away. And our ASA is significantly skewed by the fact that Christmas fell on a Sunday this year and the fact that we had excellent attendance at both Christmas Eve services, which count toward Sunday attendance. All the same, good things are happening at St. John’s. We offer three Communion Services each week in our Church, all of which are well attended. Two regular Bible studies are joined by a strong EFM program to provide Christian Education opportunities for our members. We have a regular presence for Prayer and Communion distribution in two nursing homes. We offer weekly lay led evening prayer at the church and also at the chapel at Pickering House, the home of our local tri-county hospice program. We have a regular presence in the county jail, the transitions center, and in SEPTA- the tri-county jail in Nelsonville (Bill McCleery, assisted by Chuck Canter even baptized two men there this year!) We have had good participation serving meals to the poor in Jackson and Hocking counties, and the support of our parish for the local Lutheran Social Services food pantry continues. We continue to support missions ranging from Haiti to Liberia to East Asia and beyond, and youth work in Pennslyvania. We support work among single mothers in our own community and provided hats and mittens to needy children in our own public schools. Our building is used by AA and Alanon, Fairhope Hospice, the Lancaster Festival Art Walk, and a group of local elementary school cheerleaders regularly. Special needs students from Lancaster High School come to our church every week during the school year for on-site job training experience. All of these things and more are supported by all of the administrative and service structures such as altar guild, choir, office volunteers, and the like that make up the daily labour of the people of God at St. John’s. We support the ministries of the Episcopal church directly through Episcopal Community Services Foundation, Support for the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem on Good Friday, support for the Dohn's- medical missionnaries in the Dominican Republic, and direct giving to two Episcopal Seminaries at Nashotah House and in Ambridge PA. This year, we saw one of our own families, the Canters, graduate from the House and accept a church appointment in the Episcopal diocese of San Diego. We have been pleased to support the Good Earth Farm and Common Friars, our relatively new Episcopal Monastery in Athens. Our own Emily Crawford served as a summer intern there during her break from Washington and Lee. .We also pay our diocesan Mission Share fully and on time this and every year. These are a few of the highlights of who we are and what we do here at St. John’s, and there are many more things we do to serve God and our fellows here and around the world. Thank you all for your generous support and service.

2011 has also seen some big changes about how we do business at St. John’s and in the look of the Church. First for the capital projects: We have new roofs on both buildings which should serve us for years to come. A major masonry project was conducted on the west end of the church which included the rebuilding of both towers. Many thanks to Glenn Newman, a long-time friend of this parish for doing the work. He saved us substantial amounts of money with his patient and careful workmanship. Thanks also to Martin Taylor, our good neighbor, who cooperated with us and Fairfield Federal to stabilize and reconstruct the wall that marks our property line. Last year, our vestry decided to adopt a plan of “Common Ministry” or increased lay involvement in the running of the church. A significant component of that plan was the replacing of our Church secretary with volunteer workers. It has been a learning process, but the transition has been made successfully, thanks to the hard work of Tom Hammer, Schyler Crawford, and all of our office volunteers. We hit a milestone in 2011 when our treasurer, Lowell Stallsmith, celebrated his twenty fifth year in that position. Thanks Lowell for a job well done. We continued to get to know each other better thanks to the monthly fellowship breakfasts organized by Mark and Mary Alice Perrine and their crews. Suzie Cork and the folks at Shaw’s continued to conduct the popular cooking classes which have brought joy to so many and raised a considerable sum for our parish. Many thanks are also in order to the Fairfield Anglican Fellowship, an independent mission support agency and registered 501c3 for their continued substantial support of our mission through the payment of utilities and support for individual projects of our parish and their support of the Common Friars in Athens. Thanks to all who support St. John’s by their labor, their giving of money and time and prayer, and by living the gospel every day. We are truly blessed, and if 2011 is any indicator of who we are, I anticipate a great 2012 here on behalf of the kingdom of God.

Faithfully,

Bill+

Life As Stewardship

2012-01-08T17:06:00.000-08:00

I love living in the country for many reasons, but perhaps my greatest joy comes from the opportunity it affords me to give back something to the land.

After the onset of winter last week, the last couple of days have been unseasonably warm. As the weather inched into the upper 50's, I decided to clean the horse stalls and chicken house. The scrapings totalled between twelve and fifteen wheelbarrows full of muck and soiled bedding, all of which made a very nice dressing for the raspberry canes. Today after church, I took the dogs and walked down into the woods to check the game runs. There was a significant amount of fresh deer sign from last night and early this morning, but pretty much all of the animals had moved on by the time we arrived. The squirrels seemed well fed on the fall's ample supply of black walnuts, and cuttings littered the ground at several locations. I re-stacked some brush piles, which should help the rabbits and squirrel to find some relief from the hawks and owls. While the springs have never recovered from the Corps of Engineers' last "improvement" to the watershed, I was able to get far enough into the wet areas to make some plans for restoration in the coming months. The recent losses of Ash and Elm trees in our area have cleared up some nice plots where I hope to plant Shag-bark Hickory in late February or early March, just before I plant the first peas and potatoes.

Husbandry is a lot like the Christian life. We start with wonderful opportunities fraught with serious limitations, and we apply a combination of love and reason to make something better than what was there when we began. By God's grace and through many mistakes, improvement is measured in the long term and seldom appears either quickly or easily. Then at the end of it all, we go on to our reward and leave the legacy to someone else, just as we received it from those who preceded us. What a blessing it is to know that we make a difference, even if only for a little while.

Mid-winter Musings

2012-01-04T11:46:00.000-08:00

Fairfield County is now firmly in the grips of winter. The truck thermometer read 22 degrees Fahrenheit when I did my chores this morning at the barn. A light dusting of snow covers the ground, and the horses are very glad to be out of their stalls now that the ground is frozen (they tear up too much pasture when things are muddy and therefore have to stay in the barn until the ground is frozen.) Just last weekend, Tristan, Chuck, Leo the fat Labrador and I were shooting pheasants in fifty degree weather at Federal Valley. We bagged six birds, missed two embarrassingly easy shots, and watched one beautiful cock bird glide into the treeline when Leo got excited and galumphed out of range. It was a good day with lunch at the local ma and pop restaurant, Cardhu, and Dominicanas. The slower pace of mid-winter life in the countryside always calls me to consider those things that are truly important, and this year is no departure from that rule.

Monday night, Kathy Heim (our organist) conspired with me to offer evensong at the church. It is a fitting service for the countryside in mid-winter. After the sentences and confession, we proceeded directly to Phos hilaron by Robert Bridges and Louis Bourgeois, The lessons from the Feast of the Circumcision were answered by Crotch's Mag and Whitneys's paraphrase of the Nunc set to Orlando Gibbons' Song 1. There was enough plainsong, simplified Anglican chant, and incense for even me, but the most amazing thing about this lovely service was its spontaneity. I was in the throes of laryngitis, and so was unable to sing or read my accustomed parts. Kathy chanted, Ivan led the canticles, Frankie and Ann read the lessons, Ivan and Kathy offered thoughts on the lessons, Paul led the state and church prayers, Ivan offered those prayers requested by members of our congregation, and I merely received the gift of worship from my friends. I was helpless in a sense, but through my friends, I met God. The liturgy was truly the work of the people here at Saint John's, and the experience got me thinking about what might be.

Imagine a place where the Holy Communion was the basis of our life together. What would it be like for the ancient devotional societies of the church to cooperate in prayer with the more functional modern mission agencies which labour in our parish? Could it be possible that evangelical commitment to study God's Word might be blended with the devotional practices of the church catholic such as confession and stations? Could the personal devotional practices of the modern west be coupled with fasting and the disciplines of another age and another part of the world? And could God, would God, work through such a mix to send his people out in the power of the Holy Spirit to 'preach good tidings unto the meek, bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn; to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified.' (Isaiah lxi. I)?

These are the sorts of things I think about in mid-winter. Perhaps in the days to come, God will unite our hearts to see such a miraculous fulfillment of the prophesies of Isaiah.

Queen Elizabeth's Christmas Message, 2011

2011-12-29T11:36:00.000-08:00

Sometimes people ask why many Anglican Christians outside the United Kingdom and Commonwealth pray for "Elizabeth, Defender of the Faith" in our prayers for the Church, Clergy, and People. While many people know the well rehearsed historical reasons, this year's Christmas greeting from Queen Elizabeth answers that question in a fresh and exciting way. May God help us all to emulate the sincere faith of this wonderful Christian Lady in the year to come. Might our understanding and proclamation of the Good News of Jesus Christ be so clear, so humane, and so persuasive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHxbMbYgJ_o

Christmas Sermon 2011

2011-12-23T07:35:00.000-08:00

Preached at St. John’s Lancaster 24 December 2011

Isaiah 9:2-7

Titus 2:11-14

Luke 2:1-20

It is so easy to walk in darkness. For years after my father’s sister Mae died, thanksgiving seemed hollow and forced to me. When I was a small boy, dad’s side of the family always gathered at Uncle Polly and Aunt Mae’s house in Frankfort, Indiana. It was a magical place to be a boy. There was a hill which seemed like a mountain to us which stretched down to a small stream where adventure abounded. Uncle Polly was a railroader on the Nickel Plate line, and he would take us to the yard to see the great iron beasts and actually let us climb into the cupola of his caboose. There were swords in their house, and a penny collection to dazzle the mind of any young boy building a collection for his scout advancement requirements. And then they died, and for years thanksgiving was not the same.

My experience tells me that Christmas is like that for many people. All of the tinsel and presents cannot masque the fact that our experience this year is not as of yore. Faces are missing, and laughter is not as it was. The table that was full is not, or is in a different way, and nostalgia seemingly blinds us to the blessings of this Christmas to a greater degree than we would wish. During this time of year which is filled with so many blessings, and when even those who are generally not religious or even kind in the least still find time to share some goodness and love with their neighbors and friends, the shadows of Christmases past can haunt us and bring darkness.

But on this day, and at this hour, we gather as the people of the Living God to proclaim that the great light has indeed shined into the darkness. The light of God has shined into our lives and increased our joy. The rod of the oppressor is snapped asunder. “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and he shall be named Wonderful Counselor! Mighty God! Everlasting Father! Prince of Peace!” “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory!” Surely “The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to us all.” The darkness is swept away as we “go into Bethlehem to behold this thing which has taken place!”

Some months ago, I was privileged to visit the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, in the Palestinian Authority. We walked quickly through the great plaza and stooped to enter the Church, in some ways a dark and forbidding place, where we knelt to pray. My mind was filled with thoughts of that first Christmas as we joined the line of pilgrims who waited to descend the narrow stairway into the crypt where our Saviour was born. I handed the Greek Monk a handful of coin and he handed me a handful of candles to commemorate my prayers for those I love. And then we moved into the holy place. There were flashes from the cameras of ill-behaved tourists and distractions all around, but they melted away and surely the darkness was dispelled as I met God in that place where the shepherds came on that night ‘to see what had taken place, which the Lord had made known to them.’ With our Lady, I treasured the memory of these things and pondered their meaning in my heart; and like the shepherds, I could not help but to glorify and praise God for all I had heard and seen in that place, even as it had been told me by the Scriptures we have heard this day.

Each of us here brings to this Holy Season our own set of experiences, expectations, and burdens. There will doubtless be for all of us joys and hopes fulfilled, but also those moments of introspection which call to mind other things. The realities of the world rush in upon us, and the uncertainties of life weigh on some more than others, but whatever your frame of mind and heart this day, I bring you the good news that “The Light Has come into the darkness.” “We who lived in a land of deep darkness-on us light has shined!”

God loves you tonight. Whatever you may have done, whatever your situation may be- the birth of Jesus is the proof that God loves you, and has a wonderful plan for your life. There is no sin against God or man he will not forgive. There is no guilt or shame he cannot heal. There is no loss he will fail to comfort, no uncertainty he cannot give strength to bear. There is no habit or addiction he cannot give strength to overcome. There is no aloneness he cannot break through. The proof of his love is that He sent his Son Jesus into the world to identify with our humanity, to sanctify our suffering, and to bring us purpose and peace. Very soon, we will confess our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as we say together the Creed. We will confess our sins to God and receive his blessed forgiveness as he forgets our sins and puts them as far away from us as the east is from the west. And then we with the shepherds will go to Bethlehem and see this thing which has taken place, foretold by prophets and promised by God. We will kneel in humble thanks to receive the body and blood of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Might it be for us all a time of healing. Might we experience anew the overwhelming acceptance and love of God. Might we be drawn together as the people of God and imbued with the knowledge that we are never alone, never devoid of purpose, and ever filled with love for God and our fellows, just as the prophets foretold.

Christ is come into the world! A babe is born unto us this day in the City of David- Christ the Lord! The prophecies are fulfilled, and God has showered us with his love. Might we all find peace this night, and light which dispels the darkness. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. AMEN.

Wisdom From a Politician!

2011-12-18T20:53:00.000-08:00

Last Friday, Prime Minister Cameron of the UK gave a wonderful speech marking the end of the commoration of the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. In it he challenges his hearers to express their faith while living in a multi-cultural and diverse society in ways that are positive and do not put others down. The whole thing is a bit long but it is worth the read if you have the time. You can access the speech at http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/king-james-bible/.
Bill+

Parish News and Upcoming Events

2011-12-14T20:35:00.000-08:00

Rector’s Rambling- January 2012

As I sit down to write my first Rector’s Rambling of the new year, It doesn’t feel much like winter. The weather has been in the low fifties, and the rain has cancelled my pheasant hunt with Bill Young and Sadie the Retriever. The horses are a bit cranky about being in through the rains, and I must say that I’d much rather have them out eating grass than standing inside eating hay and oats. But that is December in Ohio. On the flip side of the coin, there is much for which I am thankful as the new year opens. Having Tristan home for Christmas is something I will never take for granted. I suppose Oxford, Ohio has as much potential for accident as anywhere in the world, but it is very unlikely that anyone there is shooting at my son and his friends. I am still rejoicing at Matthew’s ordination in “the California.” The short opportunity to share in his joy, and to see Ashley and the girls refreshed my soul.

We had a wonderful visit with Bishop Price. He has been a faithful and long time frind of our parish, and he will officially retire as our Suffragan Bishop with the coming of the new year. Our's was his last official visit in the Diocese before his retirement. It was good to see so many brothers and sisters officially affiliate with our parish, and the reception in the undercroft was wonderful. This coming Sunday, we will baptize yet another daughter of Eve into Christ’s One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

I have been very gratified by the response to the “Essential 100 Bible Reading Plan” http://e100challenge.com I do believe with all my heart that if the people of God here or anywhere can increase their Bible literacy, spiritual renewal will follow. The Word of God is indeed sharper than a two edged sword, just as the Bible tells us. To read and study the Bible prayerfully, and with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, is to open ourselves to know the very character of God, revealed in Jesus Christ who said “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.”

In January, I will be traveling again to Charleston for the “Mere Anglicanism” Conference www.mereanglicanism.com . Believe it or not, the topics and speakers are really quite exciting for a traditionalist priest, and I am looking forward to the trip to hear:

The Rev'd Dr. Richard Turnbull, Principal, Wycliffe Hall, Oxford
Anglicanism In Full Flower: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
The Rt. Rev'd Richard Chartes, Bishop of London
Missionary Visionary: Bishop Henry Compton
Dr. John McCardell, Vice Chancellor, the University of the South
Anglicanism on Fire in South Carolina: The Great Beaufort Revival of 1831
The Rt. Rev'd Michal Nazir-Ali
Amnesia and Anamnesis: How we lost our way
The Rt. Rev'd Mark J. Lawrence, Bishop of the Diocese of South Carolina
A More Excellent Way: Shaping the Future of Anglicanism
The Very Rev'd Dr. Justyn Terry, Dean, Trinity School for Ministry
Recovering the Christian Mind: Educating the Anglican Ministry Today
The Most Rev'd Benjamin Kwashi, Diocese of Jos
Recovering a Dynamic Anglican Missiology
I do appreciate the good people of St. John’s making continuing education a part of my package, and hope that the challenge and refreshment I find at St. Philip’s Charleston will invigorate my ministry among you.

On the fifth of January, the clergy of the Hocking Valley Deanery will be meeting with Canon Anne Reed, the Diocesan Staff Member Bishop Breidenthal has appointed to help us develop and implement strategies for creative ministry. We will be discussing how we might cooperate in mission along the route 33/ Hocking River corridor, and especially how we might work together to insure that our brothers and sisters in some of the small churches and preaching stations of our Deanery might have Holy Communion more regularly. In addition to our established missions and parishes, we have sacramental, preaching, and teaching missions in jails, prisons, and retirement homes all up and down the river. I believe God is doing great things in our midst, and hopefully we will strengthen our existing ministries and discern new ways that God might call us to proclaim the Good News to all people.

This Ramble has been more newsy than inspirational, but I hope it will help us all as we seek to discern what God would have us to do in this coming year. Resolutions can be very good things, and I hope that a greater awareness of the opportunities around us might help us to open our hearts to the leading of the Holy Spirit as we seek to live for God in the months to come.

Faithfully,

Bill+

After the Order of Melchizedek

2011-12-04T17:25:00.000-08:00

It has been a long journey and a lot of work, but we all rejoice that Son In Law Matthew (center- aka "the preaching bear" by children in Malawi) was ordained to the Sacred Order of Priests by Bishop Mathes of San Diego on behalf of Bishop Lawrence of South Carolina on December third. Matthew asked me to preach for his ordination, and here is my sermon, along with some pictures of the day.

Concelebrating with Bishop Mathes

Presenting Fr. Canter and His Family

Putting up with Marines (little brother is on the right!)

Greeting Friends at the Reception

A Goodly Heritage

Ordination Sermon- Matthew Canter
Preached at St Michael’s by the Sea, Carlsbad California
On the eve of the feast of Nicholas Ferrar

Exodus 3:1-6
Psalm 121
II Timothy 4:1-8
Saint John 10:1-18

May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts, be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

There are times in our lives when we, like Moses, stand in the very presence of God. It may be at a burning bush, or in the vicinity of a bolt of lightening, or when we hear a voice in the dark, but we know instinctively that we have been in the presence of the living God. His Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are indeed the children of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ. In July of 2000, Matthew’s mother Kathy received a letter from Scotland which I have been given permission to share with you today. Her son wrote, “I feel and felt within me on the late night of first July that my life be used to spread and minister the Word of God. I believe that God tells all of us different matters in our lives. It just so happens I was listening when he told me I should be in the ministry.” What a blessed letter for any mother to receive. It is no wonder that it has been so lovingly preserved. I don’t know the exact details of what happened in Scotland in July of 2000, but it made a young man aware of God’s presence in his life, and he was listening, and here we are today. I presume, in fact I know that over the last decade or so, that young man had times when he doubted what he experienced on that first of July, but over the years an ever growing circle of friends and family, mentors, congregations, bishops, seminary faculty, and the members of the commission on ministry have come to the same conclusion that he reached that night, that his “life be used to spread and minister the Word of God.”
Matthew, thank God that by his grace, you were listening. Thank God that the good people of Fairview Church had lived before you the Word of God in such a way that you had some idea of how to recognize the voice of God in your life. Thank God that Mike Morgan sent you to us at St. John’s, and that you met a godly professor at Presbyterian, and that there were men in your unit in Korea and Iraq who served God faithfully- until the very end of their lives. Thank God that you met my Daughter and fell in love with an Anglo-Catholic pietist and went to Nashotah House and met Bishop Salmon and went to Malawi and came here. As I imagine you can attest, there are no accidents in our lives. God has prepared you for this day that he anticipated before the foundations of the earth were laid. He knew you in your mother’s womb, and knew that your “life would be used to spread and minister the Word of God.” He has positioned us all, the members of his one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, along the way as witnesses to discern, and affirm, and acclaim the reality of your call. And now, under the leadership and direction of the bishops of his church, we gather today to affirm that you are called to be “alter Christus,” in the place of Christ, as a Presbyter of the church catholic. As president of the Eucharist, you will stand in the place of and along side of your bishop to model for your people the life and example of Jesus Christ. Like him, you will represent to the Father that holy sacrifice of ourselves in love and humility on behalf of the whole world and teach us that “no man hath greater love than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” By word and example, you will teach us to “love one another,” and to “prefer one another before ourselves.” You will make mistakes, and from time to time fall into sin, but you will return and repent, trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ to shower you with his grace and to give you strength; because you are “sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.” You will discipline your life according to the precepts of the Bible, because it is in your behaviour and character that men and women will know Jesus. But now I have gone to preaching at my son-in -law, something I’ve looked forward to for a long time, but enough is enough, so let me regroup and restrain myself.
Son in law, as you are commissioned and ordained this day to spread and minister the Word of God, you are ordained by Bishop Mathes on behalf of the Holy Church of God to stand in the very place of Christ. At the Altar, in your preaching, and by your example, you are set apart in a very special way to proclaim to everyone, because God loves everyone, that the way to enter the sheepfold of God’s mercy is through the wicket gate, the door of Jesus, who died for us and was resurrected to glory that we might live forever with peace, and purpose, and hope, and the knowledge that God loves us. Love all those made in God’s image, and honour their decisions and their outlooks, and their beliefs, but never under any circumstances waver from your commitment that Jesus is the door, and that he is the way to the Father’s forgiveness and love.
Be faithful to your people, “wallow with them in the midst of their daily affairs”, and so order your life that they will see in you the Good Shepherd who giveth his life for the sheep. So order your life and your family that they will see in you the holiness and the humility of Jesus. When times are difficult and discouragement sets in, do not flee, thereby allowing the wolves of this world to scatter the flock of Christ, but stand firm in the Gospel you have received. Give your life for the people of God, that they may know firsthand the character and love of God in Jesus Christ the Good Shepherd, in whose place you stand.
As you strive to do this thing by his grace, remember your covenant with my daughter and grandchildren. It is so easy to become so busy in good works that we neglect those whom God has given us first. And yet it is in your marriage that you most perfectly model the image of God in the world. It is there that you show the respect and consideration that characterizes all true leadership and models the headship of Christ. It is there in your wife and children that people see the true role of the Church, submitting to godly headship not out of fear or mere duty, but because your character and fidelity to the Word of God produces for them an ark of safety and the knowledge that you would never demand or coerce anything that would be hurtful, or humiliating, or unloving. It is in your marriage, and in the begetting of children that God has allowed you to participate with him in the very act of creation. Cultivate and love your family with all humility and tenderness, that all people might see in your home the true nature of that love which exists betwixt Christ and his Church.

Matthew, would you please stand.

“I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry. For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.” In this his second letter to Timothy, from which our second lesson was drawn today, St. Paul proclaims those same characteristics of effective life and ministry that St. John gives us in his first Epistle General, namely that our lives should be characterized by love, sound doctrine, and personal holiness, which is obedience to the clear teachings of Holy Scripture. Matthew, love everyone. Love everyone. Love everyone. for God has sent you to represent him as a priest of his church. Believe and teach the Faith received from apostles and martyrs, and from Christ himself; grounded in the Bible, contained in the creeds, and proclaiming to all the beauty of the Holy and Blessed Trinity- one God, and of the unique, historic person and work of Christ. Conform your life to the clear teaching and example of the Word of God written, which is the authentic eye witness Holy Spirit inspired record of the Word which was made flesh and dwelt among us. And with St. Paul I say “Do thy diligence to come shortly unto me.” And I, along with Rebecca and your parents would add, bring the girls with you. Now, would you please face the people to whom God has called you.

Ashley, would you and the girls please come and stand beside Matthew.

Would the congregation please stand.

Behold one soon to be ordained a priest of the living Christ. Behold him whom you have acclaimed as one called and set apart to this holy office. Bear with him and remember that he is human. Love him and his family. In honesty and with kindness share with him in those tasks and sacrifices and risks to which God has called you. Share your burdens with him, and help him to bear his own. Remember that you are called together to be the people of God. None is above and none below, but all labour together in humility in the Name of him who called us all to believe in Jesus and to love one another. Remember that in God’s economy, the most experienced may learn much from the youngest and most naive, and the simplest man or woman might be the teacher of the most highly educated. Give thanks for each other, and go forth to show the people of this community that God loves them, and that he has a wonderful plan for each of their lives.

And now Father, continue with us in this place. Make this day to be not only a landmark for your servant Matthew, but for all the people of this parish and this church. Make it to be for us all a time of commitment and beginning as we do the work you have given us to do.. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. AMEN.

Occasionally, I love technology

2011-11-25T23:46:00.000-08:00

Today was a banner day for me and the US mail. I received the latest edition of Alexander Warrack's "Concise Scots Dialect Dictionary," which means I can start on my resolution to read the complete poems of brother Robert Burns. I also received the latest National Geographic map of the United Kingdom and Ireland, which allows me to trace Drs. Johnson and Boswell on their "Journey through the Western Isles" of 1792 or so. Since I was ordering things on Amazon, I also received Morwood's "Dictionary of Latin Words and Phrases," which I have meant to buy for years, but just never got around to it. But the most wonderful thing that came in today's mail was a reloading die and package of sabots for the .30 caliber rifle from SabotReloadingPro.com in Provo, Utah.

Tristan and I have long lamented that the country around here is too flat to shoot our rifles of choice in cals. 30-06 and 30-30. There is just too much chance for richochet. This has effectively kept us from hunting the coyote, which is perhaps the greatest threat to game in our part of the world (that is with the exception of modern farming and development practices- which we can't do anything about, feral house cats- which we don't shoot because they might be someone's pets, and red-tail and cooper's hawks- which are protected.) That is about to change, thanks to today's technological innovation. The sabots will allow us to shoot .224 caliber bullets at a whopping 4200 feet per second (almost twice the regular .30 caliber speed) and to use smaller specialty bullets which are designed to explode rather than richochet when they meet with any resistance. While we will still pay close attention to field of fire and backdrop to our targets (because no shooting sport is entirely without risk of mis-use by thoughtless idiots.), we now have the opportunity to provide a valuable service of coyote removal and spend time together afield- all thanks to the marvels of technology.

Those of you who know me well have a general idea about how much it pains me to say anything good about things modern, but credit must be given where credit is due. Bravo to the boys in Provo for adapting a technology that has been around the military for some time to civilian use. Hopefully it will mean more birds and rabbits in our future here in Fairfield County Ohio!

Sermon for Christ the King Sunday: A Challenge to Read, Mark, and Inwardly Digest...

2011-11-18T23:39:00.000-08:00

Rector’s Rambling- December 2011

Printed below in its entirety is my sermon from Christ the King Sunday. It admonishes us as a Church to participate in Scripture Union’s Essential One Hundred Bible reading plan between now and Easter. I hope you will consider prayerfully participating in this godly discipline. It will renew our lives and our parish. If you would like a set of the “E-100” materials, they are available at the Church office or from the ushers at our Sunday services.

Faithfully,
Bill+

With the celebration of Christ the King Sunday and the start of Advent, a new Christian Year is upon us. The cycle is simple, and yet instructive. We consider the significance of it all as Advent begins and we realize our own failures in light of the judgment that will one day come upon us . We hope for deliverance as we consider the prophesies of one who will come to save us from our sins, and from ourselves. On Christmas, the King of Glory deigns to come among us as one of us. Him who is the eternal agent of creation becomes a baby, born of a virgin in fulfillment of prophecy and grows to sinless manhood. In Him, the good news of God’s mercy and redemption goes forth to all nations at Epiphany. “So God loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoso believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” In Lent, we consider the real significance of it all as we consider his goodness, his love, his grace; and contrast it with our own sinfulness. And then comes the agony of Holy Week when we more fully understand and mourn the impact of our choices upon him who is the best and the truest of all. We receive his body and blood on Maundy Thursday in that most poignant and confusing of services, and mourn on what it seems so strange to call “Good Friday.” And then comes Easter, that glorious day when Our Saviour overcomes death and the grave and our sins to give us new life and the hope of heaven. Our outlook is changed forever and we are known as the children of God by grace through faith. And then we wait with the disciples in Jerusalem for the coming of the promise, fulfilled at Pentecost when the Blessed Holy Ghost gathers us together, purifies us anew, fills us with grace and anoints us with power that we might go forth to do the work of God in this world. And all the nations will be drawn to him, just as the Bible says: “Every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord!”

The Christian Year enshrines the historic events of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, our Christ and our King. The Bible bears witness to the truth of these events, and the Creeds of the Church condense the sublime truths we proclaim in our worship. And yet there are so many in our world, and even in the Church who do not accept the reality of these things we celebrate. A few years back, Bishop Frey caused a great stir in the church press when someone asked him what made Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry so special. He said “We don’t cross our fingers when we say the creed.” A few weeks back, Fr. Bill McCleery and I had the honour of sitting under Dr. Luke Timothy Johnson, the great New Testament Scholar. I asked him what was non-negotiable for us Christians. His reply was direct and simple: “Creed and the Canon of Scripture.” We as Christians are bound to believe, if we are to honestly call ourselves Christians. We may have our doubts. We will never fully appreciate the truths in the Creed and the Canon of Scripture this side of Heaven. There is much we will never fully understand. But as Christians we are called to acknowledge the truth that Jesus Christ, the second person of the Holy and Blessed Trinity came among us, lived as one of us, and after his cruel murder was resurrected and transformed into the first fruits of glory to show us what we shall be as we believe in and follow him. Flee those who would deny the historical nature of these truths as you would flee the plague or the destruction of war. Embrace the faith of our Holy Mother the Church, the faith of patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs. Face your honest doubts and cling to him who is the author and finisher of our faith, the Jesus of history.

I believe that many of the problems and weaknesses of the churches in America today stem directly from ignorance of the Scriptures. While some of this ignorance is willful, much more of it is simply because so many Christians have never taken the time to read the Bible. As a people, we are far too likely to take our views of the reality of Christ from a program on the History channel or the Easter issues of Time or Newsweek. Many priests and professors, and even some bishops, spend more time explaining why details of the Bible could not be authentic to Jesus than they do teaching and living the precepts of our Lord. Some have gone so far as to decry or deny the veracity of Creed and Canon of Scripture while still drawing a paycheck from the Church. I must agree with Bishop Fitz-Simmons Allison when he names such duplicity a most dishonorable act. But there are many faithful and deep thinking Christians in professional Christian service and among the laity who have in faith committed themselves to simply following the Jesus of history, the Jesus of the Bible, with intellectual honesty and persevering confidence in him who saved us.

On this Christ the King Sunday, when we acknowledge the glory of our heavenly King, I would like to issue a challenge to all of us at St. John’s. The Scripture Union, which had its start as a missionary society of the Church of England, our mother church, has prepared a program which leads readers through what they deem the one hundred most significant passages in the Bible. The ushers handed everyone a tally sheet and Bible marker when you came in today. Between now and Easter, I would ask all of us to read these one hundred passages from the Bible. It has been said that “knowledge is power.” We as Christians might well amend that statement to read “Knowledge of God’s Word will transform and empower our lives.” Let us read a passage a day between now and Easter. Ask God to illuminate the passage as you read. Commit yourself to apply it’s teachings to your everyday life. Believe that these passages are reliable eyewitness accounts of the acts of God in the world. Call me if you have questions. I believe that if we commit ourselves to reading the Bible, the Holy Spirit will do a work among us that will transform us to the glory of God the Father into the image of Jesus, our one true King! In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. AMEN.

Thinking About Faith

2011-11-13T20:42:00.000-08:00

Events and discussions of the last few days have led me to consider again the true nature of creedal Christianity. What is it that our Holy Mother the Church calls us to believe? What is the irreducible minimum content of that faith once received from the Apostles? While there is certainly room for argument around the edges, if there is no core verity to our Faith, then I seriously doubt it is really worth believing. It ceases to become an understanding of reality based on verifiable experience which enables us to enter into a living relationship with the Triune God.

I have long held Bishop FitzSimons Allison to be a man whose life is characterized by closeness to God, faithfulness to the Scriptures, and consistancy of character. He recently posted the following short essay on the website of the Diocese of South Carolina, and I pass it on in its entirity. I hope you will find it as thought provoking as I do. He cuts to the heart of one of the major issues facing the church today, the erosion and even the denial of doctrine. His essay, like so many of his writings over the years is provocative and takes sides, and therefore I think it is rather likely to be prophetic in nature. I offer it with a prayer for our beloved Episcopal Church, that we might see the beam in our own eye, and thereby be better enabled to see clearly the light of Christ.

Faithfully,
Bill+

Shrinking Jesus and Betraying the Faith
The following article was submitted by the Rt. Rev. C. FitzSimons Allison, XII Bishop of South Carolina, Retired

What caused the crisis now being faced not only by the Diocese of South Carolina but by the entire western Christian Church? It’s more than an issue of sexuality. It’s one of pandering to the secular culture, of shrinking Jesus and betraying the faith.
Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan are two remarkably popular theologians who teach a version of Christianity that reduces the Christian faith to contemporary secular assumptions. For Crossan, Jesus was an illiterate Jewish cynic. No Incarnation no Resurrection. The Easter story is “fictional mythology” (p. 161, Jesus a Revolutionary Biography). Borg claims that Jesus was only divine in the sense that Martin Luther King and Gandhi were divine. Borg dismisses the creeds (p.10, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time) Jesus was a “spirit person,” “a mediator of the sacred,” “a shaman,” one of those persons like Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Mohammed, et al. (p. 32)
Recently Borg and Crossan have collaborated on a book, The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’ Final Days in Jerusalem. Their Jesus is a semi-revolutionary leader of peasants and outcasts against the priestly elite and those who accommodate to the dominant system of Roman coercive authority. It was not our sinful condition that demanded his crucifixion but this elite. Borg and Crossan’s Jesus does not come from God to take away sin but arose from among the innocent to teach us how not to
be a part of the dominant systems. They fail to understand the depth of sin in all of us at all times, including peasants, as well as the elite. More importantly they lose the assurance of ultimate mercy and forgiveness.
Speaking of elites these two “scholarly authorities” purport to tell us, “What the Gospels Really Teach about Jesus.” They pander to an increasingly secular culture and to the human itch to find some undemanding simplicity that now finally explains everything. And they do this while
ignoring, and without reference to, the multitude of superior contemporary scholars such as Richard Bauckham, Raymond Brown, Luke Timothy Johnson, N. T. Wright, Richard Hays, Leander Keck, Christopher Bryan, and scores of others whose works reflect the faith of scripture and the creeds.
In addition to the academic arrogance of claiming that everyone has been wrong about Jesusuntil now, Marcus Borg, who is a member of the Episcopal Church, denies, in his writings, the creeds and doctrine he affirmed at his confirmation and in his present worship. It is the same
moral issue as that of Bishop Jack Spong who was asked by one of his clergy, “How can you, as a bishop, ask those you ordain to swear to doctrine that you expressly and personally deny?” Crossan, on the other hand, showed some moral integrity when he resigned his Roman Catholic orders. These are not times when people readily think in terms of doctrine or of honor.
Christian faith, but not secular faith, now effectively banned from schools, colleges, and universities, has been relegated to the private and subjective arena. The result is the growing popularity of any who eliminate from Christian faith all that secular trust finds incompatible: miracles, the radical nature of sin and the consequent radical nature of grace, transcendence, holiness, and our human desperate need for God’s initiative action in Jesus. The consequence of this secular replacement of Christianity over the years is that otherwise educated people can be bereft of any substantial grasp of scripture. One glaring example is Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori who tells us that Marcus Borg “opened the Bible to me.” (Acknowledgements A Wing and a Prayer). The Christian creed’s affirmation, to which she has repeatedly sworn, (but Borg negates) is that Jesus Christ is: “the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light ofLight, very God of very God begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made . . .” Borg has not opened the scripture for Bishop Jefferts Schori but closed its revelation of Jesus’ divinity.
One must ask how such apostasy has come about in the Episcopal Church. One answer is given by the new bishop of Connecticut, Ian Douglas. He accurately claims,” The Episcopal Church does not readily think in terms of doctrine.” As one thinks carefully about this statement the spiritual pathology of TEC becomes apparent. Doctrine is “that which is taught, what is held, put forth as true” (Webster). Doctrine is a synonym for teaching. When we “do not readily think in terms of doctrine” we are unaware and
ignorant of Christian teaching. This is true of both “liberals” and “conservatives.” We were warned in scripture about losing our grasp on doctrine and the danger of false doctrine; (“. . . so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of
doctrine by cunning men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles.” Eph. 4:14 (see also Titus 2:;7, I Tim. 1:3, and 4:16, II John 10, II Tim. 3:16, 4:2)
Bishop Douglas’s statement, however, is only true of Christian doctrine. The Episcopal Church does indeed think in terms of doctrine: doctrines of litigation, abortion, divorce, sexual behavior outside of marriage and all kinds of current politically correct doctrines, as well as teachings that Jesus is reduced from the Son of God to a “subversive sage.” (p. 119, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time ) The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church personifies this sad reduction, this shrunken Jesus, this betrayal of Christian faith. Her claim that “salvation is attained by many ways –Jesus Christ is a way, and God has many other ways as well. . .”(italics provided) (Interview, Time Magazine, July 10, 2006) is a violation of her ordination and consecration vows regarding the church’s creed (p. 519, Book of Common Prayer, , 1979). It is also sadly bereft of the Good News that salvation is never attained but freely given to those who believe. As to her belief in eternal life, she is unsure it exists and she contends that Jesus was more concerned with heavenly existence in this life. (Arkansas Democratic Gazette, Jan. 7, 2007) This sad result reduces Christian faith to the secular assumptions of this age while this age is in
desperate need of the very faith that has made it great. Dean William Inge’s famous warning has never been more apt than today: “The Church that marries the spirit of the age will find herself a widow in the next.” We thank God that the leadership of this diocese not only thinks in terms of Christian doctrine but is courageously committed to the sworn faith of scripture and creeds.
When Episcopalians do not think in terms of Christian doctrine they consciously and unconsciously conform to speculations of the current age. When the creedal and biblical affirmations of Jesus’ full humanity and divinity are given up we lose the promised assurance of God’s mercy. The sad secular substitute for divine mercy is a culture destroying permissiveness, lowered standards of morality in society, and diminishing honor in human character. Permissiveness is no substitute for mercy.
Let’s be clear – the doctrine of Borg, Crossan, and Jefferts Schori makes nonsense of the Eucharist: Holy and gracious Father: In your infinite love you made us for yourself; and, when we had fallen into sin and become subject to evil and death, you, in your mercy, sent Jesus Christ, your
only and eternal Son, to share our human nature, to live and die as one of us, to reconcile us to you, the God and Father of all. He stretched out his arms upon the cross, and offered himself, in obedience to your will, a perfect sacrifice for the whole world. (p.362 Book of Common Prayer 1979)
The doctrine of “mere man” (like Martin Luther King and Gandhi) is indeed a widespread heresy in modern times but finds no reflection in any of the major heresies. It was so rare that only a specialist is apt to know its name: psilantropism. One of the outstanding contemporary scholars, Timothy George, has this to say about heresy: Heresy is a deliberate perversion, a choice (hairesis in Greek), to break with the primary pattern
of Christian truth and to promulgate a doctrine that undermines the gospel and destroys the unity of the Christian Church. A Church that cannot distinguish heresy from truth, or, even worse, a Church that no longer thinks this is worth doing, is a Church which has lost its right to bear witness to the transforming Gospel of Jesus Christ who declared himself to be not only the Way and the Life, but also the Truth. Rest assured the Bishop and Diocese of South Carolina, in the face of heretical assault on the Church will be faithful to the “one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all.” The challenge for us at this time is the opportunity to recover the neglected duty of “thinking in terms of doctrine” and to show the cruelty of heresy and declare the Gospel good news of Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior.

Honouring Those Who Serve and Doing What We Must

2011-11-12T16:48:00.000-08:00

Rebecca and I just returned from Diocesan Convention in Dayton. It was like most other Diocesan Conventions, which means that I would have preferred to be somewhere else, but it is a part of my job, and as I keep reminding myself- the worst day at Convention is better than the best day finishing moulds in the foundary! There were some notable things that happened. The Convention was held at the Hope hotel at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, named for Bob Hope, the great entertainer who entertained American troops around the world for over fifty years. May God bless his memory. The meetings were held in the Holbrook Conference Center, named for US Secretary of State Richard Holbrook, who brokered the Dayton Peace Accords in the same facility where we met. There is something very satisfying about meeting in a place where so much good occurred and so many lives were saved in some of the worst of times. It gives one pause to consider the hard work involved in peacemaking. Bishop Breidenthal went out of his way to honour US veterans on this November 11th, Veteran's Day here and Remembrance Day for so many of our allies. Kudos to our bishop for remembering our troops and all they do to maintain peace and stability throughout the world. Thank you Bishop.

On Friday night, the St. John's delegation slipped away into Dayton's Oregon district and found a great little art deco bar and eatery specializing in mediteranean cuisine. The food was beautiful as well as delicious, and the conversation flowed as freely as the wine. For lunch on Saturday, we drove into Fairborne to follow up a tip about a great little Italian place. It was everything we had been led to believe. The Calizone was to die for and the price was right.

Apart from the food and the fellowship, it was good to see some friends and make a few new acquaintances. Yes, it was better than working at the foundary, or the auto plant for that matter. But we are very glad to be home, surrounded by dogs and the things we love. It is quiet here, and soon I will walk up to the barn to put the horses and the chickens to bed. While conventioneering is far from my favorite thing about being a priest, I am home now and contented with my lot. For that I give thanks.

"Pastor, what do you think about Occupy Wall Street?"

2011-11-05T20:12:00.000-07:00

Several people have asked me over the last few days what I think about the “Occupy” movement. I’ve given it some thought, and while I would never claim the authority of the Holy Spirit on such issues, I think my thoughts are relatively clear and somewhat balanced. I offer them as my own, and not those of St. John's or the Episcopal Church. I would gladly welcome discussion on them (preferably face to face over coffee- I'll buy.) I could after all be wrong, and the discussion would probably help both of us to apply our faith more authentically to the great issues of life.
1. I think that for the Church, her officers, and her official bodies to make strong political statements or to take strong political positions is extremely divisive and usually does more to drive well meaning people out of the church than it does to serve any prophetic ministry of the Church.
2. I think that the “Occupy” movement, like the “Corporate World” it seeks to address, is probably filled with a lot of very capable and well intentioned people with some very legitimate concerns. It also (like the “Corporate World”) has some very real troublemakers, ne’er do wells, and dangerous and unprincipled people in its ranks.
3. I think that any society which is characterized by a sense of division, and where enough people feel marginalized and disenfranchised to cause such civil unrest probably needs to do some serious self-evaluation:
a. Shapers of opinion need to acknowledge their role in turning people against each other and stop doing it, whatever their motives.
b. Holders of power and resources need to acknowledge their responsibility to the broader community and develop self-enforced ethical guidelines for living into that responsibility.
c. Those who lack larger scale power or resources need to acknowledge their responsibility to work within a flawed system and not seek to destroy the system (at least in a constitutional republic such as ours.)
d. Everyone needs to see everyone else as individuals created in God’s image rather than as members of groups destined to unending conflict and worthy of unending scorn.
e. Everyone needs to ignore and isolate demagogues as unworthy of consideration in civil society.
4. I think it is dangerous and often illegal to damage public or private property, to participate in large and potentially disruptive assemblies without a permit and a plan for maintaining order, or to impede anyone on the way to conduct lawful commerce or personal business.
In short, I think there are probably legitimate concerns and legitimate people in the “Occupy” movement and in the “Corporate World.” I am concerned that demagogues on the one hand and hard heads (or hard hearts) on the other get far too much consideration and control in modern society. I fear that if real revolution ever comes (from any source or point of view,) most of what we hold dear will be destroyed. And Finally, I think the Christian Community needs to work a lot harder at demonstrating those attitudes and ethics which will usher in the New Jerusalem.

More Wisdom from Margaret

2011-11-04T22:52:00.000-07:00

Three year old Margaret's catechesis at the hands of her mother is coming along very well. Like her Mother and Uncle Tristan, she is growing up with the solemn understanding that the great men and women of the past were near associates of her family. My children really did believe for a time that Scipio Africanus, Cincinnatus, Horatius, Our Lady, and St. Paul were not that far removed from their grandparents in time and space, and that most of them had probably helped Little Grandpa and Uncle Jake defeat the combined armies and navies of Imperial Japan. And so it is really no surprize that with her mother's help, she is developing a view of the immanence of our Lord's humanity which is most refreshing. Here are her recent comments on what Christmas will be like in "The California."

"...and then we will have a party and have cake and ice cream and we will go to the playground and Jesus will go down the slide with me at the playground and we will have decorations and go to church and have a party and it will be fun and we will have presents for Jesus for his birthday and it will be in December and Mama and Papa will be there and I will play with Jesus on the playground..."

As daughter Ashley wrote, "A clearer version of heaven I have never heard."

Wisdom from Margaret

2011-11-03T05:59:00.000-07:00

When I logged on this morning, I found the most wonderful message from daughter Ashley. The subject line read simply "Wisdom from Margaret" (our beautiful three year old grand-daughter in "the California.") The message read, "I love Jesus because Jesus loves me." What a wonderful way it was to start the day. Life gets so very complicated some days, and as the Scriptures say, "Out of the mouths of babes thou has perfected praise!"

Good news came to us yesterday afternoon. Bishop Salmon, retired of South Carolina and currently Dean of the Seminary at Nashotah House, will be able to attend son-in-law Matthew's ordination in Advent in "the California." He is a godly man, filled with the wisdom and good humor or our Lord, and has had such an important role in the formation of Matthew for holy orders.

Tuesday afternoon, I had occasion to stop by Ohio Christian University in search of an organist for our parish. Things there went quicker than I had anticipated, and on my way to Columbus to the University Medical Center, I determined that it would be a shame to complete such a beautiful day without some small sporting diversion. So I swung by the boat ramps at A.W. Marion State Park and cast a leadwing coachman into the edge of a weedbed bordering a hole where I had done pretty well in years past. While I was working on my roll cast, I noticed a hiker coming down the trail. He looked familiar, and as he came closer, I realized it was Sergeant Major Osbourne, with whom i had served some years back. We laughed and talked about the old days, our kids, and life out of uniform. He was in the woods plotting hardwood locations for a study about the impact of exurbanization on reforestation patterns. It seems that the breakup of the large farms into smaller holdings over the past forty or fifty years has led to substantially fewer field and woodlot fires, with the unintended consequence that softwoods are replacing hardwoods in many parts of the region- something to do with faster regeneration rates among the lesser desirable woods and insufficient light for the early hardwood growth (I think.) It is much more complex than that, but I suppose that is a layman's misunderstood generalization of the type that makes up most political ads. In any event, I think I learned something, and it was great to catch up with an old friend who did much throughout his career in the Army and in the Fire Service to care for his soldiers and firefighters and their families. May God bless the SGM for his godliness, his decency, his concern for the environment, and his love of the people among whom he has worked.

A Wonderful Shoot!

2011-10-28T21:21:00.001-07:00

This afternoon Chuck, Tristan, fat Leo the Labrador, and I converged on Buckeye Pheasant Farm west of Dayton for a memorable shoot. After a lane or two of very fast hunting in a new and exciting place, Leo settled into his customary rythem, and by the end of the day was hunting as well as I have ever seen him work. We bagged ten pheasants, which are now awaiting their destiny as stir fry in Tristan's freezer in Oxford. Those of you who follow this blog may remember that one of the questions surrounding this hunt was how much of the Marine Corps remains in my Son. The question was answered shortly after we arrived. Tristan uncased the Winchester model 12 pump gun and layed it next to the Stoeger side by side. He then quietly recased the double and loaded his grandfather's pump. Every time someone signaled that the dog was "on", Tristan assumed that assault stance that is so characteristic of so many of our young men today and shot like the professional he was and remains. Once a Marine, always a Marine! I suppose that this means he will never shoot with the grace of a Robert Churchill or the style of an Elmer Keith, but he does bag more than his share of birds with the quick shots of a veteran infantryman. Two years ago when he was home on leave after his first deployment to the high desert, I remember watching him in the field when we were following the terriers in search of vermin. As we crossed a fence or forded a stream, it broke my heart to see him assume the slouching range walk of one who expected to engage at any moment. Even in Fairfield County, he was back in "the Stan." After he came home as a wounded warrior, I remember watching him scan every parking lot for trip wires and every rooftop for snipers. But today my boy was back, and the joy of the hunt was in his eyes again. He did comment once that it was nice to be able to step wherever he wished and not have to worry about being blown up. Welcome home son, we love you more than words can express.

More Light

2011-10-27T21:34:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, T and I went to Columbus where he experienced the basic degrees of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. He entered the gentle craft shortly after his graduation from high school, and before he left for the Marine Corps. While he was home on convalescence leave after the second tour to Afghanistan, he and Danny Meenach, an old friend of the family, were made Mark Masters and initiated into the mysteries of the Holy Royal Arch. And now he joins so many others as a Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret. Exquisite and self-important titles apart, the higher degrees of the Royal Craft are designed to transmit those lessons of responsible manhood which are so often not passed on in society in any age. Personal responsibility, dedication to God, high minded citizenship, commitment to your own beliefs and principles while tolerating and understanding those of other people, and the brotherhood of man, are all taught in the higher degrees. While the French degrees of the Scottish Rite tend to be a bit more emotive and radical than the stately experiences of the British degrees of Mark Master and Royal Arch, they are every bit as profound, and their Gallican flavour stirs the soul to great ideas and greater deeds. It is good to go with my son to a place where good men gather to learn more about being better. The feel of an all male lodge is different from other venues for the transmission of values I have known. It is more primal, and more visceral in some ways. I am glad to be able to pass on to my son what I received from my father. In spite of creaking knees and failing memory, growing older has its own set of blessings that I could never have known as a younger man. For such blessings I am eternally thankful.

Musings on Tomorrow's Shoot

2011-10-27T20:58:00.000-07:00

The terriers are wrestling on the couch, and the night is late. Tomorrow begins early, and much of this evening has been spent in preparation for the day. It will be the third pheasant shoot of the season, and Tristan's first since his return from the war. Chuck will be by with Fat Leo the Labrador shortly after breakfast, and we will drive to Buckeye Pheasants, just west of Dayton, and Tristan will drive up from the university to meet us there. He has asked me to bring his grandfather's Model Twelve pump and the Uplander double, both in 16 gauge (his deceased grandfather's gauge of choice.) It will be interesting to see which gun he hunts with tomorrow. He handles a pump very well, but very agressively, like a Marine infantryman on patrol. The double by comparison is more of a gentleman's gun, slower and more deliberate. I often wonder how much the fleet stays with him, and his choice tomorrow might indicate where his heart truly resides. If he is anything like my dad, his grandfather, the fleet will never be far from his thoughts, even as the years make him more and more of a civilian. It is so very good to have him home at last.

Back In The Saddle Again

2011-10-16T20:41:00.000-07:00

It seems like years since I've posted anything. Amidst my complete disinterest in technology, I forgot how to access my blogspot account. But now I am back again. Any time I am faced with technology, I seem to hear far off in the distance, a faint voice chanting "One ring to rule them all! One ring to rule them all! One ring to rule them all!"
Not that much has changed since I last posted, but my attitudes seem to be changing a bit. Beating cancer on a couple of occasions has a way of helping one to see how unimportant and insignificant most things we worry about really are. Tristan's wounds in Afghanistan (from which he is completely recovered) remind me that most of the other problems in my life were just minor background noise. And the knowledge that my particular positions in the Episcopal Church's late unpleasantness have been determined to be the loser, even though I continue to hold them vigorously, has been extremely liberating. Perhaps like that old Jacobite clansman who happened to be abroad on business during the '45, and who therefore survived the Hanoverian ascendancy, I am now free to be a bit odd but not much of a threat to anyone. I can toast who and what I like, and be a bit quirky (but not too quirky) without fear of imprisonment or exile. Such powerlessness is not necessarily a bad thing.
Perhaps it is from such a position that true holiness is to be found. Once we realize that we exercise no control, we are free to acknowledge with our hearts, as well as with our heads, that God is in control. I am free to pray the old prayers with the old rubrics to my heart's content, in the knowledge that living for Christ is all that remains. And that is not a bad feeling. I daresay it might be a good thing to wish it for all of my friends.
In any event, I am back, and I hope that these disorganized ramblings might be of some hope or encouragement to some fellow traveler somewhere in the blogosphere. May God bless us all with peace as we wind our ways to heaven.
In Christ,
Bill+

"We must cultivate our garden." with apologies to Voltaire

2011-06-20T07:19:00.000-07:00

Rector’s Rambling July 2011
Weeding seems to consume most of my July every year. As I was crawling along on all fours earlier this week, it occurred to me that life is a lot like weeding the garden, and so I offer these few mid-summer reflections:
1. CIVILIZATION IS LIKE A WELL WEEDED GARDEN, IT USUALLY DISAPPEARS BY DEGREES, NOT IN ONE CATASTROPHIC EVENT. I recently attended a funeral ( or was it a graduation, the story is the same) where people were dressed in ways that could only be described as grungy, and where general behavior failed to lend the proper dignity to the occasion. I don’t remember waking up one morning and seeing large numbers of people in torn jeans or tee shirts without proper undergarments at what had once been considered formal, or at least “dress up” functions. Neither do I remember getting up one morning and seeing three foot specimens of Queen Ann’s Lace growing in my runner beans. It happened by degrees because we stopped doing the little things which show respect to other people and lend dignity to special occasions. Perhaps if we all started with small things, like saying “please” and “thank you,” we could at least get back to business casual or better as a way of showing respect for special days and special people.
2. PEOPLE TEND TO VALUE THINGS THEY HAVE TO WORK FOR. Peas are a precious commodity to me. They are probably one of the most labour intensive crops in my garden. I generally share tomatoes, and green beans, and even my glorious Yukon gold potatoes; but almost never my peas. They involve too much work to think that someone might leave a few on the plate at the end of a meal. It is easy to take things for granted if we don’t work hard for them- things like our church, our town, and our friendships. It would be a better world, a more invested world, if we all looked at our schedules and determined to work hard, even sacrificially, in one area of our community life which impacts others in a meaningful way.
3. SOMETIMES, YOU HAVE TO LET A BIT OF THE BAD GROW ALONGSIDE THE GOOD. The aforementioned peas are a case in point. Garden peas have very shallow root systems. Pulling up deep rooted perennial weeds in the vicinity of peas often uproots the pea plant as well. Sometimes it is better to trim the weed that the pea plant might live. It is the same with people whom God has not finished with quite yet. (I think that includes all of us!) A little patience and a willingness to tolerate mixed results in the short term can bring real blessings in the end.
4. EVEN WHEN I WORK HARD, THINGS DON’T ALWAYS WORK OUT THE WAY I HAD HOPED THEY WOULD. I weeded faithfully this year, built trellises, and purchased good seed. The first two plantings of beans, and the first planting of peas still rotted in the ground from too much rain. And so I tilled and planted again. Like is a lot like that. Sometimes our plans don’t work out, but persistence and hard work generally pay off. Life is filled with “unforeseen occurrences” but the general principles remain the same. If we love God and those among whom he has placed us (even the ones we don’t like), if we work hard and in harmony with the principles of God revealed in Nature and the Bible, we are much more likely to have a good life than if we try another method.
5. THERE WILL ALWAYS BE ANOTHER WEED THIS SIDE OF HEAVEN. I started pulling weeds in March and will stop about the end of February. So in life there will always be another aggravation, another sinful failure, another temptation, another problem, another issue, another person who refuses to be helpful just because that’s the way they are. But we who eat the Flesh of God, we who drink His Blood, we who are Signed by the Cross and Marked as Christ’s own forever, know that God’s grace is sufficient for the work at hand, and that one day we will reign with Him in glory.
6. AMEN, AND AMEN!

Sincerely,
Bill+

My Soul, and the Irish Countryside

2011-05-18T02:45:00.000-07:00

Rector’s Rambling- June 2011

Perhaps some of it had to do with location, or soil type, or warm rains coming in with the Atlantic Westerlies. Or perhaps it had more to do with my expectations going in. But the greens of Ireland were unlike anything I had ever seen. They seemed to be infused with a warm interior glow, and I was reminded of those times when I happened to be in the field or on the water when a major front passed. All of nature seemed to come alive with a primal savagery for just a few seconds, and the experience was surreal. In such times of heightened awareness, it seems easier to sense the presence of God, or at least to realize that we are not really that far removed from the rest of His creation. I can easily understand why the Old Queen, looking down the valley from Ladiesview, quipped that it was one of the loveliest vistas in the British Empire.
In a sense, it is hard to imagine how such a beautiful land could have such a tragic history, replete with tribal wars and family betrayals, famines and oppression, much of which ultimately (if not with complete accuracy) gets blamed on religion. But then, I suppose our individual histories are not that different. We are all born with such incredible beauty and potential, made as it were in the very image of God. Then the circumstances of our birth, the nature of our physical attributes, our failures in relationships, and a thousand other variables intervene and we are left feeling vulnerable, alone, and afraid. We develop methods for dealing with our situations which often end up putting walls around ourselves. We wrongly imagine that we must protect ourselves from each other, and in so doing, we end up excluding God from those hidden corners of our lives as well. The image of God remains, like the Irish sunshine, but we can see nothing in ourselves but darkness and worry. We justify our situation by the most powerful magic we can muster, and that we usually call religion, faith, or spirituality.
How different our histories might be if we could see the eternal beauty of God in ourselves and in each other. How pleasant it would be to stroll in the warm sun of God’s love, enjoying the gifts he has given each of us. How uncomplicated it would be to have His law written upon our hearts as the prophets foretold, living the Gospel every day in simplicity and love for God and man. In these months of summer, I trust we will all find the grace to acknowledge our own shortcomings, to draw closer to God through prayerful attendance upon Word and Sacrament, and to experience the beauty that is all around us.

Sincerely,
Bill+

2010-12-29T21:12:00.001-08:00

Your Destiny...

2010-12-29T08:01:00.000-08:00

Sermon: Second Sunday after Christmas A

Jeremiah 31:7-14
Psalm 84
Ephesians 1:3-19
Matthew 2:1-12

Preached at St John’s Lancaster

Have you ever stopped to think what you might have in common with three Zoroastrian philosophers, a Jewish carpenter, a young mother and baby, a dour but hopeful Jewish prophet, and murderously Machiavellian King? This question has the distinct sound and feel of the first line of one of those internet jokes that seem to flood my in-box, but it is far from a joke, because it reminds us all of God’s great love towards us, and of our responsibility to respond appropriately to that love.
The three philosophers are better known to us as the three kings, or three wise men. They were not Jews, but in all probability were followers of the prophet Zoroaster, a Persian prophet of the late sixth century BC. His teachings are recorded in the “Zend -Avesta,” and are based in the worship of the good god Ormazd, who is engaged with his followers in a great struggle between light and darkness. There are still Zoroastrians today in the Iranian exile community. Most of them in their homeland have, like their Christian neighbors, been killed, marginalized, or forced to flee. These philosophers were noted for their knowledge of the heavens, which they used to predict the future and to advise rulers, and they were very aware of the sacred writings of the peoples of their world. They saw a new star in the east, perhaps a comet or a conjunction of the planets, and as they compared it to their sacred writings, they came to believe that it was a harbinger of the birth of a king. And so they came to Judea looking for him.
Without doubt, one look at Herod confirmed all they had heard about him. He was a cruel and manipulative man- a man who would stop at nothing to centralize and protect his power. And so it would have come as no surprize that after they had found the child where the prophets had said he would be, they presented their gifts and “departed to their own country another way, having been warned in a dream.” The Scriptures had predicted that when Messiah came into the world as a bright and shining star that “Kings of the Earth should attend to his rising.” And so the prophesies were fulfilled in these three wise kings from Persia. Their experience seems so far removed from our own, but is it?
Joseph was just another carpenter from a small town occupied by the Romans, another town of no account. In a later age of equally dominant Imperial thought it might have been described as “south of Brownsville and east of Dover,” or merely as “beyond the pale.” But the Bible tells us that Joseph was a just man, and one who listened to God. And so he “got up” on more than one occasion and took the child, and his mother, first to Bethlehem, and then into Egypt, and then into Israel, and then into Galilee, to a city called Nazareth, “that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, namely that He shall be called a Nazarene.” And so through this simple and just man, the protector of the Holy Family, the prophesies were fulfilled. His experience seems so far removed from our own, but is it?
Mary and her son seem to be the pawns in this story. Moved about by forces beyond her control, supplied and protected by men sent in accordance with the prophecies of God. Hunted by a murderous tyrant, and forced to relocate time after time in her child’s formative years, her humility and trust in God never flagged. She remains for us today “Our Lady,” that one human being who perhaps more than any other teaches us what it means to walk humbly with the Lord our God, and to trust him every step of the way, even when our understanding is incomplete. She is what we hope to be, what we ought to be, and so often fail to be. Perhaps she is the easiest to relate to of all the characters in this account.
And so the question remains, what do we have in common with these people? St. Paul addresses the issue when he writes to the Church at Ephesus,
Ephesians 1:3-12 (King James Version)
3Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:
4According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:
5Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,
6To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.
7In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace;
8Wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence;
9Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself:
10That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him:
11In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will:
12That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ.

You see, before the foundations of the world were laid, God had a plan for the salvation of his creation. In his abounding love, He knew that the freedom with which he endowed us would be misused and misunderstood. He knew that we would fall. It was the price of making us free. But freedom was the way he chose to show his love to all creation. It was as if he thought, “If after life’s vicissitudes and difficulties, they will willingly respond to my love, and learn to share that love with each other, forgiving each other and living together successfully as my people, then all creation will see the beauty of my character and know the wonder of my love.”
But back to the question at hand. “ What do you and I have in common with these people?” Like them, before the foundations of the world were laid, God knew your name, and had a plan for involving you in the outworking of his plan for the salvation of mankind, indeed of all creation. You are as it were “predestined” for this work. Like Jeremiah, the dour prophet of Israel, we are called to sing aloud the fact of God’s love in our own lives, that the people among whom we live and work might know that God is in the process of gathering in his people, from every nation, that his creation might be made whole and reflect that love and purpose and joy and peace that is his glory. It is our vocation. It is our destiny.
But what of Herod? How does he fit into this question? Herod is a tragic example of what happens to one who rejects the possibilities of oneness with God. Like all of the others in today’s lessons, and like us, he was given the gift of freedom by a loving God. But instead of that holiness of God which shines forth in love and purpose and joy and peace, he chose power and pride and control over others and at their expense; and he forfeited his own soul.
Today, God calls you and me, all of us here, to live into that vision of wholeness illuminated by the lives of the wise men, Joseph, Mary, the Babe, and Jeremiah. He calls us to be “just” like Joseph, to be obedient and submissive like Mary, to use our minds and our skills for the accomplishment of God’s plans like the wise men, to proclaim to all by word and example the reality of God’s love in Jesus Christ like Jeremiah, and ultimately to be willing to sacrifice ourselves for others for the sake of the kingdom of God, like Jesus. We are called to have these things in common with these men and women of faith. It is our destiny. Unfortunately, some among our species will choose like Herod to misuse their freedom and walk another way. But let us so live our lives that everyone we meet might see the wholeness of God in us, and be drawn to the service of Jesus, our Lord and our Saviour, our Brother and our Friend. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. AMEN.

On Becoming Christian

2010-12-29T08:00:00.000-08:00

Sermon Christmas Eve 2010

Isaiah 9:2-7
Titus 2:11-14
Luke 2:1-20

Preached at St. John’s

Tonight we, with Christians all over the world come together to hear again the old, old story; which is as fresh and new as the first time it was told. Into a world filled with uncertainty, hardship, want, injustice, and aloneness, our Heavenly Father sent his only Begotten Son to show every man and woman and boy and girl the depths of his love for us. As it is written, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Tonight, we assemble in this holy place, so full of the sounds and symbols and smells of our faith, to believe and to rejoice that Jesus of Nazareth, born in a stable in Bethlehem some two millenia ago, is in reality the long awaited one who has saved his people from their sins.
It is still a world filled with darkness in so many ways. Our brothers and sisters in the Sudan face almost certain war after the plebescite scheduled for the first of the year. Our young men and women face danger half a world away and there seems to be no end in sight. Unemployment hovers at over 9%. But the fact remains that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Things did not change overnight in the Roman or the Jewish world when Jesus was born. But on that night there was enkindled a hope of that which was coming into the world. The shepherds understood that much, and they came to adore him. The Bible tells us that his mother remembered the details of that night and hid them in her heart. Not many days later the wise men welcomed him as the object of their quest, and thus fulfilled the prophesy that kings would come to his rising.
That God would break into human history demonstrates for all time that he who made the heavens and the earth has an interest in us, in you and in me. The great things of our lives and the small details that charm us most are all of interest to him. Because you see, he is our Heavenly Father, and he cares and yearns for us as we do for our own children. On this night, he offers us his love, and invites us to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God.
Whatever burden you may carry this night, know that God has proved his love for you, and bring that burden to this his holy altar. The procedure is simple. After this homily, we will have the opportunity to stand and declare our belief that Jesus is the Christ. The Scriptures tell us that to confess and believe that Jesus is who the Bible says he is, and that he has accomplished what the Bible says he accomplished, appropriates for us the mercies of God’s grace. Then we will kneel and bring him all of our needs in the prayers of the people. As we remember the needs of our community, church, and world, envision in your mind and heart your own needs. Perhaps a loved one is in harm’s way, or you face some serious physical problem that consumes you. Perhaps finances have been tight, and the pressure of it all is eating at you. Perhaps one you love does not return your feelings of affection and trust. Tell God about your need, in specific detail, and ask for his strength, wisdom, and comfort. And boldly and in faith, ask him to meet your needs. After the prayers, we will pray to God the general confession, which acknowledges to God our own failures and acknowledges our need of him. Imagine in your hearts eye those things which you have thought or said or done, or left undone, which have harmed others, hardened your own heart, and disappointed your loving Heavenly Father. Tell him from the bottom of your heart that you are sorry. He will accept and forgive you. And then come forward to the holy Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. If you have been baptized, receive this gift of Gods enabling grace gladly, and know that as the bread and the wine touches your lips, God gives you a direct infusion of his saving and healing grace. It is as if a syringe of his mercy has been dispensed to you at that moment. If you have not been baptized in the Name of the Holy and Blessed Trinity, come forward in faith, and cross your arms over your chest. We will pray that God will extend the grace of this life-giving sacrament to you this day, and then see me after the service, and we will arrange for you to learn more about the Faith, and to be baptized at an appropriate time.
Tonight, on this festival of the birth of our Lord, God the Father offers us that same love that he offered to all the people of the world so many years ago in Bethlehem. He waits for us this night to bring him all of our needs through these simple acts of faith that I have outlined. Come to the manger this night, and find that peace and love which pass all understanding. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Hearing God

2010-12-29T07:58:00.000-08:00

Sermon Advent 4A
Preached at St. Johns Lancaster

Isaiah 7:10-16
Ps 80
Romans 1:1-7
Mt 1:18-25

Years ago in France, there was a young girl who said that God communicated with her in miraculous ways. She inspired a nation, was hailed as a saint by those who could use her politically, and burned as a heretic by those whose power she threatened. Many today maintain that Joan of Ark was indeed a saint, but had we been alive then, what might we have said? Several hundred years before the visions in France, a young girl in Roman Palestina said that an angel appeared to her. Her Aunt also said she had dreams, and her uncle lost his voice for a season after an alleged encounter with a heavenly being. Her betrothed also claimed an angelic visit, recorded in today‘s gospel lesson. Several hundred years before that series of claims, the prophet Isaiah broke forth in a semi-estatic utterance which neither he nor anyone else fully understood, and again, based on the political and economic agendas of his hearers, they named him either saint, heretic, or crazy man. It all raises a very significant question for you and for me as we approach this Christmas season. How does God speak to us? While most of us hear today would count all of the individuals I have mentioned as saints, what would you say if your sister, or your neighbor’s son, or the elderly person down the block made the claims made by the players in today’s Scripture lessons? This morning, I hope that we can examine for a few minutes how God has communicated with his people in the past, and how we might exp[ect to hear his voice today.
First and foremost, God speaks to us in the Bible, the Holy Scriptures, the Word of God written. Jesus believed that, and so did Paul. In fact, most of the patriarchs and prophets and apostles spoke freely about the law of God and quoted freely those scriptures which had been revealed by the time they wrote. Anglicanism has always taken a direct and minimalist view to this primary form of illumination. If the scriptures say clearly that we ought to do something, then we ought to do it. If they say we sould not do something, then we ought not to do it. Whenever anyone tries to build elaborate arguments to prove that the scriptures are for or against something that they are not specifically for or against, we probably ought to thoughtfully ignore the person and the argument. In the same way, when someone works very hard to discredit the scriptures, or to re-interpret them in some new way, especially if that way endorses current social or ethical practices in the world at large, we probably out to respectfully ignore that person and that argument as well. God gives us three types of law in the Old Testament. The Ceremonial law of worship and sacrifice is a prophetic foreshadowing of the coming of the Christ, and as the book of Hebrews shows us, it is completed in him. It is no longer binding on Christians. That is why we do not sacrifice animals and have seders here at St. John’s. The legal code of ancient Israel was meant to demonstrate for us how the tenents of the law might be applied in every area of our life, and to show us what ethical and behavioral holiness is all about. In short, they were meant in a particular setting to demonstrate to us something of the character of God and of his Messiah. But their purpose is fulfilled in Christ’s coming, and that is why we don’t stone unruly children or witches. The moral law however, is binding on all people in all places and for all time. It is unchanging, and it helps us to order our ways and to understand the true nature of Christian holiness, which is the outgrowth of love for God and man. And so we look for God’s guidance in the Bible.
Sometimes, God speaks to a person directly, like he did to the people in today’s lessons. Perhaps in a dream, or with a vision or by means of a voice. It is not the norm, but it does happen. It is more likely that a follow of God might sense some urging of a conscience fine tuned by God’s Holy Spirit and by regular reading of the Bible; or perhaps a gentle nudge or leading, and inexplicable feeling whereby “his Spirit bears witness with our own that we are indeed the children of God.” But how do I know that such a communication is not in the words of Ebenezer Scrooge, “a bit of undigested potato”, or worse, a sign of mental illness or excessive fatigue, or some other misleading cause? The first test is that God is one and eternal. He is the same “yesterday, today, and forever.” God will never tell you anything that contradicts what he has already told you in the Bible. If your “leading” does not stand the test of Scripture, it is not of God. A second check on the validity of some unexpected or ecstatic experience would be its distinguishing characteristics. Is it compatible with love? Revenge, or schemes for power or dominance are not of God, because they are not of love, and “God is love.” This check might be expanded to say, “is this leading compatible with God’s revealed character.” God might use some very bad things to draw us closer to himself, for he works in and through all things to dispense his mercy and love to his people, but he is never the author of evil. You can take it to the bank that God inspires no-one to an act of terrorism, and it is equally true that he inspires no one to a spirit of revenge against that terrorism, be it individual or national. Both terror and revenge are the products of hate, and God, as we have established, is love.
At this point, it would be good to say a word about the odd, strange, and curious. God is not limited by our understandings of what might be proper or expected. It is true that he often works through the human intellect which is a true manifestation of the image of God. Scientific and mathematical reality, rightly understood, can open to us the way of God in many ways. But, we should be very careful about dismissing a message because we think the messenger or the delivery method is not to our taste or our likeing, or to our understanding. God speaks how he will and through whom he will. A the dreams of a young girl in France or Palestina might just as well please him as a dissertation by a PhD in Biblical literature or a favorite preacher. To speak in Battalion terms, he is the Colonel, and he makes the calls. Let us wait for God in humility, knowing that his choice of messenger or delivery might be very normal and expected, or very bizarre and unexpected.
Finally, we should say a word about divine providence. God often confirms what he means us to hear by means of opened or closed doors of opportunity. This is not to say we should assume that a bit of opposition means that we have misread God’s will for us. The Bible says we will meet with opposition, sometimes even from our own families. But it is to say that where God calls, he enables, and he makes a way. Through diligent prayer, study of the Scriptures, fellowship with God’s people, receiving Holy Communion, and regular participation in all of the many means of Grace, God will give us hearts to discern and know his will, with strength and opportunity to accomplish the same. It is an inexact science, but it is based on the promise of God, and on the firm assurance that he will give us all of the wisdom and resources we need to accomplish the mission he has for each of us.
And so in conclusion, as we consider the examples of Isaiah, Joseph, Mary, and so many other of the saints of God through the ages, let us open our hearts in this holy time to hear God’s message to us as a people and as individuals. He loves you, and is not in the habit of hiding things from you that you need to know or understand. Trust him day by day, and live your lives in the knowledge that God wishes his best for you as he employs you to manifest his grace and his love to a world in need. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Godly Anticipation

2010-12-09T04:13:00.000-08:00

Sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent, Year A
Isaiah 35:1-10
Psalm146
James 5:7-10
Matthew 11:2-11
Preached at St. John’s Lancaster

Remember when you were a child waiting for Christmas? Sometimes the excitement just got to be too much. For years, my dad was a volunteer firefighter in the town where we lived. Every December, he would buy the bulk candy for distribution at the annual visit of Santa Claus to our town and store it in our attic until the day arrived. We kids were given strict orders to stay out of the attic, but sometimes, when my cousin Brian and I were the only ones at home, the temptation was just too great. I’m sure dad knew what we did in spite of our most serious attempts to cover up our pilfering. But at the age of 6 or 7 it was just so exciting. Who could stand to wait?
Today’s propers speak of a time of wonderment and excitement for us Christians. Isaiah employs an image that must have been extremely powerful to a people with a history of desert wanderings. “Waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert.” We humans can survive for a while without food if we are relatively healthy. But water is a different story. What a powerful and profound picture the prophet paints for us. The day is coming when Messiah shall come, and those things that we cannot live without will be given to us in abundance. Imagine what this will mean in your own life. A cure for cancer will flow forth in the midst of a disease ridden world. The cure for crippling arthritis will appear as might streams in the desert to refresh the people of God. Where once the dry and constant discouragement of Parkinson’s, of dementia, and family strife was all we could see; now the life giving intervention of God will bring us wholeness and reconciliation. What a transformation it will be.
The Gospel lesson speaks even more directly to those times in our lives we would just as soon avoid. John the Baptist, John the Bold, had possessed a faith which was the encouragement and admiration of Israel. But then came his imprisonment, and what must have been a growing realization that he would soon be executed. In the midst of the mental and physical darkness of that filthy dungeon, his faith began to waver. He sent word to his cousin Jesus, whom he had proclaimed to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, “are you the one, or do we wait for another?” Sometimes, in the darkness of our lives circumstances seem to conspire to break our spirits and discourage us beyond measure. And then comes to us that still small voice of God. “Remember the blessings and evidences you have seen of my love. The time is not yet, but do not doubt your senses or your memory. I am coming for you, and that very soon.”
Whether an ancient Hebrew nomad living in a dry and arid land, or a fiery prophet of God undergoing a real time of personal doubt and discouragement, the message of the Scriptures, the message of God, remains the same. “Look forward with expectation, for the fulfillment of the promise is at hand. I will never leave you nor forsake you. I am with you always, even unto the end of the world!” In the words of St. James, the brother of our Lord, “Be patient, beloved, until the coming of the Lord.” All of our lives are a mixture of wonderment and tragedy. “The rain of God’s blessing falls on the just and the unjust.” and “into every life, a bit of the rain of trial must fall.” Through it all, we are called to be patient. Like the farmer or gardener in the springtime, we are called to enter the fields with expectation every morning, wondering what the new day will bring. First the seed in the ground, and then a few days later the blade, and then the growth of spring and finally the ripening and harvest of late summer.
In the midst of our attempts at being patient, St. James suggests some very practical things that may help us as we await the Lord’s appearing in the midst of lives that can be less than ideal and very unpredictable.
1. Take strength in the fact that our Lord’s coming is near. Faith is defined in the Book of Hebrews as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” I hope with all my heart that waters shall break forth in the desert, and that cancer will be cured, and that people will learn to live together in peace, and that every child born might have a long, prosperous, and contented life, filled with purpose and belonging. None of those things have happened yet. But the evidence is there that they may well come to pass when Jesus returns, which he has not yet done. When he was here on earth, he gave us a taste of the first fruits of what will one day be. The sick were healed and the dead were raised and the hungry were fed. A Roman soldier demonstrated an act of kindness to the mother of a condemned Jewish criminal, and revolutionary terrorists laid down their swords to preach the gospel of peace. And Jesus walked among us and after he had laid down his life a sacrifice for my sins and for yours, he took it up again by the power of love, God’s love for every one of us. Yes, the evidence is there, even though I have not yet seen the fulfillment of the promise. And so I take strength in the fact that our Lord’s coming is near. At times, like St. John, I may have doubts and experience that weakness which is common to all mankind, but at the end of the day, I find hope in the fact that our Lord’s coming is near.
2. St. James also tells us not to grumble against each other as we work to be patient. Sometimes it is very hard to maintain a positive outlook, but that is the admonition of the Scriptures. It makes sense. No one likes to be around a negative grumbler for very long. For a while they might be entertaining, or even inspirational, but in the end, a grumbler is tiring and drags down everyone around them. Charlene Rowley sent me a little item about dogs this week which maintained that dogs are so wonderful because they wag their tails so much more than they wag their tongues. I am reminded of the admonition from the movie Bambi that “if you can’t say something good- don’t say nuthin at all.” It is still good advice. Participating in negativity on a regular basis sets us up for yet another bad day, and directs our attention away from Jesus and into ourselves. It is a form of idolatry that can, and so often does, consume us. And remember: negativity breeds negativity. If the radio and TV shows, the books you read, and the people you hang out with are negative, the chances are that you will be negative too. Avoid such company. Fill your life with light and beauty and peace, and your heart will come to reflect your surroundings. We can not pick all of our associates and associations, but most of us can do a better job than we have done heretofore.
3. St. James tells us to remember the example of the prophets, who kept their eyes on the prize and often suffered for the sake of the Kingdom of God, but maintained an attitude of patience and expectation through it all. It is a terrible thing to feel alone. We have all known someone who really came to believe that they were so special, so different, that no-one knew the depths of their suffering. Sometimes it was as if they were addicted to the rush of feeling bad. Well, as the stories of God’s people throughout the ages show us, none of us are really that unique. There is nothing that happens in our lives, for good or for ill, that is not common to man. By God’s grace, others have survived and remained faithful, and by God’s grace so shall we. Might we always remember that a loving heavenly Father has surrounded us with so great a cloud of witness in his saints that we might be encouraged by their lives, even as we live our own. As James says in the verse following today’s second lesson, “We count them happy which endure.” God will give you strength, even as he gave them strength, so be patient, until the coming of the Lord.
4. Finally, in a verse which finishes the paragraph from which our second lesson is drawn today, James says “above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea and your nay, nay; lest ye fall in condemnation.” In other words, as you go about being patient, be yourself. Don’t try to live up to anyone’s expectations but God’s. If someone doesn’t like who you are, they are not going to like you any more because you try to be who they think you should be. They will merely despise you because you have submitted partially to their control. Don’t put on airs either. It only lands you in debt and bad company. Believe me, I speak from experience. If you can’t learn to be happy with who God made you and calls you to be, nothing in the world will ever make you happy. This is not to say that it is ok to wallow in our sins. God expects an honest and ongoing attempt at obedience, but it is to say that true contentment is found only as we patiently live into the role that God has chosen for us in this life, knowing that in the life to come, we shall live with Him forever.
In the remainder of this Holy Advent season, in the midst of life’s joys and vicissitudes, walk with patience, and with hope, the road that God places before you. And may you so live in this life, that you may never be afraid to die, and in the world to come, you may have life everlasting. AMEN.

Preparing for the Kingdom of God

2010-12-09T04:11:00.000-08:00

Sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent Year A
Isaiah 11:1-10
Psalm 72
Romans 15:4-13
Matthew 3:1-12
Preached at St. John’s Lancaster

Advent is a time of preparation; but preparation for what? Different people might answer that question in different ways. One might look forward to holiday visits with children and grandchildren. Another might prepare for the most profitable retail shopping season of the year. A third might anxiously prepare for the most wonderful gifts to be opened after Santa Claus makes his annual visit. But John the Baptist had something different in mind. He was preparing for the Kingdom of Heaven to come, and he was sent by God to help others prepare as well.
The kingdom of heaven is that long awaited day when God would break into the world in a way which had been foretold by the prophets of old. As the ancient carol says, Isaiah t’was foretold it. “And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots: And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge, and of the fear of the Lord; And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord: and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears: But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. And in that day, there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious.” When Jesus Christ was born into this world, the beginning of the fulfillment of that prophesy was fulfilled, and its fulfillment goes on today, and every day until our Blessed Redeemer returns in glory.
You see, since the coming of Jesus, everything has changed. The world is indeed turned upside down, and will never be the same again. Old things are passed away, behold, all things are made new. John, by the power of God’s revelation, knew these things; and he was commissioned by God to proclaim the time of preparation to them, and to us.
The Bible makes it very clear that our entry into the kingdom of God, our salvation if you will, is completely God’s gift to us. St. Paul in his letter to Bishop Titus (2:11) makes it clear that it is the grace of God which brings salvation to us. It is the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf which brings us salvation. Jesus is explicit about that when he says at the institution of the Holy Communion (Mt:26-28) “This is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.” Perhaps the most explicit statement of this great truth of our faith is made by Archbishop Paul in his letter to his beloved friends at Ephesus, (Ephesians 2:8-9) “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”
If then our salvation is a free gift of God, procured for us by Jesus even while we lived as slaves to sin, and if we can do nothing to earn it, why does St. John the Baptist, the forerunner, call us to repent? Why does he demand in such clarion terms that we be sorry for our offences against God and man, and reform our ways?
First, a gift has a giver, but it also has a recipient. Have you ever given anyone a gift that they did not open, or even acknowledge? It might have been something quite wonderful, but because it was not accepted and acted upon, it was of no use to anyone. Think of Salvation, or membership in the Kingdom of God, as the Lord’s gift to us. It is there, and it is a reality whether we accept it or not. But to benefit from it, to be a part of it, we must accept it. In the words of St. Paul, (Romans 10:9) “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” The act of faithful belief is the act of acceptance a loving God has decreed for entrance into his kingdom.
Second, and this is where the process really gets interesting if you are a student of human psychology. Do you remember the fable of the ant and the grasshopper. The ant worked diligently all summer to store his winter’s food. The grasshopper played and did as he pleased, but never worked to lay in the winter’s supply of necessities. When cold weather came, the ant was vindicated by his survival, and the grasshopper’s foolishness was evident to all who saw his corpse. The Grasshopper didn’t put victuals aside because he really didn’t believe he would need them. Most people who don’t respond to God’s gift of salvation don’t fail to do so because they are bad and nasty people. They just don’t really think they need to do so. Perhaps they are well intentioned agnostics or even principled atheists who see no evidence for God. They help their neighbors and are kind to animals, but they see no need of God in their lives. Many others are simply too busy, often doing good and necessary things for people they love deeply. But there just isn’t time for God. I’ll admit that there are some folks who are just nasty and brutish, but I’ve not run into very many of them in my 56 years. To respond to God’s gift of love, to enter the kingdom of God, we humans need to see a need for doing so. That is basic psychology. And that is where repentance comes in. The kingdom of God promises us a time when the foolishness and corruption of human government will be replaced by the everlasting rule of the true King of Heaven. It promises us eternal peace and harmony. It promises us a world of plenty and hope and deliverance from all which has the capacity to kill or destroy. It represents in its ultimate fulfillment the triumph of God over selfishness and greed and sin of every kind. And it will put our guilt and shame over those past acts which have so complicated our lives as far away from our memories and our relationships as the east is from the west. If we really see a need for a renewed world like God promises, then we also eventually will come to see that most of the mess in this current world is of our own doing. We have neglected our responsibilities to our neighbors and ourselves. We have failed to tend this garden in which God placed us. We have sought to control others for our own benefit. We have been lazy, and lustful, and disrespectful. We have expected others to do our work for us and been satisfied with our ignorance. Perhaps all of us have not done all of these things, but as a species, we are guilty as sin, and all of us have had a hand in at least a few of the things I have mentioned. When I realize my yearning for “the kingdom of God” with all its blessings. When I humbly acknowledge that my mistakes and attitudes have had a hand in making a world so unlike the kingdom of God. Then the natural human response to such a realization must be repentance, which is little more than genuine and heartfelt grief, followed by changed attitudes and behaviour. Grief is a natural human psychological response to the realization that I am responsible to some degree for spoiling this wonderful place where God has put us, and that I am responsible to some degree for the divisions that exist between me and some of the people around me, people who were created by God to be my sisters and brothers, and my fellow pilgrims on the road to the Kingdom of Heaven. And so John only asks of us that which is so natural to us all, that we be sorry for those things we have done which have served to spoil this garden of God’s delights which we call our world and our relationships with others.
But there is a second step to repentance. Has anyone ever told you they were sorry, but you knew it was a lie, a social convention designed to smooth ruffled feathers and escape some temporary unpleasantness? What would have convinced you that the persons grief and sorrow was real? I daresay the only thing that would have worked is if they changed their behaviour and stopped doing that thing which had been so offensive in the first place. Without a real effort at changed behaviour or attitude, the words “I’m sorry” ring with a hollow cynicism.
Saint John the Baptist was sent by God to tell you and me that the Kingdom of God’s reign has broken into this world, And that it is in the very real process of being established, with or without our help. God offers it to all of us as a free and unmerited gift, just because he loves us. But he is a gentleman, and will not force any of us to receive this great gift he offers. It is his hope, and this is the Baptist’s message, that you, and I, and everyone else in the world will rejoice that the beginning of the Kingdom is upon us. It is his hope that we will look around us and see the need for what he offers. It is his hope that you and I will recognize that we have all done things in the course of our lives that have hindered the establishment of the Kingdom temporarily, and have hurt people we ought to love. It is his hope that we will be so sorry for these unthinking and cruel actions and attitudes that we will cry out in grief, ask his help, and do better in the days to come. And finally, as we live into this reality which is the Kingdom of God, it is his desire that we see with a new clarity the wonder and truth of the Lord Jesus Christ’s sacrifice for each of us, and that we will with joy confess public ally that Jesus is Lord of our lives, and believe with all our hearts that God has raised him form the dead to proved the truth of it all. AMEN.

Long Live The King!

2010-11-20T19:40:00.000-08:00

Sermon for Christ the King Sunday
Preached At St John’s Lancaster

For weeks, with just a few exceptions, the vestments and hangings in our church have been green. And now, with one week remaining before the season of Advent, they are white. Today is the Sunday set aside by our holy mother the Church as Christ the King Sunday. It is the day we pause to consider the nature of the station and dignity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
We all know about kings. They live in palaces and wear spectacular uniforms to review their splendidly dressed palace guards. They are great tourist attractions. Their weddings are often televised. And lushly photographed books and magazines about their homes and gardens are almost always bestsellers. And one other thing, they don’t have near as much power as they used to.
Our history informs our opinion of kings as well. They are generally remembered as very fallible and somewhat out of touch Scottish or German powerbrokers that care more about enriching themselves and their friends than about fulfilling the responsibilities they claim in relation to us and our families out here in the colonies. At the end of the day, we are pretty sure that we are better off without them, unless of course they are circumscribed by parliaments or local chieftains who agree with us.
The end result is that we often see Jesus not as the imperial ruler the Scriptures claim him to be, but as a sort of buddy who doubles as our president. We like him and he likes us, and we respect him a lot, but when it comes to such things as commands and edicts, most of them are discussable, and a good number of them are negotiable. I imagine that is why so many of us who name the name of Christ today ignore so many of his precepts. So many who really do try to follow Christ fail to have respect for human life and seek to justify the use of abortion as an unfortunate but acceptable form of birth control if a child does not fit into their plans. Others who serve him so faithfully in so many other ways are willing in their anger to bomb civilian populations back into the Stone Age, and attempt to justify their attitudes and actions in the name of our own security. Still others who are devout in so many ways are willing to overlook the physical and emotional needs of their neighbors, neighbors in need, and neighbors created in the image of God himself, on grounds of practicality, or availability of resources, or their own opinions about who deserves to be helped and who does not deserve to be helped.
If we go on to add all of the other places where an individual Christian might cut corners and justify their departure from the clear teachings of Scripture: sex, wealth, truthfulness, and respect for
God and other people, to mention just a few; it becomes painfully obvious to most thoughtful people that all of us fail at some time and on some issue with which we struggle. Most of us who name Christ as our King fail to treat him as such at least on occasion. Like men and women of every age and in every place, we fail to appreciate the true meaning of Kingship as it relates to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
What are we to do? On this feast day of Christ the King, I would offer a few common sense, and biblical suggestions:
1. Remember that Christ the King is sovereign, and that means that by right, he calls the shots. He has spoken to us in the words of the Scriptures, and where their teaching is clear, we are bound to follow those teachings.
2. Remember that we all foul up from time to time. We miss the mark, and that is the definition of Sin. Even the most religious of us, the most Christian of us if you will, need to go to the King, tell him we are sorry for our failures, and ask his forgiveness. Always remember that a sincere apology, which means that we really are sorry and that it is our intent not to do the wrong thing again, will be accepted by the King, and we will be forgiven.
3. We need to work hard to change our attitude about kingship, and to submit in all things to the revealed will of our Sovereign. For that is the meaning of Sovereignty.
In conclusion, let us put aside the idea that we can live a victorious Christian life if we do not accept the plan for living laid out for us by him who loved us enough to step down from his throne and die for our sins that we might be reconciled to God and have abundant life forever. Even if we do not agree with or understand completely why he gives us some clear command in the Bible, let us strive to live in obedience to those commands in the knowledge that one day he will say to us, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”
My brothers and sisters, on this feast day of Christ the King, I would propose a toast to be offered at our next meal, wherever that may be: “To Christ, the True King. Long live the King.” In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. AMEN.

BIG T & little t Tradition

2010-11-14T18:27:00.000-08:00

Catechetical Sermon Four: Holy Tradition and our traditions
Preached at St. John’s Lancaster, 14 November 2010

Rebecca and I have always kept small aggressive dogs who are wonderfully loving. Their skin is generally black, and their coats are coarse and thick, but they don’t shed. They have small, upright ears and alert eyes. They spell immediate death to any rodent on which they manage to fixate. They will sit under a tree for hours or dig two to three times their body length in search of prey. They are not for everyone, and many people who acquire these breeds of dogs without doing their research before their purchase end up giving them away. All of you who have been around dogs know that I am talking about terriers. The definition, like the experience of owning them, is unmistakable and absolutely predictable. Tradition, and traditions are like that. They often aggravate us, they almost always comfort us, they are often a mystery to others, and they define who we are.
When we employ the word tradition, we are actually talking about two different things. Big “T” Tradition,, which is often called Holy Tradition, is that way of doing things which we have received from the Apostles, and which St. Paul admonished us to hold fast. It involves the way we organize our Church structures into Dioceses with Bishops in Apostolic Succession, represented by Priests and assisted by Deacons. It is evident in our insistence on the use of the same elements that Jesus used in the Holy Communion, and in our insistence that the words of Scripture be employed in the Eucharistic Prayer. It defines why we insist on saying the Apostles’ Creed at Baptisms and the Nicene Creed at Communion. It informs our understanding of the intricacies of our understanding of the Holy and Blessed Trinity and of the Union of the Divine and Human Natures in the Person of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. It involves our insistence that believers do their very best to live lives of obedience to the clear teachings of Holy Scripture. Little “t” traditions are very different from big “T” Traditions. They involve those theological comfort items that give us a sense of having been in church, and in the presence of God. They include things like the use of organ and English choral music, the lighting of candles, when we cross ourselves, and how we bow. Liturgical colour schemes and the installation of pews in our Naves also fall into the “little t” category.
It goes without saying that Holy Tradition constitutes a body of practice which we dare not change on our own or without sincere and prayerful consideration. In fact, it would be consistent with the ancient teachings of the church to say that any attempt to change the Holy Traditions of our Holy Mother the Church without the full consultation and consent of our Anglican and Ecumenical Brothers and Sisters, including as the Romans, the Orthodox, the Copts, the Syriac, and the Protestant Churches, any such action would be arrogant and prideful, and would represent a willful walking apart from that consensus which defines us as the Body of Christ.
But that is enough of the heavy theology. Let’s talk about some of those fun things which define us, and which help us to express more fully our commitment to Christ. Keep in mind that these things we will talk about are not required, but they are loved by many faithful men and women, because they have often defined who we are as this people of God called Episcopalians, or Anglicans.
1. The sign of the Cross. The sign of the Cross is a reminder of the signing with the cross that we experienced at our Baptism. Here are some of the times that people have come to consider it appropriate to sign themselves
At the conclusion of your devotions after entering the church
At mention of the Resurrection of the Body in the Creed
At the absolution in Prayers or Communion
In the Communion prayer when we acknowledge ourselves as being in Christ
Before receiving the elements in Communion
At the beginning of the canticles in Morning or Evening Prayer
Whenever you hear an ambulance or pass a funeral
In short, whenever life’s events call you to remember the grace of God in your life.
2. To genuflect or to Bow. Either is acceptable and appropriate at any time you cross the line of the cross in a procession or while moving about the church. It is simply a matter of giving Royal Honours to God. On the continent, subjects generally knelt before King or Emperor, and therefore the catholic custom is to genuflect, and that is perfectly acceptable. In the British Isles, it was customary to greet one’s sovereign with a low Stuart bow. Hence many in our Communion execute a solemn bow.
3. Facing East in the Creed. We face east during the Creed because we believe that Jesus will return to Jerusalem, and therefore we face east in anticipation of this event. While facing east, it is customary to bow when the article about Jesus begins, again as a sign that we are indeed His liege men and women.
4. Covering or uncovering in Church. It was the custom of the apostolic church, and is still the custom in most Christian places, that men have their heads uncovered during prayer and women have theirs covered. Saint Paul talks about this custom, and until very recently, it was the norm even here at St. John’s. But again, it is a devout custom, not a requirement.
5. Entering the church in silence. Customarily, Anglicans and Episcopalians, and most other liturgical Christians, assume an attitude of prayer when entering the church and refrain from talking to each other until after the service. This custom is designed to show our respect to God and to give us time to prepare our hearts to worship Him in an undivided manner.
6. To kneel or to stand. Both customs are presented by the prayer book rubrics, or instructions. The medieval western custom was to kneel for confession and prayer, sit for instruction, and stand for praise. An early eastern custom (and remember that the Churches of Britannia and Hibernia originally gave obeisance to the Patriarch of Jerusalem, not to that of Rome) called for Christians to stand whenever they addressed God. The choice is yours.
Is your brain full and your head spinning yet? I’ll assume that it just might be. So let me summarize a couple of general principles that might help you to put these “little t” traditions into perspective.
1. Lots of people have found that sharing these traditions helps them to feel like a part of something much larger than themselves, to feel God’s presence more immediately in their worship experience, and to identify with a particular Christian worshipping tradition.
2. If you find them helpful in those or other ways, then do them.
3. If you don’t find them helpful, then don’t do them.
4. Follow your heart, and God will bless you.
But now, let us consider our traditions and Tradition in a more serious light. Do the things we do help people to see that we are indeed Christians? ( Like the characteristics and physical features of a terrier mark it out as one.) And more importantly, are the fruits of the Spirit, especially Love, so evident in my life that my witness is seen as being consistent with the customs I practice. If that is not the case, I will be seen as a hypocrite, and my recognition as a follower of Christ may well do more harm than good. So, go forth to keep seriously and devoutly those Holy Traditions we have received from the Apostles. Participate in those “little t” traditions which give you a sense of belonging and feeling closer to God. And in all things, as the song says, let them “know we are Christians by our Love.” In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. AMEN.

Holy Relationships with God and Each Other

2010-11-11T04:40:00.000-08:00

Catechetical Sermon Three- Relationship and Incarnation
Preached at St. John’s November 7th, AD MMX

What exactly do you look for in a relationship? I remember a few years back when one of our acolytes, who will remain nameless and is now graduated and off to start her life as an adult, asked one of our older lay readers, who will also remain nameless, a very straightforward question while we were all standing at the altar during the service. She innocently said, “Are you hot?” He replied, “No, but I was thirty years ago.” And the question remains, what do you look for in a relationship? Our answers may differ in a few specifics, and they may mature a bit with time, but I daresay that our hopes and dreams, and our aspirations probably have a lot in common. All of us want to be loved. We want to matter to someone. We want someone who will respect us, and would never knowingly embarrass us or hurt us. We want to be safe and secure, and not have to worry that our special friend will ever leave us for someone who is more interesting or better looking. We want someone who will be interested in what we are interested in, and who will laugh with us and care about what we care about. There are a few other things, but that is the heart of the matter.
Our first catechetical lecture , you may remember, spoke about the authority that love brings to us all. Last week, we talked about how the Holy and Blessed Trinity models for us the nature of true Christian Community. This week, I would like for us to examine how the Incarnation of Jesus the Christ shows us the true nature of two kinds of relationships, the one we can have with God, and the ones we ought to have with each other.
Christians believe that Jesus of Nazareth, a life and blood man who was born of Mary of Nazareth, was and is the incarnate Son of the ever-living God, the fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophesies, and the God given sacrifice for the sin of the world. Christians believe that He is fully God, because he was conceived by the Holy Ghost, and fully man, because he was born of the Blessed Virgin Mary, His mother. Christians believe that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and the first few verses of the Acts of the Apostles, give a reliable and historical account of his activities here on earth. Christians also believe that the Old and New Testaments of the Holy Bible give us insights into who He was, and into the nature of His mission. We also believe that these Bible truths are summarized in the Apostle’s, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds, all of which are found in The Book of Common Prayer. In short, the Incarnation means that Jesus is who the Bible says he is and that He did what the Bible said he did. That is a very clear summary of what Christians believe about the Incarnation. But what does it mean for you and for me? I think it might be helpful today to examine that question under two headings. First, What does the Incarnation say about what kind of relationship God offers each and every one of us? Second, What sort of relationship does Jesus model for us as we attempt to live with each other?
Before we move to the examination of these two lessons offered us by God, we ought to consider a question that may have already arisen in some of your minds. “How can I really believe that all of this is true?” People asked the same question in the first century of the Christian era. Paul was blunt when he said that there were hundreds of eye witnesses to what we might call the “Christ Event.” He went on to say that many of them were still living. And then he said, “If you don’t believe me, go and ask them.” In essence, St. Paul was employing the same criteria in his “Truth Model” that the Bishops and Fathers of the Church employed as they worked to determine the canon of Scripture, that is, as they prayerfully sought to determine which books would be accepted as Scripture and which would not. First, they said, the book must beyond any doubt have been written by an eyewitness or his amanuinsis, or personal secretary. Second, it must be of consistent belief with the books of the Old Testament, for God is one, and unchanging. Third, to be accepted, the Holy Spirit must have borne witness to the truth of the scroll by causing it to be used throughout the churches of the world. I fear this may be a grave disappointment to devotees of the history channel or A&E, but there simply was no conspiracy, and there was no power play. Godly people employed the rules of good scholarship to check and double check the historical truth of the documents involved. They came up with a list of twenty seven books which we call the New Testament.
Now, back to the question at hand. What kind of relationship does God offer each and every one of us? All of us can relate to those stories which abound in the Bible of people who made a hash of their lives. They squandered opportunities and made bad decisions, sometimes out of ignorance, and sometimes out of pure willful cussedness. And they paid dearly for those decisions. We call all of that the sinful nature of mankind. But God made us in His image, with a rational mind, and the capacity to love and be loved, and the ability to sense His presence among us, and to know right from wrong. When He looked at us, He said, “That is good!” And even after we had made such a hash of things, He determined to come up with a way which would preserve our dignity by acknowledging our personal responsibility, and at the same time would shower us with His eternal, completely unmerited, and never-ending love. This plan was put into effect when Jesus came to live and die and be raised again as one of us! “So God loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoso believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Note that He did not say, whoso liveth up to the standard, or whosoever is worthy, or whosoever is without sin. We were dead in trespasses and sin, estranged from God, alone and relying on our own wits and resources, and realizing a bit more every day that our resources were not sufficient to meet our needs. And God said, “I will send my Son, who will serve the sentence for every felony and misdemeanor and selfish word and evil thought any of them have ever had. I know they will struggle, but I love them so much that I will waive all of the qualifications. My son will cover for them all, if only they will keep faith with me by believing that I love them enough to have sent Him to do this thing.” “Such love, such wonderous love, such love, such wonderous love, That God should love a sinner such as I, How wonderful is love like this?” “And can it be, that I should gain, an interest in my Saviour’s love? Died He for me, who caused His pain? For me , who Him, to death pursued? Amazing love, how can it be, that Thou my God, shoulds’t die for me.” Imagine being loved by someone so much that they would put away all of those ugly things that you have said or done or thought throughout the entire course of your life, imagine that they would accept you as you are, and give you the opportunity to live beyond the guilt and shame and to grow into conformity with God’s revealed way of peace and harmony and contentment and joy. It is the relationship God offers to us all if only we will believe in Jesus, that He has come among us and done those things which the Bible records. And so with that man so many centuries ago, we cry out, “Lord, I believe! Help Thou my unbelief.”
And what of our second question. “ What sort of relationship does Jesus model for us as we attempt to live with each other? He loved us so much that he was willing to go up to Jerusalem, even though He knew that He would be denied and rejected by those He came to save, by those He loved so much. Can you continue to love a child who has spurned and embarrassed you? Can you continue to pray faithfully for a friend or a former spouse who has betrayed you and walked away with mean-spirited impunity? Can you love another person so much that you willingly put your own plans and dreams on hold for their well being? Can you do unto others as you would have them do unto you, even when you know that they probably will not? Can you respond to another in kindness and gentleness, and make them feel safe and secure? Can you love another person enough to honestly and openly discuss with them those shortcomings that everyone sees but they themselves, and can you do it with such sensitivity and love that they never doubt how much you care for them? Can you listen and really care, and be as interested in the events and thoughts of another as you are in your own? Are you willing to lay down your life for anyone? And can you give another person a second, or third or seventh, or seventy times seventh chance? This is the way of Jesus, and it is dangerous and counter-intuitive. By our lack of guile and our humility, we are called to overcome all the ways of sin, the flesh, and the devil. We are called to walk in the way of Jesus. It ought to be said of us, as it was of Nathaniel, “Behold, an Israelite in whom there is no guile.”
Today, might we join our hearts in prayer that we might respond to God’s love by believing in our hearts and minds that which He has accomplished in our midst by sending Jesus to live and die among us, and to overcome death and become our Saviour. And might we seek every hour of every day to love one another even as Christ loved us, and gave himself for us. Let us stand as we confess our belief in the words of the Nicene Creed, found on page 327 of the Book of Common Prayer.

Living the Trinity

2010-10-30T17:40:00.000-07:00

Catechism Sermon Two: Holy Community
Preached at St. John's on All Hallows Eve, 2010

Imagine a time from your past when you felt completely alone. It may have been a genuine time of separation from human companionship, or it may have been a time when you were surrounded by people, but in your heart, you believed that no one cared, no one noticed, and no one knew your name. For a few moments early in the experience, you may have enjoyed the solitude and the quiet, but before long, a devastating sense of loneliness began to oppress your spirit, and your heart ached as it had never ached before. All of us need to be in community. God made us that way. In fact, it is an important part of His image in which we are marvelously and wonderfully made. If we are to experience the fullness of God in our lives, we must learn to live together, in spite of our differences, in spite of our annoying habits, and bad choices and yes, even in spite of our shortsightedness, selfishness, and even our occasional stupidity. God has made us to live together with each other, and a large part of being Christian is learning to live with others who share the name.
As the fathers of our Holy Mother the Church prayed, studied, and worked together in the first three centuries after Jesus, they were led by the Holy Spirit to condense the essential message of the Scriptures into what we know as the creeds of the Church. The three creeds, namely the Apostles’ (which we recite at Holy baptism and in the Daily Office), the Nicene (which we recite at Holy Communion), and the Athanasian (which ought to be rehearsed by all Priests at Morning Prayer on the high holy days of the church, but so seldom is anymore); these three creeds all posit two great and immutable truths about our faith. The First is the Holy and Blessed Trinity. The second is the Incarnation: or a firm belief in the unique, historic, and efficacious person and work of Jesus Christ in this world. Next week, we will talk about the Incarnation , and what it means for our relationships to each other and to God the Father, through (in the words of the funeral liturgy) the blood of the everlasting covenant, and in the power of the Holy Spirit. But this week, we will discuss the Holy Trinity, and what it means for us, for who we are, and how we live together.
Although the word “Trinity” was not used for two or three hundred years after the earthly life of our Lord, the gospels and the other books of the New Testament make it abundantly clear that the definition of the concept has been with us from the beginning of the Church. The Bible is clear that there is only one God, and yet there are clearly three distinct individuals, or persons, who proceed to and from each other, who communicate with each other, and who all receive divine honours on numerous occasions. I must admit, it is beyond my understanding, and honestly, it is beyond all human understanding. Many have tried to explain it, and many explanations are helpful in illustrating some aspect of the concept, but they all fall short. They either combine or confound the persons and make God out to be either a king, far away and unapproachable, or make him into our buddy, thereby denying his power and holiness. In short, God’s nature is trinity in unity. After a sense, three is one and one is three. Smarter people than me have tried to explain it, and have had no more luck than I have had. But the fact remains that the Bible clearly teaches it, the Church has always affirmed it, and Christians are bound to believe it, even if we do not understand it.
But even if we cannot understand it, it makes a wonderful difference in our lives, and models for us how we ought to live together. Stay with me now, for we are at the heart of the matter. I cannot imagine the Father without the Son and the Spirit. I cannot imagine the Son without the Father and the Spirit. I cannot imagine the Spirit without the Father and the Son. They are inseparable and go together like peanut butter and jelly, like salt and pepper, like carrots and peas. Now imagine a church, a local parish or a broader body of believers, where if any one of us were not there, it simply wouldn’t be the same. Imagine a place where if you were absent for a few weeks, you would get calls and cards, not because of some program organized by the staff, but because the people who sit by you each week, the people who kneel with you at the altar, really do miss you and care enough to be concerned. We are not there yet, none of us are, and none of us ever have been. But that is our ideal, because we are those who bear the imagio Dei, the image of God in our lives and in our institutions. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful place to go to Church? Wouldn’t it be a great family to be a part of? Wouldn’t it make you feel truly loved, and give you a sense of belonging beyond anything you could ever imagine? To never be lonely again. That is the real beauty of the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity. It is one of the two essential doctrines of our Faith, and it is eminently practical every day of our lives.
And so what does it mean for us today? I would submit that we are bound to apply the doctrine of the Trinity in at least two ways, first in our Ecclesiology, that is what we believe about the Church, and secondly in our parish, where we live every day and interact with each other. For the first thousand years, there was a basic agreement that a Christian was a Christian, was a Christian. A Priest from Britannia or what was later called the English Heptarchy was recognized as a Priest in valid orders in Rome, or Constantinople, in Baghdad, in Constantinople, or in Addis Ababba. Holy Communion was shared and was the common currency of the Christian Experience. There were times when Christians fought like only siblings can fight, and the Church was racked with distressing regularity by sin, bad manners, and selfish personalities. But the Faith was one, characterized by one Scripture, two Testaments, Three creeds, Four Councils, and Five Centuries of shared experience under a common Lord and Saviour. And then we began to value our own druthers over the unity offered us in Christ and modeled in the character of God himself. The Church split in the 11th century, and again in the 16th, and we have been at it on a regular basis ever since. History has made it abundantly clear that heresies come and go, as does bad behaviour. False doctrines that were on everyone’s lips in 1700 are barely known by anyone save specialty historians today. But there is almost never a reunion after a split occurs in the body of Christ. We live in a world where many would coerce and control those who disagree with them in the Name of God. We also live in a world where many would demand their own way at any cost, even if it means rending the robe of Christ, also in the Name of God. And so we are faced with an unpleasant choice between those who would bludgeon us with catholicity and say that we must all be the same, or those who would define the faith in terms of their own experience and break communion with everyone else. I would submit that Trinitarian faith offers a third way, whereby we maintain our principles by living them faithfully, and allowing others to do the same. The faith is defined as the creeds define it, on other issues, we argue rationally and live faithfully. In such a faith, I cannot imagine a world where other Creedal Christians, be they Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, or something else, were not my neighbors and friends. Some of them might annoy me to no end, and I might find their worship to be other than I would choose, but I acknowledge the validity of their faith and welcome them to the Communion table, even if they don’t acknowledge the validity of my faith or welcome me to their Communion table. How dare I take it upon myself to split the body of Christ again, however egregious the belief or behaviour of someone else might be. I shall live the faith as I have received it, imperfectly for sure, but as faithfully as I can with God’s help.
And that brings us to our local parish, St. John’s. Take a moment to look at the folks sitting around you…… Some of them you may like, and there are probably one or two that well, let’s just say you are not soul mates. But God has put us all here together. And he has called us to love each other even as he has loved us all. There is a place here for all of us, those who are close to God, and those who wander a bit more than they ought. God in his mercy has brought us together, and he calls us in the midst of our differences to learn to live together, and to care about each other to such a degree that we can’t imagine what it would be like if any one of us were missing. You see, God has chosen us to model for the world what he models for us in his own nature, and in his own being. We are all of the Holy and Blessed Trinity that most people will ever see. Do we live together in such a way that in spite of our differences and faults, people look at our parish and see a place where everyone belongs, and is loved, and finds a place? Do you feel that you really belong here? Are you doing all you can to make others feel that way as well. Have you made a commitment not to coerce or bully anyone here, even if they are wrong, and even if they try to do those things to you? Imagine a place where you were so loved that if you missed a few weeks, people, even people who disagreed with you politically, and behaviorally, and in many of their druthers, cared so much for you that they called to see how you were doing, not because there was a program that induced them to do so, but because they really did care. Let us all commit today to ask God to help us to build such a church, a Trinitarian Church, and might we do our very best to love those around us. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. AMEN.

Ideas for Drawing Closer to God

2010-10-24T23:16:00.000-07:00

Rector’s Rambling: November 2010
It is a warm night for late October. The terriers pace listlessly and outside, I hear the last of the crickets singing their nearly solitary songs. This has been a night for writer’s block if ever there has been one. It seems strange, because there is so much to write about this time of year. We are approaching the climax of the annual stewardship campaign at the church. Bishop Breidenthal is coming for his annual visitation on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. We will be gathering with our friends from St. Mark’s and Sixth Avenue for our Annual Thanksgiving service. And I have ten new chicks which hatched quite unexpectedly this last week. Any of these things could usually provide inspiration for a tolerable ramble, but tonight is different, and my deadline is at hand.
Last night at Fisher Catholic’s football game, I was pleased to be able to talk to Father John Reade, a friend and former member of our parish who now serves our Lord as a Roman Catholic priest. We spoke of many things, caught up on news, and laughed together. At one point, we shared with each other how difficult it sometimes is to maintain the regularity of our own devotional lives. There are so many good and necessary things that need doing, and which are important parts of our job descriptions as priests. I hear the same concern voiced by many of my friends who are involved in ministry, and I cannot help but conclude that if it is a concern for those of us who serve the Church professionally, it must be even more difficult for the good people of God who work a non-religious job at home or in a workplace forty or fifty hours each week, and try to juggle family and community responsibilities as well.
Several things have helped me to maintain the regularity of my prayer life and study time over the last few weeks and months. I pass them on to you not because I think that everyone will be able to use all of my ideas, but because you might find some of them helpful. None of them are original to me. One is drawn from Fr. Pat Reardon, an Orthodox priest in Chicago who helps my Ashley with things spiritual. Another is drawn from the English author Izaak Walton, whose Compleate Angler has charmed me for years. And then there is the Book of Common Prayer, which always draws me back, and is the property of all God’s people.
First, keep a list of the people you pray for, and pray for them specifically, and every day. A small book or a three by five card will often suffice. It only takes a few minutes to go through the list, and you can always add a new request, or cross a line through those prayers which are answered. Don’t let your list get too long, or it will get unweildly. Start with a new list each month, and re-enter those ongoing requests which really are necessary. You will be encouraged at how many of your prayers God actually answers, and will be drawn much closer to those for whom you pray.
Second, establish a place where you can go to be alone. I often take the dogs and walk down the trail to the cabin, or hermitage, at the bottom of our property. While they chase mice, I light candles and pray, or read, or both. Sometimes I sing evensong. Sometimes I read the great litany. Sometimes I read poetry, or the writings of the Fathers and Divines. And sometimes I just sit and think. It is a place where I meet God, and a place where I go with a sense of expectation. Seek out a place apart for yourself, and God will meet you there.
Third, familiarize yourself with the Book of Common Prayer. The edition does not matter. I prefer the older editions, but any one will do. To share those prayers and forms which are the common currency of the people of God through the ages brings me the comfort of knowing that I am never alone, and that I am a part of something much bigger and more profound than I can ever know. If you are unsure about how to start with the prayer book, give me a call sometime at 215-3900, and we will sit down and discuss some ways that you can get started on a wonderful journey of prayer book spirituality.
Finally, for today, think about developing devotional practices which involve all of the ways you might experience God. Many of us grew up in a word- based culture which has given way to a sight and sound- based culture. But there are other senses that can also bring us to our Lord. The feel of beads running through our fingers can be a powerful and comforting tactile experience of the presence of God. A scented candle or pinch of incense can call to mind in a powerful way that Scriptural image of the prayers of the saints arising before the throne of God as great clouds of incense. Along this same line, reading or saying your prayers aloud, or singing the Psalms and Canticles can be a way of transporting ourselves into the heavenly court. While most human bystanders will think you are insane if you do some of these things, I have it on good authority that dogs and cats don’t seem to mind.
As the days grow shorter and the darkness grows longer with the coming of winter, I hope and pray that we all might be able to take some time to seriously consider the nature and practice of our private time with God. Each of us will find that what works for us will be a bit different from what works for our neighbors, but as we seek Him, he will meet us where we are, and in a way that is custom tailored to our personality, to our needs, and to our situations.
Faithfully,
Bill+

The Authority of Love

2010-10-24T23:15:00.000-07:00

Catechism Sermon I: Authority
Preached at St. John’s Lancaster 24 October 2010

The Bishop is coming! The Bishop is coming! On the Sunday after thanksgiving, Bishop Breidenthal will be amongst us to minister in Word and Sacrament. We will gather here for a single service at 9 AM. After hearing God’s Word proclaimed, and responding by renewing our baptismal vows and receiving the sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, we will adjourn to the undercroft for a wonderful party with the parish silver, finger foods, and laughter all around. But what makes it such a special day? The Right Rev’d Thomas Breidenthal stands in direct line of succession to the apostles themselves, and he is for us a direct link to Christians throughout the world and across the centuries. He literally stands in the place of Christ, and we are called by the fathers of the church to honour him as we would honour his Lord, the Saviour of us all. As you might guess, I have some differences of belief and interpretation with the Bishop, but then, he also has some with me. In fact, I daresay there are no two of us here today who agree on everything. Life is a bit more complicated than that. In spite of our differences, we who name the Name of Christ, we who eat the flesh and drink the blood of God, are called to come together each week to lay aside our differences and affirm with the people of God through the ages that Jesus Christ, the second person of the Holy and blessed Trinity, came and died for our sins that we might be reconciled to God the Father; and that he, by the power of love, took up his life again on the third day and ascended into heaven that we might live henceforth in the power of the Spirit, sharing with every person in the world the good news that God has broken into history to give us purpose, and belonging, and union with God in this world and in the next. In contrast to such a great truth, to such a powerful message, our disagreements, as profound and important as they may be, pale in comparison.
In preparation for Bishop Breidenthal’s visit, I thought it worthwhile to review with the entire parish a sort of catechism, or instruction of the faithful. Today, and over the next three weeks, I hope that we will be able to review the essentials of our faith as Christians, and the unique witness we bear as Anglican Christians, known since the American revolution as Episcopalians. Our discussions will fall into four categories:
1. What is our Authority for the things we believe and do?
2. How does the Holy and Blessed Trinity model the nature of the community in which we live and bear witness?
3. What does the incarnation of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ say about the relationships we should have with him and with each other?
4. How do our peculiar traditions, and the Tradition we have received from the apostles, help us to sense God in our midst, and share him more effectively with others?
And so what exactly is our authority for the things we do? In short, our authority is the love of God manifested usward in Christ Jesus our Lord. When I wandered in darkness and sin, leaning unto my own understanding, and doing what I thought was best for me and mine, Jesus looked upon my pitiful blindness, on my selfishness, and on my insecurity, and he said to the Father, “I will go and pay the price for all his errors and confusion, that he might be reconciled to you and have a new start.” He loved me even when I was rebelling against him, so much that he laid down his life for me. Such loving sacrifice gives him the right, the authority, to come and speak truth to me. Such love places a fair claim on my life, and compels me to respond to his invitation and be restored to a healed relationship with the Father. Such love calls me to respond in kind, and to accept gratefully, if imperfectly, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which enable me to become a conduit of love, his love, to all people, everywhere.
I, we, have been transformed by the love of God into what we were made to be. God is love, and we who are made in his image are called to reflect his love in all that we do. By his grace, he has given us the Bible, a collection of books written by human authors under divine inspiration which shows us the character of God, which is love. Because this collection of books is the God-breathed record of his self-revelation in Jesus, it is the place where we see the true nature of love. It is here, through the examples of patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, and ultimately through the example of Jesus himself that we see the sacrificial nature of love. “Greater love hath no man than this, than that he lay down his life for his friends.” It is here that we learn the degree to which love extends to every part of our lives, for we are to “love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves.” It is here that we learn the true nature of love when we realize that we ought to “do unto others as we would have others do unto us.” It is here that we see this law of love for God and man made practical in the tables of the ten commandments and in the working out of the laws of Israel in everyday life. As God’s love is the authority in our lives, and for all we do as a church, so is the Bible that body of belief which is given us by a loving God to help us in the understanding and application of that love to which we are called.
In his first letter to the Church at Corinth, Saint Paul sings the glories of Charity, or that Godly love which the ancient Greeks called agape. “Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunted not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth….” Indeed, he goes on to say, “And now abideth faith, hope, and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” This is the love of God made manifest to us in Jesus Christ, and implanted in our hearts by the infilling of the Holy Spirit. A life characterized by such piety, such humility, such love, is all the authority any man or woman of God needs to reach out to a world in need.
We Anglican Christians have been blessed by God in so many ways to experience this love of God. Christianity first came among us in the middle years of the first century, carried by Jewish traders and Samaritan soldiers of Rome. It was cross fertilized in the second, third, and fourth centuries by the words and examples of Greek and French missionaries, and organized in the fifth and sixth centuries by Irish abbots and Roman bishops. By the time of Whitby in the seventh century, we had seen that the love of God is truly for all people, and that no single organization, or denomination, or national group has a monopoly on the experience or proclamation of God’s love. The man or woman who is transformed into the image of Jesus, and who lives humbly in the power of his love, bears the authority of God himself to reach out and share that same love in every situation. This is our authority, and this is our mission. It is who we are and who we are called to be.
And so in the words of St. Paul, the question remains, “Is the evidence of God’s love manifest in your life?” When your neighbors look at you, do they see Jesus? When they look at you, do they see someone who is long-suffering and kind? Do they see someone who is not motivated by envy, someone who is not always seeking to be the center of attention or characterized by prideful arrogance? Is your behaviour above question and reproach? Are you desirous of seeing good come to other people instead of always insisting on your own way? Are you able to walk away from a fight or argument, and to think well of others even when perhaps they do not deserve it? Does iniquity bring you sorrow, or do you enjoy a good laugh at the expense of someone else from time to time? Are you truly happy when you see the triumph of the good, and can you be happy for others when good things happen to them, even if you are left out? Are you willing to bear the difficulties and vicissitudes of life with your faith in God unshaken, and even in the darkest of times does your hope in God’s love burn brightly? Are you able to trust God and be patient when things don’t go your way? These are the true evidences of God’s love in your life and in mine. Where such evidences of piety and godliness exist, no other authority is necessary, for people will see in us the love of God, and they will know that God has come among us to offer us deliverance from the mess that we have made of our lives and in our world.
On this day, as we prepare for the visit of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, our Reverend Father in God, Thomas, let us beseech our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to fill us with His grace, and perfect us in his love, that every man and woman and boy and girl might know the truth of the Good News of God through us. This is all the authority we need, and it is the authority offered to us by God. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. AMEN.

Thoughts on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church

2010-10-08T21:42:00.000-07:00

Sermon Proper 23C The Sunday closest to October 12

Jeremiah 29:1,4-7
II Timothy 2:8-15

Preached at St. John’s

The city of Jerusalem is mesmerizing. To walk in the footsteps of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is an experience which can transform one’s life. To look upon the walls of Suleiman the Magnificent and walk the path to temple mount is merely a short imagining to the citadel of David. The promises of God are everywhere. On the rock covered by the great dome of Islam Abraham lifted the knife to slay his son, his only son, and experienced the deliverance of God. Here David danced before the Lord, ensuring the disdain of those who thought too much of what others might say, but exhibiting that purity of heart which brought him the sobriquet “a man after God’s own heart.” Solomon the wise, in obedience to the call of God, erected the first temple in this place. To the call of the shophar and the solemn intonation of priestly chant, the faithful repaired to the worship of the one true God for generations. It was commonly believed that God would never let his holy city be defiled by the tramp of foreign armies, although he had never said so himself. But it was not the tramp of foreign armies which first defiled the holy city. Rather it was the disobedience of his own people which destroyed that city which had heard the songs of God’s praise and welcomed the entry of the great kings appointed by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
I have always yearned for Jerusalem. My favorite hymns are of the city. “And there’s another country,” “Jerusalem, my happy home, when shall I come to thee..,” “And we shall build Jerusalem, in England’s green and pleasant land.” Among my favorite psalms are the songs of degrees, which for centuries have been sung by the people of God as they approached the city of David, the city of God. “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.” “Behold, how good and pleasant a thing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.” You see, Jerusalem is for the people of God a metaphor of that heavenly city which is to come, which is to come down from God out of heaven as a bride adorned for her husband. Rebecca and I have long sought to make our own domicile a vision, a pale reflection of the city of Jerusalem, a place of harmony and beauty and godliness. We have never been completely successful, but it is our dream and our goal, that visitors to our home might gain a sense of that which is to come.
Imagine how the children of Judah must have raised their lament when their city was destroyed by the Babylonians, and they were dragged into those seventy years of captivity in a strange and foreign land. “By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land.” It must have seemed to the faithful that the world itself had come to an end. And the prophet Jeremiah wrote to them a letter which was to fill their nights with hope and their days with holy labour. “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”
Have you ever received news which seemed to indicate the demise of that which you held most dear in all the world? From time to time, some bit of information has such an effect on me. Perhaps it is an offshoot of my personality and experience, or perhaps it has some basis in reality. When it strikes, it cuts me to the core, and instills in me a brooding sense of doom that can take some days to pass. In those times, I look to the experience of the children of Judah and Israel after the first temple was destroyed and the people carried away. For seventy years they lived in a hope not realized that God would deliver them and restore the city of Jerusalem, and when finally the Persian king allowed their return, it was as if all the world was against them. The rebuilding project languished for a full generation. Fathers and Mothers died, and their children grew up with the promises of restoration unfulfilled. But they persevered, and built homes, and planted gardens, and reared families in that place of spiritual desolation where God had placed them. And in the end, their prayers were answered. The temple was rebuilt and the wall was reconstructed. The people returned to accomplish the mission that had been assigned to them some 900 years earlier, namely to be the bearers of Christ to the nations. You see, in the end, God’s will is always accomplished; not on our time table or in the way we might imagine, but his triumph is inevitable, and we are called to soldier on with hope through the hard times, living in and praying for those societies and times and institutions where he has placed us, and not leaning to our own understanding or our own ways.
On Friday, as I was perusing the church press, I was stricken by a spirit of what could have easily become hopelessness, or even despair. And then I sat down and read the propers for this day. I saw the admonition of Jeremiah to the people of God, and I heeded the wisdom of St. Paul writing from prison, “The saying is sure: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he will also deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful- for he cannot deny himself. Remind them of this, and warn them before God that they are to avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth.”
Many things will happen in this world, and all of us will find some of them not to be to our liking. But if we are faithful and true, and go about serving God with obedience, and with love, and with faith in the Incarnate Christ and the Holy and Blessed Trinity, refusing to be caught up in arguments and bantering over words, God himself will vindicate us, and we will be by his grace ushered into that heavenly city, the new Jerusalem. Be faithful my friends, and let no earthly events lead you to despair. Our God, the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, is faithful, and he has named us as his own. AMEN.

Faith in the midst of Darkness

2010-10-02T11:32:00.000-07:00

Proper 22C The Sunday closest to October 5

Haabakkuk1:1-4;2:1-4
Psalm 37:1-10
II Timothy 1:1-14
Luke 17:5-10

Preached at St. John’s Lancaster

Today’s lessons attest to the fact that the world can be a pretty rough place. It does not take a prophet or a philosopher King to recognize the fact that the evil seem to prosper all around us, and that for significant periods of time they seem to call the shots and accomplish their selfish and evil ways with impunity. Sometimes, as Saint Paul points out to His Grace, Bishop Timothy, good people find themselves in the most untenable of situations. And all of us, in the midst of life’s vicissitudes, have cried out with the disciples, “Oh Lord, increase our faith!” In general, or in philosophical terms, we can all see the reality of the human experience, and we sagely acknowledge that which is self evident. But what are we to do when these realities of a fallen world become so real to us that we ache within our hearts. What happens when we cry out for deliverance from cancer, or justice over some contractual situation which we agreed to when we were younger, or more foolish, or when our financial situation was so much more stable and hopeful? We cry out for God’s hope and deliverance, and like Habakkuk say, “how long, O Lord…will you not listen?” What happens when we see decisions taken by others, decisions which threaten all we love and have worked for, and we feel powerless to do anything? With that prophet, we cry, “Violence!, O Lord, will you not save us?” And who of us has not been in some difficult situation, when we have felt so awfully alone, and we knew that if we could just talk to the one that we loved, God would give us strength through that encounter? Echoing the words of St. Paul, we cry out in the darkness of the night, “I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day, remembering your tears, I long to see you that I might be filled with joy.” And yet our loved one for whom we yearn is still so very, very far away, across an ocean, or in another state, or on the other side of the grave. And we are so terribly and unalterably alone.
In such circumstances and at such times, we, with the disciples, cry out to Jesus, “Increase our faith!” And now as then, He seems to give us the same answer that he gave them, and it seems so insufficient. “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, be uprooted and planted in the sea, and it would obey you.” How many of us have asked with all the faith we could muster for some such miracle, only a hundred times more immediate or personal, only to see our situations remain absolutely the same, or worse. To pray , believing, and then to realize that cancer or diabetes still racks the body of the one we love; to lose a child; to find no escape from migraine headaches; to see a loved child walking along a path which will certainly lead to death and destruction in this world and the next; to see a parent or a spouse fade away to a mere shadow, both physically and mentally, of what they were in their prime; to see a marriage fail in spite of all our best efforts…the grief, and the anger, and the pain can be crippling in such a situation.
There are often those well intentioned friends, who like Job’s comforters, attempt to help us in such times. One will say that we simply lack faith, because Jesus always keeps his promises, and if the tree is not planted in the midst of the sea, the problem must be with us, and we need to be more holy in our actions and conversation if we wish to receive God‘s blessing. There is another who says that we must boldly claim the healing of God, and a third who wants to enroll us in a self-help program which will help us to see the possibilities in our lives and “just praise the Lord in everything.” They are all well intentioned, for the most part, but they are about as much help in the midst of our adversity as was Job’s wife, who counseled her suffering husband to “curse God and die.”
And so what are we to do in such times? Today’s propers give us an answer, but I’m afraid it is an answer which the practitioners of instant blessing, prosperity, and quick results will not like. The Prophet Haabakkuk is succinct when he responds to his own troubles by saying, “I will stand at my watch post, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint.” Paul is equally direct and realistic: “…God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline…I know the one in whom I have put my trust,and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him. Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.” Such language invariably takes me back to the old words of the signing at baptism, words which were our common Anglican heritage for centuries before our own American church unilaterally modified the baptismal rite which had been used throughout the communion and the church for so long. As the Minister made a Cross upon the Child’s forehead, he said “We receive this Child into the congregation of Christ’s flock; and do sign him (or her) with the sign of the Cross, in token that hereafter he shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight under his banner, against sin, the world, and the devil; and to continue Christ’s faithful soldier and servant unto his life’s end. Amen.”
The answer to the reality of evil in our world, and to suffering in our lives, is you see an answer which does not promise immediate deliverance in every instance, nor is it an answer which releases us from the call to embrace true faith, which is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. We are not called to expect that God will overturn the laws of nature, his own laws, at every turn, although from time to time it has suited him to do so. We are not called to live in some sort of denial of reality which exudes false happiness and is characterized by bad theology and a pasted on smile. We are called with Habakkuk, and Paul, and Timothy, and the Twelve, and with saints through the ages to do our duty, “and when we have done all that we were ordered to do, to say, We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done.” They understood that it was not about them, but rather about God, and his plan for us all. The whole duty of man, according to the old catechism, is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. That is best done by patient endurance and faithful obedience, all growing from a heart filled with love for God and man.
True faith is a gift of God. It is best known in the long times, and often in the dark times, as we learn to stand the post that we are assigned by God to his glory and to the extension of his kingdom throughout the world, that every knee should bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord! In the midst of the darkest time, our most discouraging time, we would do well to look to the east in anticipation of the return of Christ, the true king. He will come to vindicate his people, and to make all things right. “He abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. For this gospel, we, like Paul, are appointed heralds.” Such an appointment will of necessity bring hardship and suffering, because our enemy the devil lurks in this world, seeking whom he may devour. But we must never be ashamed, for we know whom we have believed!
So let us, with Habakkuk, that good soldier and true watchman, stand our post in all sorts of weather, and in the difficult as well as the wonderful times. Like him, might we anticipate the fulfillment of that vision of the end, which does not lie. “If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay. Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith.” Might we live by faith, and thereby inherit all the blessings promised in Christ Jesus, our Lord and our Saviour, our brother and our friend. AMEN.

Ember Day Thoughts on Stewardship

2010-09-25T04:43:00.000-07:00

Rectors Rambling October 2010 II

After the refreshment of an early morning rain, the heaviness of the September heat is already beginning to assert itself. The terriers, after their early morning constitutional, are draped rather unceremoniously across the master bed, and the rooster is announcing his dominance of the day. There is a hint of fog in the front pasture, and Tristan’s deployment flag hangs listlessly. I pray that his day is as uneventful as this morning seems to be.
Yesterday at the mid-week communion, we heard the lessons for the autumnal ember days, those days set aside by our holy mother the church for all of God’s people to pray for “the increase of the ministry.” The old phrase has nothing to do with my girth or the size of my bank account. Rather it has to do with the setting apart of persons to serve God in Christian ministry. While all ministry is included in the concept, there has historically been an emphasis on the vocations of priest, deacon, monk, nun, and friar. I hope with all my heart that at this turn of the seasons, we might all pray that God would do his work in the hearts of many that they might hear and follow God’s call in their lives. I would also encourage all of us who have influence in the lives of the young to help them consider God’s call in their lives. Our society does so much to prepare our children and grandchildren for the future. We make sure that they study math and English and history. We teach them about healthy choices and encourage them to play sports that they might learn about the challenges and hardships of life. But we do a very poor job of calling them to consider God’s claim on their lives. We ask them what they would like to do after graduation, and all of our pre-admissions college testing is designed to help them determine where they might be successful, but we so seldom lead them to ask what God would have them to do. Let us fulfill our responsibilities on these ember days to be God’s agents for the increase of the ministry… And His Holy Name will be glorified in this place.
Fall also marks the beginning of our stewardship process at St. John’s. The vestry has already discussed how we might proceed, and the budget committee will be meeting in the days to come. I hope everyone who loves St. John’s will consider how God would have you to give of your time, talents, and money as we begin this period of discernment. I would offer a short list of suggestions as you consider your pledge this year.
1. We need volunteers in the area of worship such as lectors, ushers, choristers, altar guild members, and acolytes.
2. We need volunteers in outreach, especially in nursing home ministry, prayer ministry on Monday night and on Thursdays at Pickering House, parish health, and pastoral care.
3. Pray and ask God what he would have you to do. Remember that it is very easy to get too many irons in the fire. When he calls you to engage in one ministry, he may be calling you to disengage in another.
4. Pray and ask God what he would have you to give financially. The answer he gives you will probably surprise you by its size. Step out in faith and make adjustments to your discretionary spending patterns in order to fully fund the figure that seems right to you as you pray. God will be glorified by your obedience, and the work of the Kingdom will be accomplished.
5. Never forget that we are called to follow Jesus in the way of the cross. If stewardship seems easy, we are probably not giving enough in some category.
6. Finally, consider giving of yourself by attending Christian worship every week in the year to come. Jesus gave us very few direct admonitions, but he says that we should receive the sacrament when we meet together, and the Scriptures tell us to “forsake not the assembling of ourselves.” In the long run, the Kingdom of God will go forth with or without our time, talents, and money. We would be the poorer in such a world, but God’s kingdom would continue to exist and function. The real basis of our life together is to follow him in obedience, and a significant part of that obedience is to meet together each week to hear the Word and receive the Sacrament.
As a sultry September rolls into October, let us give thanks for small things in our lives, for dogs and gentle rains, and blued metal on fine walnut, for bamboo fly rods, and the abundance of the world. May God bless us all, and guide us as we pledge ourselves, and all that we love, to his service.
Sincerely,
Bill+

What Really Matters

2010-09-25T04:35:00.000-07:00

Sermon Proper 21 C The Sunday closest to September 28

I Timothy 6:6-19
Luke 16:19-31
Preached at St. John’s Lancaster

We Americans tend to be a rather pragmatic people; and that is not a bad thing- as a general rule. Like the Ancient Romans, whose heirs we are in so many ways, we are inventive and flexible, willing to borrow good ideas whatever their source, and generally ready to put in the hard work to make a program work if we are convinced of its value. But the problem with pragmatism is that it tends to imagine that whatever works is ultimately right, and that is not always the case. Slavery worked pretty well in the pre-machine era. Paying sub-living wages without benefits works pretty well in a geographic area where there are lots of undocumented workers (or illegal aliens, you choose the term) and little enforcement of fair labor practices. A second potential problem with pragmatism is that it can easily come to value that which is quantifiable and measurable over that which is harder to conceive in material terms. Instead of valuing “righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness” as our epistle lesson today encourages us to do, pragmatism taken to excess can lead us to measure the worth of our lives and the lives of those around us in terms of more visible economic factors. Disposable income, short term financial security, diversification of resources, and running in the right circles, power or control over others, can and often do replace those more illusive and hard to define virtues commended by St. Paul.
Today’s Gospel lesson tells the story of Dives and Lazarus, who lived in a town in ancient Israel and saw each other almost every day. One was very poor and one was very rich. But after their deaths, the poor man went into Abraham’s bosom, and the rich man went to that other place. Their Earthly roles were as it were reversed. When the rich man, Dives, cried out for mercy and sought relief for his 5 still living brothers if not for himself, he was told in no uncertain terms that we are all responsible for the decisions we make in life, and that his 5 brothers, like himself, must use the many resources God had given them to turn to him, amend their lives, and do the right thing. Jesus goes on to say that even the miracle of one rising from the dead would be unlikely to change their hearts, because they had decided long ago to pursue wealth and power and pleasure rather than the things of God. The blessings they had received had become idols and in effect turned their heads, and caused them to ignore those things which really are important, those things that we cannot measure in an account book; things like “righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness.”
The Fathers of the Church generally studied the scriptures by employing various independent methodologies to examine and evaluate the text, much like our Education for Ministry group does today when they engage in theological reflection. One of their standard methodologies was to look for hidden allegorical meanings in the Scriptural passage they were prayerfully studying. They sought to discern if God was telling them anything in the symbols, the numbers, or the circumstances of the story itself. St. Jerome, who lived from 347 to 420 and translated the Bible into Latin, looked into the symbolism of Lazarus and the 5 brothers of Dives, the rich man, and noted a deep and abiding truth about the nature of that pragmatic outlook which is so prevalent among us today. In his Homily on Lazarus and Dives, Jerome observed that Lazarus, the poor man, had much in common with the call of Jesus for us all to walk away from the wealth of the world and to embrace the things of God. He went on to say, “…you have five brothers: sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch. These are the brothers to whom formerly you were enslaved. Since they were the brothers you loved, you could not love your brother Lazarus. Naturally, you could not love him as brother, because you loved them. Those brothers have no love for poverty. Your sight, your sense of smell, your taste, and your sense of touch were your brothers. These brothers of yours loved wealth, and they had no eye for poverty.” You see, Dives found himself unable to see and respond to Lazarus, the true spiritual poverty of Christ, because he was so enamored by the wonderful sensory input that was all around him. He was so focused on those things that he could experience in a measurable and tactile manner that he lost sight of those more immeasurable and spiritual things: righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness. So in our pragmatism, we must be very careful or we will become so caught up in those things that we know by the means of this world, that we fail to apprehend the truths of the Holy Spirit, which are again: righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness.
We, like the men and women of every era, have a tendency to focus on those things that are immediately around us, and in our busyness and amidst the responsibilities of life, we tend to focus on those things which we immediately perceive with our five senses. Perhaps the pragmatic, or “do what works” nature of our own age even makes these tendencies more pronounced. It is good to be attentive, and it is good to be practical, and it is good to employ those five senses that our Lord has given us and blessed by his own incarnation. But we must be very careful not to overdo a good thing, giving primacy to our sensory perceptions and our willingness to declare something good just because it works to the exclusion of those more important things: righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness. It is so easy like Dives to become so enamored by the distractions of sensory luxury and pleasure that we fail to see our brother Lazarus, who is Christ’s call for us to focus on the development of that spiritual poverty which is the door to heaven’s joys.
Before concluding today, I must return from St. Jerome’s spiritual interpretation of the parable of Dives and Lazarus to a more conventional interpretation which is every bit as valid. If we fail to see the poor in our midst and do what we can to help them, we will pay the price for our failure at the judgment. God expects us to use the gifts with which he has entrusted us to help our neighbors in need. Among us there will be differences of how this might best be done. Some will advocate for increased government action and some will call for more private sector efforts. Some will call for a greater proportion of direct aid in cash and kind and others will stress education and joint service to a greater degree. Some will call for immediate and direct aid , and others will call for more stringent, and perhaps slower, methodologies of delivery to address the possibility of fraud. We may disagree about how best to help those in need, but every Christian must heed the call of our Saviour to help those in need. The consequences of failing to heed this call are eternal.
In today’s lessons, I see a dual message. The more immediate reality is that there are many people today who suffer the ravages of poverty, and we as Christians are required to help them. The second is just as real, but perhaps seems less immediate in our day to day lives. It is that we sometimes get so caught up the physical aspects of life that we neglect those spiritual realities which ought to define who we are and how we behave. Would the people who know you best say that you are righteous, godly, and filled with faith and love for God and man? Would they say that your daily life is characterized by endurance and gentleness which is an inspiration to those around you? If not, perhaps you have chosen over the years to serve those five brothers of whom blessed Jerome preached. Perhaps today is the time to invite God to turn your heart from the pleasures and responsibilities of this world, that you might see Jesus more clearly, and serve him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN.

Real Stewardship

2010-09-18T14:39:00.001-07:00

Sermon Proper 20C
Luke 16:1-13
Preached at St. John’s Lancaster

Today’s Gospel lesson has always left me scratching my head just a bit. Why would Jesus take a man as deceitful as the steward and use him as an example of anything good? I suppose in the past, I’ve always avoided looking up the answer by simply preaching on one of the other texts, but this year, I have decided to work through the question, and here is the answer I found in a book by the Rev’d Canon Leon Morris, who served as Warden of Tyndale House Cambridge, Principal of Ridley College, Melbourne, and visiting Professor of New Testament studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School outside Chicago. Canon Morris holds a Ph.D in New Testament studies from Cambridge, and was the general editor of the Tyndale New Testament commentary, probably the last great Anglican commentary produced in the 20th century. By anyone’s standard, he is one of the ‘go to’ scholars of the last century.
It seems that the unjust steward in today’s lesson was what today we would call a factor; an estate manager who was responsible for the day to day running of the estate, and usually acted as he saw fit without the knowledge or daily oversight of the owner. It may be that the amounts by which he discounted the accounts were commissions which were coming to him, but even if that were the case, and we cannot be sure that it was, he was a man who was guilty of employing the law in a way that left the letter intact, but ignored the spirit of the same. Jewish usury laws were designed to protect the poor from avaricious lenders, and to prevent the rise of widespread penury in the land. But over the years, a legal fiction arose which maintained that as long as the transactions were done in kind, and not in cash, and as long as the debtor’s entire store of the commodity was not exhausted by the creditor, usury had not taken place. By means of this fiction, individuals and families were left with a barn full of grain or a relatively substantial supply of oil, but came to assume tremendous, and even crippling debts. Think of an unscrupulous credit card company or bank today who charged say 15 or 18% interest, but added fees upon fees to make the debt virtually unpayable, and which was almost always willing to increase credit limits for customers who were in trouble. A cursory reading of the contract might seem to indicate a fair rate for unsecured debt, but the devil was in the fine print, where the fees and penalties multiplied so quickly. The amounts involved in these transactions were enormous. In the first example of the oil, the amounts indicate the entire annual output of 146 olive trees, a sizable orchard for the time. In the second example of the wheat, they are talking about the output of about 100 acres by the production standards of the day. Remember that all labor was by hand, and the only machine was a simple wooden plow without a moldboard and pulled by oxen or donkeys. In this case, the Factor, the unjust steward, seems to have built himself quite a little empire, completely legally, but utterly unscrupulously, without the knowledge of the Laird of the manor. When the Laird returned from his travels and discovered how his factor was treating his neighbors, he was furious. There was no grounds for imprisonment, but dismissal was certainly in order. And so the Factor went to the debtors whom he had lured into debt, and offered to cut his own profits (his commissions if you will) in order to ingratiate himself with his victims. His thought was that even when the Laird sacked him and blackballed him with the other lairds, he would be welcomed into the houses of those debtors whose fortunes he had saved. The Laird was astounded, and decided to keep such a cunning businessman on the payroll, but in all probability, he watched him a bit more closely in the future.
Jesus doubtless struck a chord with his hearers when he told this story. They had all run into men like the unjust steward. Perhaps many of them had found themselves in debt to such a man. While they were simmering with anger at their own memories of such men, Jesus said. “Such men know how to make the most out of even a bad situation. What do you do with the situations of your lives? God gives all of you certain opportunities, certain commodities with which to make your way in the world. Are you using them wisely to advance the kingdom of God? Do you use your resources to help your neighbors in need? Do you squeeze the last bit of good out of every bit of wealth with which God has entrusted you? Or do you simply sit back and do nothing, letting the resources of God accumulate dust while people made in His image are suffering all around you. I call upon you to use everything God has given you actively and wisely and boldly to advance the kingdom of God. The children of this world are so much better at this than you. Learn to be faithful in small things, and God will entrust you with much. Be wise in your work to establish the kingdom of heaven, and at the end of the age you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings!”
The question remains for us today. How are you doing as a steward of the blessings that God has brought into your life? Do you give of your money to support the work of God in the world? The Bible indicates that 10% is a reasonable place for us to start. Do you nourish your soul and mind , the imagio Dei, the image of God, by regular study of God’s ways and by attendance upon the sacraments Christ has given for our salvation? Do you volunteer at church and in the community in order to help those less fortunate than you? At the end of the day, today’s lessons are about stewardship, and they call us to invest boldly in the things of God. Our time, our talents, our treasure, and the care of our own souls are all the proper objects of stewardship. God gave his all for us, and now, he calls us to take up our cross and follow him by sacrificing and taking the risks necessary to do the work of his kingdom. Sometimes, those who are in the world do a much better job than we do in cultivating and employing the resources at their disposal. We are called to give to the maintenance of our holy mother the church, to relieve the suffering of the destitute, and to enable the good news of Jesus to be proclaimed to all people. Think on these things this week as you divide your time, as you do your banking, and as you have opportunity to apprehend the needs all around us. God will bless you as you put him first, and you will lay up for yourself treasure in heaven. AMEN.

Reflections on Forgiveness

2010-09-11T18:16:00.000-07:00

Proper 19C: The Sunday Closest to September 14
Exodus 32:7-14
Psalm 51:1-11
I Timothy 1:12-17
Luke 15:1-10
Preached at St. John's Lancaster

And they said of Jesus, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” “So He told them this parable…and he told them, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Are you happy when a sinner repents? I don’t mean a person who has had some bad breaks and then things come together for them, or a person who really needs to grow up, who comes to his or her senses. I mean a really bad person who rebels against God and hurts other people. I would suppose that for most of us, it depends on who the sinner is and what the sinner has done. When I see someone who has squandered their life and happiness in drink, drugs, or sex that is not particularly related to my family, I am thrilled that such a person comes to terms with their past and with God, and I wish them nothing but the best. But what about when it is closer to home? What about that former spouse who was so abusive, and who destroyed the people who were nearest and dearest to me? What about the drunk driver who robbed my son or daughter of life or health or reason? What about the child molester or the murderer or the terrorist? Then, for almost all of us, the command to follow the example of Jesus and the Holy Angels becomes much, much more difficult.
The Gospel lesson makes it hard enough, that I should be happy over the repentance of such a person, and that I should be willing to welcome their presence; but today’s Old Testament lesson makes it even harder, and as it were raises the bar to a seemingly impossible level. The children of Israel had fallen into idolatry almost as soon as Moses left them to go up on the mountain. By their calculated actions, they had despised everything Moses had done, and mocked God Himself. By my standards, Moses would have been very justified to be angry with such a people, but when God announced His determination to judge the people there in the wilderness, Moses poured out his heart with all of the love and eloquence he could muster. “Oh Lord…turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people.” You see, Moses went far beyond simply standing back and being happy and welcoming those who had rebelled against God and hurt him personally after they decided to turn again to the Father. He actively interceded that God might have mercy on them and give them another chance to live lives of fullness, joy, and opportunity. The Bible calls us all today to consider whether we are willing to do as much.
Yesterday was the anniversary of the attack on our country, and on our culture, that we have come to call simply “9-11.” Flags across our land were flown at half-staff, memorial services were held, and patriotic and devotional e-mails were sent by the thousands between Americans who still struggle to deal with the shock and horror of that day. In the midst of our grief and anger, we still sometimes wish to strike out, and our words and attitudes seem intuitively justified. The only problem is that our religion, the way of the Cross, is counter-intuitive, and it calls us to love our enemies, to pray for those who despitefully use us and persecute us. In imitation of our Lord, we are called not only to be welcoming to sinners and to rejoice at their conversion. We are called as the people of God to actively work to be the agents of God’s mercy to the most guilty people in this world. We are called to be peacemakers where there is no peace, and to bring reconciliation where there is nothing but mistrust and hatred.
So often, we make excuses to escape the clear teaching of God to follow the example not only of Jesus and the Angels, but of Moses as well. We say that in the midst of our grief, we are working through the stages of healing, and that anger is an important part of that process. That may be true, but to stagnate in one stage of the process is not merely bad mental health- it is sin against God, because it represents a denial of his ability to bring us healing and a disregard for the clear command of Scripture. Many of us have also claimed the responsibility of bringing God’s justice and retribution on the evil that is so real in this world. St. Paul makes it abundantly clear that governments are instituted among men to restrain evil, but he, along with the rest of the Biblical authors, also makes it abundantly clear that it is God who is ultimately the judge, and the vindicator. We humans ought to be very careful that the power we may hold in our political and economic institutions is used with compassion and a true regard for justice for all who are made in the image of God.
In clear language then, God calls all of us who have given our Lives to Jesus Christ to embrace a new way of forgiveness and sacrifice. He calls us to be willing to work and live in such a way that everyone, even our most decided enemies, might be drawn to know the love of God and the saving transformation of relationship with Jesus. When I consider such a high standard, such a difficult order, I realize that I cannot do this thing on my own, for my anger is too great, my hurt too deep. And this is where God speaks to us today in St. Paul’s second letter to Timothy. Paul humbly follows the example of King David in today’s Psalm and admits that this is not a thing he can do on his own. In fact, he acknowledges that in times past, he was the chief of sinners, a blasphemer who persecuted and hounded the church of God. But in spite of such a past, God strengthened him, judged him faithful, and appointed him to heavenly service. As the free and unmerited grace and love of God flowed through his heart, Paul was transformed into an example of God’s patience, that in Christ Jesus even the most notorious sinner might come to believe in Him unto eternal life. We serve that same God who called, cleansed, and empowered the Apostle to be an example of God’s love…that all people might come to acclaim Him as Saviour and Lord. As He empowered Paul, so He will empower you and me, for He has called us and set us apart for the task, and where He calls, He enables.
To be sure, the task is daunting. In a world so often filled with the darkness of hatred, violence, retribution, and justification of the same, we are called to bring the light of Christ. We are called to be different: to live beyond the hatred, to seek alternatives to the violence, to eschew the retribution, and to resist the attempts to justify the same. Through us, God has deigned for His light to shine into the world that all might be saved.
And so, as we come to our God at this table on this day, let us recall in our minds those most painful times, those most horrendous offences against ourselves and God, and let us seek his grace that we might forgive others as we have been forgiven. Jesus said that without such forgiveness, we will not find a place in His kingdom. Let us beseech Him today to heal our past memories, to fill our hearts with love, and to give us a strength not our own to rejoice over the sinner who repents, and to offer ourselves in service to even the most onerous people, that they might see the living Christ in us, and that by our example they might share with us in that forgiveness which comes only from God. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN.

Choices

2010-09-02T10:33:00.000-07:00

Proper 18C- the Sunday closest to September 7
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Psalm 1
Preached at St. John's, Lancaster

All of us make choices every day. Some of our choices are good, and some are, well, not so good. On occasion, all of us have even made choices that are just bad. I believe it was Archbishop Temple who said that “when we choose well, God reigns, and when we choose poorly, God reigns.” But today’s first lesson and Psalm are not about the impact of our choices on God’s sovereignty; rather they remind us that we are personally responsible for the choices we make, and that those choices do have consequences in this world, and in the world to come.
The problem with lectionary readings is that they tend to be removed from their context. Today’s first lesson, for example, consists of six verses which comprise an ancient near eastern suzerainty treaty offered by God to the people of Israel. The conqueror (God) offers to the subject people (Israel) a no nonsense proposition: “If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God…God will bless you…But if your heart turns away and you do not hear…you shall perish…” In reality, this “treaty proclamation” from a soverign Lord to a subject people is a small part of the farewell address of Moses to the Children of Israel. It begins at chapter 29, verse 2, and concludes at chapter 31, verse 15. It is just over two pages long, or 61 verses. Taken in the shortened form that we heard today, the choice sounds rather stark and forbidding, but taken in its full context, it paints a beautiful picture of the grace manifested usward by a loving heavenly Father. Let me illustrate by giving you a synopsis of Moses’ address to the people:
Paragraph 1: You all saw the great wonders by which God delivered you from the hand of Pharoah, but to this day you do not understand what really happened.
Paragraph 2: For forty years, you have been the recipient of God’s bounty and protection, your clothes never wore out, and you defeated enemies that were much stronger than you. Keep the provisions of His Covenant, and you will continue to be blessed by God.
Paragraph 3: You have come here today to pledge yourself to the covenant which God offered to our ancestors, but it is not with you alone that God makes the covenant. He makes it with your children and indeed with all those who will come after you.
Paragraph 4: If any of you today plan to give lip service to this covenant, but intend to follow your own stubbornness and serve false Gods instead of the true God, know that disaster will fall upon you, for you cannot hide your self-flattery and plotting from God.
Paragraph 5: If you refuse this covenant offered by God, your fate will become proverbial among all the nations of the earth.
Paragraph 6: There are mysteries hidden from the foundations of the world, but God has revealed this wisdom and this covenant to us and our children for ever, therefore let us keep its terms inviolate.
Paragraph 7: If you observe the terms of this covenant, God will gather you back to the land that He has prepared for you. Whatever you may have done, and wherever you may have been scattered, He will gather you back to the land of your ancestral yearning, and give you prosperity.
Paragraphs 8 and 9 bear repeating in full: “The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you will love him with all your heart and soul and you will live. The Lord your God will turn all these curses against your enemies and the foes who persecute you. Then you will obey the Lord once more and keep all his commandments which I gave you this day. The Lord your God will make you prosperous in all that you do, in the fruit of your body and of your cattle and in the fruits of your soil; for, when you obey the Lord your God by keeping his commandments and statutes, as they are written in this book of the law, and when you turn back to the Lord your God with all your heart and soul, he will again rejoice over you and be good to you, as he rejoiced over your forefathers. This commandment that I lay on you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. It is not in the heavens, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to the heavens for us to fetch it and tell it to us, so that we can keep it?’ Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross the sea for us to fetch it and tell it to us, so that we can keep it?’ It is a think very near to you, on your lips and in your heart ready to be kept.” and then comes today’s first lesson: “Today I offer you the choice of life and good, or death and evil.”
So you see, this Covenant is not merely a demand uttered in a vacuum to us mere mortals. God recounts the history of how he has taken care of his people that we might be encouraged to believe that he will take care of us as well. He states again the prophesy that even though we are scattered by our sins and the bad choices of the past, He will bring us together and give us a new start in the promised land. He will come and recondition our hearts and motives, and protect us from the enemies of our souls. He will instill in us such an overwhelming love for Himself that we will gladly follow these laws and statutes which he has given for our own good. Those laws and statutes which are not strangers to us, for they are clearly taught in the books of nature and revelation, that we should love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves. And that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us. God has not hidden his will from us, nor has he rendered us incapable of doing this good. Rather he has acted to reveal his will to us in the clear words of the Bible, to write it upon our hearts, and to so fill us with love that we will desire to do that which is right. Far from a stark and impossible choice offered to a conquered people, the Covenant of God is a divine and blessed way offered freely to a chosen people by a loving and merciful God. And so we rejoice with Bishop Caesarius of Arles, and with the saints of God through the ages that “God has put it into the power of each one to choose and to stretch out his hand to whatever he wishes,#” to good or to evil, to life or to death, to heaven or to hell.
Know that on this day, the God who made you in his image, who loved you enough to send His only Son to die for your sins, that same God calls and enables you to make the most important decision you will ever make. Receive His love, walk in His ways, live in joyous obedience to His revealed statutes, and he will fill your heart with peace, and with joy, and in the world to come, he will gather you into the promised land, the new Jerusalem. AMEN.

A Rant Concerning Postmodern Notions of Right and Wrong, (with apologies to John Ruskin)

2010-08-26T19:53:00.001-07:00

A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME…

Walter Williams, the noted economist and educator, recently said during a radio address that when he was a young man, it was commonly understood in the African-American community that “Urban Renewal” was simply a socially acceptable substitute for “Negro Removal.” Over the last couple of centuries, professional philosophy’s fascination with definitions and subjective reality have crept into everyday life to an alarming degree. “Intact Dilation and Extraction” sounds clinical enough to be welcomed as a necessary and acceptable part of medical reality. The Romans simply called it “Infanticide.” All of us who are old enough to remember the 1990’s recall one of our elected leaders discussing the meaning of the word “if” with reporters. Subjective use of vocabulary has become in our day an acceptable means of what might be called a nuanced approach to verity. I cannot help but think that we would be better off to call it what many of our great grandparents called it: lying.
A century and a half ago, John Ruskin addressed this same problem in his essay “Of The Pathetic Fallacy” (Modern Painters, III, 1856) “German dulness, and English affectation, have of late much multiplied among us the use of two of the most objectionable words that were ever coined by the troublesomeness of metaphysicians,- namely, ‘Objective,’ and ‘Subjective.’ No words can be more exquisitely, and in all points, useless…” He complains that by means of redefinition and cunningly reasoned argument, there were those philosophers who denied the place of common sense and of what Jefferson called ‘that which was self-evident.’ Ruskin realized that the word games of the philosophers ultimately meant that there was no categorical imperative, no right and wrong determined by a loving Creator, no ultimate rule of justice, or of pragmatic utility, or even of nature. Where subjectivity replaces objective reality, what is right to me is just as valid as what is right to you, or right to anyone else, even if I am dead wrong.
Certainly, I doubt many of the holders of such beliefs would apply them to the medical or structural world. My contention that I felt very deeply about healing and that I had field dressed many birds and rabbits, and a few deer, would not in their eyes qualify me to perform experimental surgery on them when they were in the hospital, even if I were convinced that my procedures represented a great advance in medical science. In the same way, I doubt that many of them would board an airplane made of hemp and recycled plastic, and powered by an inadequate engine simply because I believed that it was good for the environment. And yet in the areas of cultures and morals, they are adamant that subjectivity is the norm that must be applied. I would differ. It was good that the British outlawed suttee and slavery in their empire. It was also good that the Nazis were defeated, and that Marxism-Leninism was discredited and lost its base of power with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Some ways of doing things may not be perfect, but they are better than others. It is also better not to steal than to steal, and to maintain the nuclear family as a committed body for the rearing of children than to declare sexual freedom for all, with its inevitable results of fatherless children and widespread venereal disease.
Ruskin makes a good argument in “Of The Pathetic Fallacy” that objective reality, or categorical imperative, or the Law of Nature’s God, is much more real than many of us moderns are willing to admit. I daresay that we would all be better off if we would be honest with ourselves, stop playing at redefining words and splitting hairs, and realize that there are certain laws of creation that we ignore or deny to our peril.

September's Musings: Birds, Icons, and Creedal Christrianity

2010-08-20T14:48:00.000-07:00

Rector’s Rambling: September 2010

Freckles and Monet, the parakeets, are chattering pleasantly in the dining room as I write today. As I walked back from the car to the house a few minutes ago, I could hear the Speckled Sussex hens clucking amicably as the rooster, a rather nasty and self-important brute, crowed triumphantly in the distance. Earlier in the day, my pheasants were as agitated as the quail were quiet in their respective pens. There is no accounting for avian personalities or proclivities. But I do love having the birds around. There is a sense of rightness about being surrounded by the mesmerizing sounds and the seemingly synchronized beat of wings as a flock of birds moves together, apparently leaderless, but as if on cue. After a long and hot summer of waiting, the chickens are starting to lay. The eggs are small, pullet eggs, but as the hens mature, the size of the eggs will increase. Nothing in the store can quite match the color or taste of fresh free range eggs from happy girls. Surely God has blessed me and surrounded me with things that I love.
Often, I see Briarwood, our home, as a sort of Icon. At its best, it gives me a glimpse of what heaven just might be like. Sometimes, it also reminds me of our parish home a St. John’s. Filled with all kinds of birds, beautiful, somewhat unpredictable and certainly uncontrollable, it is a place where I so often experience God in our midst. It often leaves me with a rather rushed sense of being completely out of control, but it also teaches me that God is always in control, and that through circumstances and senescent beings that always seem to surprise me, God is working out his purposes not only in the world, but in each of our lives.
Of late, I’ve been trying to read a bit more serious theology. Bishop Nazir-Ali of Rochester, Archbishop Williams of Canterbury, John Calvin, and of course the Church Fathers. But I am still recalled to the standards which have impacted my life for so long: Anthony Trollope’s “The Warden”, assorted poetry of the English Romantics, and Spencer’s Faerie Queen are always high on my list for browsing. I find great comfort in the company of ideas new and old, and it is a wonderful feeling to discuss with my wife and children how those ideas fit together. I believe with those who have gone before me that God is unavoidable in and around every idea, the good ones and the bad ones, because he employs them to ultimately draw us to himself. As we exercise the reason with which He has endowed us, we come to see His fingerprints on all of human experience. That is I suppose why radicalism and extremism is so dangerous. The higher our emotions run, it seems the less likely we are to see God all around us. Certainly emotions are a good thing which help us to know love and to perceive God with us, but when they run unchecked, they lead us to fearful expressions of ego and thoughtlessness which consume us and all we have built over the centuries.
It interests me that those on the left generally blame those on the right of unthinking extremism, and those on the right generally return the charge against those on the left. What a shame it is that both are so often right! In our attempts to control and manipulate each other into some imagined ideal conformity, we tend to become hateful and absolute…and not very pleasant to be around. Oh how I wish I could go back and tame the intemperateness of my youth. A bout with melanoma and encroaching years really have made a difference in my outlook and my faith.
The end of the matter is however so very simple. I am to love the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and my neighbor as myself. I suppose a corollary would be that I ought to acknowledge my own inability to consistently get things right, and put my trust in Jesus Christ, the Incarnate God, who came to make amends for all my shortcomings and to offer me fullness and peace in this world and the next. Another might be that I really ought not to think too much of myself, and that my ultimate holiness is more or less dependent on modeling among family and friends the kind of relationships that God models for us all in His character as Trinity in Unity.
This “Rector’s Ramble has been pretty rambly today, but it is too hot to do anything else, and so like my friends Freckles and Monet, I have chosen to chirp away in joy and hopefully with some sense of God’s harmony.
Sincerely,
Bill+

Holy Fire

2010-08-11T17:24:00.000-07:00

Proper 15C The Sunday Closest to August 17
Isaiah 5:1-7 or Jeremiah 23:23-29
Hebrews 11:29-12:2
Luke 12:49-56

Today’s Propers are very troubling. The Old Testament Lesson speaks of judgment come upon God’s people because of their unfaithfulness. When I look upon the falling attendance in so many denominations, the financial difficulties faced by parishes and by extra parochial ministries, and the general lack of unity among Christians today, I am compelled to conclude that perhaps in this age we are seeing the fulfillment of that prophesy regarding what God will do to His people to recall them to lives of justice and holiness. It would not be the first time in history that God had given His people enough rope to hang themselves to lead the community of faith to rigorous self-examination, repentance, and faith. The second lesson, from Hebrews, continues last week’s catalogue of the heroes of the faith, but makes it increasingly obvious that to heroically stand for God’s ways will put a person, or an institution, at odds with the world at large, and will lead to persecution. We have seen it in our own experience. No one seems to like a boat rocker, and yet sometimes the people of God are called to make a bit of a fuss on behalf of those who suffer the gross injustices and wrongs that are so characteristic of human society. Eventually, the majority may come around to addressing the wrong that the prophet of God illuminates, but generally, the prophet is seen as an annoyance we are unwilling to tolerate, and is cast aside in one way or another. But perhaps the most troubling lesson of all today is that of the Gospel. It challenges our preferred vision of Jesus as gentle pastoral philosopher who went about doing kind and cuddly things. When he says, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled,”# the Lord leaves us with an uneasy sense of uncertainty. We all remember playing with fire as children. It was so wonderful and unpredictable. It was beautiful and consuming, and it could turn and hurt us so very quickly. It is ultimately a disturbing image, which causes us to ask with St. Cyril of Jerusalem, “Why is it fire?”#
I would argue that St. Ambrose of Milan best answered that question in his fourth century work Isaac, or The Soul. “Love is good, having wings of burning fire that flies through the saint’s breasts and hearts and consumes whatever is material and earthly but tests whatever is pure. With its fire, love makes whatever it has touched better. The Lord Jesus sent this fire on earth. Faith shined brightly. Devotion was enkindled. Love was illuminated. Justice was resplendent. With this fire, he inflamed the heart of his apostles, as Cleophas bears witness, saying, “Was not our heart burning within us, while he was explaining the Scriptures?”(Luke 24:32) The wings of fire are the flames of the divine Scripture.”# St. Cyril of Alexandria echoes this understanding of the words of Jesus. “We affirm that the fire that Christ sent out is for humanity’s salvation and profit. May God grant that all our hearts be full of this. The fire is the saving message of the gospel and the power of its commandments. We were cold and dead because of sin and in ignorance of him who by nature is truly God. The gospel ignites all of us on earth to a life of piety and makes us fervent in spirit, according to the expression of blessed Paul.(Romans 12:11) Besides this, we are also made partakers of the Holy Spirit, who is like fire within us. We have been baptized with fire and the Holy Spirit. We have learned the way from what Christ says to us. Listen to his words: “Truly I say to you, except a man be born of water and spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”(John 3:5)”#
Does your heart burn within you? Does the love of God fly through your breast with wings of burning fire? Has God’s fire ignited you to a life of piety and fervency? Do faith, devotion, love, and justice inflame your heart? We were all cold and dead and walked in ignorance of him who is the true God, but now we have been baptized with fire, and the Holy Spirit- and we are called by God to demonstrate the reality of his holy fire to a world where so many are alone, and discouraged, and without hope. As they see the results of God’s anointing with fire in our lives, they will be drawn to his love, and will be transformed into his glory. And there will be those who will reject us even as they reject our Lord, because that piety which he places in us will remind them of the evil of their selfish ways. Our devotion to him will seem to them a root of intolerance. Our love will be interpreted as weakness. Our faith will be called a crutch for the unrealistic. And households will be divided, two against three and three against two as the word of God goes forth to the saving of the nations.
On this day, we are called to examine our lives honestly. Does your life exhibit the fire of God? Has your baptism resulted in a life of humility, honest introspection, ethical righteousness, and a desire to see God’s justice roll down like a mighty river in this world, and not just in the world to come? Have you truly forgiven those who do you wrong, even as Jesus forgave you when he said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”?(Luke 23:34) If so, give thanks to God in all humility, and go forth to share his love with everyone you meet. If not, let this be the day that you receive God’s cleansing and redirection, lest you, like the people of God in today’s Old Testament lesson, are judged and given over to the tormenters of this world that you might be brought back to God through the recognition of your own misery.
“We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us …lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.”(Hebrews 12:1-2) In the Name of the Father, and of the son, and of The Holy Ghost. AMEN.

The Most Important Thing

2010-08-07T08:35:00.000-07:00

Sermon Proper 14C The Sunday closest to August 10
St. Luke 12:32-40 Preached at St. John's Lancaster

Jesus is coming again! It may be during the middle of the night. It may be near dawn. It may be tomorrow. It may be in a a thousand years. But Jesus is coming again. Of that you may rest assured. Before He left this world, He said that the people of the earth would see Him coming on the clouds of heaven. At His ascension, the holy angels told the disciples that He would come, again in glory, on the clouds, just as he had been taken up that day. The ancient Creed of St. Athanasius, affirmed historically on the great feast days of the church at Morning Prayer, states unmistakably and succinctly the beliefs of the body of Christ about this parousia, or coming again: “He ascended into heaven, he sitteth on the right hand of the Father, God Almighty: from whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies: and shall give account for their own works. And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting: and they that have done evil into everlasting fire. This is the Catholick Faith: which except a man believe faithfully, he cannot be saved. Glory be to the Father, and to the son: and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. AMEN”
According to Nelson’s Illustrated Bible Dictionary, parousia is “a Greek word that refers to the Second Coming, or the return of the Lord Jesus Christ at the end of this age to set up His kingdom, judge His enemies, and reward the faithful. The Greek word literally means, ‘a being alongside,’ hence ‘appearance’ or ‘presence.’ Christians are ‘looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our Great God and Savior Jesus Christ’ (Titus 2:13). This blessed hope of the Parousia, or Second Coming, sustains believers in a godless age.”
And so, this good news of the Second Coming is meant to “sustain believers in a godless age.” How interesting it is that this news which sustained the men and women of God through the disownings and dislocations of the first century, through the great persecutions of the second and early third centuries, through those horrible sixth and seventh centuries when all the world seemed turned upside down, and the great shrines of our faith fell to the forces of Mahomet- that same good news has sustained the people of God through the great bloodlettings of the twentieth century when Stalin, Mao, and the others slaughtered so many of our brothers and sisters for refusing to give the state higher reverence than they gave to their Lord and Saviour, their Brother and Friend Jesus Christ. And now, in an era when so many things are so good for so many of us, but when the way of Christ seems to be marginalized and relegated to the realm of personal preference in so many ways, we are called with our brothers and sisters of ages past to take comfort in seeing the “big picture.” You see, whatever may happen in our individual lives, or in this world, Jesus is coming again. “And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting: and they that have done evil into everlasting fire.” And so, you see, there is justice after all. The loving God who made the world and created us in His image did not abandon us to destruction. It is true that he has given us the gift of free will, and sometimes we have by his grace used it to his glory and to the betterment of all; and sometimes we have in our selfishness used it to horrible ends. But even in our bad decisions, He is working to bring about salvation to all those who cry out to Him and receive the provision He has provided in His Only Begotten Son Jesus Christ- and he is indeed accomplishing the regeneration and deliverance of the entire created order. Take heart my brothers and sisters. Whatever things may come to trouble you or worse, God knows your Name, and in His faithfulness He will give you strength to rely on Him, and at the end, He will come to receive you as his own.
In today’s Gospel lesson from St. Luke, Jesus makes it clear that being ready spiritually for the coming of Jesus is the single most important thing any of us can do. In His words, He indicates an intimate knowledge of how we think, and of those motivations which so often dominate our lives. As the agent of our creation, and as one who was fully incarnate as one of us, I suppose that is only to be expected. Our Lord lists four temptations which so often lead us astray, and cause us to neglect this greatest gift, namely the gift of our salvation. Fear, enslavement to money, thoughtlessness, and sloth are, in today’s Gospel, posited as perhaps the greatest threats to our souls.
Which of us has not been afraid? When we were children, we were perhaps afraid of the dark, or of being alone. Things have not really changed that much. Have you ever trembled in fear because you feared, or knew that the one you loved so very much might leave you through death, or worse, through desertion or betrayal? Have you ever been afraid that through no fault of your own, you would be unable to meet the physical or emotional needs of your family? The sensation is like a vortex which consumes you, like a whirlpool that you cannot escape. Jesus knew that when such fear takes hold of our hearts, we have precious little energy for anything else, including seeking him. And so he breathes on us a blessing and says, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” And again “Consider the lilies of the field, today they flourish and bloom, and tomorrow they are cut down and cast into the fire, and yet Solomon in all his glory was not clothed as they. Will not your heavenly Father, who clothes the lily, do so much more for you, o ye of little faith?”
And then there is that other truth which distracts us from the love of God- the love of money. Jesus told the rich young ruler that he could not serve both God and mammon. How often have we neglected our families, our selves, and our God to make just a bit more, that we could probably have gotten by without? And yet the drive to make more, whether we need it or not, and at whatever cost, is as addictive as heroin, and it has destroyed just as many lives, just as many families. Today, Jesus repeats that truth “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” St. Paul admonishes Timothy to be aware of those things which he knows he cannot handle, and to flee temptation. Jesus says the same to us today. “If you can’t handle it, give it away, and not only will you help others, but you will remove that temptation to preoccupation and sin which will ultimately cost you your soul if you don’t deal with it now.” John Wesley, that great Church of England priest and evangelist, once said that we should “earn all we can, save all we can, and give all we can.” I daresay he was not just acting as a fundraiser like some early TV evangelist. Rather he was passing on a truth known from the beginning, that acquisition is addictive, and that it will turn our minds and hearts from God in the long run. Nothing in the world, no dream for our children, or our retirement, no lifestyle or home or car is worth losing our souls. Beware the love of money, for as the scripture says, it is the root of evil.
Jesus next turns to military or nautical language as he cautions against that thoughtlessness which can devour our souls. “Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit.” How often have you whiled away the day in some euphoric revel and wondered at the end of the day where the hours had gone? Such a day can be wonderful and relaxing from time to time, but it, like the love of money, can be as addictive as heroin as well. There is a certain discipline involved in seeking and knowing God. It begins with the hard and sometimes unpleasant work of knowing ourselves, of honestly acknowledging and evaluating our strengths and our weaknesses. It involves setting aside our pride and admitting that we need God, and that there are some very important things that we just can’t handle by ourselves. It involves submitting to the way that God has revealed, and not imagining in our pride that we are wiser, and smarter, and better looking that anyone and everyone who has ever walked the earth, and even smarter than God Himself. If I do not by His grace discipline my mind and employ that Imagio Dei, or “image of God” with which I have been endowed, if I do not employ my reason, and my ability to apprehend truth, there is a very strong possibility that I will wait too long, and develop too many bad habits, and at the end will have put off that preparation which is most necessary for the salvation of my soul.
Perhaps sloth, the fourth sin against which Jesus warns us today, is after all a manifestation of this failure to “be dressed for action.” The servants in the parable were probably not bad people, else they would have been dismissed long ago. They had just fallen into the bad habit of getting by with what they could. If someone else would do their work, or feed them, or look after their needs, why should they trouble themselves to be diligent, and work hard, and rise to the responsibilities of life. The Master, after all, had been gone for quite a while, and wasn’t expected back for several more weeks. Laziness in the practical things of life almost always leads to laziness in the spiritual realm, because we are unified beings, and character is not something that we are likely to have in one area of our lives if it is not there in every area of our lives. To take one’s leisure, to put it off another day, and to sponge off of our neighbors might work today, and even tomorrow, but ultimately, it will cost us our souls. It will catch up with us.
And so blessed is that good servant who believes the words of our Lord that he will come again. Blessed is that man or woman who removes by the grace of God and by sheer force of will those impediments which take our eyes off of God and cause us to put off dealing with that thing which is truly most important, namely the salvation of our souls. Blessed is that person who realizes that “now is the time, that today is the day of our salvation.” “You must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour,” and we “shall rise again with our bodies: and shall give account for our own works. And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting: and they that have done evil into everlasting fire. This is the Catholick Faith: which except a man believe faithfully, he cannot be saved.”
If you are not ready this day to meet our Lord at His coming in glory: 1. Affirm the provision that the Triune God has made for you in the Incarnation of Jesus as we say together the creed. 2. Bring him all of your needs in the prayers of the people. 3. Confess your sins in your own words or in those of the general confession as we pray together. 4. Renew your Baptismal vows as you come forward to this altar of God today. And then go forth from this holy place, and “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.” In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. AMEN

A Race Apart

2010-08-02T07:01:00.000-07:00

Proper 13 The Sunday closest to August 3
Colossians 3:1-11

About two weeks ago, I received a call from a very pleasant lady who announced that she was an employee of the recent decennial census. She had apparently stopped by Briarwood while Rebecca and I were at Nashotah House for Margaret’s second birthday party. Apparently, my four decade’s old custom of reporting only constitutionally mandated information had prompted the call. She worked through each of the remaining questions very professionally and politely, and did not seem surprised or annoyed by my increasingly predictable answers. The following day, I found myself pondering the fourth question: “What is your racial or ethnic identity?” My consideration was not related to the census, or to any other modern political or sociological conflicts, real or imagined. Rather, I found myself wondering how an early Christian would have answered such a question.
Archbishop Rowan Williams, in his 2005 book “Why Study the Past?”, demonstrates conclusively that early Christians viewed themselves as “resident aliens” who sought to be good citizens of Rome, but acknowledged a higher sovereignty, that of Jesus Christ. In their letters to each other, they often used the Greek word paroikoi, which means “resident aliens” or “settled migrants.” They saw themselves as a people transformed by God and set apart for his use as a nations of kings and priests. From this transformation flowed a rigorous self-accountability and rather puritanical morality. While the members of the Roman Senatorial and Equestrian classes approved of the Christian’s high moral standards, they could never come to terms with the fact that these Christians would never subordinate the sovereignty of Jesus Christ to that of the empire and it’s representative, the divine Augustus. These Christians, who were set apart by the sort of morality St. Paul admonishes in today’s second lesson, were so committed, so fanatical in their devotion to this Jesus, that they counted martyrdom as their highest crown and as the greatest proof of the power of God in the world.
His Grace Lord Canterbury points out that in the second-century Letter to Diognetus, Christians are described as “a foreign group living in the cities of the empire (and elsewhere, ‘spread throughout the world’), distinguished by no special ethnic costume or alien language but by their allegiance and their consequent behaviour, at home everywhere and nowhere…Christians behave differently…they forswear promiscuity, infanticide (including abortion), fraud and violence; and of course, in the most public counter-cultural witness of all, they will face death for their commitment. This is not just a claim for moral superiority… More important is the role such descriptions have of defining the separate identity of the ekklesia.” (the Church) (Williams p37). You see, in the early centuries, the Church of God, the people of God, were not merely seen as a religion apart, or even as a people apart, but as a separate race, a unique ethnicity; knowable by their rather odd and unique ethical system, set apart from their non-Christian neighbors not by jewelry or clothes or language, but by how their transformation in Christ was lived out in everyday life.
And so, to return to the fourth question on this year’s census form, I suppose that I should have answered, if I was to answer, “Christian.” And yet such an answer seems strange to us today, living as we do in a culture where questions of race are so charged with passion and even violence. We are accustomed to defining race primarily by color, or hair type and texture, or certain physical characteristics. We are prone to lay aside our well intentioned national ideology of individual work and opportunity and to accept, reject, or distance ourselves from a man or woman based on the degree of their physical resemblance to our preconceptions of some group of strangers that we have observed from afar, and which we have never really tried to know. But imagine a world, or even a parish, where race is defined in terms of St Paul’s admonition to the Colossians. ‘You have been raised with Christ. You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. He is your life, and when He is revealed in glory, you will be revealed with Him! Therefore, set your minds on things that are above, not on earthly things. Put those things to death! Fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry) will bring the wrath of God on their practitioners. You used to be like that, but you are now changed in Christ Jesus. Get rid of those things which characterized you old life: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language. Do not lie to each other, because you have stripped off the old self with its ways and have clothed yourself with the new self! And you are being constantly renewed in knowledge according to the image of your Creator. IN THAT RENEWAL, THERE IS NO LONGER GREEK AND JEW, CIRCUMCISED AND UNCIRCUMCISED, BARBARIAN, SCYTHIAN, SALVE AND FREE; BUT CHRIST IS ALL AND IN ALL!’ (Colossians 3:1-11 paraphrased from NRSV, emphasis mine).
Does my behaviour as a Man of God define me in this world as much as does my white skin and blue eyes? It is a disturbing question, but one that is indicative of the nature of my relationship with God in Jesus Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is a question which confronts us all, and which calls us to consider what it means to be raised with Christ in baptism, what it means to identify with Him in the sacrament of Holy Communion, and what it means to go forth from this Holy Place to remember the poor, to pray for the sick, and to be kind to one another.
A caveat is in order at this point. We must never allow this rigor of the early Christian community to become an excuse for feeling that we are better than others, or for looking down on those who do not share our commitment to Jesus Christ. To do so would constitute the worst kind of Pharisaism. Rather it should call us to see our own shortcomings and need of God, and encourage us to ever growing maturity, humility, and godliness. We are called by God to acknowledge the radical transformation that He has accomplished in our lives, and to receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit that we might live into this holiness to which we are called. In such a way, the power of God to transform lives will be shown to all who are willing to see His mercies in the world. Surely we will fail from time to time, because we are but sinners, trusting in Christ alone for salvation. But as the consistency of our character becomes evident to those among whom we sojourn, they will come to see us as a race apart, a community of resident aliens. They will at first reject us for our differences, but ultimately, drawn and convicted by the power of the Holy Spirit, they will come to Name Him as Saviour and Lord, and they will join with us in that eternal priesthood which is the free and unmerited gift of a loving God to all who will believe. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. AMEN.

On Being Christian

2010-07-23T13:04:00.000-07:00

Sermon Proper 12C Colossians 2:6-19

Paul starts today’s lesson with an incredible assumption: “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord.” He assumes that all of those to whom his words are addressed are Christians; that they have “renounced the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all covetous desires of the same, and the sinful desires of the flesh, so that they will not follow, nor be led by them.” He assumes that they “believe in Jesus the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and that they have accepted him, and desire to follow Him as Saviour and Lord.” He begins with the understanding that his readers “Believe all the Articles of the Christian Faith , as contained in the Apostles’ Creed,” that they have “been baptized in this Faith,” and that they have purposed by God’s help to “obediently keep God’s holy will and commandments, and walk in the same all the days of their lives.” It is a significant assumption, but it defines who we are expected to be, and how we are expected to live our lives.
Having established the identity of his readers, Saint Paul proceeds to encourage and admonish the believers at Colossae:
1. “Continue to live your lives in Him, rooted and built up in Him“- Happy is that man or that woman whose foundation is Jesus Christ, the author and finisher of our faith“. Bishop Berkley taught that if Christ ever stopped thinking of us, ever stopped loving us, ever stopped interceding for us for even a moment, we would cease to exist. This is the idea beyond his famous ontological proof of the existence of God, which has confused and frustrated undergraduates for centuries. Saint Paul must have had in mind those older teachings of the prophets which spoke of the day when all of the followers of God would be grafted into the tree of Jesse, that ancient ancestral stock of Israel from which was to spring forth a Messiah, who would redeem his people from their sins. Imagine the comfort God offers us by cutting us away from those roots of bitterness and addiction and pain and prejudice which have led to so much unhappiness throughout our lives, and grafting us into the pure, undefiled rootstock of grace and love which is in Jesus Christ our Lord. The prophets spoke of a day when the old hearts of stone would be taken out of us, and new hearts, tender hearts of love and purity would be put in their places and the law of God would be written on our hearts. In that day, no one of us would serve God or our neighbor because we had to, but rather we would do so because we wanted to. Our motives would be perfected, and we would find the true joy of living lives of love and compassion. That day is upon us as we draw our motivations and attitudes from Him, and we are built up into that Kingdom of our God in the here and now; and they will know we are Christians by our love.
2. The Apostle continues that we ought to be “established in the faith, just as you were taught.” But what is the faith that we have received? What is that common core of truth which has been believed by all Christians, at all places, and in all times? The skeptic might say, Surely there has never been such unity of belief. Certainly there has always been variety of practice and liberty in non-essentials, but where is there evidence of essential unity in the Early Christian community? And yet a careful study of the New testament, and of early church history shows that there is that core of faith which Bishop Lancelot Andrews said was characterized by “one Scripture, Two testaments, three Creeds, Four Ecumenical Councils, and five centuries.” There is a basic statement of our faith which we deny to the peril of our souls. We may never completely understand it, we may never fully appreciate it, but it is there, contained in the creed we repeat every Sunday and lived out in the Sacramental community of which we are a part. You see, God has revealed Himself to us in the books of nature and scripture. In nature, we see the benevolence of a loving creator who makes a world characterized by order and purpose, and says at the end of the day “behold, it is good.” The book of Scripture is the God inspired and God superintended record of the coming of the Christ into the world. In it we see clearly our need established, and God’s loving and merciful provision to meet all of our needs in Jesus Christ. Often, we are tempted to jettison the historic understanding of the people of God about how God shows his mercy to each of us, and to all of us. We imagine in our pride that our understandings and our judgments are wiser and better than those which have been shared by God’s covenant community of faith for the past 3,400 years. Such prideful arrogance is a heady liqueur which has led many to deny the faith received, imagining themselves to be some sort of new Solon or New Solomon. It is a deadly thing to do, to overthrow or ignore the wisdom of the ages, revealed in the books of Natural Science and the Revelation of Christ, and to imagine ourselves wiser than God Himself. It is the idolatry of our age, and of every age.
3. St. Paul’s next admonition perhaps provides the experiential basis for applying what we have learned today to every aspect of our lives. “abounding in thanksgiving.” Is a spirit of thankfulness evident in your life? Is you demeanor such that you are able to see God’s everyday mercies, and the evidences of his love in the midst of life’s vicissitudes and disappointments? Is your experience of God deep enough and regular enough that you sense his love in your family, your employment, and the laughter of friends? Are you able to find a sense of meaning, of purpose in your current situation and in the situations of those around you? Or are you so caught up in the negative events and attitudes of life that thanksgiving, and its companion- joy, has fled from your experience? God offers us that peace which passes all understanding. It is not the giddy false happiness of denial, but rather an abiding confidence that we are loved, and that even in the midst of a sinful and sometimes dangerous world, God is working through the bad as well as the good to perfect our character, and to make us more humane, more self-controlled, more responsible, and more heavenly. In short- he is getting us ready for heaven, and so building our character that others may know the reality of his presence among us. It is this holiness of life and outlook , this set apartness by God and for God which enables us to be thankful in the darkness as well as in the light. At its very heart is that faith which is the “substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen.” It is that confidence that in all things God loves us, and that he is working out his purposes for all mankind in spite of our bad decisions, and through the agency of our good decisions. And for all of these things we can be thankful.
And so we who are signed with the cross, we who are marked as Christ’s own forever, are admonished to look to Jesus as the author and finisher of our faith, the developer of our motives, and the motivator of our deeds. We are called to embrace and practice the faith we have received, not thinking more of ourselves than we ought, and not imagining ourselves to be wiser than the community of faith through the ages. And finally, we are reminded to give thanks in all things, ever remembering that the God who made us and called us loves us as his very own. Through Jesus Christ our Saviour and Lord. AMEN

Traditional Faith

2010-07-21T20:18:00.000-07:00

Rector’s Rambling: August 2010

Over the past few days, I’ve been previewing the video tapes of the Anglican-Orthodox dialogue held last year at Nashotah House, one of our Episcopal Seminaries. From time to time, a singular sentiment is voiced by both the Anglican and the Orthodox speakers at the conference. They point out that we in the modern west are so focused on being either liberal or conservative, when the real question for us liturgical Christians ought to be whether or not we are traditional. Political questions and issues come and go. Interpretive nuances drop in and out of style with distressing frequency. But the traditional faith received and lived on a daily basis by Christians has remained pretty constant through the ages. Do I believe that in the time of my need, God loved me so much that He sent His only begotten Son Jesus Christ to be born of a virgin, and thereby broke into a fallen world that I (and we) might be reconciled to God Himself? Do I believe that in a great act of love, this same Jesus died to enable that reconciliation? Do I believe that after His death, he was resurrected and ascended into heaven thereby proclaiming the triumph of God’s plan of love on my behalf? Do I believe that He is currently seated at the right hand of the Father praying for me before I even know what to ask? Do I believe that God has sent the Holy Spirit, the blessed third person of the Holy Trinity, into our world and into my life that I might be able to live in obedience to His way, which I could never have done on my own? Is my community of faith constituted in such a way that our worship proclaims these truths to all the world, and inspires me to live for others even as Christ lived for me? Such a faith, and only such a faith, is properly deemed “Traditional.”
I encourage everyone at St. John’s to consider this call to traditional faith. At the heart of this challenge is the decision to take control of our own destiny by framing our own questions and blazing our own paths. The world seems to always attempt to set our agendas and define the nature of our faith journey. But what would happen if we, the people of God, simply walked away from the world’s categories and priorities and determined to live the traditional Christian faith? What would the result be if we determined to simply believe that God came to save us from ourselves because He loves us so very, very much, and then nurtured ourselves through worship as we reached out to a desperate world in acts of kindness, mercy, and predictable constancy? What would happen if the love of God flowed through us to all creation even as it flowed through Jesus when He was incarnate in this world?
Several basic steps come to mind to enable our pursuit of such a reality at St. John’s:
1. Let us commit to attend upon the word and sacrament with weekly regularity, either here or wherever we may be traveling. As we receive the bread and the wine, God gives us a direct infusion of His enabling grace for the week to come, and He draws us closer to himself and to each other.
2. Let us consider well and seriously the liturgy. Do I truly believe the attributes of God that I sing in hymns and Psalms? Do I believe that the Scripture readings and the Sermon (which ought to explain and apply those scriptures to my life) are God’s authentic Word to me, and to all of us? Do I believe the articles of the Creed to have really happened? Do I honestly believe that I need to confess my sins to God and receive His forgiveness? Do I believe that a loving God really does hear my prayers and answer them in ways that are best for me and for those I love? Is the passing of the peace just a formality, or do I see it as an opportunity to be reconciled to some member of our parish from whom I have been estranged? Do I believe that by receiving the Holy Communion, I am participating in the great foretaste of the marriage feast of the Lamb, stepping into the heavenly court, and proclaiming my unity with God’s people in every age and every land?
3. Let us examine our lives to insure that our actions and attitudes match what we profess in worship. Do we go forth from the Eucharist to remember the poor, to pray for the sick, and to be kind to one another?
I am sure there is more, but this is enough for now. Let us all commit to at least consider the keeping of that faith we have received, that Traditional Faith to which we are called. I do believe that as we do this thing, God will be pleased, and the kingdom of heaven will break forth among us in ways we could never imagine.
Faithfully,
Bill+

The Call to Worship

2010-07-19T08:27:00.000-07:00

Proper 11 Year C The Sunday Closest to July 20th
Colossians 1:15-28
Luke 10:38-42

Today’s Gospel lesson sounds strange to our modern western ears. Jesus had come into a village to teach. Preparations were well underway to extend to him that especial hospitality which was so characteristic of the ancient Jewish community. Martha had without doubt been working hard since she heard that the Master was coming into their village and home. There was a house to clean, food to be prepared, clothes to be washed, and instructions to give to the servants. All of the preparations for a major party consumed her time and her energy. Her sister Mary had probably started out being a pretty good helper as the preparations progressed. But when Jesus finally arrived, sister Mary was nowhere to be found. Sister Martha finally found her sitting at the feet of Jesus, listening intently to the Master’s words. Martha was consternated and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” Jesus did not give her the answer that she wanted, or the one she expected. “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” I daresay most of us would share Martha’s consternation in a similar situation. Certainly there is time to sit and listen to Jesus…after the work is done. Mary is shirking her duty. Shame on Jesus for letting her get by with that!
We are, like the ancient Romans, a nation of doers. We are in the main hard working, diligent, well organized, and pragmatic. We are serious about our religion, but we realize that if someone doesn’t do the work, it is not going to get done. Those characteristics have established our national power, built our business acumen, and helped us to create a spectacularly high standard of living. Martha was a lot like most of us. People like Martha, and like us, are the engines which make the economy work, and which lay the groundwork for much of what we would generally call human achievement. In their place, our characteristics are all admirable qualities and good things, but- and there is that most disturbing word- our general propensity to focus on doing sometimes causes us to undervalue other important things in life.
Mary was beginning to realize some things about Jesus of Nazareth which had not yet fully dawned on her hard working sister Martha. Saint Paul eloquently stated those “things” years later in what constitutes our Epistle lesson for today. “Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers of powers- all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him- provided that you continue firmly established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven.” This is the Christian Faith in a nutshell, and if it is true, then certainly “Mary has chosen the better part.” To sit at the feet of the master, to bask in the light of his presence, and to adore and worship him is certainly more important than anything I could do or accomplish in a thousand lifetimes. That is not to say that our good works and hard work are unimportant or that God does not expect them to flow from our faith, but it is to recognize that worship given to our Creator and Redeemer and Sustainer is infinitely more important than any work that we might be called to do.
Unfortunately, many of us only come to appreciate this truth when some great calamity or undesired situation arises in our life. For the poet John Milton, that realization came when he realized that he was going blind, and wondered how he could possibly get along without his sight. He wrote:

When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent, which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning, chide:
“Doth God exact day labor, light denied?”
I fondly ask; but Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work, or His own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state
Is kingly. Thousands at His bidding speed,
And post o’er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.”

Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, in his book “Frontiers in Muslim-Christian Encounter,” points out that “the ancient Churches (of the east sic), because of the restrictions on them in the past, have developed a theology of witness which emphasizes the centrality of the Eucharistic liturgy in Christian witness. This is not surprising since the liturgy was often the only way in which they could declare their faith.”
How sad it is that most of us only come to give adoration and worship of Jesus its proper significance when health, political reality, or personal tragedy remove all other options in our lives. Blessed is that woman or man who, like Mary, can see Jesus for who he is, and realizes that to worship at his feet is “the best part.”
And this brings us to the place of worship in our lives, both individually and as a parish. We are called to ask ourselves if it is indeed “the best part” in our estimation. At the risk of preaching to the choir this morning, I fear that it often is not first in our lives. There are so many other things which we value above attending every week upon the word and sacraments, which is the way that God has given us to sit at the feet of Jesus. We have all heard those who might say “I feel closer to God in the woods, or on the boat, or on the golf course on a beautiful morning than I ever do in church.” It is a noble sounding sentiment, but unfortunately, it is not an option that God gives us when He says, “forsake not the assembling of yourselves together”, and “unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no part of me.” Oh that all the people of God might say with the Psalmist, “I had rather be a doorman in the house of the Lord, than to dwell in the tents of the wicked.” Over the years, I grew to appreciate the example of Fred Hatcher, who always was attendant upon the Word and Sacrament wherever he traveled in this broad world. Here in Lancaster, in Europe, Asia, or Elsewhere, he never missed Sunday Church. Might we all be blessed with a burning desire to claim “the best part” with Mary and Fred, and with the saints of God down through the ages. As we acknowledge who he truly is, and sit at His feet expectantly and regularly, surely he will meet us and transform us more perfectly into His image by the blood of the everlasting covenant and in the power of the Holy Spirit. AMEN.

Another Rector's Rambling for May

2010-04-16T20:46:00.000-07:00

When I read my First Ramble for May (see previous post) to daughter Ashley, she asked what was bothering me, and when I told her, she said that I ought not to put the post in the church newsletter because it represented a scholarship that was outside the experience of most people. But I'm glad I got the Chesterton thing off my chest, because along with watching "Braveheart" and reading Churchill's "The Island Race", it made me feel a lot better about the current status of my beloved Anglican Communion, or at least about my place in it. And so now I offer someting that might be a bit more helpful to a few more people.

Rector’s Rambling- May 2010

At last it rained! I’ve been waiting all week. Watering new plants and seeded beds is incredibly time consuming, and yet is so necessary this time of year if the weather does not cooperate. For a number of years now I have found myself at odds with most of my neighbors and friends when spring and summer roll around. They tend to welcome daylight savings time because it leaves longer evenings and saves energy. I like standard time because it gives me an extra hour in the morning to take care of animals and the garden. They like sunny days and clear days because they allow time for their chosen pursuits. I generally prefer slightly cloudy skies and regular rain because such days make it easier to start plants in the greenhouse or in the garden. Small scale agriculture and agrarian living in general also puts me at odds with most of my neighbors and friends regarding what wild or domestic animals are desirable and which ones ought to be classed as vermin. As a weed is a plant, sometimes a very beautiful plant, in the wrong place. Vermin can be defined as a species of animal, sometimes quite beautiful animals, of which it can be said that three are picturesque on someone else’s property. Thus raccoons are vermin because they spread disease and chew leather. Deer are vermin because they eat corn and beans. Canada Geese are vermin because… well, you know the answer to that one. The list shifts by the season and goes on and on, but I think you get the idea. All of us have our own reasons for determining what is desirable and what is not desirable, and few of our lists agree all of the time.
Thinking about such things led me inevitably today to consider how our lists of behavioral expectations as Christians differ from the lists of society at large. Certainly they coincide at many places with the lists of our neighbors who are not Christian- all of us for example say that murder is a bad thing- but where do the differences lie? The historic position of our Holy Mother the Church is that holy matrimony is a relationship between a man an a woman, contracted for life in the presence of God and witnesses, which is designed to demonstrate to all the world the nature of the relationship between Jesus Christ and His Church; and which is designed to produce and rear children, to provide a buffer and an outlet against illicit carnal behavior, and to provide a man or a woman with “an helpmeet” to meet the ordeals of life. My guess is that a poll of the nation at large would reveal that most people do not define marriage in such a way. Or consider the question of authority in life. Our Anglican faith tells us that the Bible is the ultimate authority in our faith and practice, and that it contains everything we need to know in order to be saved and to lead a “godly, righteous, and sober life.” It also informs us that the Bible (which is the revealed truth of God in written form) when properly understood, will never contradict true science (which is God’s revelation in nature.) Our Anglican faith goes on to say that the Bible is properly understood when we inform our discussions about it with the teachings of the church through the ages (which we call “the holy tradition”) and when we understand it by using reason (which consists of all the ways we know God and his truth, and which is a part of the image of God in which we are created.) The outgrowth of this traditional set of beliefs about the Bible is of course that we ought to do what the Bible says clearly that we should do, and that we ought not to do what the Bible says clearly that we ought not to do. Anglicanism teaches us that when there are serious grey areas, we ought to agree to disagree in love, and that we ought not to try to force our opinions and expectations on others.) In my experience, most people, even most people in the church, do not believe those things about the Bible.
And so I come back to the point that we all have lists by which we live and by which we order our lives. The question is, “Do the lists by which I live identify me as a person of genuine Christian faith?” The question is simple, and I imagine that the answer is sometimes very uncomfortable, even for the best of us. In this month to come, I hope we will all take the time to examine our “faith lists” honestly, and that through such a prayerful examination, God will draw us ever closer to himself.

Sincerely,
Bill+

Rector's Rambling, May 2010- Alfredus Magnus

2010-04-15T08:34:00.000-07:00

Rector’s Rambling- May 2010

Those who know me best say that I am rather predictable. Some of them also know that when I truly believe that my world is passing, I reach for a well thumbed copy of G. K. Chesterton’s “Ballad of the White Horse.” The flurry of Easter activities precluded my reading of the news about our denomination, country, and world. But the passing of that great day led me back to the news servers, and I reached again for my well loved copy of the story of King Alfred and my other beloved friends. Mark, the dutiful Roman, has always called me to what I hope to be, but fear I am not. On the eve of the Battle of Ethandune “His speech was a single one,… Dig for me where I die, he said…Bear not my body home, For all the earth is Roman earth, And I shall die in Rome.” Eldred the Saxon has always been my favorite character. In the midst of battle he thought of beautiful things, and of home. “But while he moved like a massacre, He murmured as in sleep, And his words were all of low hedges, And little fields and sheep. Even as he strode like a pestilence, That strides from Rhine to Rome, He thought how tall his beans might be, If ever he went home.” And then there is “Alfred born in Wantage, who (sic) Rules England till the doom.” Of him our Lady had spoken, “But you and all the kind of Christ, Are ignorant and brave, And you have wars you hardly win, And souls you hardly save. I tell you naught for your comfort, Yea, naught for your desire, Save that the sky grows darker yet, And the sea rises higher.” And yet Alfred did prevail for a time, though his world was changed forever. In his brokenness and humility, he faithfully lifted high the Cross of Christ, knowing full well that every generation of Christians would be called to do the same.
And now is our time, for the vision of Alfred is fulfilled. “I have a vision, and I know, The heathen shall return. They shall not come with warships, They shall not waste with brands, But books be all the eating, And ink be on their hands. Not with the humor of hunters, Or savage skill in war, But ordering all things with dead words, Strings shall they make of beasts and birds, And wheels of wind and star. They shall come mild as monkish clerks, With many a scroll and pen; And backward shall ye turn and gaze, Desiring one of Alfred’s days, when pagans still were men…By this sign you shall know them, The breaking of the sword, And Man no more a free knight, That loves or hates his lord. Yea, this shall be the sign of them, The sign of dying fire; And man made like a half-wit, That knows not of his sire. What though they come with scroll and pen, And grave as a shaven clerk, By this sign you shall know them, That they ruin and make dark. By all men bound to Nothing, Being slaves without a lord, By one blind idiot world obeyed, Too blind to be abhorred; By terror and the cruel tales, Of curse in bone and kin, By weird and weakness winning, Accursed from the beginning, By detail of the sinning, And denial of the sin; By thought a crawling ruin, By life a leaping mire, By a broken heart in the breast of the world, And the end of the world’s desire; By God and man dishonoured, By death and life made vain, Know ye the old barbarian, The barbarian come again- When is great talk of trend and tide, And wisdom and destiny, Hail that undying heathen, That is sadder than the sea. In what wise man shall smite him, Or the Cross stand up again, Or charity or chivalry, My vision saith not; and I see No more; but now ride doubtfully To the battle of the plain.”
And so with Alfredus Magnus, Rex Brittorum, I am called to ride forth this day. How the battle will progress I cannot know, but I know the end. In faithfulness and patience we are called to serve our Lord, and that will be enough. As the good king sang before the Dane, “That though you hunt the Christian man, Like a hare on the hill-side, The hare has still more heart to run, Than you have heart to ride. That though all lances split on you, All swords be heaved in vain, We have more lust again to lose, Than you to win again.” Let us rise above our realities and serve faithfully that greater truth.

To Christ, the True King!

Bill+

Citations are from G.K. Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse, SanFrancisco, Ignatius Press, 2001 (A beautiful reprint of the 1928 edition illustrated by Robert Austin)

Reflections on the Holy Seplchure

2010-03-15T17:56:00.000-07:00

Rector’s Rambling, April 2010

In place of the above, from Easter through the Day of Pentecost

Celebrant Alleluia. Christ is risen.
People The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.
Book of Common Prayer, p. 323

On Easter, the Feast of Resurrection, we gather to proclaim the good news that Jesus is alive again, and that for us he has overcome death and the grave. I began Lent this year in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. It is a cavernous place, first built by Roman engineers at the behest of St. Helena and at the command of her son, the Emperor Constantine, over 1600 years ago. At that time it was nearly twice the size it is now. After the destruction of time and war, it was rebuilt by the crusaders a thousand years ago, and it shelters the holiest sites of Christendom. Walking the narrow streets of Jerusalem down the Via Delorosa from the Old Roman fortress Antonia, I paused in each of the chapels and offered prayers. Here Jesus was condemned, there he fell. Simon was impressed by the soldiers at this place, and there is the spot where Jesus received the pitiful mercies of St. Veronica. As I entered the shrine through the great double doors, I turned immediately to the right and climbed the rough and irregular winding stone staircase which leads to the top of Golgotha. The beautiful chapels atop the mount (and inside the church) call to mind the suffering of our Lord, and the passion experienced by his mother and all those who loved him. As I knelt to touch the spot where the upright of the cross fitted into the rock, I felt a rush of my own unworthiness, and the reality faced me that this was all of my doing, of our doing. I lit a candle in thanksgiving for and in memory of those who had gone before me and followed the line of pilgrims down the narrow and steep stairs and around to the right into the Greek reliquary, where resides the largest remaining piece of the Holy Rood, the True Cross upon which our Lord suffered and died. As I knelt in that holy place, the rude impositions of flash bulbs and jangling tourists faded into nothingness and I sensed the love of God in a deep and abiding way. I knew that He had died for me, and I was overcome. After that moment, the Greek monks moved us out quickly to make room for more pilgrims, and we beheld the stone upon which the body of our Lord was prepared for burial. Incense wafted in the air and the chant of a lone monk rose above the excited chatter and general disrespect of tour groups. In my mind’s eye, I saw the women, and St. Joseph of Arimathea, who later brought the gospel to the Britons, gently carrying the limp body to this place of sorrow, and performing as quickly as possible the rites prescribed in Jewish law for the dead. Minutes passed with an agonizing sense of eternity, and I could not think of words to pray. I was dimly aware of people coming to pray or snap a photo, but time seemed to stand still at this holy place.
Then I walked with others past an Armenian shrine to our Lord, around the small and dark Coptic Chapel, and stood in the quietly meditative line of pilgrims waiting to enter the tomb of our Lord. The Greek guardians of this Holiest place glared with some intensity at a group of tourists who chatted gaily and snapped pictures without regard for the devotions of others. Finally the monk, with his flat black hat and threadbare cassock motioned me into the crypt, and I knelt before the stone upon which our Lord was laid by loving hands so very long ago. My mind was empty, and as I signed myself, I mumbled the Jesus Prayer and the Our Father.
The misbehavior of a group of my fellow countrymen, jockeying for position to get a picture of themselves before this holy place, disrupted my reverie, and the tomb’s guardian motioned for us to move on. I wandered on, through the numerous side chapels and crypts, considering what my Lord had done for me, and giving thanks for the love which caused him to take the punishment for my sins. As I emerged some hours later through the great doors which guard the sacred sites, the bright sunlight blinded me, and reminded me that Christ, the light of the world, is risen indeed, and that because of his resurrection, I too will live forever.
Never again will I approach Easter without remembering the Holy City of Zion, and never again will I proclaim the Easter salutation without reliving the joy that God gave me that day in Jerusalem.
I hope that you will join me in Church on this blessed Easter Day, and that together, our hearts might be warmed by the experience of the presence of God.

Bill+

St John's Rector's Rambling: Lent 2010

2010-02-06T13:52:00.000-08:00

Rector’s Rambling March 2010

A good snow storm is a great time for dreaming. Surrounded by the warm glow of finished pine and hickory, I sit at the study end of the chapel with a size 16 Mustad fine wire hook in the vise, trying to decide whether to reach for the hare’s mask, the turkey bots, or the back feathers of a ring necked pheasant. I don’t know that it will make much difference to the fish I hope to catch this spring, but right now, here in the grips of winter, it seems an interesting, if unimportant question. I daresay that most of the things we think about fall into the same category as my dilemma over which dressing to use for the body of a trout fly. They are interests of the moment which may have some utility, but hardly classify as significant in the grand scheme of things. And yet how often do we imagine them to be of supreme importance? How often have we all been so attached to our own ideas or opinions on any given question that our defense of them has led to interrupted friendships, regularized bickering, or generalized dissatisfaction with life? Lent calls me to think about such things, because it is a time when I am called by our Holy Mother the Church to examine my own motives and to confess my own sins. It is a time for honesty with God and with myself. It is a time for transformation from what I have been into what God calls me to be.
At its best, a parish is like a family. We live together well much of the time, but our necessary vocations demand so much of our time that we fail to know each other as well as we should. We make assumptions about each other, and about each other’s motives on a regular basis. We do care for each other after a fashion, but often take one another for granted. Our interests and concerns develop and wander with predictable irregularity. As a result, we often neglect those opportunities afforded us to know one another more completely, to understand one another, and to truly appreciate the pressures and issues that so often dominate our lives. We are committed to each other and to this place, but often we are strangers- strangers who assume so very much about each other without adequate data- strangers who attempt to protect ourselves from each other by erecting walls of control or by blaming others for our own attitudes and negative responses. Since we fail to take the time to know each other, we miss out on the opportunity God gives us to bear one another’s burdens, and to create a place where any one of us can feel safe and secure in the worst of times. Every parish, and every family, struggles with these issues to a greater or lesser degree because we are so very, very human.
As we continue through this holy season, we have a wonderful opportunity to address those patterns of human behaviour which are outlined above. Our Evangelism and Renewal Committee has worked very hard to afford us all several opportunities to eat and fellowship together, to worship together, and to consider the implications of that worship as it relates to us being the family of God. I hope you will be sure to attend the Lenten programs if you are in town. Be sure to sit at table with someone you don’t know, and even better, if there is someone that you don’t particularly like, strike up a conversation with them about something that is important to them, their children, their work, or their hobbies. We have been blessed with a wonderful parish family here at St. John’s, but like every family, there is always work to be done as we learn to love and respect each other to the glory of God, and to the edification of our souls.
At the beginning of this ramble, I wrote that days like this are good for dreaming, and so I think I’ll tie three flies instead of one, but I promise before God that I will never let these gentle reveries of rushing water and flashing fish obscure my true calling to love those around me more perfectly. I hope you will join me in this determination.

Pax Vobiscum,
Bill+

Sermon Preached at St. John's V Epiphany

2010-02-05T08:39:00.000-08:00

Fifth Sunday after Epiphany (Sexagesima) year C

Psalm 138
Isaiah 6:1-13
I Corinthians 15:1-11
Luke 5:1-11

Today’s propers are obviously about conversion. I find it singularly instructive that all of the objects of today’s Scripture lessons are people who had been initiated into the people of God by appropriate sacramental observances carried out at the appropriate times of their lives. Isaiah was a good and observant Jew. Certainly he was circumcised on the eighth day and participated regularly in the Passover and the other feasts of God’s people. At Corinth, Paul was addressing Christians who had been baptized and were presumably regular in their attendance upon the sacrament of the body and blood of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Luke spoke of Jesus coming to Peter, James, and John, all good and observant Jews, like Isaiah. Even King David in today’s Psalm speaks of experiential meetings with God subsequent to his Circumcision as a child.
So, what do today’s lessons say about the sacraments of the Church? Are they of no use? Are they merely forms that we go through in order to mark the turning points of our lives in the hope that there is a God who cares for us? Heaven forbid and perish such thoughts from our minds! The sacramental ceremonies of Circumcision and Passover, which are fulfilled prophetically in the Christian Gospel Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion, are means of imputed grace instituted of God and commanded us as outward signs of that inward and spiritual grace given us by a loving heavenly father. When you receive a sacrament, it is as if God plunges a syringe filled with grace into your arm, and you are given a bracing dose of that spiritually enabling favor which only comes from Him who has made you and named you as His own. If you receive it well, in obedience and with love towards God and man, your soul is refreshed and strengthened. If however you receive it poorly, without thought or consideration and with no intention of living a well examined and obedient Christian life, you receive the life giving sacrament to your damnation. So saith the Apostle.
To us Christians, Baptism and Holy Communion are life giving sureties of our membership in Christ, and of God’s favour usward. And so what is this “conversion” demanded of and experienced by the players in today’s Scripture lessons? It is in short a turning, a going the other way, a transformation so radical that we can never again be the same. I find it interesting that those whose transformations are chronicled in the lessons all came face to face with the living God in a way which revealed His glory and underlined their own inadequacy. Isaiah’s vision of the very throne of God, David’s realization of God’s mighty deliverance, Paul’s recounting of the power of the eyewitness accounts to the resurrection of the Christ, and the Apostles’ personal experience of what they knew to be an absolutely inexplicable miracle- all of these events led to an humble acknowledgement of the individual’s need for God in the immediate present.
There is a pattern here which is replicated so many times in the Bible:
1. God reveals himself to a human being.
2. That human being recognized that he, or she, has come into the presence of God.
3. The mystery of God’s holiness overwhelms the vision’s or experience’s recipient and leads to an immediate acknowledgement of personal human insufficiency, or what we generally name humility.
4. The recipient gains an immediately increased appreciation of their need to be closer to God, of His overall plan for human history, and of their own place in it.
5. The recipient is changed forever, as are their habits and their passions, and they come to see themselves as the very ministers of God on Earth.
And now we come to the question. Everyone here has been baptized. Everyone here is at least moderately regular in attendance upon the holy Sacrament of Christ’s body and blood. But, have you come face to face with the living God? Have you met Him in a way which is unmistakable and life altering? Granted, not everyone is called to be an Isaiah or a Peter, but there is ample evidence in the Bible, and in the history of our Holy Mother the Church that God calls all who will receive Him to a life of continual conversion, transformation, and setting apart for His particular use. It should be the desire of us all to seek such an experience of the living God that the comfort which leads to complacency shall never be known among us who bear the sign of the cross. The evidence of the Scriptures tells us that God chooses the time and place and manner of his appearance to each of us. It also teaches us that like Hannah, who went every year before the shrine of God to seek His face, we are called to yearn for this transforming experience, this overwhelming revelation of His glory.
And so this day, as you come faithfully to receive that sacrament which gives us strength and assurance that we are God’s own, I bid you to pray that the heavens might be opened, and that God would grant you such an experience as Isaiah had that day; an experience which will change your life forever and send you forth to do the work of the kingdom with a fervor and an intensity that you have not known. Pray that he will allow you to see your own needs, your own sins, and that He will forgive you, wash your conscience, and give you the grace to walk in obedience to His commands. Pray that he will imbue you with a sense of gratitude which will make humility and godly sobriety the characteristics of your life. Pray that he will grant you a glimpse of His purpose being fulfilled in human history, in the events all around us, and that He would help you to see your purpose and mission in the same. Today, as you come in faithfulness to receive the blessed sacrament which is His gift to all Christians, God calls you to be so much more. Seek Him now, while he may be found, and claim the inheritance and the mission prepared for you before the foundations of the world were laid. AMEN.

Sermon preached at St. John's IV Epiphany

2010-02-05T08:31:00.000-08:00

Sermon: Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, 2010
Luke 4 : 21-30

Jean Jacques Rosseau was no friend of the church. As a young man, he was disgusted by the actions of some members of the clergy incumbent in cures around his family estates. By his account, they cast aside their vows of poverty and chastity and invoked the ancient feudal rite of “prima nocte,” by which the Lord of a manor was entitled to any woman who lived on his lands on her honeymoon night. These early memories helped to form his famed cynicism toward the Christian Religion. In his comments on the idea that man is made in the image of God, he is reputed to have said that “men love God so much that they regularly insist on remaking him in their own image.” In short, that is a major theme of today’s Gospel lesson.
Jesus had returned to his home synagogue. With good reason, many of the people there were excited and looked expectantly forward to what the hometown rabbi might say or do. His words were not what they had hoped to hear. He castigated them bluntly, and indicated that he would not do great miracles there. Many in the crowd were outraged, and sought to do him harm. I would suggest to you today that Jesus was addressing the same human propensity that day in Nazareth that Rosseau would address so many hundreds of years later. The people in Nazareth were more than willing to acknowledge God, as long as he turned out to be the god they wished to acknowledge. Like those early enlightenment French clerics who so disgusted young Rosseau, they reserved the right to design their own god, according to their own wants. It is so easy for us to do the same thing today. I am always ready to quote God and the Bible when I perceive them to support my particular political or personal ideal. Let me give you an example. The Bible says, and we believe the Bible to be the word of God written, that we are to respect all human life. As a matter of fact, it says clearly that if we even think ill of our neighbors and call them fools, much less kill them, we are in danger of hell fire. I am glad to run out all of the verses about the sanctity of life in my opposition to abortion, but when someone points out to me that these same verses have something to say about the relatively indiscriminate use of high explosive munitions in the global war on terror, or that they also would seem to apply to the debate over the death penalty in Ohio, I am not so willing to submit to the clear teaching of Scripture. You see, I am much more ready to apply the Scriptures logically to what I perceive to be shortcomings in others, than I am to apply them to what they perceive to be shortcomings in me. In effect, I redefine who God is to satisfy my own druthers. And generally speaking in modern American political debate, folks on the other side of any given issue do the same. But we have all missed the point. God says that all life is sacred because all people are created in the Image of the one true and living God. There may be a time in this sinful world when a soldier or a government is forced to take life in war, and some of that life may be collateral damage, or innocent life. There may be times when the state must use the death penalty as a punishment or deterrent in this fallen world. And there may be a time in this fallen world when parents and their medical team must choose between the life of a child and the life of a mother. But even in this fallen world, where choices are sometimes between the lesser of evils rather than between good and bad, God’s clear admonition is that we respect every human life. True Christianity does not give us the option of defining his will in any other way.
Let me give you another example. Have you ever prayed for something good and true with all of your heart, only to have your heart’s desire crushed? Perhaps you prayed for the healing of a loved one, and they died. Or perhaps you prayed for a job that you did not get. The possibilities of such negative answers to prayer are endless. Did you become angry and walk away from God, saying to yourself, “If there is a god and he would allow that, he is no god of mine!” By imagining your situation to be the most important thing in the world, and by placing yourself at the center of the universe, you have just refused to accept God’s self revelation, and demanded a God of your own making. The Israelites did such a thing in the wilderness when Moses did not immediately come down from the mountain, and it led to a total breakdown of lawful moral authority in the camp, and ultimately to the deaths of thousands.
And this brings us back to the example of today’s Gospel. People were glad to have Jesus back home, if he would do the kinds of miracles he did elsewhere in Israel. But they were unwilling to acknowledge him as anything but the carpenter’s boy. That he would see himself as the fulfillment of the prophesies was unthinkable to them. They were willing to accept him on their own terms, but not on his. It is not uncommon for us to do so. It is a human propensity. We demand that God fit within our box, and we are willing to accept only those parts of his self-revelation which fit with our presuppositions. The problem is that when we do this, we break the first two commandments as we create a false god, one that has the ability to make us feel good for a little while, but one which effectively separates and isolates us from the true God, the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob; the creator of heaven and earth, who sent his only begotten Son to die for our sins and to prove the power of his love by taking up his life again on the third day; the one who will come to be our judge, and our vindicator.
It is so easy to design our own God to meet our own perceived needs. But to do so is to make ourselves into false gods. It is to imagine that we stand at the very center of the universe, that we are the single most significant being in the entire cosmos. We have all done it from time to time, regardless of whether we are on the right or the left, whether we are formally educated or educated in the school of hard knocks, and whatever groups we may identify ourselves as being a part of, or not being a part of. You see, whatever else he may have been, Rosseau was a keen judge of human nature.
And now the question remains: to what God do I give my allegiance today? Is it to a god of my own making, one who justifies my attitudes, positions, and actions? Or is it to the living and true God who reveals himself in Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, to whose nature the Holy Bible, inspired and preserved by the agency of the Holy Ghost, bears witness? For us Christians, God calls us to accept and acknowledge his character, his love, and his person even if it does not make sense to us, and even if we wish it were different. He allows us to ask questions, and I dare say even encourages us to the same, but at the end of the day, the people of God are those who submit to him as he is, casting ourselves on his mercy and receiving his grace. In just a few moments, we will say together the Nicene Creed, the great Eucharistic confession of the Church. In it we find the true Scriptural definition of who God is, and of what his character means for each of us. Let it never be said that we crossed our fingers as we affirmed our faith. Rather let it be said that we came to the foot of the cross, with our questions and our issues, but that at the end of the struggle, we accepted by faith the living and true God, who is our judge and our saviour, our brother and our friend. AMEN!

Preached at the Installation of My Friend

2010-01-18T16:39:00.000-08:00

Installation of the Rev’d Mr. David Halt as Rector of St.Matthew’s Church, Springfield

Joshua 1:7-9
Psalm 43
Romans 12:1-18
John 15:9-16

The Scripture Lessons appointed for today are most instructive, and they are echoed and affirmed by Saints throughout the ages. Be humble. Love one another. Be faithful and obedient to the Word of God written. Acknowledge and appreciate and enable one another’s gifts. Stand with courage and steadfastness for that which is right, whatever the cost may be; and together you will model for this city and this diocese the very nature of God.
Dave, we go back a long way. I remember taking our hummer deep into the woods at Camp Grayling to find a quiet place to read Morning Prayer, and running the ridge line at the east end of Camp Atterbury to the old settlers graveyard to do the same. I remember when we broke away from the convoy on the way to Fort Knox so that you could meet Bishop Thompson. He stood us up, but treated us to a wonderful meal at his club in downtown Cincinnati. I think it was on that trip that we had the tire blow out somewhere around Louisville. We were young then, and you were Methodist, and I used to be. We both loved God and our families. Our hearts burned with a desire to serve him and the Republic, and we shared so many things, tears and joys and fine and gentlemanly things, and dreams of what the future held.
Now I am on the downhill side of my active life as a Priest of our Lord, and you, you are at a grand new beginning. The people to whom God has called you come to this place faithfully every week after they have toiled in the workplace and sought to build their families and relationships in times which are often so very, very difficult. Honour them, and the vast majority of them will honour you virtually all of the time. After all, you are God’s gift to each other. Forget most of what you learned in school about being a good pastor. Go back and re-read Gregory’s Pastoral Care, and Herbert’s Country Parson, and Baxter’s Reformed Pastor, and throw in a bit of Bishop Grafton for Good measure. Don’t forget Archbishop Ramsay’s Christian Priest Today, and remember the godly examples of Mr. Harding and Father Tim. Buy a little farm and mabey even burial plots, and write your name in the soil of this place. Become one with this people. Share their dreams and visions. Baptize their children and bury their honoured dead. Weep with them and laugh with them. Rejoice with them when their children win the state championship, and be by their side when those same children go off to war, or college, or to a new love. Serve them faithfully in Word and Sacrament, and guide them in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic faith; for that is your primary task here. Programs are fine, and sometimes are even helpful, but your primary purpose is to preside in Word and Sacrament, that the people of God at this place might come to know themselves, and God and each other, with an ever deepening intimacy…an intimacy which ravishes their souls and leads them to that peace which passes all understanding. It will never do for you to be a professional priest or sacramentarian. You must be one with this people, “wallowing in the midst of their daily affairs.”.. loving them and thereby proving your amateur status, remembering that amo, amare- is the latin root for love, which ought to motivate everything you do here. Bind yourself to them with an holy co-dependence, and thus demonstrate to this entire county the true nature of the Holy and Blessed Trinity. As we cannot imagine the Father without the Son and the Spirit; or the Son without the Father and the Spirit; or the Spirit without the Father and the Son—So may the people of saint Matthew’s be bound so closely in love that none of you can imagine what your church would be like if any one of you were absent.
This will not be an easy task. There will be times when your own humanity and that of others here will show its ugly possibilities, and you will think the worst of each other’s motives. You will disagree with vigor over agendas and programs and prerogatives. You will release arrows you wish could be recalled, and perhaps for a time even think their release fully justified. And this is where the admonition of today’s Scriptures becomes so important. Always conduct yourself with humility, preferring others before yourself. Be willing to listen, and covenant with your people to hear one another. Teach them that the Word of God written is the rule and guide of our faith, that it contains all things necessary to salvation, and that no Christian man ought to be required to do or believe anything that is not clearly taught therein; and that we ought to submit to the clear teachings of the Bible, even when we do not agree with them. Questions are good things, but at the end of the day, obedience must be our goal. Such obedience grows not out of coercion or slavish worship of laws or precepts, but out of an absolute confidence in the character of Him who loves us, and who gave himself for us. Because he has always been so constant in seeking our best, we can follow with confidence where He leads the way, even when we do not understand His grand strategy.
Dave, my friend, you will make many mistakes, as will every member of your vestry, and of every committee, and as do all of us here. There will be those who will hold onto the mistakes of others with a seemingly eternal memory. But if your life is holy; If you live according to the ways of God taught in the Bible; if your attitudes and demeanour give evidence that the love of God is spread abroad in your life; if you are a man of good will; the people here will gain such confidence in your character that they will work with you in spite of your shortcomings. And if you seek to see that same holiness and evidence of the Holy Spirit in their lives, your love and acceptance and understanding will be mutual- an empirical evidence of the efficacy of Holy Baptism in the lives of all here.
And so in closing, I would say to you, my friend, and to all here:” Be strong and of a good courage, be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.” AMEN and AMEN

Personal Reflections to those I love

2009-12-10T10:04:00.000-08:00

Today, we experienced the first real snow of the year. The horses were skittish as I led them to pasture in the semi-darkness of a mid-December day. The terriers literally tumbled down the front steps in wild anticipation of what they might find. Cleo, the barn cat, observed their idiocy with an icy glare from her safe perch. Real winter is arguably my favorite time of the year. As it limits my activities, it gives me more time for real contemplation of what is truly important. Some wag once said that with age comes wisdom. I don’t know about that, but with it certainly comes stiffer knees and a changed outlook. Most of the cause’s célèbre which occupied my energy and activity in earlier days have been abandoned or repudiated by most of the people I know, and certainly by society at large. But I continue to mull them over in my mind, and am convinced that a goodly portion of them, some with minor modifications, are as true as ever. The Old Republic has passed, and the ideas of Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin are as unknown as those of Scipio, Cicero, and Tacitus. The stately commitment of the Old Empire to responsibility and order is reinterpreted as nothing but greed and oppression by a younger generation of scholars and students, if they know of it at all. Even those Churches that God used to form my spiritual habit and outlook have developed into things that Fr. Maier and the Venerable Bede would not recognize.

In spite of the painful realization that the values which have shaped my life are at best repudiated and at worst forgotten, I remain an optimist for the most part. I remember as an undergraduate, and later as a graduate student, studying in detail the fall of Roman Britain. It was a slow and gradual passing from that day in the Year of Our Lord 486 when the Emperor wrote that there were no troops available, and that “the cantons must take steps to defend themselves.” Within a few years, the great villas were no more. People who could not or would not return to Italy clustered in the walled towns, or were slowly driven back into the mountains of the west. These were the days of Arthur and Gildas and Patrick, days of great deeds in desperate times. And then one day it became evident that the children no longer spoke Latin, and that the stonecutters had lost their art, and the flowing lines of Latin verse had been largely replaced by the throbbing and guttural chant of the Saxon warrior. But in spite of it all, the faith survived, and many of the old manuscripts were preserved, and stories were told of great days and great men. Lives and generations passed, but the ideas were passed down faithfully from Father to Son, from Mother to daughter, from Abbot to Monk, from Bishop to Priest, and from Priest to People. And then, many years later, by God’s good grace, there was a Renaissance of piety and learning. The barbarian was converted, civilized, and gentled. The ideas bore fruit, and God rebuilt that which had been lost through the excess of human sinfulness. Then, He was as always faithful to those who were called by his Name, those who followed Him in faith and in obedience.

And so, at the beginning of 2010, I remain an optimist, and I pledge myself to tell the old, old story of Jesus and His love. I pledge to pass on those ideas and things which are good and true and beautiful. I pledge to study and pray, to teach and preach, to faithfully administer the sacraments, and to maintain the values I have received from apostles and prophets, from liberators and defenders, from my fathers physical and spiritual. I will “work with my hands and study to be quiet,” that I might be a godly example among those to whom I am called. I will gently resist that which is contrary to God’s Word written, and love all those for whom Christ died. And that will, I think, be enough for one year.

May God bless us all in this coming New Year. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. AMEN+

To Christ, The True King,

Bill+

Reflections On A Wonderful Thanksgiving

2009-11-29T19:05:00.000-08:00

1. Spending time with those you love is a bit of heaven on earth. Rebecca and I traveled with Tristan (home on leave from the Marines), and my mother to See Matthew and Ashley, Margaret and Jack in Wisconsin. We met Rebecca's parents there and shared memories, dreams, and time together. God has blessed us most richly, and I give him thanks.
2. Just when it seemed that I was almost alone as a traditionalist in the Episcopal Church, God brought me to Nashotah House www.nashotah.edu, a seminary of our Church. It is a wonderful place, and full of those ever so Anglican touches that first brought me to this demonination. Fr. Klukas' sermon, and the simple liturgies of Communion and prayer encouraged my heart and refreshed my soul. If you have a few extra dollars to donate to a cause, this is a good one.
3. Driving through Chicago has provided empirical data to support my contention and that of the Scriptures that man is fallen indeed! It never fails to amaze me how self-interest and anonymity can combine to make even decent people into rude and thoughtless barbarians. Lord have mercy on us all!
4. Ashley has introduced me to a wonderful website www.grooveshark.com, which allows the user to develop a playlist of music in an absolutely legal manner for home listening. It is like having my own radio station without commercials or morning hosts! Matthew learned about this wonderful place in Hebrew class, another reason for studying foreign languages.

There are, I'm sure, other reasons to be thankful, but this is enough for now.

Rector's Rambling: December 2009

2009-11-23T20:36:00.000-08:00

Christmas joy is a wonderful thing. Several years ago, when Ashley graduated from high school, many of our friends at St. John’s took up a collection and bought her a Crosby bridle. She used it almost every day while she was in the equine program at Ohio State Wooster, and has treasured it ever since. This week, she called home and asked Rebecca to look at a saddle on e-bay. It was a beautiful Crosby with wool padding and dark German leather. She excitedly told about how it was out of production, and that it was a perfect match for the rest of her Crosby leather. As she spilled out her plans to pay for it, it became rather obvious that the timing of the sale was likely to be a problem. There were only 18 hours left until the auction was over. Rebecca asked me in hushed tones what I thought, and we did what most parents do, we agreed to enable a temporary asset transfer through a sale listing. As Rebecca said “Merry Christmas” to Ashley, I could hear my daughter on the other end of the line absolutely giddy with joy. She was as a little girl again.
As I reflected on the wonder of the joy a saddle could bring, I thought of other Christmases, when Tristan was in theatre, and Brad, and Matthew, and Chris, and now Stuart. My mind often wanders to them. Generally I cry and I breathe a simple prayer,” O God, give them strength and courage, watch over them and help them to do their duty.” I remembered my dad and how happy he always was to give to others, and I thought of one Christmas in particular when he bought toys and clothes for a poor family in our neighborhood. He crept onto their porch in the dead of night on Christmas Eve and left the wrapped boxes to be found the next morning. I don’t think he ever told anyone what he did, and I don’t know if he even knew that I had seen him that night. One year when I was in College, I took a job ringing bells with the Salvation Army in Chicago. We had initially been told that we would not be released in time to get home for Christmas day, but when that news changed, I grabbed my kit, jumped on the first train I could get for Muncie, and headed home. I called my cousin Carroll from the station, and he drove from Parker to pick me up. When I arrived home just before midnight on Christmas eve, I walked in and found my folks sitting at the table drinking coffee, looking like they had lost their last friend. It was a wonderful and unexpected reunion, and our joy was genuine that night.
There is something about the celebration of the birth of our Saviour that seems to deepen every emotion and to heighten every perception. Our depressions are more sinister, and our joys are more absolute. As our appreciation deepens for those we love, our longing for those from whom we are separated grows ever more painful. Perhaps it is fitting that in this time of our deepest and most passionate outpourings, when we are the most vulnerable in so many ways, that Jesus should come into our lives. “So God loved the world that he gave his only begotten son…,” and he is still giving him to us today. As the light of Christ comes into the world, might we all welcome him with joy beyond knowing, and might we receive this gift of God who loves us, and calls us all to himself.

Merry Christmas!
Bill+

Address at My Lodge Installation

2009-11-20T13:20:00.000-08:00

I would like to thank my installing officers, Worshipful Brothers Wil Browning, Henry Hunt, Paul Scholl, and Frank Stuck, for agreeing to preside over our ceremonial this evening; Worshipful Brother Clark Brown for serving as our photographer, and Worshipful Brother Ed Jackson for delivering the introduction to Masonry oration to our guests. And my thanks to the Color Guard from Lancaster Commandery #2 Knight’s Templar for presenting the colors. To Kathy Heim for singing our National Anthem. To Julie Meenach, Alma Priddy, and Roseanna Bush for preparing and serving our reception. To my wife Rebecca for allowing me the time to be a Mason. To my parents, who taught me the value of our Fraternity from as far back as I can remember. And to all of you for coming to share this night with us, the officers and brethren of Lancaster Lodge #57 Free and Accepted Masons of the Grand Lodge of Ohio.
And I would like to thank the brothers of this lodge for the confidence you have placed in me by electing me to be the master of this lodge for the ensuing year. I pledge to all of you that I will do my very best to bear the responsibility of governance of this Lodge with a spirit of humility, and that I will strive to create an atmosphere wherein brotherly love, relief, and truth prevail. I shall do my very best to avoid any temptations to coercion, anger, strife, or any other vice which could become a threat to liberty, equality, or fraternity among us. It is said that we as Masons meet upon the level of equality, act by the plumb of uprightness, and part upon the square of virtue. I pledge to you my best efforts to accomplish these lofty goals together, as brothers and as equals.
Freemasonry originally attracted me because of its clear and unyielding commitment to the values which have built and maintained our culture: personal responsibility, personal liberty, and the worth of every man; judgement and value based on a man’s character and actions, and not on his birth, wealth, or worldly position; a willingness to respect the religion and political sentiments of others even when we disagree with them, and to work with them to build a better society; respect for Diety and a commitment to the belief that there is a common set of values enshrined in Natural Law which is self-evident to all good men; an understanding that we are responsible not only to God, but to each other; and finally, a deeply held conviction that The Great Architect of the Universe has created a world characterized by harmony and order and reason, which leads us to the inescapable conclusion that reasonable discourse and harmonious behaviour are always preferable to fanaticism and strife.
There are those who say that these principles, principles on which our western culture is built, are outdated and that the time has come for them to be radically reinterpreted, or even jettisoned and remembered only as relics of some idealized and misguided past. Men of the West, I would submit to you that this is neither the time nor the place for such foolish notions. More than ever, the world stands in need of the virtues taught and upheld by our ancient fraternity, and I thank you for the opportunity to lead in this holy work.

A Time for Remembering

2009-10-15T09:32:00.000-07:00

Rector’s Rambling: November 2009

November is a month for family remembrances. All Saint’s and All Soul’s call me to remember those who have gone before. They will be especially introspective days for me this year. Veteran’s day always calls me to remember the heritage I have received and sought to pass on to my children. Thanksgiving, while a civil holiday and not on the church kalendar, arouses in me some of the most godly thoughts I am likely to experience in the course of a year. The approach of Advent calls me to consider again what the coming of Jesus into the world means to me and mine. The celebrations are not as large or as commercial as those surrounding Christmas and Easter, but perhaps they are in a way more introspective and in some ways more painful, and more blessed than those great public feast days of our faith.

“Anticipating that the normal course of events will take place in Lancaster,” I will experience another important family day this November. I wish with all my heart that my dad could have been here for it, but God had another posting for him, and so I shall reluctantly content myself with the knowledge that one day we will perhaps be able to talk about it in heaven. On the 20th at 7 PM, given the above caveat, I will be installed as the worshipful master of Lancaster Lodge # 57, Free and Accepted Masons. Like my father before me, I am blessed to be a part of this ancient fraternity whose members are dedicated to the promulgation of brotherly love, relief, and truth to all people of good will, without regard to their political party or religious creed. If you are free that evening, I would invite you to come to the Temple at 224 South High Street for the ceremony and reception to follow. I have often said that as the Church brings me Jesus Christ in the sacraments, and the Regiment taught me the true meaning of virtue, so the Lodge schools me in that morality which has built and maintained our culture. I hope you will be able to share the evening with me.

May November be for you a time of holy thoughtfulness. May you take the time to remember those with whom God has blessed your life. May you shed a blessed tear, and go forth to walk in the way of God, and to do the work He has given you to do.

Sincerely,
Bill+

Focusing on What is Important

2009-10-01T10:51:00.000-07:00

Last night, I attended a meeting of the William Reece Chapter of the Allied Masonic Degrees, a research society and convivial fellowship group. Much of the discussion centered around some wonderful artifacts owned by a member of the group, which he brought for show and tell, and the propensity of many in our fraternity to engage in wild and unsubstantiated rumors, not to mention the occasional "conspiracy theories" and even the occasional goofy religious concoction (my choice of words.) It was an enjoyable evening, and was over before we seemed to get started. As I drove home, I began to generalize the discussions and lessons of the evening to my faith, and to my citizenship, and to life in general. Distraction seems so often to be the normal state of human affairs. My wife once threated to get me a sweatshirt which on the front said "I have ADHD" and on the back "Oh look! A chicken!" I sometimes think there are many folks who could honestly wear such a shirt. It all seems rather humorous and harmless enough, but is it? What of that one who takes aside a young Mason, or a young Christian, or a recent graduate from basic training or boot camp, who has just completed a life altering experience in degree or baptism or training, and leads them to believe that which is marginal at best and distracting at the worst. The elder Mason who leads a young man to believe that the true secret of Freemasonry is the identity of the Merovingian line of Kings or the location of some archaeological artifact, or the Bishop who counsels a new Christian that their persuit of a deepening personal relationship with Jesus Christ is "the western heresy," or the NCO who plys a young boot with alcohol and the club scene to the degree that he or she forgets his responsibility to serve the common good of humanity as a soldier, sailor, airman, marine, coastie, or agency rat of what President and Brother Theodore Roosevelt called "The Greatest Republic Upon Which The Sun Ever Shone"; I would argue that that person falls within the paramaters of that group which our Lord said would be better off drowned in the depths of the sea. To cause one who is full of idealism and passion for good to be distracted and to turn from that motivation and dedication is indeed a sin against God and against man. I pray that I will always be on guard not to be among that number. Rather let me concentrate on the basics of my beliefs. With a firm reliance upon Almighty God, with a clear and reasonable mind, and with a genuine concern for truth and for all whom God has made, I pray that my love of liberty, of personal responsibility, and godly charity might be an encouragement and a model for many. So Mote it Be.

Winter Squash, Vergil, and Grey Skies

2009-09-25T13:04:00.000-07:00

At six this morning, I woke up and made myself a pot of tea. After letting the dogs out, feeding, and cleaning up, I read Vergil. I never fail to be amazed at how the basic human virtues seem to manifest themselves in every age. What a testament it is to God that in this fallen world, He always manages to lead us to the Christ through either the Natural Law or the Revealed Law of the Scriptures. Given, the Natural Law can never get us there entirely, for "how shall they hear without a preacher?" But certainly the sense of brotherhood I sense with the ancient heroes of Troy, or Rome, or a dozen other places, exceeds that which I sense with some of my neighbors with whom I share baptism. I surmize that God has written into the human heart a basic nobility which reflects his own image. It may be covered, and even damaged by sin, but so often it has blazed forth in the most unlikely places. It assures us that while we may be barbarians, we are still loved of God, and in His grace and mercy, he calls us all to a higher way through every culture that he has allowed to exist and develop in all of history. It only remains to us to see our finest yearnings brought to fullness as they are completed in Jesus Christ, who is the original virtue, and is indeed the "Author and Finisher of our faith."

After returning home from work today, I gathered the winter squash and put them in the cellar. It seems like they have been growing and twining for so long. A couple of unseasonable weeks early in the spring caused me to wonder whether they would grow to maturity. Today's harvest proved the foolishness of that fear. I suppose it is the same with us. Like Harry the King, it is a good thing that God does not judge us by the promise of our younger days. His grace is so benificent, His prophetic ability so absolute, that He allows us to seemingly perish in the unseasonable times of our rebellion. And then He comes in splendor to transform us into the image of His Son. We are truly blessed.

For several days now, the rain has been intermittent in our part of the world. Earlier in the week, I planted around twenty five or thirty various pine and spruce trees. Hopefully all of them are stiff enough and pungent enough to dissuade the deer and my beloved pony from seeing them as dessert. One day, they will shield our home from any trace of human habitation apart from our family, and they should provide a wonderful cover for the deer, bird, and rabbit population hereabouts. But they cannot grow without rain. And so even if I cannot till the garden today, I rest in the knowledge that my trees will grow with the rain that God has provided.

And so once again God has provided for all my needs. He has led me to Christ. He has allowed and enabled me to grow beyond the rashness of my youth. He has watered the trees and caused the desert to flourish like a garden. Surely he is good to me, and to all those whom he has called to be His own. And truly his rain, and all of His blessings, fall on the just and on the unjust alike. Oh, that we might have eyes to see, and hearts to appreciate His love and provision for us.

Rector's Rambling: September '09

2009-08-21T11:49:00.000-07:00

Rector’s Rambling- September 2009

Hope springs eternal, and with the start of a new school year, opportunities will abound at St. John’s for us to worship together, know God together, fellowship together, and proclaim in our words and by our actions the Good News that Jesus Saves! I hope you will take advantage of the opportunity to receive the body and blood of our Saviour at least once each week. The Faith teaches us that to receive the Holy Mysteries imputes to us an infusion of grace that is healing, and strengthening, and which unites us to God and each other. I would also invite you to attend one of our Bible studies regularly. The Bible is God’s roadmap for our lives, and as we prayerfully and humbly read, mark, and inwardly digest it, our lives are transformed more perfectly into the image of Christ. Plan on dining with friends this year as often as you can. Our Lord gave us an example of fellowship over food on many occasions, and we hope to serve breakfasts every month in order to know each other better, and to provide a friendly venue where acquaintances from outside our parish family might be welcomed into the fold. I’m told that plans are also afoot to add cappuccinos and lattes to our coffee bar this year during the Christian Education hour!
If you are blessed to have children in your life, I pray that you will bring them regularly to St. John’s for worship. Whether they are grandchildren, your own little ones, or friends from your neighborhood, bring them often and teach them by your example and by gentle direction how to worship God according to the received customs of Christ’s ancient, one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. Attend their games and programs at school and their clubs, but teach them that there is a way of Christian worship which is dignified, communal, and intensely personal. It is a lesson which will transform their lives. It is true that the very young might not be able to sit through an entire service, and for them and their loved ones we are providing a cry room with closed circuit TV this year, but often we underestimate the ability of our children to pray, sing, listen, and give God the respect he is due from all of His creation. Jesus said, “suffer the little children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” Might we heed His call and introduce our children to the one who will keep them throughout this life and into eternity. It is the greatest gift we can give them. And as I ponder this truth, a serious aside occurs to me. Some people say that we must radically change the worship we have received from the Apostles and Martyrs in order to make it relevant to young people. I’ve never believed that, and have not found it to be true in my own life or those of my children. There is a comfort in the tremendous mystery of Divine Worship as we learn that we are not the center of the universe, and that we are called to participate in something that is older, and greater than ourselves. It remains to us to teach our Children why our worship transcends time and space, and to model for them how we as Reformed and Catholic Christians historically meet our God in Word and Sacrament.
May God bless you as this strangely cool and wet summer comes to a close. May He bless you with an abiding sense of the presence of the Holy Ghost in your life, with a clearer understanding of your own motives and needs, and with a sense of forgiveness and purpose that comes only from above. And may he fill your heart with that hope which springs eternal.. AMEN.

Pax Vobiscum,
Bill+

Thoughts on General Convention

2009-07-23T19:46:00.000-07:00

In case anyone wonders, I thought it good to publish some musings on General Convention, recently completed in Anaheim.

1. While it is important to welcome all people, sinners and saints alike, to God's Church to hear the good news and find salvation and strength, the so called "inclusion resolutions" seem to represent a departure from the traditional Christian understandings of Scriptural authority, Holy Matrimony, and holiness of life. They also would seem to be a clear repudiation of the repeated call of the Anglican primates for individual provinces to not break the bonds of affection between us by unilateral actions.

2. I agree with Bishop Jefferts-Schori that God has given His Church guardianship of Word and Sacraments, and would add that He has entrusted to her the work of bringing the nations to Christ. I would agree with the traditional understanding expressed by Cyprian (I think), who said that there is no salvation outside the church. I would also agree that many people have undervalued the role of the Church in our salvation. But I found the Presiding Bishop's remarks about personal relationships with Jesus to be very troubling, and contrary to all that I have experienced and known in the Bible; especially when taken in the context of some of her earlier statements about the unique mission of our Lord.

3. For some time, I have struggled with the tendency of many in the Episcopal Church, and in Western Christianity in general, to redefine the traditional understanding of Scripture. The resolution stating that certain parts of the Christian Scriptures are anti-Semitic seems to represent a flowering of this undervaluing of the Bible as the revealed Word of God and the rule of our life.

4. I deeply appreciate the example of the traditionalist bishops at General Convention, who have consistently acknowledged the need for traditionalists to stay within the Episcopal Church not only as missionaries, but because a strong Catholic ecclesiology demands it. In their positions I find strength in some very difficult and trying times. I also appreciate the respect that many of the non-traditionalist bishops offered to the theological minority.

5. I come away from all I have read about the Convention with an increased resolve to live within the spirit of the Windsor Report and the Anglican Covenant as promulgated by the Archbishops of the communion. I commit myself to attempt to lead a godly, righteous, and sober life in keeping with the clear teachings of Scripture. And I pray that God will give me strength, wisdom, and humility, to speak and write clearly and plainly as I seek to be the watchman at St. John's Lancaster.

A Tough Month

2009-07-23T18:08:00.000-07:00

This has been a difficult month, but it has had its blessings as well. On the twenty-eighth of June, my father died. He was a good man, and he set the standard for who I ought to be. Christ was in his heart, and it was a place of love and forgiveness. He served God and the Republic well, he cared deeply and had a great sense of humor, and I miss him terribly. Then came General Convention in Anaheim. The Church that I love so well, or at least the largest part of her North American branch, voted to normalize monogamous sodomy, declared the New Testament to be anti-Semitic, and repeated several chronic socialist agenda items that have been banging about mainline protestantism for several decades . There were no real surprizes, but my heart is still heavy, and I ask God's forgiveness for my own shortcomings this side of glory. This week, a dear friend and brother of mine has been in the hospital and the Docs can't figure out what ails him, another dear friend has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and this afternoon, Rebecca and I found out that our beloved West Highland White Terrier Quincy just might have cancer. It has been a difficult month indeed.

But on the other side of the ledger, my folks were able to move in with us before Dad died, and that is a good thing. Friends from our past and present poured out more love on us than anyone deserves during Dad's illness and burial and beyond. God met us in the Burial Service (1662 BCP Daily Office with Commendation and Committal.) I shall never hear the Navy Hymn again without fond memories of my father. And for it all, Tristan and Ashley and Margaret were here with Dad and with us. Matthew was able to join us for the services (both Masonic and Christian), and served with distinction, along with Dave Halt and Mel Truex, comrades from adventures long past.

Three of our greatest blessings revolve around our children. First, Tristan is home safe from Afghanistan. I praise God for his mercies usward, and pray his consolation on those seven families in Lima Company 3/8 who grieve the loss of their sons.

Second, Matthew and Ashley have traveled to the Diocese of South Carolina for a summer internship there. God willing and Bishop Lawrence consenting, he will soon begin the discernment process for Priestly ordination in that beautiful and most orthodox part of the world. May God shower his blessings on Bishop Salmon for his vision and discernment in the lives of my children. Finally, Margaret's first birthday party was celebrated in true southern form (for details see Ashley's excellent blog http://horatiusatthebridge.blogspot.com/), and we, like her paternal grandparents, were blessed to be present.

Life is truly a mixed bag, but through it all, I have found God's sweet presence to be a constant and abiding comfort. From the bottom of my heart, I pray that all who read this might know Him as Saviour and Lord, and that they might find that same peace that I have known.