Rector's Study August 2008

With Fr. Jim away on vacation, this edition of the Radiant Cross provides a good opportunity to help our members and friends know a little more about our rector. Here is an updated biography of Fr. Jim.

Fr. Jim and his wife Lee Elena recently celebrated their twentieth year together. They met in St. Louis, Missouri where Jim was born and raised, and near Lee Elena’s hometown of Monticello, Illinois. Lee Elena is a Registered Nurse working at St. David’s Hospital in the Emergency Department. She graduated from Texas Tech this month with her MSN and will soon begin working as a Nurse Practitioner. Their three children are Valerie, 17, Emily, 15, and Melanie, 12. Fr. Jim attended a Lutheran elementary school and credits his early education in a Christian environment as formative of his faith in God. It was there and then that he began to sense a vocation from God to Holy Orders.

Before attending college, Jim worked variously as a self-defense instructor (earning a black belt in Chinese Kenpo), as a carpenter building custom homes, then as a laborer and/or department supervisor at a variety of manufacturing companies. Responding to a re-emerging sense of call, Fr. Jim returned to church life in his mid-twenties. Having drifted away from the Church of his childhood, the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, he simply looked up ‘”Church” in the white pages of the phone book. There he found a local Church of Christ listed and began attending worship services. It was at this congregation that he was blessed to meet Lee Elena Mathis, his wife-to-be. The two were married in 1988, and headed off to Abilene, Texas were Jim attended Abilene Christian University. Jim earned Bachelor of Arts degree in Biblical Studies.

Sermon 10 Pentecost - Proper 12A July 27, 2008

10 Pentecost - 27 July 2008 - Proper 12A
Genesis 29:15-28; Romans 8:26-39; Matthew 13:31-33,44-52
James V. Stockton

A mustard seed, a bit of yeast, a hidden treasure, a fine and expensive pearl, and a net that captures a great catch of fish: the Kingdom of God is comparable to many things. And it is so, I think, because it is many things to many people. It is a single tiny thought, a quiet feeling, a gentle but persistent inspiration, that grows in meaning and power to become a spiritual, emotional, and physical home for peoples of all sorts and conditions. Almost as a secret, it spreads its influence helping a person, a family, a society, a nation, a race to become more than they’d started out to be, and end up having more to share with others than anyone but God could foresee. It is a net big enough, wide enough, strong enough to hold far more in number and variety than anyone but God alone might suppose.

It is a Kingdom whose citizenship is determined not by those fishing, or as we heard last week, not by those planting its seed; but by God and by those whom God alone, at a time of God’s own choosing, will grant the frightful burden of responsibility of determining who stays in and who does not belong. The Kingdom of God is a way of being and of doing that is valuable to the health and progress of a person, a family, a community, valuable enough that the labors to hold onto it and the sacrifices to attain it are almost nothing in comparison to its benefits. By Jesus’ parables, people see that the Kingdom of God is many things to many people.

There’s a more modern parable that can be helpful. It was first told in 1991. It is a movie titled City Slickers. Mitch, Phil, and Ed are urbanites, city-dwellers to the core. They decide to vacation together by joining a cattle-drive as a stark alternative to their everyday lives. Curly Washburn is the lead cowboy on the cattle drive. He is a surly, old cuss who intimidates just about everybody around him. As part of his job back in the city, Mitch is accustomed to being able to communicate with just about anyone. In Curly Washburn, Mitch meets his biggest challenge.

Curly and Mitch spar with one another for awhile, until one day, Curly decides to share with Mitch a piece of wisdom that he has gained over his long and challenging existence. “You know what the secret of life is?” Curly asks. “No,” Mitch responds. “What [is it]?” Curly holds up his hand, with one finger extended. “[It’s] this.” he says. “[It’s] your finger?” asks Mitch. “One thing,” Curly says, pushing Mitch to pay attention. “Just one thing. You stick to that,” he continues; “and everything else don't mean [spit]”.

One thing. Our reading from the Old Testament today finds Jacob focused on one thing. Jacob is in a land foreign to him, and he takes refuge with Laban and his family. He works for Laban for a month, and, because they are distantly related, Laban offers to reward Jacob’s labor. Jacob loves Rachel, the younger of Laban’s two daughters. So Laban and Jacob strike a deal. In the custom of the day, it is an arrangement that will honor both Jacob’s labor and Rachel’s dignity. For seven year’s labor Jacob may have Rachel‘s hand in marriage. But Laban cheats on the deal. And though Laban has essentially violated the terms of the arrangement, there is no indication that Jacob wishes to do the same. Instead, Jacob puts in seven additional years in order to arrive at the relationship for which he has longed these many, many years.

And if so, it falls upon us to ask, “In what way might this relationship with Rachel be that ‘one thing’ in life to which Jacob clings, after which everything else means nothing?” Perhaps, for Jacob, the treasure is found in the compassion that he has toward Laban, setting aside his right to scold the man, in favor of mercy toward a father’s efforts to care for his older daughter. Perhaps it is in the patience that Jacob exercises in laboring seven years and then accepting the labor of seven years more? Perhaps it is in the affection between the Rachel and Jacob, that hints at the love of God for all, which forms and sustains the Kingdom.

The Kingdom of God is rightly many things to many people. So, rightly enough, it could be any of these. Yet, I would suggest that for Jacob the Kingdom of God is something very specific, specific to Jacob himself. If Jacob knows now what it is to have been cheated, Jacob knows also what it is to have cheated someone else. As we have heard in previous weeks, Jacob has cheated his brother, tricking him to give away his inheritance. Jacob has cheated his father, tricking him to bequeath the larger inheritance that his father intended for the older brother to Jacob, instead. Jacob knows what it is to cheat, and what it is to know that what one thinks one wanted is hard to have and hard to enjoy when one cheated to get it in the first place.

More than mercy, more than patience, more now even his feelings for his beloved, or hers for him, Jacob finds the Kingdom of God, and his place within it, in the restoration of his integrity. In the chapters of life to come, Jacob will indeed trick his father-in-law to prevent him from successfully cheating Jacob again. But never again will he take advantage of the right and good will of another. Jacob has realized that the integrity of his relationship with Rachel, with God, with himself, is treasure enough for him to surrender all else in order to achieve.

The Kingdom of God is many things to many people. What might it be to people, today? What might it be to the people around us? What might it be to you? to me? What might be that one thing that is worth sticking to, so that nothing else even compares?

City Slicker Mitch is talking to Curly, the gritty old cowboy. “You know what the secret of life is?” Curly asks. “[It’s] this.” he says. “Just one thing. You stick to that,” he continues; “and everything else don't mean [a thing.]” Mitch waits for more, but Curly says nothing. “That's great,” says Mitch finally. “But what's the one thing?” he asks. Curly looks at Mitch and slowly nods his head. With a glimmer of satisfaction in his eye, he answers: “That's what you've got to figure out.”

The Kingdom of God is many things to many people. And this means that as many things, if not more, are, for many people, quite the opposite. What is it that keeps a person from finding the treasure of the Kingdom of God? What keeps someone from making their home in the branches of the Kingdom, in the arms of God’s Love for all? The kingdom opposite to that of God is many things to many people.

The Apostle Paul reminds the early Christians in his letter to them at Rome, that for some the kingdom opposite God’s is the kingdom of hardship and struggle, the kingdom of worry and distress, or the kingdom of ridicule, persecution, hunger, poverty, or war. And so in many places where futility reigns over the dignity of labor, the Kingdom of God can remain buried and hidden from view. In many times in which despair reigns against the comfort of companionship, the influence of the Kingdom of God can remain stale and fail to spread. In many people’s lives for whom alienation, starvation, and death itself reign in place of life and truly living, the net of the Kingdom of God can seem to miss them entirely, or simply allow them to fall through.

And so, as he said to his followers long ago, Jesus says still today to you and me, and through to those whose lives we share: “The Kingdom of heaven is many things to many people, so that it can be that one thing specific for you.” “It may be for you,” says Jesus the courage welling up within you that you need to set you free from the tyranny of fear.” “It may be for you,” says Jesus, “that peace that is hidden deep within you while all around you storms and fury rage.” “It may be for you,” says Jesus, “that unique and precious hope in tomorrow that you need to lift you from today’s despair.” “Each of you,” says Jesus, “is a treasure of God, unique and precious.” Perhaps once hidden,” says Jesus, “God has found you.” “Perhaps once lost,” says Jesus, “God has claimed you.” “Against this,” says Jesus, “the rest of it doesn’t matter. For you are the Kingdom of God. You are God’s one thing,” says Jesus. “God is sticking with you now and always, and will never let you go.”

And now may Almighty God, in whose grace and mercy we are held, ever give us peace, refreshment, awe and joy, that we may know and share the blessed reign of Jesus Christ our Lord, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, One God for ever and ever. Amen.

© 2008, James V. Stockton

Sermon 10 Pentecost - Proper 11A July 20, 2008

10 Pentecost - 20 July 2008 - Proper 11A
Genesis 28:10-19a; Romans 8:12-25; Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
James V. Stockton

‘It is better to give than to receive,’ so taught the Apostle Paul quoting Christ Jesus. And we might suggest, along similar lines, that it is better to create than to destroy. This is not so simplistic as it might first sound. Abandoned failing buildings need to be demolished. Social systems that have outlived their usefulness to humanity need to be brought down. All that said, it is still better to create than to destroy. And if this, too, sounds simple, consider the effort required to create something, compared to the effort it takes to destroy it. How much easier it can be to plant such seeds of destruction as ‘You are evil;’ ‘You don’t belong;’ ‘No one cares about you;’ than to plant the seeds of Gospel of God’s Love for all.

Some of you have heard me tell the story of a farmer named Peer, and of a terrible tragedy that enters his family life. His story is found in the novel titled The Great Hunger, by Johan Bojer. Peer and his wife and daughter live in a small Norwegian farming village. Theirs is a spartan but pleasant way of life, raising enough grain to feed themselves and have also some to sell for to earn a bit of money. One day, a new neighbor moves in at the small farm bordering his. Besides trying to farm a bit, the neighbor also works with tin and solder repairing cookware. He is identified in the novel only as ‘the brazier.’

The brazier is unpleasant and suspicious of everyone. When he sees Peer leaning over the fence to sniff the aroma of the apple blossoms on the tree in the brazier’s yard, the brazier sends his large dog out to chase Peer away. One day, Peer is working in the field, when he hears his wife Merle screaming and calling for help. Peer comes running and finds to his horror, the great hulking menace of the brazier’s dog attacking Peer’s little daughter, Asta. Peer wrestles the dog off of Asta and rushes her inside. But it’s too late; Asta cannot survive her injuries.

With his daughter gone, Peer finds himself as he puts it, ‘at the promontory of existence, with the sun and the stars gone out, and ice-cold emptiness above…, about…, and within…, on every side.’ At the same time, all the town knows what has happened, and the brazier is now hated by everyone. No one brings him pots and pans to repair. No one will sell him or lend him seed to plant. Bojer’s story of Peer and his situation describe a person who suffers the affects of destruction. Having experienced it, Peer begins to realize that he, too, has the power to destroy.

And so it is, that deep in the middle of the night, Peer rises from his bed. His wife watches silently as Peer gathers some things, then quietly goes outside. Peer stands looking across the yard toward his neighbor’s home next door. The lights are out there; the brazier and his wife are asleep. Peer starts moving in their direction.

Passionate circumstances such as leave people ‘ice cold and empty,’ or as fill them with white-hot rage, may well leave them wondering, ‘Is it more blessed to create, or to destroy?’ Even in the days of the apostles, when their ministry is emerging in the early Church, find such passions at work among the Christian community as threaten to destroy it. Who truly comprises this community? The Gospel came first to the Hebrew people of whom Jesus himself was one. Are they then the true community of Gospel? Jesus sent his apostles into all the world, to create a community of disciples of every nation. Are these then the true community of Christ? How is one to know? And what is one to do about those who’ve been allowed in, but don’t belong, and ought not be here?

It’s a problem for the Church that arises as soon as the Apostle Peter baptizes a Roman soldier named Cornelius and his family. It’s a problem for the Church that arises as soon as the Apostle Philip baptizes a man who is an Ethiopian and a eunuch. It’s a problem for the Church that arises as soon as an increasing number of Gentiles are admitted to the fellowship of the Church first by Peter, then by Paul. And as this becomes more and more of a problem, the disciples look back into their time with Jesus and they remember that Jesus once told them this parable.

When the owner of the field tells his servants that their job is to sow the seeds not pull the weeds, Jesus is telling his disciples that it’s not their job to purify a fields that belongs to God; or to purify the membership of a community formed by God’s Holy Spirit. It’s not the job of a disciple, it’s not our job, to try to figure out who is of God, and who is an imposter. Sometimes this can be a job that is hard to set aside. Because the honest truth is that it’s often easier for people, to decide what needs to be torn down than to propose a constructive alternative to build up instead. Sometimes, it will even cross a person’s mind what other Christians, other parishes, other churches ought to do and how they ought to be.

There are, I think, a wealth of unappreciated consultants in our world waiting to tell us exactly what needs to be removed, trashed, wasted, destroyed. This is not to say that we are called to surrender our responsibility to avoid preserving or perpetuating that which is better off ended. While the distinction between destructive and constructive often can be in the eye the beholder, nevertheless, the destructive consequences of such phenomena as illness, poverty, denial of basic rights, terrorism, and war are largely inarguable. These destroyers of the individual human soul and of the collective spirit of humanity, are examples of phenomena that are best destroyed themselves.

But it is to say that, in a world that can be for some, ice-cold and empty and for others, inflamed with angry rage, our job is not to police someone else’s piety; not the current-day equivalent of the Gentile, that lowly outsider who dares to pray to God, and whose prayers God dares to hear; not the stranger from a stranger’s land, to whom God in fact might send us to meet them where they are, and offer them God’s own welcome. It cannot be our vocation to tell God who does and who does not belong to the fellowship that is God’s own creation. Which is why Jesus tells us that this task belongs to another order of God’s Kingdom and to another time, to angels and messengers of God in a season of God’s own choosing. Ours is simply to live and move in what Paul calls ‘the glorious liberty of the children of God,’ to sow the seed of the Gospel where we are, and to care for those that grow there.

In the cold clear and quiet night, the farmer, Peer, climbs the fence into the bare fields of his hostile neighbor. His daughter is gone, and now the brazier himself is condemned by all the village to starve until he moves away. “As for me,” Peer says to the reader, “[What I did,] I did not do…for the sake of Christ, or because I loved my enemy; but because, [while] standing upon the ruins of my [own] life, I felt a vast responsibility. [I came to realize that] humanity must arise, and be better than the blind powers that order its ways; [that] in the midst of its sorrows it must take care that godliness does not die. The spark of eternity was once more aglow in me, and it said: ‘Let there be light.’” And quietly, secretly, in the middle of the night, so that no one will know it is he, Peer reaches into a bushel of seed that he has carried with him, and begins to sow the brazier’s field. “…I went out,” he says, “and sowed the corn in my enemy's field, [in order] that [for him and for me] God might exist.”

Today, tomorrow, sometime soon, you, I, or someone near us, will meet the ‘ice cold and empty’ in the world, or its ‘white-hot rage.’ In the face of destruction, ours is a call to build a community comprised of people of all sorts and conditions. In the presence of destruction ours is a call to plant and to grow in the broad field of humanity around us, and in the intimate garden of our own hearts, such seeds of the gospel as ‘You really are forgiven;’ ‘You really are loved;’ ‘You really are welcome here.’

And so may Almighty God who, has called all people to live in God’s eternal Love, so unite us in one truth, in one peace, in faith and in charity, that with one heart and soul, we may glorify God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon 8 Pentecost - Proper 10A July 13, 2008

8 Pentecost - 13 July 2008 - Proper 10A
Genesis 25: 19-34; Romans 8:1-11; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
James V. Stockton

‘Patience is a virtue,’ so goes the saying. Do people believe this? Do people practice it? Do we? Fast-food restaurants may stretch the definition of food, but at least they’re fast. Why take the time and trouble to go out to a video-store and rent a DVD, when the same movie is available online as a download that can be viewed immediately or at one’s convenience? The importance to modern life of faster boot-up times on computers, and faster connections to the internet, demonstrate that speed is a modern virtue more popular than patience by a long shot.

Contemporary society is often identified, and probably rightly so, with a culture of instant gratification. If the pay-off isn’t immediately available, then one is hard-put to persuade people that the effort is worth it. Those of you who are teachers, and those of us who are students also, are likely quite familiar with the phrase, “Will this be on the test?” And the answer, of course, is ‘yes.’ It may not show up in a question on a quiz or on a final exam. But whatever it is, one likely to be tested over it some day, in some way. And it’s the ‘some day’ that makes it a hard sell. It’s the waiting, the waiting, the waiting.

Patience is a virtue. ‘God, grant me patience,’ so goes the prayer. ‘God, grant me patience, and please, do it right now!’ As one with a reputation for driving with a quickened pace, I identify with that prayer. And lest there be any skeptics present who doubt that God listens, please notice in response to our prayer for patience, God has sent us Windows Vista® and the new Apple iPhone®.

‘Patience is a virtue;’ so goes the saying. And as a thing that is good, one may assume, rightly, I suggest, that patience is also a thing that is godly. The question becomes, then, how do people of God find their access to the virtue of patience? Where do they go to download patience? Where’s the drive-through where they can place their order?

Someone has said, “The secret of patience is doing something else in the meanwhile.” And the Apostle Paul just might agree. Paul writes to the Christians in Rome that, the way he sees it, there is on one hand the life of the flesh, of carnality, in terms of today, the life of immediate gratification. On the other hand, there is the life of the Spirit. But if it seems that Paul is suggesting that one is important to God and the other is not, then this is a great example of why it is important to avoid taking texts of scripture out of the larger context. Paul’s point is that through life in the Spirit of God, people find the patience to tend, in a way that is proper, virtuous, and even godly, to the concerns of their lives, and of the lives of those around them. It is exactly because they are waiting for those blessings of life in the Spirit that come to them in God’s good time, that what they do in the meanwhile matters all the more.

I read a story about a driver at an intersection. It is rush hour, traffic is heavy, and his car stalls. The light turns green, and for all his efforts, he cannot get his car started again. A symphony of honking horns rises up around him. He tries and tries to get his car running, but he is unable. Finally, he gets out his car, goes to the driver immediately behind him, and says, “I’m sorry, I can’t get my car started. If you’ll go up there and give it a try, I’ll stay here and honk your horn for you.”

“The secret of patience is doing something else in the meanwhile.” The parable of sower that Jesus tells in the gospel for today offers insight into what people can do in the meanwhile. First, it is probably instructive that the first thing Jesus does is sit down. ‘Jesus went out and sat beside the sea.’ He doesn’t rush to the people, the people come to him. He just goes out and takes a seat at the seashore. In itself, it s a scene of serenity, of watching the waves, of listening to the water, of allowing things to happen as they will, while one simply observes. It is a picture of patience. As the crowds gather, Jesus gets into a boat; and we can just allow ourselves here to infer personally what we will about any sort of divine imprimatur upon the act of sitting in a boat out on a lake somewhere, perhaps with a line in the water.

From here, Jesus begins to speak to the people. And again, his example offers yet another insight and invitation. “Listen,” he says. Simply, ‘Listen.’ It’s no exaggeration to say, I think, that listening, like patience, is an increasingly rare expression of the art of being human. “Listen,” says Jesus. And it is almost enough to stop the reading there. In his book Go and Do Likewise, author William C. Spohn writes, “…the practices of Christian spirituality form the bridge between the texts of the New Testament and the virtues needed to live out a Christian way of life.” He goes on, “A single dramatic insight into a biblical story or image may impress us for a lifetime.” “However,” he notes, “regular disciplines are the usual way that these [stories or images] become habits of the heart.”

That ‘single dramatic insight’ is something that a culture of instant gratification can relate to well. But instant enlightenment, instantaneous illumination, immediate gratification of the desire to meet and to know God is hard to achieve. A meaningful experience of worship can offer hints of the transport and bliss of that union with God that is to come, but the singular dramatic experience is never meant to substitute for the regular relationship with God or with God’s people.

And so, ‘Listen.’ Jesus calls the people to the regular discipline of the patience to listen for a living word spoken to their heart from the heart of God. The parable of the sower of the seeds describes for the followers of Jesus the reality that he encounters, and that they in their turn will encounter, too. You and I can only imagine how this parable takes on growing significance for the disciples after Jesus has ascended and they begin to lead and serve the emerging fellowship of the infant Church. And the point of the parable is not so much the sower, though that is how it has come to be identified. The point is the soils, the inevitably different soils, upon which falls the seed.

In Jesus’ day, in the days of the apostles, and in our own, the Word of God falls across the ears and the hearts of persons of all sorts and conditions. Persons who hear but do not understand fall prey to losing what might have sprung up in their lives. People who welcome the Good News of God’s Love for them may lose what they gain when they discover that though God is near, they’re not yet in heaven, and troubles will continue to arise. Persons who hear, who understand the concepts, who even appreciate the theory, may miss out on what God is hoping to grow up in their lives, when they succumb to the lure of the world around them. Be it, as for Esau, a simple bowl of stew on a hungry afternoon, or as for his brother Jacob, access to the power and wealth around them, the lure of immediate gratification can threaten to leave them deaf and numb to Jesus’ call to ‘listen and be patient in the meanwhile.’

And so, for Jesus in his day, for the apostles in theirs, and now for you and me, this means that sharing the Word of God must always be more than sharing a text, a book, or a recorded reading. It means that the Word of God that lively lives is found less printed on paper pages, flashed across monitor screens, or encoded on digital media, and more often found composed upon human hearts upon yours and mine. It means that the Word is annotated, if you will, by we and all those whose lives, are already fertile with a lived relationship with its author. For all those into whose lives God plants its seed, the Word is given meaning that is personal, immediate, and lasting in your actions done for them, and in mine, in your words spoken to them, and in mine, and in the time we take just to listen; to practice our belief that patience is a virtue, and to sit with them beside the sea of God’s blessing: God’s Love for each of us and for us all.

So may Almighty God, source of life and lover of souls, bring us to the fullness of grace for which God, through Christ our Savior, has prepared both us and all whom God has made; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, One God, for ever and ever. Amen.

© 2008, James V. Stockton

8 Pentecost - 6 July 2008

8 Pentecost - 6 July 2008 - Proper 9A
Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67; Romans 7:15-25a; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
James V. Stockton

I hope and pray that all of us had a happy and meaningful 4th of July holiday. Though ours is not a perfect land, it is indeed a good one. And part of the hard-won freedom that we enjoy is the very freedom to say that our nation is not perfect. So, I pray that we had a good holiday not dwelling on the criticisms but appreciating the good.

It has been said that when one’s only talent in life is criticism, that talent is best treated scripturally; i.e. it is best to bury it until the day the master returns. In their day, the disciples of Jesus remember that even for Jesus there is no pleasing the critics. I think it’s helpful for people to see how they can identify with this. Jesus’ critics find fault with everything that he does. If he heals someone of a terrible affliction, they argue that he does this on a day on which no such be doing such labor. If he feeds the hungry, his critics argue that he failed to tell them to wash their hands first. If he points to the good in a Gentile or a Samaritan, they argue that he’s speaking up for an outsider and ignoring his own kind. If he comforts the outcasts, his critics argue that he spends his time with people clearly forsaken by God. The disciples realize, as did Jesus before them, that there is no pleasing those determined to find something to criticize.

Rector's Study July 2008

From the Rector’s Study ~

Some very material urgencies are imposing themselves upon us these days. The rising costs of fuel and the consequent increases in costs of other tangible goods are affecting some of our most basic decisions. Travel plans come into question, major purchases may need to be put on hold. Simply buying a gallon of milk or a half-gallon is a new and unfamiliar choice that more people are having to make. In addition, the arrival of summer reminds us that the dog days are but a pleasant myth. Chores around the house keep us busy: changing HVAC filters, hanging new curtains, replacing light bulbs, putting in new trim molding, cleaning out the attic, straightening the garage. Chores around the church keep us busy, too: straightening pew racks, fixing steps, catching mice, repairing air-conditioners, replacing bulbs, to name some finite examples from the infinite list.

In this environment of urgency and busyness we can easily lose our sense of what matters most, both to God and to ourselves. Anthropologist and theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once wrote that, "We are not physical beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a physical experience." That about ourselves which is less tangible, less quantifiable, less obvious, and thus even less accomplishable, is, in Teilhards’s view, that which is most distinctively human. For Teilhard, what makes us human is our connection with God and eternity, not our connection with our immediate circumstance in time and space.

Sermon 7 Pentecost - Proper 8A June 30, 2008

7 Pentecost - 30 June 2008 - Proper 8A
Genesis 22:1-14; Romans 6:12-23; Matthew 10:40-42
James V. Stockton

Does God dream? It’s a different question from asking, ‘Does God sleep?’ People have dreams of their futures, dreams of their legacies, dreams for the happiness of their loved ones, dreams for the society of which they are a part, and dreams for the world in which they live. Do people wonder if God had dreams? Do they wonder, ‘What dreams does God dream for people?’ Do they ever wonder, ‘What dreams does God dream for me?’

I read a story about a priest and his sermon one Sunday. “In the ancient times” he begins, “the people believed that God spoke to them in dreams and visions. If they wondered where God wanted them to go, or what God wanted them to do when they got there, they would seek a direct word from God in their dreams.” What do God’s people dream for themselves? And what about people beyond the border of the fellowship of God’s people? What dreams do people dream outside the Church looking in? And what does God dream for us and for all?

Long, long ago, Abraham had a dream. His own dream has been to have a son who will carry forward his lineage. And with the birth of his son, Isaac, his dream, his vision, his fondest hope has been fulfilled. But one day Abraham has a dream of another sort. It is a vision, and it originates far beyond Abraham’s aspirations. Neither comforting not inspiring, it is a dream, a vision, by which God tests Abraham. “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love,….” God knows of Abraham’s deep attachment to the boy. God knows the test that this is for Abraham.

In Hebrew it is the aqedah, the binding. It means Abraham’s binding of his son Isaac in preparation for his killing him and offering him up as burnt sacrifice to God. In the entire story of God’s people, this is a unique episode. I’ve seen people brought to tears when reading it aloud. So disturbing is this bit of Abraham’s story that virtually nothing is said of it, no attempt to make sense of it, in all the rest of the books of the Old Testament. Scholar Jon Levenson, in his book The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son, notes that there is an “utter absence of direct references” to the aqedah “anywhere else in the Hebrew Bible.” It isn’t until the Hebrew people are invaded, defeated, and taken captive that the rabbis and scholars of their day in their commentary or midrash begin to give the story more attention. As Levenson notes, it “becomes a theme of enormous import in Judaism of the Roman period, including the forms of Judaism that served as the matrix of Christianity.”

And thus the question remains alive through generations down to our own: the question being, as Levenson puts it, “the righteous father’s willingness to sacrifice his beloved son… together with the son’s glad and unqualified acceptance of his own divinely mandated death.” Question indeed! For the unspeakable command of God to Abraham causes the question to become far more urgent, “What truly does God dream for God’s people? What is God’s truly dream for me?”

Back in church, the priest continues explaining: “If the people weren’t getting any messages from God while dreaming in bed at home, they would build an altar of stone and sleep beside it, or go sleep in the Temple, where they believed all this would work better.” From beginning to end, the story of Abraham is rich with dreams that bring him messages through an angel from heaven. At the last possible moment, the angel calls out again, and Abraham answers. It is an important dynamic that I believe we do well to notice. From the start of this strange episode, through the three days of Abraham’s pondering of the message, to the climactic rescue of the child, a crucial element is Abraham’s attentiveness to God.

The angel calls out, Abraham answers, and God shows him a ram nearby which substitutes for Isaac as sacrifice to God. Then the angel speaks to Abraham again. In the verses that immediately follow our Old Testament reading for this morning we read: “The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, ‘I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.’”

In trying to find meaning in this story, then, some of the early rabbis went on to suggest, as some people suggest still today, that God grants favor to Abraham not when God first calls him to special blessing and responsibility, but when Abraham offers the sacrifice of his own son. For some of us, this will recall Jesus’ words in the Gospel for last week: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;…” “All nations on earth will be blessed,” says God through the angel, “because you have obeyed me,” obeyed even to the point of be willing to kill his own child.

If this is true, then it raises the stakes immeasurably when we ask the question about what God might dream. We can put the question socially and anthropologically, so that we ask collectively: What is God’s dream for us or for humanity? What does God require of us or of humanity? We can put the question personally and individually, so that a person asks himself, herself, you ask yourself, I ask myself: What does God dream for me? What does God require of me to make God’s dream real? However we ask it, though, if the question really is not just what am I willing to sacrifice, but whom, then the proportions of the question become huge. More important, the question becomes dark, ominous, even, dare I say, unholy.

Which may be why the Old Testament is completely silent on the aqedah, and the New Testament mention Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac only twice, and only as evidence of the faith of one who has already received the promise of God. Which is why, I think, that if the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac is a call to God’s people to sacrifice anything, it is God’s call to sacrifice the notion that a dream of God is sadistically to test the faith of God’s people to the point of absurdity and obscenity. It is God’s call to us, and through us, to all whose lives we share, to reject with all our heart and soul and mind and being the idea that God would call Abraham or anyone else to kill their dreams.

The question is, then, very important: What does God dream for God’s people? In church, the priest is concluding his explanation to the parish. “So, the people would seek from God a message in their dreams. Thus began,” he says, tongue in cheek, “the time-honored tradition of sleeping in Church. I want to point this out,” he continues: “though I’m fairly certain that they will not actually hear it who would appreciate it most of all.”

You and I know that we need not be asleep in church to dream. So, don’t sleep in church, but by all means, dream. Let’s receive from God dreams for our future, for the legacies that we’ll leave behind, for the happiness of our loved ones; for the society of which we are a part, and for the world in which we live. We know that dreams that can be gifts of God. So dream this week, by all means, dream.

We know also that beyond the border of ECR people have dreams as well. Beyond the boundaries of the Episcopal Church, beyond the wider fellowship of all God’s people, people outside looking in have dreams. And as you and I do, they also in their own way, wonder, ‘What does God dream for people?’ ‘What dreams does God dream for me?’ After confronting our nightmares about the cost of obeying and following Jesus being more than we can bear, Jesus hints, I think, at the real dream of God. ‘Be welcomed,’ he says ‘by those who welcome you. And in you, let them welcome me.’ ‘Welcome those who come to you.’ he says. ‘And in them, you will welcome me.’ ‘Welcome one another. That’s all the sacrifice I really ask; just welcome one another.’ It’s as though God says, ‘Let my welcome live in you; let my Love live in you; let my dream be alive in you, and together, let us see our dreams come true.’

And so may Almighty God, who has poured into our hearts the greatest gift, grant us faithfulness in our witness to the power of that Love, which burns in the heart of God’s own Son Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and for ever. Amen.

© 2008, James V. Stockton

Sermon 6 Penteocost - Proper 7A June 22, 2008

6 Pentecost - 22 June 2008 - Proper 7A
Genesis 21:8-21; Romans 6:1b-11; Matthew 10:24-39
James V. Stockton

How did your last week go for you? I hope it was blissfully calm, but maybe it wasn’t. I hope your relationships with the people and world around you were refreshingly honest; but maybe they weren’t. I hope you experienced wonderfully your faith in God and God’s faith in you; but maybe you didn’t. And if it wasn’t, if they weren’t, and if you didn’t, maybe it goes to demonstrate what Jesus told his disciples long ago: Peace isn’t natural. Truth isn’t cheap. Trust in God isn’t easy.

Is it surprising for people to hear this? In a world suffering from war, is this a hard word from Jesus to hear? Jesus did not come to make peace with the world. He does not come to affirm the way things are. Instead, he brings a sword. Jesus’ manner of life, his witness is here to cut away the immorality of injustice; his words are here to pierce the heart of falsehood and pretense. In a time of fears that conflict may spread more widely, is it surprising to learn that Jesus comes to call his followers to fight when need be, to struggle when need be, to suffer and die, when need be?

I have to wonder, is it hard for Jesus apostles to remember what Jesus says to them in the gospel for today? He has risen and ascended, and as they live into their own ministry, they recall Jesus’ words and example to guide them on their way. “My critics and enemies call me evil and crazy,” says Jesus. “And if this is what they tell people about me, you can imagine what they’ll say about you.” “So,” Jesus tells them, “don’t be surprised. Don’t be surprised that people oppose the truth that you bring, the values that you represent.” “So, know this: God has you. Ultimately, your clear conscience will calm your mind. Your integrity will settle your fearful heart. Ultimately, your love for God, your commitment to truth, your pursuit of justice and mercy, will keep you in the knowledge and love of God.”

The challenges of God’s call can be surprising. It can be hard sometimes to trust the promise of God. Yet if these struggles betray how woefully human are those who seek to follow Christ Jesus, how thoroughly human is our own the Episcopal Church, along with the wider fellowship of all who seek the knowledge and Love of God, it bears recognizing that it is precisely to these thoroughly human struggles that God gives custody of the divine treasures of Peace, and Truth, and Trust in God.

As we heard last week, Abraham and Sarah are impatient to experience God’s promise to them the unlikely promise of an heir born to them in their extreme old age. Having arranged with her maid and slave, Hagar, to serve as surrogate mother, Sarah now resents the son that Abraham has fathered with Hagar. She wants the child and his mother banished and Abraham agrees. Abraham sends the woman and child off into the wilderness to fend for themselves. These actions of Abraham and Sarah demonstrate the fact that God calls and moves through people not because they are perfect, but because they are willing to try; and when they get it wrong, are willing to try again.

There is, then, no need to soften the fact: what Abraham and Sarah do here is cruel. The closest we can come, I suppose, to defending their actions is to recall that that God somehow assures Abraham that God will tend to the child. It is a promise that God makes to Abraham, and later also to the boy’s own mother. And, of course, it is a promise that God keeps. God does rescue both Ishmael and his mother Hagar from the harshness of the desert. And the Ishmaelites do become a nation great in their own right.

On a side note, in some circles, it’s a popular notion, to equate Ishmael and his descendents with the followers of Mohammed and with Islam. I would suggest caution here, if only to note that the original animosity is between Sarah and Hagar, not between Isaac and Ishmael, who actually grow up for awhile playing nicely together. In addition, it’s important, I think, to note that the birth of Islam brought it into conflict not first with the Jewish descendents of Abraham, but with the Christian believers in the divinity of Jesus. And of course, more recent conflicts are rooted in 20th century politics, with any sense of ancient discord merely supplying secondary and specious justification for modern hostilities. In short, let’s not blame this stuff on God. Instead, let’s be willing to try to trust the promise of God. And when we get it wrong, let’s not force the promise in our own way. But let’s be willing to try again to trust the promise of God.

Trust in God is hard. Truth can be costly. Peace must be intentional. Jesus knows all this. And it’s important to him that his followers know it, too. Certainly, his disciples remember that Jesus was no conquering warrior. They remember also, though, that Jesus was no diplomat come to negotiate, compromise, and placate the self-interest of as many people as possible. As is said elsewhere in the gospel, Jesus is no ‘respecter of persons.’ He is no mincer-of-words. He does not alter his manner or his speech based upon the status of the person or the people to whom he speaks. And so he cannot, he will not, tell his closest followers anything less than the truth. And the truth is, the apostles are in for trouble. God has not sent Jesus to call them from their fishing nets and tax-collector’s booths, to a life of ease and effortless success. Just as Jesus does, so also will the apostles now confront all that keeps people from God’s Love for them and for all.

Trust in God can be difficult. Truth is costly. Peace must be on purpose. “One’s foes will be member of one’s own household,” says Jesus. Maybe Peter thinks back and recalls his father’s response to him dropping the fishing nets, leaving the boat, leaving behind the family business, and going off with this itinerant preacher, Jesus. Maybe Matthew remembers how his friends and relatives told him what a fool he was to leave his lucrative position as tax-collector and take off after this upstart, Jesus. Maybe someone you or I know has known similar skepticism among people close to him or to her when she or he decided to follow the course that was, for her, for him, the nobler, higher, more godly way. Maybe you or I have experienced it ourselves.

Peace is a prize to be pursued and earned. Truth is a challenge to be met and embraced. Trust in God is a spiritual gift to be exercised and strengthened. One wonders if it’s hard for the disciples to hear this. One wonders if it’s hard for people now to hear this. Is it hard for you and me to hear it again today? And one wonders if maybe the disciples follow Jesus anyway because they hear from him the same promise of God that gathers us here today: “You are of value to God,” says Jesus. “You matter to God. God cares for you. God is always with you.”

How was last week for you? I pray it was good and joyful, exciting and energizing, and all that you hoped it would be. And I pray that this week will be all that and more. I pray that this week will be, for you and me, for us together, and through each of us, also for those around us, a week that is unsettling, disturbing, challenging, tiring, and in this, a week that is rich with the promise of God.

I pray that this week we won’t be surprised when God gives us occasion to do battle with the impulse to do battle; to refuse to tolerate the instinct for intolerance; to surrender a natural contentment in pursuit of a true and supernatural peace from God. I pray that this week we won’t be surprised that God gives us occasion to pay the price for speaking the truth; to confront those comfortable falsehoods that separate people from God and from one another; and to proclaim loudly, in deed and in word, that truth alone will set us free in the knowledge and Love of God. I pray that this week we will not be surprised to find that God gives us occasion to welcome and receive again the gift of trust in God; and occasion to use it, to exercise it, to strengthen it, so that our witness in the world may be ever faithful, ever peaceful, and ever true to the Love of God for all.

And so may Almighty God, who draws our hearts to Jesus, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so direct our wills that, wholly belonging to God, we may be dedicated to the welfare of God’s people, and to the glory of God’s Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, One God, for ever and ever. Amen.

© 2008, James V. Stockton

Sermon 4 Pentecost - Proper 5 A June 8, 2008

4 Pentecost – Proper 5A – 8 June 2008
Genesis 12:1-9; Romans 4:13-25; Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
James V. Stockton

This month, this week, daughters and sons, granddaughters and grandsons, nieces, nephews, cousins and friends, and maybe some of us right here, are graduating. From a school, a college, a seminary, some institution of learning, they will take their experiences and growth and bring them to bear on the question: ‘What now will they do with their lives?’

What will you want you life to be? What kind of person will you strive to be? What will you to do with your life? What are you doing with your life today? They’re all variations on a theme. And most people know that it’s a huge question. Because most people know, on some level, that of all that life brings to us, that life itself is the greatest gift and the greatest responsibility.

What do you want to do with your life? What do I want to do with mine? We have a sense that the answer to this question has somehow to do with God, which is at least part of why we are here in Church on this fine morning.

Recently I was reminded of one of my favorite stories. At a theological conference, someone once asked a prominent rabbi a question. ‘Rabbi,’ he begins, ‘what do you think will happen when we die?’ And the rabbi says, “I think God will ask each of us, ‘why didn’t you enjoy life more?’” How might people respond if God were to ask them, ‘What have you today that you brings joy into your life?’ How might you or I respond?

In the scriptures of the Old Testament, Abraham and Sarah are great figures who respond to God’s call, and who have much in their life that brings them joy. Today we hear a small portion of their amazing story. Before he was Abraham, he was Abram. Before she was Sarah, she was Sarai. Before they hear God’s call and respond to it, they live on land that Abram has inherited from his father in the midst of a people that they know, within a culture in which they prosper. They are people who have much in life to bring them joy. Then God calls them to graduate to a higher knowledge of God’s grace and Love for all.

"Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house,” God says; “to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation,” says God; “and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing." It sounds as though the cause for their joy is that God will make of Abraham and Sarah ‘a great nation.’ God will cause this great nation to exalt Abraham’s name in its history and mythology. And it may even be that Abraham and Sarah take God’s message in exactly this way.

But they will learn. They will experience more of God’s love. And they will graduate. They will graduate to the greater knowledge and understanding that God is making of them a divine joy and blessing in the lives of those who will follow, those who, in their own way, will graduate, and so in their own will ask “What now will I do with my life?”

The Church represents and re-presents this question in its sacramental life. Virtually every one of the Church’s seven sacraments involves a question or questions that aim ultimately at asking us, “What really do we intend to do with our lives.” In addition, beyond the rites and ceremonies themselves, when we are candidates for baptism or confirmation, or when we are seeking the blessing of Holy Matrimony, or are asking for unction or reconciliation, or, like our own seminarian Sue Wilimot, are preparing for ordination, there is a period of examination, to ensure that we are prepared to address the questions that are particular to each sacrament. “Into what and into whom are you to about to be baptized in order to become a Christian?” “In the Church that is confirming you, what does the word ‘episcopal’ mean?” “What is the affliction of which you wish to be healed in body, mind, or spirit?” “Are you prepared to amend your sin against God and your neighbor?” Each question alludes to that one question that lies at the heart of every sacrament: “What shall I do with my life?”

It is the question that the Apostle Paul wants to help the early Church answer through the story of Abraham and Sarah. By the time Paul writes his letter to the Christians in Rome, the story of is an icon of faith in God. Teachers and preachers hold him up as the example to follow the personification of ready obedience, the ideal to which the rest of us ought to aspire.

‘What shall I do with my life?’ It’s the question for which the evangelist Matthew tries to provide an answer through his own story in the Gospel. Matthew instantly rises to Jesus’ call, who immediately leaves his old life, to venture onward with Jesus into an unfamiliar new life is, to a less spectacular degree, also an example for Christians to imitate, an ideal of ready faith in Jesus to which all of us may rightly aspire.

The truth is, though, Paul is using the story of Abraham another way. The truth is the story of Matthew is set into a larger context that makes it a story not so much of profound faith, but of a man’s knowledge of himself as a sinner, and of God’s grace reaching into lives around him that no one but Jesus would deem worthy. As a revered figure at the core of the identity of God’s people, Abraham and his covenant with God provide a template for the New Covenant that God makes with people in Jesus. Paul’s point is that the original covenant that God made so long ago with Abraham is not founded upon Abraham’s actions. It is founded upon the trust that Abraham placed in God; trust that preceded and shaped Abraham’s faithfulness in response. The former covenant is the agreement of a promise made between God and Abraham which Abraham’s lineage ratifies throughout their generations primarily through the sign of circumcision, and in other rites and ceremonies.

Paul wants the early Christians to understand that the New Covenant is similarly based in trust. As the Old Covenant is rooted in Abraham’s trust in God, so is the New Covenant rooted in Jesus’ trust in God. This is the agreement of the promise fulfilled, a covenant between God the Father and God the Son, Jesus Christ, a covenant that Christ’s followers then ratify in their own lives, primarily through the sign of baptism and also in the rites and ceremonies of the other sacraments. And above all, it’s important for them to know, it’s important for you and me to know, that, as Paul says, this promise rests on grace. The story of Abraham and Sarah, the story of Matthew, Paul’s own story, and yours and mine, as well, all are first about God; and only then about our response in faithfulness to God.

What will we do with our life? It’s the covenant question. Biblical scholars have discerned in scripture over 600 specific prohibitions for human behavior, and twice as many prescriptions. And while never God’s intention, people came to understand these as the Covenant they were to keep.

And so, it’s our graduation question: What will you do with your life? What will I do with my life? We may choose to spend this precious gift of life trying to observe what seem to be God’s rules for us. And sooner or later, when we finally realize that there’s no human way for us to keep these laws perfectly, that we are creatures with a flawed sense of good and bad, of right and wrong, that we are inherently unable to be perfect in our faithfulness to God, then do we bring our experience and growth to bear on the question: What will we to do with our life?

Will we follow the advice of a Rabbi and scholar, and enjoy life more today, tomorrow, and the next day? Will we answer God’s call to each of us to be set free from our role in life as sinner, and instead to become a blessing from God in the lives of many? Will we graduate to God’s call to us to desire mercy; mercy for ourselves, in understanding our need for it? and mercy for those around us, those beyond help, those beyond welcome, but those never beyond our knowledge of the Love of God for all.

And now may Almighty God, who has lifted us from what we were due into the richness of grace, equip us to be worthy of our call, that by all our works, begun, continued, and ended in faith, we may glorify God’s holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

© 2008, James V. Stockton

Rector's Study June 2008

From the Rector’s Study ~

From here on, our task is all about living out the New Covenant. We are charged both with being God’s people toward one another and with doing God’s will in the world around us. What we are given to do and to be is very likely just the same as was given to the first disciples of Jesus as they went out from the upper room. The wind of the Spirit of God had blown over them and freshly empowered them, literally inspired them, to proclaim in deed and in word the Good News of God’s Love for all. Their call is our call; our vocation is the vocation of the apostles of Christ our Lord.

Our diocese has elected a new bishop whose task it will be to remind all the rest of us our call, and to empower God’s Church for the carrying out of our mission. Our new bishop will need our prayers; indeed he needs them now, even before he becomes officially our bishop. Pray for the Rev. Andy Doyle, and know that he is praying for all of us. Give thanks that, in some important ways, our diocese, the congregation of all the people, has chosen to end business as usual in order to chart a new path toward our future. And let us commit ourselves now to continue to do our part to ensure that our diocese stays true to this new course.

Sermon 2 Pentecost - Proper 3 A May 25, 2008

2 Pentecost - 25 May 2008 - Proper 3 A
Isaiah 49:8-16a; 1 Corinthians 4:1-5; Matthew 6:24-34
James V. Stockton

God provides. Beneath all the theology and mystery that enrich the message of the gospel, the simple truth that God provides lies very near the heart of the Good News of God’s Love for all.

There’s a story about a woman, living alone in her simple home, and her landlord, the man from whom she rents it. Bertie is an elderly woman; no spouse, no children, with very little by way of fixed income. Bertie contents herself to live with only her most basic needs met. She is pleasant, though. Poverty has taught her the simple beauty of God’s creation that many others around her pass by and ignore in their hurry to their next appointment or obligation. Mitch is Bertie’s landlord. He is not a bad sort, but he does find Bertie a curiosity and a pity.

One day Mitch stops by to collect from Bertie her rent money, ten days past due. “I’m sorry,” says Bertie as she hands Mitch her rent. “I was hoping I’d be able set aside a bit more before I had to pay my rent. It didn’t work out like I’d hoped, but God will provide.” Mitch looks around her bare bones abode. “What’s your God providing, Bertie?” he asks. “You don’t have anything as it is. You’re giving me your last dime, and I’m guessing that you don’t even have anything left to eat.” Bertie smiles at Mitch. “God will provide.” “Good grief!” Mitch shakes his head. “‘God will provide!’” mimicking Bertie. He shakes his head, and leave.

God’s provision. The idea can seem to be that Jesus is calling his followers to suspend their concerns, their concerns about anything, really; about everything. ‘‘Don’t worry about your food. Don’t worry about your clothing. Don’t worry about tomorrow.’ It’s as if Jesus is inviting people to cast their cares aside as though completely insignificant. And the implication, then, is that the people who have a care or a concern, the people who are worrying about something, are not just people of ‘little faith,’ but are people of no faith at all.

That said, it might be interesting to find out: Are you worrying about anything? If so, don’t be afraid to raise your hand. Don’t be afraid, you of little faith. So, just raise that hand.’ And of course, few people are going accept such an invitation. It isn’t an invitation to bring one’s ‘troubles and woes’ to Jesus. It’s rather more of an invitation to open oneself to criticism and judgment from others for the so-called ‘sin’ of worry and concern. It is an invitation, then, to denial; denial of one’s true feelings, denial of one’s true thoughts, and thus a denial of one’s true self. As such, it is an invitation to a dangerous and unfaithful exercise in false religion. For it is an invitation to deny to God the offering of the fullness of one’s being, in body, mind, and spirit. This is not the invitation that Jesus makes to his followers.

I read about a couple tourists visiting Israel. Kavanagh and McDuff have come over from Scotland to see the Holy Lands. Arriving at the Sea of Galilee, they learn that a boat ride across the lake will cost them fifty dollars apiece, and they are aghast. “Why, back home, we have some of the most beautiful lochs in the world,” cries McDuff. “And a fellow can cross them for but a few shillings.” “Ah, but sirs,” says the guide, “this is the lake that Jesus walked on.” “Small wonder, that,” says Kavangh. “With what you’re charging to take a boat across, I can see why he went on foot.”

With Jesus having ascended to heaven the disciples now know the presence of God by the power of the Holy Spirit among them, within them, and around them uniting them to God in body, mind, and spirit. They do in their own day what people like us do today; they recall his teaching and seek its fullest meaning for the worries and concerns of their lives and of the lives of those around them. And because people worry, Jesus is clear: ‘No one can serve both money and God,’ he says. And while the meaning may be apparent, yet we will do well to ask why Jesus would tell his followers, of all people, this bit of wisdom. ‘Don’t worry about your life,’ Jesus says. And again, the meaning and its application are broadly relevant. But there are insights available to us when we question why Jesus is telling this specifically to his followers.

His disciples now are right where he knew they would be. They have become the leaders of a movement that is beginning to catch fire. Jesus knew when he was among them that some day the disciples would gather the attention that accompanies offering to people the love of God and the dignity of being a child of God. And Jesus knew that this attention would bring with it temptations to capture and use this attention for purposes that would be less than godly, gracious, and true.

The rulers of the Temple, who governed the religious worship and practice of the people, would one day order the apostles of Jesus to cease their spreading of the good news of God’s Love for all. They would threaten the disciples with punishment. They would offer to leave them in peace if only the apostles will agree to ‘behave.’ People would offer the disciples money and rewards to share with them the privileges of leadership and the more spectacular gifts of God’s Holy Spirit. The disciples would face the temptation to restrict the sharing of the Gospel to none but their own people, to none but those whom they themselves deemed worthy, and none but those who could pay for it in return.

And so it is important to Jesus that his disciples remember, that all his people remember, that you and I remember, that God provides.

Bertie is alone in her simple home. Her rent is paid for the month. Now she must content herself with a glass of water and some salt-crackers from her pantry. “God, she says aloud, “I know that you provide. “I’ll be careful not to worry about myself too much,” she continues. “And I’ll just rely on you not to worry about me too little.” Worry wouldn’t be quite the word to tell what Bertie feels. But whatever concern there is, underneath it lies a simple trust that God provides.

Choosing to serve God above all else is first a choice to serve something other than oneself. It is a choice well represented by those whom we remember on this holiday weekend, who chose to serve their country and the defense of others rather than serve themselves alone. It is the choice that transformed the first followers of Jesus into leaders of the Church and servants of the Gospel of God. It’s the choice that is set before every follower of Jesus since then, set before many times over, every day, set before you and me still today.

Inside her home, Bertie is eating when she hears a sound, a thump as something lands in her fireplace. Bertie investigates and finds pound sack of potatoes! Instantly she hears a thud at her back door. She rushes to see. Opening her back door, Bertie finds a grocery bag with two frozen chickens inside. She is speechless. Suddenly there is another thump at her front door. Rushing to open the door, Bertie finds several sacks this time, with bread and milk and eggs and canned goods. Berite is filled with awe and amazement. “Thank you, God!” she cries.

“Good grief, Bertie!” Mitch is laughing, as he comes out from around the corner of the house. “I brought you all that. And here you’re thinking God just dropped it out of the sky!” “Thank you, Mitch,” says Berite. “Thank you. And thank you, God!” cries Bertie again. “I couldn’t imagine that you could use this man, but I always knew that you would provide.”

Today, tomorrow, the next day and every day, the choice set before us is to trust that God provides. It is a choice to trust the simple truth that lies near the heart of God’s Love for us, and of God’s Love for all. It is the choice to raise your hand before family, friend, and neighbor and say, “Yes, I’m worried; so, help me to remember, please, that God provides.” It is the choice to fold my hands, and to tell God, “Yes, I’m worried; and yet, I remember, and help me to remember, Oh God, that you do provide.” It is the choice to stretch out our hand that those around us, that they may discover that God provides through you and me. God’s Love provides.

And so may Almighty God remember not what we deserve but that which God has entrusted to us; and as we have been summoned to the service of the Gospel, may God make us worthy of our call; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns One God, now and for ever. Amen.

© 2008, James V. Stockton

Sermon 7 Easter - Ascension Sunday May 4, 2008

7 Easter A - Sunday after Ascension Day - 4 May 2008
Acts 1:6-14; 1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11; John 17:1-11
James V. Stockton

Of the geometry with which God has blessed us it may be that the circle is the most pleasing of shapes that people see and most satisfying of concepts that people encounter. This proposition may be one worth keeping mind as we reflect upon one of the complexities of our faith. “The church that forgets the absence [of Christ] inevitably misunderstands and misconstrues [Christ’s] presence.” So writes theologian and historian Douglas Farrow in his book Ascension and Ecclesia. Farrow’s point is that Christ’s ascension is, and must be, far more than “only a lesson designed to put an end to the disciples’ expectation of further ‘visitations’ from heaven.”

Christ’s Ascension is a core and basic tenet of Christianity. The orthodox doctrines of the Church, as represented in both the Apostle’s Creed and the Nicene Creed, describe Jesus’ ascension into heaven as something on a par with those other aspects of his life and ministry that are definitive of Christianity itself. Along with his conception by the power of the Holy Spirit, his birth by the Virgin Mary, his passion and death under Pontius Pilate, and his mighty resurrection from the dead, Jesus’ ascension into heaven is right in there with the rest.

Here, then, is where the geometry of the thing might be helpful. The point of the Ascension of Jesus is that what was begun is now complete. Certainly what was begun in Jesus, in the incarnation of the Christ, this is completed. Yet, there is more than this that God has begun. And this means that there is a greater circle, if you will, that is represented in Jesus’ ascension, encompassing a wider meaning than people might first perceive.

“I have made your name known,” prays Jesus, “to those whom you gave me from the world.” It is a prayer that Jesus offers to God on his final night with them before his arrest and execution. And perhaps as we do today, perhaps as our fellow Episcopalians and many other Christians around the world do today, perhaps the disciples also remember this prayer that Jesus once offered on their behalf, as they turn from the mystery of his ascension into heaven. “Holy Father,” Jesus prays, “protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one as we are one.” Jesus prays for them because, even though they do not realize it on the sad night on which he prays, nor do they realize it yet as he blesses them atop Mount Olivet before disappearing from view, yet Jesus knows. Jesus knows that he is leaving them in the midst of a world to which they no longer really belong.

And Jesus knows that, soon, the disciples will realize it themselves. “Lord, is this the time?” they ask Jesus. It’s a very reasonable question; it’s a very linear question. ‘You have been raised from the dead; you have shown yourself to us repeatedly, you have confirmed for us that you are the Christ of God.’ “Now,” they ask him, “is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” It’s a linear question. And so, it is a worldly question. And for this reason, Jesus must tell them, “It’s not for you to know.”

A story tells of Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw and young man whom he meets at a dinner party. The young man launches into a monologue describing his observations and opinions concerning innumerable topics. He drones on and on, with on one else nearly as fascinated as he himself. Unwilling to restrain his wit any longer, Shaw interrupts. “I do believe,” he says to the young man, “that between the two of us, we know everything in the world that there is to know.” “Really?” asks the young man. “And how, pray tell, would that be?” “Well,” says Shaw, “you seem to know everything except that you are an incomparable bore. And I know that!”

What is humanity’s to know, and what is it that is not ours to know? Within our venerable Anglican tradition, there is an approach to faith that is described as a three-legged stool. It originates with 17th century Church of England theologian Richard Hooker, and, in my humble opinion, we have yet to plumb the depths of his insight. Hooker proposes that Christian faith is well supported by a godly triad whose first leg is Scripture, whose second leg is Reason, and whose third is Tradition. And despite the tendency of some ideologies to make appeals to tradition in order to support practices that are rooted in unchallenged prejudices, nevertheless, thanks be to God, Anglicanism still ranks Reason ahead of tradition. It is Anglican, it is Episcopalian, thus, I think we may rightly argue, that it is simply inherently Christian to appreciate this fantastic capacity to think, to question, to wonder, to theorize, to test, and to think it through again. It may be given to us to know, or it may be given to us not to know. But it is always given to us to want to know.

The disciples want to know is this the time. Jesus wants them to know something far more important. And Jesus wants them to want to know that it is something not ‘out there’ in front of them somewhere; but something closer, something nearer to the point where they began. When the disciples start out with Jesus, they do not know him. They think they know him; they think that he is a wise man, they wonder if he is a prophet, and they hope that he is the one anointed and appointed by God to put their people back at the top of the hierarchy of world order. From our own perspective of nearly 2000 years afterward, we know that Jesus was not literally any of these; we know that the followers of Jesus did not, in the beginning, know Jesus.

Now, as he prepares to leave them in death, Jesus he prays for his disciples in a particular way. His disciples have come to know him at least well enough that though they remain are in the world, yet they, like he, are now no longer of it. That life that is of the world and the life of Christ in the world do not communicate long with one another before one begins to give way to the other. <>Two people uniting as a couple, have no absolute need to do in the context of a life of faith in God, a life in but not of the world. People celebrating the life of a love one who has recently died, have no absolute need to do in the context of a life of faith in God, a life in but not of the world. But sometimes, in times of joy, people do seek God’s blessing in a context of a life of faith. Sometimes, people do seek God’s consolation in times of grief in the context of a life in but not of the world. This indicates, I suggest, Christ’s call to his followers to create such intersections of cooperation and distinction, where people may bring their experiences of the linear progression of their lives into contacts with eternity and with the life of God.

“In the Bible,” writes the scholar Farrrow, “the doctrine of the resurrection slowly emerges as a central feature of the Judeo-Christian hope. But if it can stand for that hope, that hope itself is obviously something more.” “…it is not too bold to say,” he continues, “that the greater corporate journey documented by the scriptures continually presses…toward the impossible feat of the ascension.” <>At his ascension, Jesus promises his followers that soon they will be blessed with the Holy Spirit of God, as he himself was blessed. For he knows that they, like he, that we like he, are now be in the world, as a symbol of life begun, ended, and perpetually residing in God. Today, you and I have completed a circle. We have returned to find Christ Jesus where our journey with him began. He is absent, distant again; and we find ourselves, and sometimes people in the world around us, again expectant of his coming. And yet, we find him still uniquely present to us in word, in sacrament and in the sacramental fellowship of we his people.

And so, by his absence and through our expectation, we discover Jesus again among us, in the only way that we can find him, in the way that only he can be found. As he and the Father are one, we find Jesus again, he within us and we in him; in the world but not of it, we living the life of the faith that we have in Jesus, and Jesus living the life of the faith that he has in you and me.

And so may Almighty God, who unites us in the holy bond of truth and peace, of joy and charity, so grant to us the gift of faith that it may overflow our own, and bless the hearts and lives around us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and for ever. Amen.

© 2008, James V. Stockton

Rector'sStudy May 2008

From the Rector's Study ~

Once his followers experience Christ Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, the movement of the Holy Spirit of God defines and determines the Church thereafter. With infectious passion the good news of God’s Love is broadcast farther and wider by growing numbers of Christians. They gather regularly to give thanks and praise to God, the very purpose of our own Sunday worship. In this community practice, God renews the vitality of the Holy Spirit within the Church, God’s people. From there, we move back out into the world around us, to infect it further with God’s Love for all. Thus, even as the Church celebrates cyclically the life and ministry of Jesus through the seasons of the Church year, yet the Church exists always and perpetually in the season of Pentecost, the season of the movement of the Holy Spirit.

As you likely know, this month our diocese will hold an election for our next diocesan bishop. Again as you may know, I am a nominee in this election. As the community whom I serve and lead, I want to share with you my sense of call, of the movement of the Spirit, regarding this election:

Sermon 4 Easter A - April 13, 2008

4 Easter A - 13 April 2008
Acts 2:42-47; 1 Peter 2:19-25; John 10:1-10
James V. Stockton

Conventional wisdom: I wonder if it isn’t almost a contradiction in terms. There is a wisdom, I suggest, in people gathering today to celebrate Jesus and his resurrection. But it is a wisdom that is, I suggest, more extraordinary than conventional. Conventional wisdom may have some people sleeping late this morning. After all, conventional wisdom tells them that they’ve endured a long busy week and another long busy week lies ahead of them; so, they should rest up in preparation for it. Conventional wisdom may have some folks out on the lake this morning, enjoying some leisure time. Conventional wisdom tells them they’ve earned, so they’d be fools not to take it. Conventional wisdom also tells people sometimes when it’s time to give up, or why it’s senseless to continue trying, or to try at all in the first place. There’s a saying that holds that the person who says it can’t be done should move out of the way of the person doing it. Maybe people should wonder: ‘Is conventional wisdom’ almost a contradiction in terms?’

There is a story of the Rt. Rev. Milton Wright. He was a bishop of the United Brethren Church which was shortly to join a similar denomination to form the Untied Methodists. In 1890, Bishop Wright is speaking at the Church’s annual convention. The convention is held at a local college. At one point in the meeting, the president of the college rises to speak. “I think,” says he, “that we are living in a very exciting age.” “What do you see?” asks the presiding bishop. The college president replies, “I believe we are coming into a time of great inventions. I believe for example,” he says, “that [one day soon, people] will fly through the air like birds.” “What!” exclaims the bishop. Shocked, he cries out, “This is heresy! The bible says that flight is reserved for the angels.” His was the conventional wisdom of the day.

Conventional wisdom: it may be a contradiction in terms. Conventional wisdom certainly contradicts the wisdom that gathers people, Episcopalian and otherwise, to celebrate Jesus and his resurrection. Conventional wisdom is, by definition, so very conventional that it hardly ever celebrates at all.

When, if ever, has conventional wisdom not held in some form or another, that people do best to take care of themselves, and their own interests, and to protect their things from others who might use them or even take them? When, if ever, has conventional wisdom not held that one ought not try to rise too far above one’s station in society? When, if ever, has conventional wisdom not held that one should go along to get along, to go along with things as they are in order to avoid trouble for oneself. When, if ever, has conventional wisdom not held that one should take for oneself the most that one can get away with taking: in ancient times, that one should take as much as possible of the food gathered for the day; or more recently, as much as possible of the money in the budget, before someone else makes off with it, and you’re left hungry and tired?

And with conventional wisdom offering such wonderful and encouraging advice, when, if ever, has conventional wisdom been the cause for real celebration? It isn’t conventional wisdom that gathers Christians today to celebrate Jesus and his resurrection.

‘The believers devoted themselves to the things that the apostles taught and to the fellowship that they created.’ They devoted themselves to breaking bread together and to praying together. As the first reading for today tells us, there is nothing at all conventional in the way the first Christians gather, either. The first Christians don’t gather up their private stuff and money, which is exactly what most people would do. Instead, they sell what they have in order to make sure that each has what he or she might need. It’s completely unconventional, and maybe this is part of the reason why these early Christians enjoy the good will of everyone else around them. It’s unconventional, and it’s a celebration. And there’s nothing really conventionally wise about people like you and me gathering today to carry on with the celebration that they began.

Ours is a traditional Church, the Episcopal Church. It’s long history traces back, yes, to the England of the Renaissance. But out history goes back even further, all the way to the apostles of Jesus and to all the way back to this very celebration described for us in the book of Acts, the book of the Acts of the Apostles. Conventional? In the sense that we hold our traditions respectfully, sure. For they are not ours alone; they belong also to those generations of Christians in whose path we follow, and to those generations of Christians who will follow us, celebrating the wisdom of Jesus, always unconventional.

When, if ever, would conventional wisdom have chosen fishermen to carry on the movement that Jesus began? When, if ever, would conventional wisdom have chosen a couple of spinster sisters and a ‘professional woman,’ shall we say, to be at the center of Jesus’ circle of followers and friends? When, if ever, would conventional wisdom encourage people to embrace their identity as sheep, and as part of the flock? But Jesus does it, and thanks be to God, our good shepherd is anything but conventional. Jesus says, ‘I am the entryway into life and life everlasting.’ Jesus says, ‘You follow me, and I’ll lead the way.’ Jesus says, ‘You go out when I go out, and you come in when I come in, and I’ll be watching over you every moment and every step of the way.’ The conventional wisdom of Jesus’ day was telling him to gather his own, to keep the others out. But in Jesus, God shows us that conventional wisdom never leads to the extraordinary.

Jesus says, ‘I want anyone and everyone to come to me. I don’t care if they look like I look. I don’t care if they speak like I speak. I don’t care if they come from my people or someone else’s. I don’t care if they know my name. I only care that they recognize my voice. I only care that they care that, in what I say, in how I say it, and in what I refuse to say, at last they hear the good news that God loves them, and is calling them to know this Love.’ Thanks be to God for the wisdom of our good shepherd.

In Jesus’ day and in our own, conventional wisdom says ‘Hey, it’s easier to look the other way while the thief or the bandit come in.’ Conventional wisdom tells us always to ask, ‘What’s in it for me?’ But Jesus says, ‘I will give my life before I’ll allow another to make off with a sheep that rightfully belongs to God, with a soul that God is trying to love.’ Thanks be to God that Jesus’ wisdom is wiser than convention.

The bishop at the convention asks the college president to speak, and the president speaks of things most unconventional. “We are coming to a time,” says he, “of great inventions. I believe that [people] will fly through the air like birds.” “What!” exclaims the bishop. “This is heresy! The bible says that flight is reserved for the angels.” The bishop looks around at the meeting. “We’ll have no more of such talk here!” Having set things right, the bishop returns home from the convention. There he passes out to his children some gifts that he brought for them. The two younger boys get a little wooden spinner. Powered by a rubber band, when the boys wind it up, it flies through the air. Content and comfortable, he thanks God, this Bishop Milton Wright, as his two sons, Wilbur and Orville, set to playing with their new flying toy.

It is a wisdom that gathers us today, a wisdom far beyond convention and comfort. It’s a wisdom of God’s own granting that moves us to celebrate Jesus and his resurrection, and our own. It’s a wisdom that gathers us today, a wisdom beyond all convention and mediocrity, bringing us to one another to see, to hear, and to feel God’s own joy in celebrating us, God’s own people, to know God’s own Love for you and me. It’s a wisdom that gathers us today, a wisdom beyond all convention and complacency, calling us to gather with us all those in the world around us who are straining to hear that voice that their heart will recognize: that voice that speaks without contradiction of the unconventional love of God; the extraordinary love of God for all.

And so may Almighty God, by whose mercy we find both rest and confidence, inspire our witness to him who gave himself on our behalf, and for the whole world; that all might come within the reach of his saving embrace; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns One God, now and for ever. Amen.

© 2008, James V. Stockton