Sermons – St. Brendan's Anglican Church: Recent Episodes

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Terrifying Lightning by David Kingham (Creative Commons)Pentecost +11 2026 Our God Reigns
Rev. Doug Floyd
Psalm 29

The voice of the Lord is over the waters;
The voice of the Lord is powerful;
The voice of the Lord is full of majesty;
The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars;
The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire;
The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness;
“The voice of the Lord makes the deer give birth and strips the forests bare, and in his temple all cry, “Glory!”” (Psalm 29:9, ESV)

Last week, I quoted Eugene Peterson who refers to the voice of God as a javelin piercing the human heart with His life-giving truth. In Psalm 29, the Voice of the Lord echoes throughout. It is over the waters; it is powerful and majestic; it breaks cedars, flashes forth flames of fire; it shakes the wilderness; it makes the deer give birth and strips the forests bare.

The Voice of the Lord is truly awesome, even terrifying. Imagine the former Hebrew slaves standing at the foot of Mt. Sinai. In Exodus 20, the Lord tells Moses to prepare the people for His appearing,

“The Lord said to Moses, “Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their garments and be ready for the third day. For on the third day the Lord will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. And you shall set limits for the people all around, saying, ‘Take care not to go up into the mountain or touch the edge of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall be put to death. No hand shall touch him, but he shall be stoned or shot; whether beast or man, he shall not live.’ When the trumpet sounds a long blast, they shall come up to the mountain.”” (Exodus 19:10–13, ESV)

“On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled. Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly. And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder. The Lord came down on Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain.” (Exodus 19:16–19, ESV)

Imagine standing at the foot of that mountain. Thunder and lightning; the mountain itself quaking, smoke enveloping the whole mountain.

Terrifying.

Those who live through a hurricane or a tornado get some sense of this terrifying power. Nature gives us a sense of the awesome terror of this encounter.

After the Lord speaks the 10 commandments, the people are shaken to the core. In Exodus 20, we read:

“Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.”” (Exodus 20:18–19, ESV)

Our Psalm today, reveals the mysterium tremendum of God speaking to His people. Rudolf Otto coined that phrase in his 1917 book, The Idea of the Holy. To encounter the Creator, the Wholly Other is both a terrifying and fascinating mystery. To encounter God in His glory is to remind humans of our nothingness. We see a glimpse of this in Isaiah 6. Isaiah’s friend, King Uzziah has died. He is at the Temple grieving. God shows up in all His glory.

He suddenly sees the Lord. Angels surround Him, but their wings cover their faces and feet. God is too glorious even for them. Isaiah’s response is to cry out,

“Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”” (Isaiah 6:5, ESV)

Paul speaks of this overwhelming glory in 1 Timothy 6:

“He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.” (1 Timothy 6:15–16, ESV)

His glory is overwhelming. Psalm 29 reveals our glorious Creator as the true Sovereign of all creation. All glory is due Him. The waters are under His thunderous voice. The trees tremble before Him. The land and the mountains shake before Him. The wilderness and the forests shake. He is truly Lord of the Cosmos. And all creation cries, “Glory!”

Underneath this vision of God’s majesty and power and glory is a challenge to all the powers that be. Israel is surrounded by other tribes who worship various powers and spirits. At the same time, the rulers of these tribal groups would seek to assert themselves over the Hebrews. If you read the ancient Mesopotamian saga, The Epic of Gilgamesh, you meet the nature of early rulers.

The King of Enuk is a strong man or big man. He has wealth and he is powerful. He can protect the city but he also takes from the citizens whatever he desires, including all the women. The Israelites still see this pattern around them, and this is why Moses warns the future kings of Israel to study the book of the Law. He writes,

“And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel.” (Deuteronomy 17:18–20, ESV)

It’s very clear in the law that many laws address the danger of powerful men taking advantage of poor and weak people. We even see this when David takes Bethsheba and ends up having her husband killed.

While David repents, we see a pattern in the history of the Israelites of kings and wealthy people who worship false gods and oppress the weak.

Psalm 29 uses language and imagery that have made some scholars think this was originally a Canaanite poem to one of their gods. The imagery seems to address various gods such as Baal who is much like Thor, a god of Thunder and power. The true power over the thunder and lightning and waters of the earth in the YHWH, the God of Israel. Thus, the Psalm opens with “Ascribe to the Lord of heavenly beings.” These beings could refer to angels. It could also refer to the people of God who are “Sons of God.” And it could also refer to all the powers on earth and in the heavens that rule or seek to impose obedience.

Think of all the corrupt rulers in our world today. Ultimately, they must bow and ascribe to God glory. Paul prays that God’s people would see the glory and power of who Jesus is in the opening of Ephesians. He prays,

“For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” (Ephesians 1:15–23, ESV)

All powers on this earth must eventually submit to the rule of God. Psalm 29 also gives us a great picture of God’s rule over the waters. There appears to be a fear of the deep among the people of Israel and probably among most peoples. Psalm 29 tells us that, “The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the Lord, over many waters.” (Psalm 29:3, ESV)

And

“The Lord sits enthroned over the flood; the Lord sits enthroned as king forever.” (Psalm 29:10, ESV)

The people fear the chaos of the deep overtaking creation. In the flood, it appeared that this chaos unraveled creation as all things were destroyed by the great waters. But Psalm 29 assures us that YHWH “sits enthroned over the flood.” (Psalm 29:10, ESV)

If you saw read or saw The Odyssey, you would have seen the Scylla (SkyLa) (the many headed sea monster). The sailors are caught between the Scylla and the Charybdis – (Karibdis),a great whirlpool: whichever way the sailors would choose someone would die. The dangers of the deep are common across multiple cultures. Israel feared the Leviathan, who is also a seven headed sea monster. Psalm 74 show YHWH ruling over this threat,

“Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth. You divided the sea by your might; you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters. You crushed the heads of Leviathan; you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.” (Psalm 74:12–14, ESV)

No power in land or sea could threaten the absolute rule of YHWH, the king and creator of all things. Psalm 29 overwhelms with images of the power and terror of YHWH’s over all things. Yet, it ends with a reminder that he draws near to His people.

“May the Lord give strength to his people! May the Lord bless his people with peace!” (Psalm 29:11, ESV)

Isaiah reminds us that this God who terrified him also comforted him. He writes,

“For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.” (Isaiah 57:15, ESV)

Jesus Christ comes in human flesh. He draws near. The God whose voice rattles the earth and brings down every throne comes to us in love. He strengthens His people and He blesses His people with peace.

In Scripture and in creation, we behold the Creator who sometimes reveals Himself through the raw and overwhelming power of creation. In Scripture, we behold the Savior who draws near in our weakness and who embraces us, redeems us and lifts us up.

As we look around our world today, there are many reasons to be fearful. Wars; economic challenges, political disputes, violence in the land, sickness, and so much more. Yet we can find refuge in the God who is Lord over all creation and who also draws near to us in love.

Every weapon formed against us shall ultimately fall. We are safe in His love. Let us trust in Him alone.

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Tree of Life Cross from San Clemente Basilica (12th century)Pentecost +10 – A Fruitful Tree in a Dry Land
Rev. Doug Floyd
Psalm 1

The prophet Isaiah proclaims,

“The poor and needy search for water, but there is none; their tongues are parched with thirst. But I the Lord will answer them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them. I will make rivers flow on barren heights, and springs within the valleys. I will turn the desert into pools of water, and the parched ground into springs.” (Isaiah 41:17–18, NIV84)

I was sitting in church daydreaming. This was the first church where I served full time; a lively inner-city Pentecostal church and folks carried their offering to the front while singing. I was at the front, it was a big church, and I had a long wait. My mind wandered. I envisioned walking across a vast desert. The sun above beat down upon me. Thirst took hold. I cried out, “Lord I need water!” Suddenly, a canteen was flung down from the sky. “No I need water. More water than that canteen.” As I looked ahead, I saw a lush green spot. Rich vibrant trees encircling a beautiful blue pool of water. I ran and jumped in the water, quenching my thirst by total immersion into this blessing of God.

Back to the service. People were still singing and dancing their way to the front, so I picked up my Bible and decided to read a little. I flipped it open, and the first passage I saw was Isaiah 41:17-20.

““The poor and needy search for water, but there is none; their tongues are parched with thirst. But I the Lord will answer them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them. I will make rivers flow on barren heights, and springs within the valleys. I will turn the desert into pools of water, and the parched ground into springs. I will put in the desert the cedar and the acacia, the myrtle and the olive. I will set pines in the wasteland, the fir and the cypress together, so that people may see and know, may consider and understand, that the hand of the Lord has done this, that the Holy One of Israel has created it.” (Isaiah 41:17–20, NIV84)

Weird. That passage sounds like the daydream I just had. Gradually, I began to think that the Lord was giving me a vision of some sort and just maybe it had to do with the journey ahead. I’ll come back to this in a moment.

Today, we pause over Psalm 1. We see a picture of a person meditating upon the law of the Lord. Imagine yourself sitting and reflecting on God’s Word. I imagine sitting beside the flowing water up in the Smoky Mountains. I hear the water rippling as I read. You might imagine walking along the beach on an early morning, ruinating on God’s Word as you hear the roar of the ocean in the background. Then again, you might see yourself sitting by a cozy fire. The wood crackles and the fire pops as you meditating upon a passage of Scripture. Now wherever you are in your imagination, listen the psalmist.

He tells us that this person has faced and avoided the counsel of the wicked, the way of sinners, and the seat of scorners. This person has resisted those distractions and continues to contemplate the Law of the Lord both day and night. The psalmist also tells us that this person is like a tree planted by the streams of water who bears fruit in season and whose leaves never wither.

Let’s sit with that picture this morning. First, we notice that there are wicked people, naysayers, critics, and scoffers that this person encounters regularly. Proverbs 2 gives us a similar picture. The person who seeks for God’s wisdom and meditates upon God’s Words will gain wisdom and know the true path. He will not be moved by those who left the path of righteousness and now speak perverted speech, and he will not be seduced by the adulteress who seeks to lead him astray.

Throughout the Psalms and the rest of Scriptures, we see a host of characters who have left the paths of God and chosen the way of sin and death. In many places the psalmist cries out,

Psalm 3:1–2: “Lord, how many are my foes! How many rise up against me! Many are saying of me, ‘God will not deliver him.'”

Psalm 7:1–2: “Save me and deliver me from all who pursue me, or they will tear me like a lion and rip me to pieces with no one to rescue.”

Psalm 17:8–9: “Hide me in the shadow of your wings from the wicked who are out to destroy me, from my mortal enemies who surround me.” [1, 2]

Psalm 57:4: “My soul is in the midst of lions; I lie down amid fiery beasts— the children of man, whose teeth are spears and arrows, whose tongues are sharp swords.”

Psalm 41:9: “Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me.”

Psalm 120:7: “I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war!”

As it turns out, the psalmist is not sitting around enjoying the “best life now” and singing songs or posting pictures about it. Even in the Promised Land, the psalmist cannot escape hardship and struggle.

Psalm 1 prepares us for a book of prayers and praise that are also filled with grief, struggle, cries for help, and questions like “God where are you?”

We live in one of the richest countries in the world, and we enjoy privileges that most people in history couldn’t imagine, and yet we still face struggle, suffering, doubt, pain, grief, and people who turn against or seek to lead us astray.

In the middle of this struggle, the psalmist begins to talk about the Law of the Lord. Most of us grew up in a culture where law was a bad thing that Jesus came to deliver us from. We are free.

When I first heard about Richard Foster’s book, Celebration of the Discipline back in the 1980s, I thought, “I’m under grace, I’m not reading any of that legalism stuff.” Finally, I did read t and reread. As a result, Richard Foster, who was a Quaker, started me on a path to becoming an Anglican.

And eventually, I began to study Torah. I discovered that the Jews saw this as the greatest gift of God they ever received. All through Psalm 119, we hear rejoicing for the gift of the Law, of Torah:

“How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments! I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. Blessed are you, O Lord; teach me your statutes! With my lips I declare all the rules of your mouth. In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches. I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word.” (Psalm 119:9–16, ESV)

The Torah was seen as a way, a path, a way of blessedness that could lead through the wilderness and still bear fruit. Yet, why is Paul so opposed to Torah? Isn’t the book of Galatians and Romans about the terrible effect of the Law? I do not have time to do justice to this question today, but I might highlight Paul’s opening verse in Roans 8,

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.” (Romans 8:1–2, ESV)

The Law, Torah, God’s instruction does not forgive sin or make me righteous. That gift comes from God alone. Humans since the beginning of the world must depend upon the Creator for life and health and holiness and forgiveness. It’s all grace. God the Father ultimately fulfills this way of grace in His Son, Jesus Christ. As Romans 8:1 states, There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Our of life and salvation is rooted in Christ Jesus alone. He is the way, the truth and the life. Our salvation is always personal. Rooted in the person of Jesus Christ. We turn to Him, we look to Him, we trust in Him.

And yet, all of Scripture is filled with His guidance. He teaches us through His word. Eugene Peterson speaks of “torah” as a javelin. In his book Answering God, Peterson writes,

God’s word has this aimed, intentional, personal nature. When we are spoken to this way, piercingly and penetratingly, we are not the same. These words get inside us and work their meaning in us. As we prepare to pray, to answer the words God addresses to us, we learn that all of God’s words have this characteristic: they are torah and we are the target. God’s word is not a reference book in a library that we pull off the shelf when we want information. There is nothing inert or bookish in these words. God’s words, creating and saving words every one, hit us where we live.[1]**

Why do we have faith in Jesus Christ? The Word of God has pierced us. Penetrated our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit. By His grace, faith awakens in us and we follow Christ.

Our psalmist is calling us to heed the Word of God. We’re not trying to accumulate as much knowledge as we can about Scripture. We read with a listening heart. Sometimes that means reading a verse or two and praying it back to God. We are listening, soaking, reflecting. Other times it can mean that we are reading through the whole Bible each year. This is a different kind of listening. We are letting the grand story of Scripture shape our imagination. As we discover this story, it reshapes how we think about God and about this life.

The psalmist is suggesting that as God’s people soak in this word, they are like a tree, taking deep root in God, in Christ and bearing fruit. This takes me back to that vision of walking through the desert a few moments ago. Isaiah is giving us a picture of the exiles returning home and of God restoring His people. Keep this in mind as we think about Psalm 1.

Eugene Peterson suggests we night read Psalm 1 through the lens of the people in exile in Babylon. They are in the blazing heat of Babylon. In Psalm 137, we hear the cry of the exiles:

“By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our lyres. For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” (Psalm 137:1–4, ESV)

The people are grieving. Their people are dead or taken captive. The Temple is destroyed. Their hope is gone. In this dreadful land, the people cannot sing. In fact, some abandon their faith. They join the mockers, the scoffers, the wicked.

Others become trees in the desert. An oasis bursts forth like that vision of Isaiah. It is a river of flowing water from the Word of God. In the midst of the struggle, in the midst of the grief, in the midst of the hopeless situation, these people become trees of righteousness. Their leaves do not wither. They bear fruit.

It makes me think of Ezekiel’s vision of the rebuilt Temple. He writes about this vision in exile with the other captives. At one point he sees water flowing out from the Temple and trees on either side of this river. He writes,

“And on the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither, nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing.”” (Ezekiel 47:12, ESV)

The captives are exiles in a strange land. Like Psalm 1 says, those who meditate on the Word, who listen and seek God’s face, they become like trees flourishing, bearing fruit, with leaves that do not wither.

Sadly, we do wither sometimes. We do feel dry, overwhelmed, fearful, angry, weary. Ultimately, Jesus is that tree that never withers, always bears fruit, is always vitally alive. He is the Tree of Life. He sustains us, speaks His Word of Life into our hearts, feeds us with His body and blood. He is the oasis in the desert, the wilderness.

In and through Christ, God’s people have thrived in dark and difficult times. They have brought beauty and joy and healing and life to world drowning in darkness. My prayer is that we might overflow with the very life of Christ to the world around us. May we become like the trees in Revelation:

“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” (Revelation 22:1–2, ESV)

Our Lord let your healing grace flow through to world in desperate need of your grace.

[1] Peterson, Eugene H.. Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer – A Biblical Guide to Finding Fulfillment in Your Spiritual Life (p. 25). (Function). Kindle Edition.

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Dr. Christopher Graham

Christ Pantocrator of Saint Catherine’s Monastery (6th century)Pentecost +9 – Faithfulness of God
Dr. Christopher Graham
Psalm 19

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

If you have been in church for any length of time, you will recognize the words that conclude our Psalm today. In fact, you may have heard them so many times you have memorized them. They are a wonderful way to start a lesson or homily or sermon as a way to dedicate the speaker and what the speaker will say. It is possible that the psalmist ends his song this morning as a dedication of what he has said. There is, however, another possibility given by clues in the psalm itself, which is that these words are actually the climax of the song itself. And that is how I am going to approach it this morning. That is, these words receive their oomph! as the climactic result of three movements.

Movement 1 is found at the beginning in vv 1–6

1 The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork.

Clearly the Psalmist directs our attention to nature in the first movement. This is a common device of the psalmists. There are different reasons for this call. At times, it is to direct our attention to the heavens as in Psalm 148 which Francis of Assisi set to music that has come down to us: “Thou burning sun with golden beam, Thou silver moon with softer gleam, O praise him, O praise him, Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” At other times as Fr. Doug showed us from Psalm 145 it is to pay heed to the fact that we live in a world radiating with God’s glory. Again our song “This is my Father’s world: The birds their carols raise, The morning light, the lily white, Declare their Maker’s praise.”

In our song today, the psalmist also has a reason for drawing our attention to nature. It is hinted at in verse 2-4

2 One day speaks to another,

and one night gives knowledge to another. 3 There is neither speech nor language, and their voices are not heard;

4 But their sound has gone out into all lands,

and their words (*utterances) to the ends of the world.

But then really comes into focus in verses 5–6:

5 In them he has set a tent for the sun; which comes forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber, and rejoices like a strong man to run his course.

6 It goes forth from the uttermost part of the heavens, and runs about to the end of it again; and there is nothing hidden from its heat.

By drawing attention to the cycles of day and night, the steady movement of the sun each day running its course, the psalmist draws attention to God’s faithfulness. This is not the view of a Creator who created, spun up things to run on their own, and then took his hands away. It is a Creator who created the rhythms and then, by his Word continues or sustains those rhythms.

And this gives rise to praise. On one hand, Scripture teaches that we are beneficiaries of God’s faithful governance of nature in a very direct way. Jesus says, “He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” Matthew 6: 25–32 “For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as

to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is life not more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the sky, that they do not sow, nor reap, nor gather crops into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

Are you not much more important than they? And which of you by worrying can add a single day to his life’s span? And why are you worried about clothing? Notice how the lilies of the field grow; they do not labor nor do they spin thread for cloth, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith! Do not worry then, saying, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear for clothing?’ For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.”

But the psalmist seems to be getting at something even more basic and a bit more subtle for us, which is that the very action of the heavenly bodies is a result of God’s actions. It is what we sang about this morning, “Summer and winter and springtime and harvest, sun moon and stars in their courses above join with all nature in manifold to his great faithfulness, mercy and love.”

But while these bodies and cycles witness, they do so without words. We, on the other hand, are created by the Word of God in the image of God to use words. And so our prayer “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer,” is a reminder of our responsibility as God’s creation to whom He has given words to proclaim “All I have needed thy hand hath provideth.”

Which leads to the second movement found in verses 7–11

7 The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul;

the testimony of the Lord is sure, and gives wisdom to the simple. 8 The statutes of the Lord are right, and rejoice the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, and gives light to the eyes.

9 The fear of the Lord is clean, and endures for ever; the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

10 More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; * sweeter also than honey, than the drippings from the honeycomb. 11 Moreover, by them is your servant taught, *

and in keeping them there is great reward.

Clearly, there is a shift from nature to law, statutes, commandments, and judgments. For the sake of ease this morning, I am going to refer to all of these simply as “law.” What is the relationship between the first movement and second movement? We could draw out a contrast here between these movements. This Psalm is helpful, for example, in contrasting the limited knowledge that God provides through his natural or general revelation and the specific knowledge that God gives through his special revelation. But this morning, we want to see that the psalmist pushes these two movements up against each other without contrasting language: on one hand/on the other, this but that. There seems to be continuity. And what is the common melody that runs through both movements? The faithfulness of the Lord himself.

To understand this, though, we need to take a brief look at the nature of the law from the psalmist’s perspective, which is different than our dominant view. In fact, I would dare say that without realizing this difference, we impose how we think of law on the words here; rather, we mute the significance of these words.

Our dominant view of law is very impersonal. We tend to think of Law as an independent thing separated from the one (or ones) who have issued the Law. If a cop stops me and says I have broken the law, rarely will I ask “whose law.” And if I did, we may get a civic lesson on how the legislature makes the law, the executive enforces the law, and the judiciary judges whether I have broken the law. Rarely would we take it to the next step to indicate that by electing the legislative branch, the law is one we ourselves have endorsed. Law, then, is something separated from any persons. Not so for the ancient mind.

The dominant understanding of pre-modern and ancient times is that the Law is an extension of the one giving the law. We do, by the way, sometimes acknowledge though it is less common. So if I walked in my house and said to my kids, “Someone needs to feed the dog” or even more directly, “Feed the dog,” the power of my law is wrapped up in the fact that I am the father whose word is law. We even have a response that indicates this. Should one of my kids have had the temerity to ask “Why?” The response was always at hand: “Because I said so.”

With this in mind, then, God’s law is an expression/manifestation of God’s will provided by God’s Word, which is God himself. There is very little difference, then, between the Law with respect to nature and the Law with respect to us. The cycles of night and day and the movement of the sun and heavenly bodies are a response to God’s will that is to his law. In fact, ancient writers were happy to point out that nature’s obedience to the will of God is exemplary for us. The quote from Clement of Rome in your prefatory reading is set within an admonition that Clement gives to the church at Corinth to say, “See how the elements of creation play together nicely? If they can do it so well, then certainly you can. It is a matter of obeying his will.”

Of course, God communicates his will with creation in a way that is designed for creation, whereas he communicates with us through words as befits our nature. But this does not change the underlying melody.

God is faithful in giving order to his creation through the expression of his will. We do not go to bed wondering, “huh. I wonder what will be in the sky tomorrow when I wake up? Maybe the sun will decide to sleep in.” In the same way, we do not have to wonder, “If I run the course God has set for me in obedience to his will, what will happen? Something bad?”

Verse 11: Moreover, by them is your servant taught, and in keeping them there is great reward.” Heeding God’s will is not like buying a lotto ticket or rolling dice. Notice the pattern in verses 7-9. God’s word IS blank, DOING this thing for us:

7 The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul;

the testimony of the Lord is sure, and gives wisdom to the simple. 8The statutes of the Lord are right, and rejoice the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, and gives light to the eyes.

By giving ourselves to the Lord’s Word for his work in all areas of our being: soul, mind heart, eyes. He even throws in our bodies:

10 More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey, than the drippings from the honeycomb. NOTE ABOUT EATING HONEYCOMB

It is because of God’s faithfulness that his will expressed to us through his Word is to our benefit, that we can say with confidence “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”

We will pray in our prayers later this morning: “And to all your people give your heavenly grace, especially to this Congregation, that with reverent and obedient hearts we may hear and receive your holy Word, and serve you in holiness and righteousness all the days of our lives.” But notice that that we are praying for is grace that we may hear and receive. Which leads to our third movement and final movement.

For the third movement we have to move outside the psalm itself. Because it was a movement that happened after David’s time. As we saw in movements 1 and 2 it is Good News is that the same Word by which He brought all things into creation and sustains them and gives expresses his words of Law to us. That Good News takes on a different key in the third movement, though, because in the third movement, that very same creating, sustaining, law-giving Word became flesh in the person of Christ. And that Jesus, as the enfleshed Word, fulfilled the Law. As we hear Fr. Doug say every week: “In obedience to your will, he stretched out his arms upon the cross and offered himself once for all, that by his suffering and death we might be saved.”

And as if that is not enough, that Word did something more than fulfilling the law. By his resurrection, ascension and sending of the Spirit, God’s Word did something else. Again, from the Prayer of Consecration: “Jesus Christ our Lord, who on the first

day of the week overcame death and the grave, and by his glorious resurrection opened to us the

way of everlasting life. In him we see our God made visible and so are caught up in the love of the God we cannot see.

God now, in our communion with him made possible through the work of Jesus and the Spirit, inscribes within that which had before been on the outside. We are reminded in the words of our prayer of preparation this morning. “Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy Name.”

And as if that is not enough, that same Word still is active against that which threatens to undo us. You heard the words of Paul this morning from Romans 8: 31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? 33 Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.

All of this gives rise to the prayer:

14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

God’s faithfulness seen in nature.

God’s faithfulness seen in his law for us.

God’s faithfulness in the Word made flesh who fulfilled the law, who inscribes his law in us, and who intercedes for us.

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Christ in the Wilderness by Ivan Kramskoi (1872)Pentecost +8 2026
Rev. Doug Floyd
Psalm 86

“Bow down your ear, O Lord, and hear me; for I am poor and in misery.”

Our Psalm begins by crying out to God. “Bow down and hear me!” There are times when the soul is so grieved that these words take shape in a groan, a cry. God does hear. He hears the cries of the broken heart. As we read in Exodus,

“And the sons of Israel groaned under their bondage, and cried out for help, and their cry under bondage came up to God. And God heard their groaning….” (Exodus 2:23–24, RSV2CE)

Our Psalm today is a groan of King David. This groan, this psalm was sung by choirs in Ancient Israel. I can hear Hezekiah crying out this psalm centuries later when the Assyrian king, Sennacherib, calls over the gates of Jerusalem, threatening starvation and destruction. We hear echoes of Psalm 86 in his prayer recorded in Isaiah:

“Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear; open your eyes, O Lord, and see; and hear all the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the living God.” (Isaiah 37:17, ESV)

The prayers of Ancient Israel have been a gift to the peoples of the earth for thousands of years. Today’s psalm is a gift to the fearful, the anxious, the depressed, the one swallowed by darkness and danger. The psalm is filled with cries for God to act. Oh God,

Bow down and hear me
Preserve my life
Save me
Be merciful to me
Comfort me
Give me your ear
Teach me your way
Knit my heart to you
Turn to me
Have mercy upon me
Give me strength
Show me a sign of your favor

The psalmist is in a quandary. There are threats on all sides. Enemies stand ready to invade.

“O God, the proud have risen up against me; and the company of violent men have sought after my life…” (86:14, New Coverdale)

When I worked with the inner-city community, many of these people faced the threats of physical enemies. They would hear gunshots in the neighborhood. Many had family members who had been murdered.

Many of us don’t know these exact threats. Our dangers are not specifically violent people but less tangible but no less painful like sickness, finances, and especially emotional distress (fear anxiety, depression, loneliness). When I was growing up, I often experienced fear. When I was real young, my sister and I were taking a bath upstairs. My dad was at the front door and made some crazy noise joking. I heard it and screamed. Fear paralyzed me. I’m sure my sister joined in the terror as well. In seconds my dad and mom came into the bathroom, comforted us, and calmed us. Isn’t that what we sometimes long for? The psalmist wants God to bow down, hear his cry, comfort him, and protect him. We all desire this.

As I grew older, I often thought I had whatever disease was discussed in health class. Oddly enough, when I faced a serious kidney disease, I was not afraid. I was not afraid. I guess I rehearsed all the sicknesses so many times that it didn’t seem that major.

For me personally, I came to see that the terrors around us are deeply bound up with our minds and emotions. Suddenly financial problems can keep us from sleeping. Times of anxiety can be paralyzing. Depression can smother us like a black cloud. I have said before that the terrors of my mind are far more terrifying than anything I’ve experienced in the outer world.

Many of you already know the great comfort in prayers shaped and inspired by the psalms. Psalm 86 is a gift to us as we face struggle, grief, anguish, loneliness, and depression. In verse 17, the psalmist cries out for some sign, some token that God has heard him. This makes me think of a poem by Czeslaw Milosz. Choked by a world that has lost its faith, he needs a sign that God is still there. In his poem, Veni Creator he prays,

Come, Holy Spirit,
bending or not bending the grasses,
appearing or not above our heads in a tongue of flame,
at hay harvest or when they plough in the orchards or when snow
covers crippled firs in the Sierra Nevada.
I am only a man: I need visible signs.
I tire easily, building the stairway of abstraction.
Many a time I asked, you know it well, that the statue in church
lifts its hand, only once, just once, for me.
But I understand that signs must be human,
therefore call one man, anywhere on earth,
not me—after all I have some decency—
and allow me, when I look at him, to marvel at you.

He gets it. God sends people. He sent the 12 disciples. He sent Paul. He sends us friends and sometimes strangers who bring a word of comfort, a word of wisdom, and maybe even a word of challenge.

As we take up the words of Psalm 86, we ask God to hear us, preserve us, be merciful to us, comfort us, attend to us, answer us, teach us, lead us, turn to us, remember us, help us. As we pray, we might become aware of something else.

We are joining in the prayers of Jesus.

The church has often considered the psalms as the prayers of the prophets and of Jesus.

Already in the New Testament we see references to Jesus in the psalms. In Acts 2, we see Peter referencing Jesus in Psalm 16. He says,

“For David says concerning him, “ ‘I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken; therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; my flesh also will dwell in hope. For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption. You have made known to me the paths of life; you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’ “Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption.” (Acts 2:25–31, ESV)

St. Augustine explicitly makes connections with Jesus in his sermons on the Psalms. For Augustine, the Psalms and all Scripture for that matter points to Christ, he says that in the Psalms we hear, the “voice of the whole Christ, head and members…”[1] Augustine likes to consider this idea of the “whole Christ” by this he means “Christ as the Head” and we as “the body of Christ.” We pray the Psalms as part of the whole Christ.

In his commentary on Psalm 85, Augustine writes, “The one sole savior of his body is our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who prays for us, prays in us, and is prayed to by us. He prays for us as our priest, he prays in us as our head, and he is prayed to by us as our God. Accordingly, we must recognize our voices in him, and his accents in ourselves.”[2]

When we pray, cry, groan Psalm 86, we are joining Christ. Jesus Christ entered the total agony of human sin and death. In our distress, we are bowing down into Christ. Like a faithful parent who runs to the cry of their dear child, Christ is comforting us by His Spirit. Our anguish may not seem to leave right away, but He has not, will not forsake us in our distress.

Now I might add one last thing. As we come to see that we always pray these psalms in and through Christ, we might sense Him leading beyond our pain to the pain of the world. There are people today surrounded by their enemies, and they are crying, groaning for rescue. We need only look around the world and even our own country.

Sometimes the news can be gut-wrenching and maybe we should avoid, but it may also lead us into pray. We take Psalm 86 upon our lips and cry out with and for the abused child, the family in the war zone, the desperate refugee, the captive, the dying patient. Without Christ, we simply cannot bear the grief of this world. It would kill us.

But we can face a world suffering and dying in and through our dear Savior who will not forsake His people and hears the cry of the lonely, the desperate, the oppressed. In and through Christ alone, we can look forward knowing that the Lord God is “full of compassion and mercy; [He is] long-suffering, plenteous in goodness and truth.” (Psalm 86:15)

[1] Laurence Kriegshauser, Praying the Psalms in Christ, ed. Gary A. Anderson, Matthew Levering, and Robert Louis Wilken, Reading the Scriptures (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009), 4.

[2] Laurence Kriegshauser, Praying the Psalms in Christ, ed. Gary A. Anderson, Matthew Levering, and Robert Louis Wilken, Reading the Scriptures (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009), 4.

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Dr. Christopher Graham

When Nature takes command by Parwaz MukadamSea Sunday 2026
Dr. Christopher Graham
Psalm 107

1 O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is gracious, and his mercy endures for ever. Let those whom the Lord has redeemed give thanks . . . 43 Whoever is wise will ponder these things, and shall understand the loving-kindness of the Lord.
Last week, in Psalm 145, we heard David’s invitation to look, to reflect, to meditate upon the works of God, and then to give him praise. What are the works of God? As Fr. Doug pointed out, “This would refer to both God’s creation and to God’s redemption.” He then helped us follow the psalmist’s lead, specifically regarding creation. As we will see, this week’s psalm is devoted to praise resulting from God’s redemption.
This week’s psalm is framed by the Psalmist’s opening and closing; v. 2: “Let those whom the Lord has redeemed give thanks.” At the end, in v. 43 Whoever is wise will ponder these things, and shall understand the loving-kindness of the Lord.

As we look at the body of the psalm this morning, then, we need to keep these purposes in mind. To move both those who have experienced God’s redemptive work AND those who need to hear and experience that work themselves.
With regard to the former, the clear assumption of the psalmist is that those who have experienced God’s redemption are far and wide. He immediately employs a merism in verse 3 to signal this, “east, west, north, south,” which presages the sections that follow in which different groups who have experienced redemption are highlighted:
• vv. 4–9: Those wandering in the wilderness, the desert experiencing hunger and thirst.
• vv. 10–16: Those enslaved in darkness, in the shadow of death, in misery and iron,
• vv. 17–22: The whose foolish and wickedness brought them to death’s door.
• vv. 23–32: Those who go down to the sea in ships, who carry out their business in great waters

Each of these sections serves as a sort of stanza with a repeating pattern, though they expand in substance and detail as we move from the first to the last. Given that it is Sea Sunday and that the last stanza is the fullest of the four, we will look at this last group in verses 23-32 as a sort of template for the others.
In each case, the psalmist first explains the life-threatening plight:
Vv. 25–27: “For at his word the stormy wind arises, which lifts up the waves. They are carried up to heaven and down again to the deep; their soul melts away because of the trouble. They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wits’ end.”

If you will allow me this morning, one sea story. I was a 19-year old engine cadet on the M/V American Condor, a car carrier running between the East Coast of the United States and Europe in 1990. Winter in the North Atlantic is particularly brutal and sure enough we were taking 25 degree rolls as get got closer to Europe. When you walked down the passageway, you truly walked like the psalmist said reeling back and forth. You learned how to wedge yourself in your bunk at night. Years later I realized that I had developed a particular habit from that cruise. I had come home from the grocery store and placed my groceries in my sink and thought, why did I do that? Because on ship, that was where you could place things without them falling off onto the deck. So one particularly rough morning, I came down for our morning briefing in the machine shop of the engine room and when I opened the doors, I saw all of these old salts sitting there in their life jackets. Now no alarm had sounded and the machine shop was not one of the stations if the alarm had sounded. So I assumed this was just another one of their tricks that they liked to play on young cadets. But no, they were genuinely worried. And about that time, we took a heavy roll and heard a loud bang right outside the door. We rushed up to get out and take care of it but couldn’t get out. On the next roll we heard a grinding sound and opened the door to find that a spare one-ton cylinder head broke loose, had slid vacross the deck in front of the door on the first roll, and was not sliding back across to the other side.

Times like these make for great sea stories after the fact, but at the time, they are frightening because they life-threatening. In our psalm, each stanza briefly describes the life-threatening situation. Each stanza also describes the resolution of the situation:
2G-30 For he makes the storm to cease, so that the waves are still. Then they are glad, because they are at rest, and so he brings them into the haven where they desire to be.
For those wandering in the desert facing thirst and hunger, they are given a straight way to a place with provision (5, 7). Those who suffer crushing, dark heaviness that imprisons them find light and release from bondage (12, 14), those whose afflictions lead to loss of appetite up to the point of death find a life-giving word that saves them from destruction (18,20).

I would simply draw from these sections that the crises and the redemption/salvation spoken of here are clear and present dangers to their very life in the present. These are things that could truly kill them, and the resolution is a restoration of their present life. This psalm (and many other psalms) assume that our lives here and now really matter to God. That God intends for us to have a life in the here and now that can be full and fulfilling. In his lecture on Psalm 90, Martin Luther says “It is the most terrible of disasters and the one most deserving of tears—when people who are about to die still imagine they will go on living; when, overwhelmed by miseries, they still dream of happiness; and when, in the most critical perils that surround them, they are deliriously self-assured” (Luther Works 13, Concordia: St. Louis, 1956, p. 129). Gracia Grendal has said, “People who are unable to see the truth of what is going on about them: death, suffering, disasters make poor believers.”

In each stanza, two lines are repeated. The first between the descriptions of the crises and resolutions. First, (vv6, 13, 1G, 28): So when they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, he delivers them out of their distress.
The second after the resolution.: (vv. 8, 15, 21, 31) Oh, that they would therefore praise the Lord for his goodness and declare the wonders that he does for the children of men

These lines marry the two purposes of the psalm found at the beginning and end of the psalm. Remember the closing exhortation of v. 43 “Whoever is wise will ponder these things, and shall understand the loving-kindness of the Lord.”
Why should those who are in tough times, life-threatening times, yield themselves to the Lord? Because the God who responds does so from hesed, from a faithful lovingkindness. Even before the first exhortation, the Psalmist sets the tone of the psalm: 1 O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is gracious, and his mercy endures for ever.
All of God’s work is rooted in his loving faithfulness and his faithful love. And this we see displayed most clearly in the work of Christ. As Bernard of Clairvaux said in our prefatory reading this morning
“Creation was not so vast a work as redemption; for it is written of man and of all things that were made, ‘He spake the word, and they were made’ (Ps. 148.5). But to redeem that creation which sprang into being at His word, how much He spake, what wonders He wrought, what hardships He endured, what shames He suffered! Therefore what reward shall I give unto the Lord for all the benefits which He hath done unto me? In the first creation He gave me myself; but in His new creation He gave me Himself, and by that gift restored to me the self that I had lost.
Bernard of Clarivaux, On Loving God 5 https://www.ccel.org/ccel/bernard/loving_god.all.html

People all around us face tough times, and the one who gave them breath now has his ear inclined to help them in their distress when that breath is threatened. What the psalmist is saying and displaying here is that the way to get that message across is through sharing your testimony. Which is why the second purpose is repeated even more than the first.

v. 2 Let those whom the Lord has redeemed give thanks . . .
It is echoed in the words repeated in each of the stanzas: (vv. 8, 15, 21, 31) Oh, that they would therefore praise the Lord for his goodness and declare the wonders that he does for the children of men.
And again at the end: v. 42 The righteous will consider this and rejoice, and the mouth of all wickedness shall be stopped.
There is efficacious power in our thanksgiving shared through the rehearsing of God’s redeeming work in my life and our life. To speak of God’s faithfulness in my life and our life is to speak of his presence in our world. It reminds those who need to hear it that the Almighty, the Creator of all that is seen and all that is unseen does not sit far off but is here. That today we have communion with and have a place in the very Christ who ascended to the right of the Father. That this king still acts on our behalf.

Sharing our story says, “Trust him, because of how He has treated me.” And of the ways to rehearse it, song may be the most powerful.
The third and fourth stanzas actually elaborate on how “the groups should praise the Lord for his goodness and declare the wonders that he does for the children of men.”
v. 22 That they would offer unto him the sacrifice of thanksgiving * and tell of his works with gladness! Should actually be “with joyful singing”
v. 32 That they would exalt him also in the congregation of the people * and praise him in the seat of the elders!

The prose of Romans 8:15–16 “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” Should break into “Long my imprisoned spirit lay Fast bound in sin and nature’s night. Thine eyes diffused a quickning ray, I woke; the dungeon flamed with light. My chains fell off. My heart was free. I rose, went forth and followed thee.”
The exhortation of Isaiah: 6 “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; 7 let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”
Break into the testimony:

My heart was distressed ’neath Jehovah’s dread frown, And low in the pit where my sins dragged me down;
I cried to the Lord from the deep miry clay, Who tenderly brought me out to golden day. He brought me out of the miry clay,
He set my feet on the Rock to stay; He puts a song in my soul today,
A song of praise, hallelujah!

This morning we share together as objects of God’s loving kindness. We share together in singing of God’s redemptive love in our lives. We sing of our Redeemer.
1 O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is gracious, and his mercy endures for ever. Let those whom the Lord has redeemed give thanks . . . 43 Whoever is wise will ponder these things, and shall understand the loving-kindness of the Lord.

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Mosaic of Jesus Creating WorldPentecost +6 – The Works of God
Rev. Doug Floyd
Psalm 145

“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:18, ESV)

When preaching on 2 Corinthians 3, JB Lightfoot proclaimed, “Already the New Jerusalem, is seen by the eye of faith coming down from heaven ablaze with the glory of the Almighty; already the tabernacle of God has descended and is pitched among men; already we are permitted to gaze on the jewelled walls and the gates of pearl, and the pavement of pure gold; to bathe in the brightness of that Eternal City, which knows not either sunlight or moonlight, ‘for the glory of God doth lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.”[1] He continues, “The true Shekinah, the Person of Christ, shines forth in all the glory of its unapproachable beauty and brightness. And we—we feeble, unworthy, sin-stained, death-stricken men—are suffered, are invited, are entreated, nay, are compelled to come in, and to gaze on the peerless sight, till our own nature is changed by the absorption of its rays, and we are ‘transformed into the same image from glory to glory.”’[2]

We live in a world radiating with God’s glory. But so often we fail to see. As GK Chesterton wrote, “The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.”[3] Step outside in the evening and gaze upon the sunset. One moment, you behold the end of the day. Look again, and suddenly you behold a world ablaze with the glory of God.

Today our psalmist wants us to look, to reflect, to mediate upon the works of God and to give praise. Psalm 145 is an acrostic poem of praise to God, meaning that each verse begins with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Like many ancient Hebrew acrostic poems, this poem is missing a couple letters, and yet it still gives us a sense of comprehensive praise to God.

The theologian Douglas Webster said that this psalmist is calling us into his fervor of praise to God. Webster writes, “The forceful and declarative “I will” statements from the psalmist overshadow whatever lingering malaise we might bring to the psalm. His enthusiasm shakes us out of our lethargy and apathy.”[4] These “I will” statements echo through the Psalm: I will extol you, I will bless you, one generation shall commend your works to another, I will meditate, they shall speak, they shall pour forth, all your works shall/saints shall, my mouth will speak.

This is not simply praise to God because we feel warm and content. This is a choice to shout God’s praises up into the heavens no matter what we face. We choose to praise God, to meditate upon God, to shout His praises.

The psalmist invites us to consider the works of God and then suggests that those works teach us about the character of God.

What are the works of God? This would refer to both God’s creation and to God’s redemption. Ancient Israel would rehearse the story of God redeeming their ancestors from slavery in Egypt and leading them to the Promised Land. Even as we remember the story of Moses, we see it brought to fulfillment in the story of Jesus.

God comes and rescues us from slavery to sin and death and is leading us to the fullness of Himself. As we heard earlier, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:18, ESV)

Even as we remember God’s saving grace in our world and our own lives, we are invited to consider the works of creation. The psalmist declares, “On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate.” (Psalm 145:5, ESV) And again, “The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing.” (Psalm 145:15–16, ESV)

It is a good thing to enjoy this glorious creation. The novelist Marilynne Robinson writes, “We live in a time when many religious people feel fiercely threatened by science. “O ye of little faith. Let them subscribe to Scientific American for a year and then tell me if their sense of the grandeur of God is not greatly enlarged by what they have learned from it.”[5] She acknowledges that many scientists have materialist presuppositions and make no room for God, and yet even as they explore the world and describe their discoveries, we are treated to glories and wonder within our creation.

Recently, we watched a NOVA episode on “Secrets of the Forest.”[6] We discovered that, “There are more trees in Earth’s forests than stars in our galaxy.” The episode explored how the complex biodiverse forests of trees, fungi, and more play a key role in creating and maintaining a healthy climate around the world.

John Calvin saw creation filled with colors and wonder that give us joy while also pointing us to God. He writes, “For our salvation was a matter of concern to God in such a way that, not forgetful of himself, he kept his glory primarily in view, and therefore created the whole world for this end, that it may be a theater of his glory.”[7]

Everywhere we look, we might find occasion for joy and praise. GK Chesterton looks down at his feet and declares,

Once I looked at my bootlaces
Who gave me my bootlaces?
The bookmaker? Bah!
Who gave the bootmaker himself?
What did I ever do that I should be given bootlaces?[8]

Meditating upon creation might be as simple as taking a walk outside, sitting on the porch, smelling the flowers, and listening to the birds. We are attuning our senses to this glorious world that God has created. When Kelly and I traveled to Glacier National Park several years ago, we were amazed at all the colors of rocks in the water. We saw blue, red, and purple, green, and gray rocks.

I tell my students that it takes time to behold the world around us. Sometimes you must sit and wait and watch, listen, touch and smell. Gradually, we adjust to what we are observing and soon we begin to see more color, more texture, hear more variation in the sounds, smell more distinct scents. This is an important aspect of science: slow and careful observation. It is amazing what we discover when we slow down.

We might respond to creation by writing a reflection or a poem, drawing a sketch, painting a watercolor or even composing a song (even if it is just a song for our ears). We are honoring the works of God even as we are learning to praise Him in all things.

There is another aspect of creation that we may tend to overlook: humans and the things humans create. James Houston told the story of a young man heading into the city, and he said, “Well I’m off to discover God’s creation.” Ted Wright who came to St. Brendan’s when he lived here, often posts pictures online of all the amazing architecture he observes. It is a thing of glory.

The Jewish scholar Amy-Jill Levine says that when she was in college, she would step out of the show, look at herself in the mirror, and proclaim, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” At 70 years old, she continues to step out of the shower, look at herself in the mirror and declare, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” We give praise to God for our bodies, our hands, our feet, our eyes, our ears. Instead of putting down what we don’t like about our bodies, we give praise to God for how He has made us.

God has created us and given us a world to enjoy. We give praise to Him in all things. If I am watching a good movie, I may give thanks to God for the film and the filmmaker. Raymond Ortland tells the story of Theodore L. Cuyler, an American minister from Brooklyn, visiting Charles Spurgeon. After a long day, the two men were walking through the fields and enjoying the outdoors. Dr. Cuyler told a story that made Spurgeon laugh uproariously. Suddenly Spurgeon turned to Cuyler and said, “Theodore, let’s kneel down and thank God for laughter!”[9]

I think in seeking to be faithful disciples of Christ, some believers have become too serious for God. They fail to see His gracious love all around them and to enjoy His goodness and grace.

Our psalmist today suggests that as we pause over the great works of God, we begin to learn of His character. He declares, “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable.” (Psalm 145:3, ESV)

His greatness is unsearchable. We can never plumb the depths of His greatness, and yet we can have fun exploring! In verses 8-20, the psalmist declares the following characteristics of God: He is righteous, gracious, merciful, good to all, mercy over all that he has made, He has dominion over all, is faithful, upholds all who are falling down, raises up those who are bowed down, the eyes of all look to Him, He is near to all who call on him, and all flesh shall bless his name.

Let us behold God’s wondrous works and give our lives to bless His holy name.

[1] Joseph Barber Lightfoot, Cambridge Sermons (London; New York: MacMillan and Co., 1890), 101–102.

[2] Ibid,.

[3] Chesterton, G.K.. Tremendous Trifles (p. 7). (Function). Kindle Edition..”

[4] Douglas D. Webster, The Psalms: Jesus’s Prayer Book, vol. 4 (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic, 2023), 277.

[5] Robinson, Marilynne. When I Was a Child I Read Books: Essays (pp. 8-9). (Function). Kindle Edition.

[6] See NOVA on PBS https://www.pbs.org/video/secrets-of-the-forest-preview-pc9ryn/

[7] John Calvin, “Institutes of the Christian Religion”, I.v.8.

[8] G.K. Chesterton, GK Chesterton Collected Works, Volume X, Collected Poetry Volume 1, Ignatius Press: 1994, p. 197.

[9] Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Preaching the Word: Proverbs—Wisdom That Works, ed. R. Kent Hughes (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 119–120.

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Rev. Doug Floyd

King David Playing the Harp by Gerard van Honthorst (1622)Pentecost +5
Rev. Doug Floyd
Psalm 89

King David wants to build a house for the Lord. The Lord says, “No but I will build you a house; the house of David is established by God forever. This means the kingship will never pass from David’s family through all time and time again.

Now we come to our Psalm for today. Psalm 89 is a celebration of God’s faithfulness to the house of David and therefore faithfulness to Israel. In verses 3 and 4, we read, “You have said, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one; I have sworn to David my servant: ‘I will establish your offspring forever, and build your throne for all generations.’ ” (Psalm 89:3–4, ESV)

The Psalm is celebrating and emphasizing God’s pledge to Israel. The Psalm moves back and forth between the faithfulness of God and the faithfulness of David’s house. At times it might seem unclear who is being referenced. For instance, “For you are the glory of their strength; by your favor our horn is exalted. For our shield belongs to the Lord, our king to the Holy One of Israel.” (Psalm 89:17–18, ESV)

The Lord is a shield of protection to Israel. The house of David is a shield of protection to Israel. The name David is associated with all future kings in the line of David. The horn of Israel is the king.

In a beautiful and poetic picture, the Psalm connects God’s faithfulness to His creation with His faithfulness to David. It speaks of the three-fold creation we see in Genesis: the heavens above, the earth below, and the waters under the earth. The Psalmist sings, “Steadfast love will be built up forever; in the heavens you will establish your faithfulness.”” (Psalm 89:2, ESV)

We look up to the heavens, the sky, the clouds, the sun, moon, and stars, and we see the absolute surety of God’s promise. The unseen spiritual powers in the heavens have joined in the chorus: “Let the heavens praise your wonders, O Lord, your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones! For who in the skies can be compared to the Lord? Who among the heavenly beings is like the Lord, a God greatly to be feared in the council of the holy ones, and awesome above all who are around him?” (Psalm 89:5–7, ESV)

Now the Psalm moves down the waters below the earth: “O Lord God of hosts, who is mighty as you are, O Lord, with your faithfulness all around you? You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still them. You crushed Rahab like a carcass; you scattered your enemies with your mighty arm.” (Psalm 89:8–10, ESV)

Finally, the earth, “The heavens are yours; the earth also is yours; the world and all that is in it, you have founded them. The north and the south, you have created them; Tabor and Hermon joyously praise your name. You have a mighty arm; strong is your hand, high your right hand. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; steadfast love and faithfulness go before you. Blessed are the people who know the festal shout, who walk, O Lord, in the light of your face, who exult in your name all the day and in your righteousness are exalted.” (Psalm 89:11–16, ESV)

All creation moves in a festal shout and a dance of joy before the Creator. At the center of His creation, the Lord has raised up David and he will be like a god among the nations. “I will set his hand on the sea and his right hand on the rivers. He shall cry to me, ‘You are my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation.’ And I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth. My steadfast love I will keep for him forever, and my covenant will stand firm for him. I will establish his offspring forever and his throne as the days of the heavens.” (Psalm 89:25–29, ESV)

As the Psalm continues, the Lord promises that the house of David will stand even if the people are unfaithful.

“If his children forsake my law and do not walk according to my rules, if they violate my statutes and do not keep my commandments, then I will punish their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes, but I will not remove from him my steadfast love or be false to my faithfulness. I will not violate my covenant or alter the word that went forth from my lips. Once for all I have sworn by my holiness; I will not lie to David. His offspring shall endure forever, his throne as long as the sun before me. Like the moon it shall be established forever, a faithful witness in the skies.” (Psalm 89:30–37, ESV)

After David dies, Solomon his son and many other kings of Judah introduce idolatry in the land. The idolatry leads to a series of sinful behaviors such as false worship, sexual slavery, oppression, the rich taking advantage of the poor. God shows mercy to the kingdom year after year after year. Eventually, the prophets declare enough: the Day of the Lord is at hand. Babylon invades the land, takes the people captive, kills the king’s sons, blinds the king, and drags him to Babylon.

Then they destroy the Temple and salt the land. The once thriving city of Jerusalem lays in ruins. The house of David has fallen. And there will never be another king on the throne…until Messiah comes.

In verse 38, today’s Psalm takes a sharp turn.

“But now you have cast off and rejected; you are full of wrath against your anointed. You have renounced the covenant with your servant; you have defiled his crown in the dust. You have breached all his walls; you have laid his strongholds in ruins. All who pass by plunder him; he has become the scorn of his neighbors. You have exalted the right hand of his foes; you have made all his enemies rejoice. You have also turned back the edge of his sword, and you have not made him stand in battle. You have made his splendor to cease and cast his throne to the ground. You have cut short the days of his youth; you have covered him with shame.” (Psalm 89:38–45, ESV)

The kingdom has fallen like a tree chopped down. The house of David is no more. The people are cast off and cast out. Abandoned, Captured.

“By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion.” (Psalm 137:1, ESV)

After spending most of the Psalm extolling God’s faithfulness, the psalmist now offers a sort but earnest plea to God:

“Lord, where is your steadfast love of old, which by your faithfulness you swore to David? Remember, O Lord, how your servants are mocked, and how I bear in my heart the insults of all the many nations, with which your enemies mock, O Lord, with which they mock the footsteps of your anointed.” (Psalm 89:49–51, ESV)

Where are you Lord?!? The kingdom is shattered. The world has come to an end. A pagan country that follows pagan gods now rules God’s chosen people. Where is our king? We know you are faithful, why have you forsaken us?

A small percentage of Jews will eventually return home and even rebuild the Temple. But life will be difficult. There is still no king on the throne. The glory seems to have faded in spite of the prophets assuring the people that the latter glory is greater than the former glory. Hundreds of years will pass as the people continue to cry out for the king. Different empires will rule over Israel and eventually Rome will take charge, and the false king Herod will rule Jerusalem.

Jesus comes as the true king. He will restore the House of David. And he will rule forevermore. He does not look like the king they’ve been expecting. He has no army. He is gentle. And like a lamb led to the slaughter, he is handed over to be killed. When Jesus is lifted up on the cross, He is lifted up as the true and final King of the Jews. Pilate puts an inscription on the cross reading, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” It is written in Aramaic, Latin, and Greek. This is the King.

Many Jews and Gentiles still cannot see Jesus as the true King, the Messiah. Yet Scripture promises that all humans will kneel and acknowledge Jesus Christ as the last King of the Jews (Philippians 2:9-11).

We don’t know exactly when Psalm 89 was written, but it is at least 2,400 years old and possibly longer. We are not Jews. We do not have an earthly king. How do read this Psalm about God’s faithfulness to the House of David?

1. The psalm praises God for His faithfulness to His people and looks to God’s faithfulness in all creation. Just the regularity of sun and moon speaks to us of God’s sustaining care of His creation. While we see repetition in nature and call these laws like the laws of motion, thermodynamics, and electromagnetism. G.K. Chesterton reminds us that behind the law is a will. God wills His creation, and He is never absent from His creation. So might we take more time to meditate upon the heavens above, the sea below, and the earth abroad. We might take time to praise God’s faithfulness to is creation.
2. The psalm celebrates the House of David. We acknowledge Jesus Christ as our Sovereign Ruler, but we do not live under human kings like ancient Israel. We do have leaders who make decisions that impact our lives: leaders in government, in business, in healthcare, and all across our society. We should pray for all our leaders and for wisdom as they serve.
3. Finally, this Psalm explores the great disappointment when it seems God has abandoned David, sent Jerusalem into exile, and allowed foreign nations to rule over Israel. If we look at history, we realize Israel is not the only nation to fall. Every great and glorious work falls and fades. It doesn’t mean the end of the world is at hand. But it can mean that the world as we know may dramatically change. This may happen in government, business, healthcare, and other places. And this can be difficult and even painful. This may really hit home in business when a new leader comes and reorients the whole workplace. I’ve experienced this many times and I know many of you have. During times of great change, we may not like what is happening all around us, so we pray. We look to our Lord, King Jesus, knowing that He rules and sustains all things. We may never go back to where we were, but we can learn a new path forward. He can lead us and teach us how to live in this new era. Disappointment can lead to bitterness, but I would hope it might lead us to trust, to pray, and ultimately to thanksgiving to our faithful God. So that even after we have cried out for God to remember us and even if our situation does not change, we might join with today’s final verse in Psalm 89,

“Blessed be the Lord forever! Amen and Amen.” (Psalm 89:52, ESV)

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Dr. Christopher Graham

Dark places (used by Creative Commons permission)Pentecost +4 – Lament
Dr. Christopher Graham
Psalm 69

Offer unto God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows unto the Most High // And call upon me in the time of trouble; so will I hear you, and you shall praise me.” Yes, these are the words that I opened our homily with two weeks ago. And no I did not grab the wrong notes. You may remember that in Psalm the antidote to a wrong perspective and lack of integrity when it comes to our actions before God is praise and thanksgiving. Last week Fr. Doug led us through Psalm 100, an example of pure praise and thanksgiving. And if you were here last week, get ready for a little whiplash. After Fr. Doug’s homily last week, I couldn’t get Kool and the Gang out of my head

“There’s a party goin’ on right here. A celebration to last throughout the years. So bring your good times and your laughter too. We gonna celebrate your party with you. Come on now. Let’s all celebrate and have a good time”

And now we are in the key of “I am a man of constant Sorrow, I’ve seen trouble all my day” or Ralph Stanely “O Death. Whoa, Death. Won’t you spare me over ’til another year?”

The order of our homilies aligns with what we read two weeks ago. Offer unto God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows unto the Most High; And call upon me in the time of trouble; so will I hear you, and you shall praise me.”

Last week’s Psalm 100 is sung from the proper perspective—”He’s the Great Shepherd, the Rock of All Ages, Almighty God is He.” From that perspective, according to Psalm 50, we now “Call upon me in the time of trouble.” And so that is where we are this morning in Psalm 69. A time of trouble. But not like I couldn’t find my car keys and was running late this morning. But in a tight spot, so tight, in fact that we are at the end of our rope. We can’t get oriented. We feel like everything is spinning. “Hello, hello. In a place called vertigo.” How does the psalmist describe it here?

v. 1 For the waters have come up to my neck
I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold;
I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me. I am weary with my crying out; my throat is parched.
My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God.

Not only is it a tight spot, but apparently God is not answering! What are we supposed to do in this situation? You may not like the answer this morning, but if done rightly, it may be the only proper response . . . lament. Lament is both hard for us and therefore underused, and yet it is essential for us in these tight spots.

Lament makes us uncomfortable because it refuses to speak in euphemism. And because of this, challenges our tendency to candy-coat the situation. “This too shall pass,” “No pain, No gain.” “Embrace the Suck.” Sometimes we even retreat to the prose of Scripture as a way to mentally avoid the fact that life right now sucks in a way that threatens to undo us! “All things work together for good. . .” We do this even with the lament psalms themselves.

I grew up singing a song with lyrics drawn from a lament: “I was sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful shore. Very deeply stained within, sinking to rise no more. . .” Singing about sin in a major chord. Hear the psalmist: “I am weary with my crying out; my throat is parched.” Verse

3. Lament happens when we realize “Life sucks!” and, in fact, is sucking the life out of me—my breath, my bones, my very being. Lament happens when we come face-to-face with and find ourselves under the burden of the brokenness of the world. In some psalms, it is our own brokenness. In other songs of lament, it is nature itself. This is the lament of the people in Joel, for example. In this psalm and in the lament of Jeremiah, the brokenness is unjust treatment by others.

v. 4: More in number than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause;
mighty are those who would destroy me, those who attack me with lies.
v. 12 I am the talk of those who sit in the gate, and the drunkards make songs about me.
v. 21They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink

Again, this challenges our tendency to euphemize. “Sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me.” Or “I’m not called to please men.” Or when we use retreat to other verses in the Bible to avoid the reality of the tight spot that we are in because of the real injustice being carried out against us.

Matt 10:28-31: And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not 2 sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.”

And this a second reason why lament is so hard. Not only does it refuse to euphemize our situation, it refuses to compromise our proper perspective on God. Lament happens when we refuse to accept the fact that the God we confess in prose— the God who values us more than the sparrows, the God who works all things together for good—that this God is, in fact, not acting on our behalf. Notice again that the plea for God is based on what the psalmist knows is true, which makes it so much harder to accept what is happening.

13 “Answer me answer me in your saving faithfulness.
14 Deliver me from sinking in the mire; let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters.
16 Answer me, O Lord, for your steadfast love is good; according to your abundant mercy, turn to me.

One of the psalms that we tend to euphemize is Psalm 42. I can’t tell you how many times I sang the chorus drawin from the first verse: “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.” Listen, I am no hunter, biologist, zoologist, or master naturalist. But if I saw a deer panting, I would know “something isn’t right here!” And the psalm itself doesn’t allow us to romanticize the situation or the fact that God is not acting: “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? 3 My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”

Lament is hard because it feels like a lack of faith. We sound like the scoffers in this psalm, we may sound like Job’s friends. But there is a key difference—lament is God-directed. Lament happens when we to God in the middle of this life-sucking situation. Calling things for what they are is an essential element of lament, but to stay there is merely whining. Maybe singing the blues. Crying in our beer. We whine about God, or maybe we theorize to defend God. “Well, it only appears he is not working to save us.” What makes it lament is that in this state, we turn to God. Lament is Godward because of its purpose. BTW, that purpose is not to make you feel better. Not to be cathartic. The purpose of lament? Again, the psalm from two weeks ago: “And call upon me in the time of trouble; so will I hear you, and you shall praise me.”

And indeed today, the Psalmist starts:

“Save me, O God!” (v.1)
V. 13 “Answer me answer me in your saving faithfulness.
14 Deliver me from sinking in the mire; let me be delivered from my enemies
and from the deep waters.
16 Answer me, O Lord, for your steadfast love is good; according to your abundant mercy, turn to me.
17 Hide not your face from your servant,
for I am in distress; make haste to answer me.
18 Draw near to my soul, redeem me;
ransom me because of my enemies!

And this leads to the last element of lament that makes it so hard. Lament remains unresolved until God acts. It puts the ball in God’s court. In doing so, lament resists our desire for closure. There is no harmonic “Amen.” We lament in order to hear from God and to see how God is answering us. It is not uncommon for OT prophets to use lament to stir God to the injustice that his people are bearing. We heard it in Jeremiah this morning:

O Lord of hosts, who tests the righteous, who sees the heart and the mind,
let me see your vengeance upon them,
for to you have I committed my cause. Jeremiah 20

At times, God responds and saves. This is why many lament psalms actually end with a thanksgiving psalm. At times, God pulls back the veil to reveal his purposes and the response is not what they want to hear.

Habakkuk cries out O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,// and you will not hear? Or cry to you “Violence!”// and you will not save?3 Why do you make me see iniquity,// and why do you idly look at wrong? 1:1-3.

and God responds:

Look among the nations, and see; //wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days //that you would not believe if told. // For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, who march through the breadth of the earth,//to seize dwellings not their own. 1:5-6

And sometimes, friends, God does not respond. In his final moments on the cross, Jesus cites the opening of Psalm 22: “My God, My God Why have you forsaken me?” In response a soldier gives him the drink of our lament this morning:

“I looked for pity, but there was none, //and for comforters, but I found none.
They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink.”

And then Jesus died. He lamented and he died. So where is the good news this morning? Not found in this psalm. Laments are unresolved.

Some good news is that you find yourself this morning in a community where people care for you when you find yourself in tight spots. You are among people who have been in spots tighter than you yourself have imagined. I can testify to this myself. Probably in the first 2 weeks of being here, having just been let go from my position and still without a job, Derrick and Alan were voices who said, “Been there, brother.” And I could tell by the way they approached me each week that they were very concerned for me even when I wasn’t concerned about myself. And after Ishared my experiences two weeks ago, Marc came up to me and said in a way that was so caring “Has God ever shown you why that happened.” So it is good news that you are in a caring community this morning. But that, friends, is not THE good news. Because I can take you to innumerable caring communities in our area. Places where people will truly commiserate with you, empathize with you, sympathize with you, listen to your story, share wisdom. Group counseling groups, recovery groups, bars, coffee shops, lodges. These are all caring communities, and I am not disparaging their value.

But what sets this congregation apart, what makes us the Church, is that we are who we are because of the presence of the God who inclines his ear to us, the Spirit of Life, and the one who Himself can sympathize with us in our weakness. The Good News is that this God has ordained a people who can be with you in these tight spots. Who, on a Sunday morning when you cannot bring yourself to sing the words “How Great Thou Art,” will sing them for you, and with you, and around you. You are in a place that, even if we are all going through a tight spot, we have committed ourselves to l hear the Word of God spoken. That when you find yourself in a state of paralysis by analysis, these people will find a way to open the roof and lower you into the presence of Jesus.

The Jesus who cried out to his Father that the cup should pass from him. The Jesus who lamented: My God, My God why have you forsaken me?
And in those same hours prayed “Forgive them.”

Hear me, though. We do not merely have Christ’s example. We have the Jesus who is today seated at the right hand of God. And that He responds at all is a testimony to the fact that God does work on behalf of his people.

The Jesus who is the Son of God who is able to empathize with our weaknesses, having been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Who offers receive mercy and grace to help us in our time of need. (Hebrews 4:14–16)

And call upon me in the time of trouble; so will I hear you, and you shall praise me.”

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Joy by Natalie Schmid (used by Creative Commons Permission)Pentecost +3 2026
Rev. Doug Floyd
Psalm 100

As the Israelites walk up the steps toward the Temple, they sing out:

“Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into his presence with singing! Know that the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name! For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.” (Psalm 100:1–5, ESV)

Psalm 100 is the culmination of Psalms 96, 97, 98, and 99. These are sometimes called enthronement psalms, because they are praising the Lord who is Creator of the Universe. Just listen to the opening lines:

“Oh sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth! Sing to the Lord, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day.” (Psalm 96:1–2, ESV)

“The Lord reigns, let the earth rejoice; let the many coastlands be glad!” (Psalm 97:1, ESV)

“Oh sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things! His right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him.” (Psalm 98:1, ESV)

“The Lord reigns; let the peoples tremble! He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake!” (Psalm 99:1, ESV)

And finally Psalm100,

“Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth!” (Psalm 100:1, ESV)

This line explodes with joy! Listen to some of the various translations:

Shout happily to the Lord, all the earth. (God’s Word Translation)

Let the whole earth shout triumphantly to the Lord! (Christian Standard Bible)

Or what about the Message:

On your feet now—applaud God! Bring a gift of laughter, sing yourselves into his presence.

This is a celebration. A party. Everyone is invited. The whole world. Lots of joyful noises. Laughter, shouting, clapping, dancing, tambourines and much more. What a delight!

I once heard an English comedian say that you could step into a poor African church in London and people will be shouting and dancing and filling the room with joy. But then if you walk down the street to an Anglican church, you would see some of the wealthiest people in society singing so somberly that you would think they were in dire straits.

Psalm 100 challenges us to be a people of joy. In the first part of the psalm the people are celebrating the Lord as Creator. The references to Lord in this Psalm are from the Hebrew word, YHWH, which is the Covenant name for God. The Lord has bound Himself to Israel, and this same Lord is Creator of all things. There is no other god. All powers must ultimately submit to Him.

As a side note, let’s look at Exodus 19. In verses 4-6 we read,

“‘You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.”” (Exodus 19:4–6, ESV)

The Creator has chosen Israel as His treasured possession and made them to be a kingdom of priests. They are called to reveal God to the nations. We see a similar idea in Romans 5 today. In verse two we read,

“Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” (Romans 5:2, ESV)

We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. The glory of God has drawn near to us in Christ. And in Christ, we bear that glory. God’s people reveal the glory of God to the nations. Our joy and laughter and delight in the goodness of God, overflows through us to the world around us. Thus, Psalm 100 opens by proclaiming,

“Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth!” (Psalm 100:1, ESV)

The covenant people of God are called to make a joyful noise. But the. We read “all the earth.” Our song echoes into all creation: sun, moon, seas, plants, trees, birds of the air, fish of the sea and all living creatures on the earth. Including all humanity. As a royal priesthood, we are called to lead the nations in praise to our God. The glory of God covers the earth. We “serve the Lord with gladness.” Following Christ is not a dour, joyless life. Just the opposite. As Demos Shakarian used to say, We are “the happiest people on the earth.” May we truly this into this God-given hilarity.

The Psalm reminds us that we are part of creation.

“Know that the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.” (Psalm 100:3, ESV)

YHWH created us even as He created the whole universe. He made us, we are His. The psalmist adds, “we are the sheep of His pasture.” Here we see the parental image of a shepherd caring for the sheep. We are created. We are loved.

In one sense, our whole life is a response to that unfathomable love. Everywhere we turn, we behold the love of God. As Amy Grant sings,

Everywhere I go
I see your face through the crowd
(Everywhere I go)
I hear your voice clear and loud
(Everywhere I go)
You are the light that I see
(Everywhere I go)
You have found me[1]**

This is one of the things I love about the Ancient Christian Celts, they are praising God in all creation. In the Prefatory Reading this morning, we read,

The world cannot comprehend in song bright and melodious,
Even though the grass and trees should sing,
All your wonders, O true Lord![2]**

The following is from a 9th century praise song from the Culdee movement, a reform movement among Irish and Welsh monasteries.

Let the birds and the honeybees praise you,
Let the shorn stems and the shoots praise you.
Both Aaron and Moses praised you:
Let the male and the female praise you,
Let the seven days and the stars praise you,
Let the air and the ether praise you,
Let the books and the letters praise you,
Let the fish in the swift streams praise you,
Let the thoughts and the action praise you,
Let the sand-grains and the earth-clods praise you,
Let all the good that’s performed praise you.
And I shall praise you, Lord of glory:
Glorious Lord, I give you greeting!

When you step outside this week, pause and look. Behold the glory all around you. Breathe it in. Rejoice. Give our good Creator praise. A 20th century Welsh poet Bobi Jones joins his voice to the praise of Celts across the ages. He praises people and places and even a truck. He offers a poem of praise from a trucker driving home for Christmas. Jones writes,

The machine has become a beautiful hill-breast home,

A sanctuary, since here he thought of God best,

God on the axle, and God in the crunching,

And gloried in them as his forebears did in a horse

Till he felt the newly-washed coal a petal in his nostrils,

And the iron cogs played at fondling his hard hands,

His happiness under his armpits.

(Yesterday my love came to buy a machine-made frock

And wore it and made it part of her own enchantment.)

Christmas today, the warmth of home on his cheek,

His children’s sweat in place of the piston’s laughter,

But at the same God’s strong feet he’ll cradle himself

Like a comely village in a mountain niche.

Everything, everywhere, Praise the Lord!

The second half of the Psalm exhorts us to praise and thanksgiving again, but this time it shifts from Creator to Redeemer. Sometimes in the Evangelical world we grow up focusing so deeply on the work of the cross that we love sight of the glory of creation. We serve the King of the universe who has declared all of His creation as good and very good.

As we praise the Lord for His creation, we might learn to become better stewards of creation, including humans.

In the first part of the Psalm, we are exhorted to make a joyful noise and then we are given a reason,

“Know that the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.” (Psalm 100:3, ESV)

Now in the second part of the Psalm, we are given a reason for entering the Temple courts with praise,

“For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.” (Psalm 100:5, ESV)

Now pause over this phrase a moment. “The Lord is good.” Our covenant God is good. This makes me think of Philippians 2:10,

“at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:10–11, ESV)

All creation bows before the Lord Jesus, confessing Him as Lord. In Jesus, we come to see the Creator God is good, just, loving, and trustworthy. We can rest in His absolute goodness.

We can trust in Him. He is a good God, a good judge. This next phrase, “his steadfast love endures forever” speaks of Hesed. Many of you may already be familiar with Hesed. It can speak of a kindness that happens in loving relations. It is one of the most often used words to describe God in the Old Testament. When used of the Lord, hesed indicates a kindness, a love, a mercy, a grace that flows from God to us. In other words, it is not the same idea of exchange in a loving human relation. Rather, God pours out His lovingkindness on people who are undeserving. His hesed is leading us to Him. As Paul writes in Romans 2,

God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.

Now get this. The Psalm declares that “his steadfast love endures forever.” Endures forever. There is a sense of horizon in this world, forever. It conveys the sense of a temporal and spatial horizon. God’s hesed is on the other side of every boundary. We cannot outrun the love of God.

“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38–39, ESV)

Our Redeemer is faithful to all generations. His lovingkindness leads us to repentance. And we are becoming the very praise of God. We are becoming prayer and praise to our God. Let me end by revisiting Psalm 100 through the words of The Message”

On your feet now—applaud God!
Bring a gift of laughter,
sing yourselves into his presence.
3 Know this: God is God, and God, God.
He made us; we didn’t make him.
We’re his people, his well-tended sheep.
4 Enter with the password: “Thank you!”
Make yourselves at home, talking praise.
Thank him. Worship him.
5 For God is sheer beauty,
all-generous in love,
loyal always and ever. (Psalm 100:1–5, MSG)

[1] Amy Grant, “Everywhere I Go,” on Unguarded (1985)

[2] From notes on Juvenecus. Written in Welsh, Irish, and Latin from the 10th century. Found in the margins of an illuminated manuscript of a 4th 
metrical Gospel by Juvencus.

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Dr. Christopher Graham

Christ the Judge by Fra Angelica (1447)Pentecost +3 2026
Dr. Christopher Graham
Psalm 50

Offer unto God a sacrifice of thanksgiving,
and pay your vows unto the Most High;
Whoever offers me a sacrifice of thanksgiving honors me,

Over the summer, our preaching will draw attention to our readings from the Psalms. From a historical perspective, this needs little defense. The inclusion of the psalms in Christian worship has transcended the differences throughout the ages. Even in the Reformation, all sides kept the Psalms as an integral part of their worship. So that we keep the Psalms as a central part of our worship has a deep history.

And even the use of Psalms in preaching has been central to the life of the Church from its very earliest days. Having celebrated Ascension and Pentecost just two weeks ago, you may remember that OT poetry is central to Peter’s Pentecost sermon. But since most of our preaching does not focus on the psalms, it may be helpful to offer some comments as we move through our time this summer. Before we dive into Psalm 50 this morning, let me make just two observations.

First, there is a danger in preaching or teaching on the psalms. Because we are more comfortable with prose than poetry, I can preach, and you can expect that I preach, in a way that achieves the clarity and precision of prose. To approach the psalms as prose, though, robs the psalms of their inherent power as song. It’s like explaining a joke. It’s like condensing a beautifully complex novel into an outline. It’s taking Louis Armstrong’s:

Gimme a kiss to build a dream on
And my imagination
Will thrive upon that kiss
Sweetheart, I ask no more than this
A Kiss to build a dream on

It’s taking the power of that and putting it in the service of this dictionary entry for “kiss.” “Two people pressing their moist, creased facial orifices together, cinch tight the sphincter muscles to draw the flesh around the orifice into a bulbous mound, and exchange saliva and breathe.” Precise? Yes. Technically, that is, anatomically, correct? Yes. And yet. . . And yet we know that Louis Armstrong comes far nearer to capturing the essence of a

kiss than a Webster’s editor. And so, over the course of our sermons this summer, we need to be aware that our homilies should be in service to the psalms.

The second comment is to recognize our tendency to accept and acknowledge the power of song in our worship and in our daily lives, and yet dismiss the Psalms as an essential source for our knowledge of and life in God. It is a uniquely modern problem, in that we have placed our sources of knowledge in mutually exclusive categories and then exalted those that lead to rationalistic certainty. We prefer, then, the prose of the NT letters and the teaching of Jesus because they appear as straightforward conduits of knowledge. And yet, only 24% of the Bible is prose discourse, in the form of laws, sermons, letters. Roughly 33% of the Bible is poetry, including songs, reflective poetry, prophetic poetry, and proverbial poetry. If we confess that this is God’s own revelation of himself to us, it is a powerful thought that he chose to use the form of poetry to reveal himself through this medium as often as he does. And this should compel us to pay attention to it. (BTW: ~43% of the Bible is made up of narrative, from historical narrative to parables.)

Over the course of our series, I imagine that we will explore the power of poetry, of song, but it is enough for us to say today that as people committed to the Bible as God’s revelation of himself, we should be (or become) comfortable with approaching God through the Psalms, even with the imprecision, because God has ordained it as a primary means of moving our interaction with him. And this is a great transition to our psalm this morning because, it seems to me, this is precisely the point of that psalm. In fact, in our psalm today, praise is not merely primary it is central. The psalm crescendos not once but twice to the point of praise:

vv. 14-15 Offer unto God a sacrifice of thanksgiving,
and pay your vows unto the Most High;

V. 23 Whoever offers me a sacrifice of thanksgiving honors me

But remember, these are not merely didactic teachings, exhortations, commissions to praise. These are refrains set in a three-part, or three stanza, song.

Part 1, vv. 1-7, and sets the stage, like songs sometimes do.

• It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday, the regular crowd stumbles in
• This is the day, This is the day that the Lord has made
• The stars at night are big and bright, deep in the heart of Texas

But what is the context of Psalm 50? A context oriented dominated by the awesome reality of the God. The Lord, even the most mighty God:

• Whose word has cosmic scope: called the world, from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof, He shall call to the heavens above, and to the earth beneath merism
• Whose is brilliantly splendid, dazzling. “Great Father of glory, pure Father of light, thine angels adore thee, all veiling their sight; all praise we would render, O help us to see ’tis only the splendor of light hideth thee.”
• Whose word has local consequence: there shall go before him a consuming fire, and a mighty tempest shall be stirred up round about him.

And this God does what? He summons his people to his courtroom:

v. 5-6: “Gather my faithful together unto me, those who have made a covenant with me by sacrifice.” “And the heavens shall declare his righteousness, for God himself is Judge.

Nothing like being in the gallery. Watching the judge rule with wisdom and power! Alright, bring in the guilty, let’s get this party started

v. 7 “Hear, O my people, and I will speak; I myself will testify against you, O Israel, for I am God, even your God.”

Uh-oh. As my kids would say “This got dark fast.” What did we do? Us? Why are we here in this place? Good songs like Psalm 50 evoke memories, and I can feel the pit in my own stomach. Reading verses 1-7 reminded me of the day just a few years ago when I was invited first thing in the morning to meet with the Chairman of the Board and with another Executive at the University I was at. I was less than a month into a deeply rewarding position and was rocking it! Oooh, I thought, what do they have for me next? A promotion would be odd, a raise even odder. And so when I sat down and they slid across a termination letter that told me to be out of my office by the end of the day, I was. . . wait, what? What did I do? What are you talking about?

Me? I had no idea? And so it is as we read Psalm 50 as God’s people. Why are we here? I’m glad you asked, because God answers:

He starts with what it is not: v. 8 I will not rebuke you because of your sacrifices, or for your burnt offerings, because they are always before me.

And yet, he called them to offer a sacrifice in v14. So what is the issue? Their perspective on God and their actions before God have gotten out of whack. In what sense? Well, this is the beautiful power of songs: I’m not sure it’s spelled out here. It is popular to read Psalm 50 in line with other passages in which they have fallen into a perfunctory action, so that their heart is not in it. But, I’m not sure that this is the issue given how the Psalm advances in vv.9-13. In these verses, God does not hold up a mirror to their lack of connection between action and heart. He reminds them of who He is in relation to their actions. There is no reason to believe that they were not sincerely and devoutly obeying God’s law in presenting the major offerings that He has called for. IT seems that they have lost perspective on the fact their service, their sacrifice are not done to prop up and sustain God. And, in turn, they have forgotten that everything they have—even the gifts they offer are from him—are his. Perhaps this is why he reminds them of his character and his ownership and then calls for them to offer that most unique of sacrifices. The sacrifice of thanksgiving. “Offer unto God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, // and pay your vows unto the Most High.” It is, then, with this perspective that when they run into trouble, they seek relief in other means other than.

Praise reorients perspective. “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. . . give us this day our daily bread.”

When we acknowledge the God of verses 1-6—the God who owns everything—then we offer praise and we will call out for his provision.

It is what U2 sings at the end of the prefatory reading this morning:

Take this city
A city should be shining on a hill
Take this city
If it be your will.
What no man can own, no man can take.”

But these are not the only ones that God addresses. So also are those whom he calls, “ungodly.” Whew! Someone else is getting called on! Except, remember that everyone who has been summoned are the covenant people of God. So who are they? If the first group is very aware of God and are even suppliants to him in their sacrificial offering, those now addressed have forgotten God (v. 32). Those who hate to be disciplined, and have cast my words behind you? (v. 17-18) This, clearly, leads to a lack of integrity:

• They “recite God’s laws, and take his covenant in their mouths yet speak wickedness, and with your tongue you have set forth deceit (v. 16/19)
• They speak of covenants, but have taken part with adulterers (v.16/19).
• They have even used God’s laws to defend their wickedness (v. 20/21)

This lack of integrity is addressed throughout Scripture. It is this issue, the lack of integrity, that Jesus addressed frequently with his opponents. Their lack of perspective was tied to their lack of integrity.

“‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; 7 in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ 10 For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’;and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ 11 But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban”’ (that is, given to God)— 12 then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, 13 thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.” Mark 7

So what is the antidote: Whoever offers me a sacrifice of thanksgiving honors me, and to him who orders his way aright will I show the salvation of God.”

The author of Hebrew also sees the connection between praise and doing good: “Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. 16 Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” Hebrews 13.

This reorienting and repairing happens several times through our liturgy. For example, we respond to

Alleluia Christ our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed, once for all upon the Cross
Therefore let us keep the feast. Alleluia.

And then immediately we offer a prayer of humble access: We do not presume to come to this your table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your abundant and great mercies.” And our hymn “Jesus, Lamb of God: have mercy on us. Jesus, Bearer of our sins: have mercy on us Jesus, Redeemer, Redeemer of the world: grant us your peace, grant us your peace.” To which Fr. Doug will say: The Gifts of God for the People of God. Take them in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on him in your hearts by faith, with thanksgiving.”

Praise/thanksgiving – – recognition of who we are in proper perspective and with integrity – praise and thankgiving. Reorienting and repairing.

See, from his head, his hands, his feet,
sorrow and love flow mingled down.
Love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all.

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Rev. Dr. Les Martin

Timothy and His Grandmother by Rembrandt (1648)Pentecost+17
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
2 Timothy 1

Follow the pattern of the sound words – 2 Timothy 1:13a (ESV)

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

Today, we begin our month-long series on 2 Timothy. Here at the outset, let’s remind ourselves just who Saint Timothy is. Timothy- in Greek Timótheos, meaning “honoring God” or “honored by God”- was an early Christian evangelist and later the first bishop of Ephesus. Tradition relates that he died around the year AD 97. A native of Lystra, he was the son of a mixed marriage between his mother Eunice, a Jew, and a Greek father.

Among the missions with which the Paul entrusted him were that to the Thessalonians to encourage them under persecution and that to Corinth to confirm the converts in the faith. Paul worked intimately with him, as refers to him as his “beloved child,” clearly identifying Timothy as his spiritual son. His name appears joined with that of Paul in the salutations of seven of the Epistles. He eventually became Paul’s representative at Ephesus, and Eusebius identifies him as the first bishop of that city. He is said to have been martyred on January 22 in the year 97, for opposing the pagan worship of the goddess Diana. Two of Paul’s later letters are addressed personally to him.

We are going to be hearing from 2 Timothy in these next weeks. The first letter to Timothy is full of directions and instructions which tell him how to proceed in the management of the churches, with the organization of our life in godliness, as Fr. Doug explained last week. This second letter contains no such directions. It is not a sort of continuation or amplification of First Timothy. With Paul now in prison, it is written in the certain expectation of his death, and so it is better thought of as Paul’s “last will and testament to Timothy.” It is personal throughout. Tender, with the purpose of refreshing Timothy- and by extension us as well- for faithful witness to the hope contained in the gospel.

Timothy needs refreshing. In our short passage for today, Paul states that Timothy is weeping in a spirit of fear, might possibly be ashamed for Paul’s imprisonment- what does that say about the power of the Gospel after all?- and he urges him not to shrink from the suffering that is part and parcel of being a witness to Jesus in every age and cultural situation. Fear, shame, and suffering seem to be Timothy’s condition at the outset of this letter, and St Paul wants to encourage him, to give him a reminder of the antidote to his present trials. Good news for us, beloved, as fear, shame and suffering are often our experience of life as well. We too, need encouragement in our journey of faith. The answer to these painful realities? I want to suggest that Paul gives it right at the beginning, when he says in verse 2 the following:

Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. (ESV)

Let’s consider how when we have fear, the peace of Jesus is the answer, when we experience shame, we find freedom in grace, and when our days seem only to be full of suffering, God’s mercy gives us a wider perspective.

First, fear and peace. Let’s set the context: Timothy has reasons to be afraid. His spiritual father is imprisoned again, and likely to be killed. The church, still in its infancy, is beset by false teachings and heretics on all sides, and as Paul’s letters make clear, there is also no small among of dissension within. Will it thrive? Will it even survive? On top of this, we do well to remember that we are not dealing with the mature Bishop of Ephesus here.

1 Timothy 4:12 has Paul saying that Timothy should live in such a way that no one can despise his youth. As of that writing, Timothy may have been an elder of the church in terms of office, but he was no graybeard. 2 Timothy comes somewhat later, but we can still safely assume that he is younger than many of his fellow leaders. So, here he is a young man, leading a fragile church, as his mentor in the faith is jailed and awaiting execution. Reasons to be afraid indeed. Ours may be different: making ends meet, illnesses known or worried about, broken relationships, the sense that there is no margin or room for error in our lives. Whatever the case, we know this: just because one is a Christian does not mean one is free from the very human sense of fear.

The peace of Christ Jesus speaks to our fears. His perfect love puts them into perspective. His ongoing presence with us is the spirit of power and love that will see us through, not by removing us from the truly fearful situations we find ourselves in, but by sustaining us in the midst of the valley of the shadow death. Our Lord speaks clearly, saying:

My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled; do not be afraid. (John 14:27, ESV)

Our lives may give us many reasons to fear, but baptized into Jesus, we are given something different, not as the world gives. In the words of the old hymn by Edward Henry Bickersteth:

Peace, perfect peace. Our future all unknown, Jesus we know and he is on the throne.

Shame and grace. Shame- that pervasive, negative emotional state marked by chronic self-reproach and a sense of failure- is, like fear, common to us all to some extent, Christian or not. Timothy is perhaps ashamed of Paul’s imprisonment, or perhaps that such a glorious truth as the Gospel could produce such a shabby church. Maybe he is simply ashamed of himself- if he was just better, maybe he could do something about the mess. I remember the shame of being a nerdy and socially awkward child. I know the shame I experience today at how I fail those closest to me, sometimes unintentionally and, sadly, sometimes not. You no doubt have your own examples, your own shame.

The solution lies in the truth of grace: that God extends his unmerited favor towards us because we are his beloved children, no matter who we are or what we have done. We are all prodigals, and all those who come home find a warm and accepting embrace. The appearance of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light, is that embrace for all who put their trust in Him.

Suffering and mercy. Jesus addresses this head-on. In John 16:33, he plainly says:

While you are in the world, you will have to suffer. But cheer up! I have defeated the world! (CEV)

To live in this world, where Jesus has indeed come among us, but where the Kingdom is still both “already-and-not yet,” is to suffer. Miracles and deliverance from evil do happen, but more often than not, suffering still prevails. Psalm 88, and many other places in Scripture, normalize the idea that the person of faith suffers- that if you are a Christian and you’re suffering, it’s not necessarily because you’ve done something wrong. Paul is suffering, the church is suffering, Timothy is suffering, and so are we today. Where is the mercy? In Jesus, and in what he has done for us. Writing in Romans 8:18, Paul states that:

I consider that our present sufferings cannot even be compared to the glory that will be revealed to us. (NET)

The glory that will be revealed to us. Other translations say “in us.” The mercy of the Lord is that the current state of play in the world is not the final answer. The final statement is one of mercy- a glory revealed to us and in us, in places like Saint Brendan’s, where the lost and the lonely and the hurting can gather around font and altar and become family, growing up into him who is the head. A mercy that will one day spread beyond the walls of all our beleaguered churches until God himself will found a new heaven, a new earth, and wipe away every last tear from our eyes.

Peace, grace, and mercy in the face of fear, shame and suffering. This is the confident approach to life that Paul wants to rekindle in Timothy by calling him back to the truth of his faith in Christ Jesus. How? Right there in verse 13 he says it, as he urges Timothy and us to “Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me.” (ESV). Now, let’s be clear: Christianity is not a personality cult, even one centered around St. Paul. Faith is a gift, after all, that we are given by Jesus, not something we stir up within ourselves, or that some other person can possibly give us. However, because of the incarnational reality that is Christianity, we can also say a little bit more. The content of our faith, you see, is something like a family heirloom. It has a pedigree. For Timothy that faith takes tangible form in the examples of Paul and Lois and Eunice. It also takes form in his ordination by the laying on of the Apostle’s hands. Many within the Anglican church make much of the laying on of hands as the proof of “apostolic succession.” Personally, I would say it is both important and useful, but not sufficient. The actual succession comes not just through authorized hands, but more importantly through believing hearts.

Paul, his grandma and his mom passed the faith on to Timothy. They all pass it on to us. As do others. For me, they include people like Saint Augustine, Martin Luther, Thomas Cranmer, Karl Barth, Robert Jenson, and Philip Cary. Both my ordaining Bishop, and my current one. The church is a family. My biological family did not pass the faith on to me, but the family of the church did – and does. Which is why we need places like Saint Brendan’s.

Timothy is instructed to guard the deposit, to follow the pattern of sound words. The things he received from his family of faith. So are we. Whether it is in catechism class or from this pulpit, Father Doug and I try and pass that deposit faithfully on to you. It’s not so much about Doug and Les – both you and God know we’re just humans – rather it’s about this apostolic succession, the pattern of sound words that we have received from those whose shoulders we stand on and the baptismal family we surround ourselves with.

We cling to the message that comes forth from all these mouths, and from the church throughout the ages. That message is the gospel. And that’s something good to guard because it’s going to see us all through this present night and into the age that is to come. As another older brother, St John Cassian reminds us in his writing:

We are called to pass beyond the fear…to the fullest freedom of love and to the confidence that belongs to the friends and sons of God.

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Resurrection by Unknown German Artist (15th century)Pentecost+16 – The Mystery of Godliness
Rev. Doug Floyd
1 Timothy 6:2b-19

The other night I dreamed Kelly and I were driving on the interstate through Asheville, and there was a great storm like we saw last year. Water was rushing over the highway and washing down in a river on the side of the road. We saw a flock of sheep trapped in the onslaught. Kelly and I jumped out of our car and were calling for people to help rescue these sheep. As we were running alongside the highway, we were running up and down steps for some reason. People were everywhere, but no one paid attention to our cries to help. We turned around and headed back toward the sheep, and suddenly, we were able to rescue a single sheep. We led it back to the car, and then I thought, “How are we getting this in the car?” And, “Where are we going to keep it? In the backyard? Its hooves might scuff up our floors.”

I told Kelly the dream when I woke up. She said, “Well that’s the parable of the shepherd leaving the 99 to rescue the one.” When the one is rescued, it is still a bit messy and challenging.

In that sense, each of us are that one sheep Jesus gathered to Himself. It’s clear that Paul saw himself this way. In1 Timothy 1:12-14, Paul writes,

“I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.”[1]

Paul is writing Timothy exhorting him in his ministry. Though Paul’s ministry has been filled with public disputes, arrests, endless travel, beatings, stonings, and more, he is exhorting Timothy to pastor a community where the people pray for their rulers so that they “may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.”[2] As our good and gracious Lord takes hold of us, he leads and shapes us in in different ways: for some it is a quiet and dignified life and for others like Paul and Richard Wurmbrand it is being shaped in beatings and imprisonment.

In all lives, he is calling us to godliness. This like takes shape through faith in love. Paul writes, “Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.”[3]

We are sheep becoming lovers through faith in Christ Jesus. Our lives are marked by godliness. As Paul writes,

[G]odliness with contentment is great gain.[4]

[T]rain yourself for godliness; 8 for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.[5]

Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.[6]

The Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains defines godliness as religion. That is, the devout practice and appropriate beliefs of God.[7] The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament defines godliness as piety. That is conduct in relation to God, to self, and to others.[8]

The Apostle Paul writes,

Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness:
He was manifested in the flesh,
vindicated by the Spirit,
seen by angels,
proclaimed among the nations,
believed on in the world,
taken up in glory.[9]

We must start with the mystery of godliness, which is the action of God In Jesus Christ. It is the shepherd who pursues the sheep that is in danger. If we read the letter of I Timothy through the lens of the unveiling of Jesus Christ, we begin to see how our conduct in relation to God, to self, and to others springs from the person and work of Christ. We are united to Christ and he is working in and through us. In this sense, 1 Timothy is an unfolding of the mystery of godliness in Christ.

In chapter 1, Paul writes, “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. [10]

In the revelation of Jesus Christ, we receive God’s mercy, we believe in Him for eternal life, and we are caught up in worship of Jesus. Revelation of Jesus leads to redemption and doxology.

In chapter 2, Paul urges us to pray for all people that they may receive this revelation of Jesus Christ.

“First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.[11]”

In chapter 3, Paul speaks of the mystery of godliness, which is Jesus Christ.

16 Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness:
He was manifested in the flesh,
vindicated by the Spirit,
seen by angels,
proclaimed among the nations,
believed on in the world,
taken up in glory. [12]

In chapter 4, Paul reminds us that, “everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, or it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.”[13] Everywhere we look in this world we see God’s hand of blessing. And if we have eyes to see, we see God’s redeeming grace at work. With the vision of God’s grace and godliness revealed in Christ, we train ourselves for godliness. “[T]rain yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. 1For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.” [14]

With hope in Christ, we act out the reality of His redeeming love with loved ones and those outside the faith. Finally, in chapter 6, Paul speaks of an epiphany of Jesus Christ. He writes,

“Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will display at the proper time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen. [15]

We are straining toward Jesus in prayer, in Scripture, in reflection on this glorious creation, in thanksgiving. We are surrounded by distractions of our world such as the pursuit of wealth, endless theological disputes, and more. Every day there are distractions that can weary us, discourage us, seduce us, anger us, and divide us. Thus, every day we are turning toward Him in the midst of these distractions.

We are turning in simple thanks for the new day, for the hot coffee, for the pleasures he has afforded us, for friends and family, for the beauty that surrounds. Once we start seeing His hand of grace all around us, we are overwhelmed by how good he is to us. As we turn to our Savior, the mystery of godliness, we ourselves begin to step into this mystery by His power and grace. We lay down our lives for one another. We lay down our lives for those in need. We become agents of redeeming grace who continue to proclaim His goodness in word and deed.

In and through Christ, we can welcome those lost sheep into our lives.

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Ti 1:12–14.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Ti 2:2.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 2 Ti 1:13.

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Ti 6:6.

[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Ti 4:7–8.

[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Ti 6:11.

[7] James Swanson, Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Greek (New Testament) (Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997).

[8] Werner Foerster, “Σέβομαι, Σεβάζομαι, Σέβασμα, Σεβαστός, Εὐσεβής, Εὐσέβεια, Εὐσεβέω, Ἀσεβής, Ἀσέβεια, Ἀσεβέω, Σεμνός, Σεμνότης,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–), 183.

[9] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Ti 3:16.

[10] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Ti 1:15–17.

[11] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Ti 2:1–6.

[12] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Ti 3:16.

[13] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Ti 4:4–5.

[14] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Ti 4:7–10.

[15] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Ti 6:11–16.

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Rev. Dr. Les Martin

St Matthew and the Angel by Guido Reni (1635–1640)The Feast of St. Matthew 2025
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
Matthew 9:9-13

I desire mercy, and not sacrifice. -Matthew 9:13 (ESV)

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

Today, we celebrate the Feast of Saint Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist. His name in Hebrew means “gift of Yahweh.” He was a tax collector in the town of Capernaum, and his work was levying taxes on the fishermen like Peter. As we heard in our Gospel reading today, Jesus calls him as a disciple, and later appointed as one of the 12 apostles (10:3). The early church identified the first book of the NT as “the Gospel according to Matthew.”

Matthew, Mark and Luke all place the call of Matthew after the healing of the paralytic and Jesus’ pronouncement of his right to forgive sins (Mt 9:1–8), and before the dinner for “tax collectors and sinners” (vv 10–13). This location for his call clearly identifies Matthew as one of the sinners (v 13) to whom Jesus offers forgiveness. Matthew’s response to Jesus is obedient, decisive, and sacrificial- Luke 5:28 tells us that he got up, left everything he was and had behind, to follow Jesus.

In all three lists of the 12 apostles (Mt 10:2–4; Mk 3:16–19; Lk 6:14–16), Matthew appears; but Matthew alone speaks of “Matthew the tax collector.” Besides distinguishing this Matthew from others, “tax collector”- Matthew’s deliberate self-designation- would also recall the life out of which Jesus had called him.

But what exactly was the kind of life was Matthew called away from? I know none of us much like the IRS today, but it was something more than just that in NT times. The Romans collected a variety of taxes. Their own officers undertook some of this work, but also delegated it to private individuals, Jews and others, who were required to return to the authorities an agreed sum. Seeking to augment their wages out of real economic need or sometimes just greed, they often collected far more than they were required to pay- painful, exorbitant amounts- and became a hated group. The Jews among them were particularly despised, as being not just unjust but also collators with Empire. Such men were regarded as sinners and were often linked in the phrase “tax collectors and sinners”. This is the Matthew we meet at the beginning of our story today.

If that’s how we meet him, I think it’s only fair to ask “why?” How does a man who becomes an apostle, evangelist, and author of one of our gospels- a man who reportedly took the faith first to his own Jewish people and then all the way to Persia- how does he start out in one of the most despised and morally compromised occupations he could’ve had?

The first possibility has everything to do with living life in an unjust system. Any of you who have spent any amount of time in the developing world would understand this immediately. In Nigeria, for instance, most lower level government functionaries do not earn enough to live on, provided they are even paid. I was often stopped by the police, the army, and customs officials in the hopes that they could extract a sum of money from the white man. Many of them, I believe, were not particularly wicked people. They were just doing what they could with their position to try and survive. It was ethically wrong, annoying, and often provoked me to anger, but at another level, I get it. When you live in a system that is corrupt and does not provide for you, you do what you need to to provide for yourself. This is a possibility for why Matthew finds himself where he is, just a guy trying to get by when all the odds are stacked against him. Honestly, I think most of us would prefer to think of one of the apostles and evangelists this way- a basically good guy trying to live his life, but making some poor choices- but there is another possibility.

That possibility is this: whether as a result of the unjust system of Roman occupation, or because of the fallibility and sinfulness of the human heart, Matthew could have simply been evil. Not super-villain evil, I’m not suggesting that, but rather the banal, wretched, petty evil that is no less spiritually destructive, but doesn’t necessarily make the headlines. In second, Timothy, chapter 3, verses two through five, Paul reminds us what people will inevitably become in the wake of the tragedy in Eden. He writes:

…people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. (ESV)

We know this. ’Twas ever thus, and the story of our cultural, moral, and political decay affirm it as an ongoing reality.

So it could be one, or it could be the other. Actually, it could also be some mix of both. We just don’t know. What we do know is that both descriptions apply to us as well. We are people of limits- those imposed on us by unjust systems, be they our culture, our faith, tradition, or our family of origin. By age, mental and physical illness, addiction, and just plain random chance in a fallen world. So often, I think our banal little sins are a product of the lives we have found ourselves in, of our inability to live beyond the limits that were imposed on us. We are just trying to get by. At the same time, we know that the truth is this:

We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts…We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done; and…there is no health in us. (Confession of Sin, Daily Morning Prayer, BCP 2019)

Beloved, the sad fact is that not all our sin is a result of circumstances. In our brokenness, the reality is we also create and cooperate with the sin in our lives. In Romans 7:15, Paul cries out in real frustration about these limitations in our fallen hearts- his and ours. He writes: “For I don’t understand what I am doing. For I do not do what I want – instead, I do what I hate.” (NET). In verse 24, his agony comes to head as he says: “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (NET) But by 8:1-2, we hear the solution as he proclaims: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the life-giving Spirit in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.” We may indeed be people of limits, both imposed upon us and freely chosen, but the good news is this: Jesus Christ offers us something different. To Matthew, to Paul, to you and me this very day.

It’s useful to note a couple of things about Jesus’ encounter with Matthew in the Gospel today, both to get a sense of how our Lord works with us, and to get encouragement as we struggle against all our limitations. If your life is anything like mine right now, you need such a reminder and such encouragement.

My first observation is this: note that Jesus calls a tax collector, not an “ex-tax collector.” The love of Christ always comes to us as we are- not as we might hope to be, or even as he wants us to be. He goes to Matthew’s house, the text says, and has dinner there. Jesus meets Matthew- and us- in the shambles of the life we are living right now, not some other one- lives of exhaustion, of illness, of compromise and sin. Transformation has to start somewhere, and it always starts with the broken sinner, right in the midst of his broken, sinful life- not with someone who has moved on from that. Let’s face it, if we could move on from that, we wouldn’t need Jesus at all.

We should also note that the call is just to follow Jesus, nothing else. In our disappointment and anger, we may focus too much on tearing down unjust systems, on “rage against the machine.” But the world is ever with us, we can’t win that battle. Further, when focusing too much on the wrongs we perceive around us, there’s always the temptation that the victim will become the victimizer. Our focus needs to be on the one we follow, not on the utter unfairness of it all.

In our despair, we may be attempted to give up on ourselves, to feel that our more personal failings and our poor choices will never change. Again, this is the victim becoming the victimizer, only now we choose to victimize ourselves. Again, the call is clear to focus on Jesus who both delivers and transforms us, not on how pathetic we think we may be.

As we follow the one who desires mercy, not sacrifice, we are invited to do the same. To be merciful to those people, institutions and situations that oppress us. They will know we are Christians by our love, after all. And to show mercy to ourselves, even when we are at our most broken and unlovable. We receive mercy free of charge, with no demand for sacrifice, and as we remain rooted in Christ, we find that we can become people like that, too, by his grace.

In his 1994 song, “Things We Leave Behind,” Christian musician Michael Card sings of St Matthew in the following way:

Matthew was mindful of taking the tax, pressing the people to pay. Hearing the call, he responded in faith, followed the Light and the Way.

That’s the lesson Matthew would teach us today, I think. Whatever brokenness and sin we find ourselves in, Jesus invites us to follow him into a life that is beyond all our limitations. Trusting him, following him, moving deeper into his heart of mercy, tax-collectors become apostles, and you and I will slowly but certainly walk in all such good works, as he has prepared for us, as well. Come, follow him.

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Rev. Doug Floyd

The Clonmacnoise Crucifixion Plaque (10th or early-11th century)Exaltation of the Cross 2025
Rev. Doug Floyd
Isaiah 45:21-25, Psalm 98, Philippians 2:5–11, John 12:31-36a

Today we celebrate Holy Cross Day or the Exaltation of the Cross. Historically, this feast commemorated the story of Constantine’s mother, St. Helena, when she discovered the cross where Jesus was crucified. According to the legend, a temple to Venus has been eracted over the tomb of Jesus. Helena ordered the temple to be torn down and excavated. She found three crosses. She brought a sick woman to the place of the crosses. She had the woman touch the first cross and nothing happened. Then the second cross. Once again, nothing happened. Finally, the third cross was brought to the sickly woman. When she touched it, she was instantly healed. Helena lifted up the cross as the True Cross of Jesus.

One thing we can say for certain is that the cross is central to our faith. As Rowan Williams writes, “There is no pre-cross Christianity.”[1] And yet, for the early Christians, the cross was shameful. Last lent, I did a presentation on the “Art of the Crucifixion,” and we discovered that there are very few images of the cross in the early church. It was seen a form of execution for the very lowest of society. “Romans almost never imposed crucifixion upon their citizens,” writes Robin Jenson, “but rather inflicted it on individuals considered to be undeserving of more humane forms of capital punishment (thieves, slaves, or traitors).”[2]

This fits perfectly with Paul’s description in our second lesson today, He writes, “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”[3] Jesus Christ is humiliated as a slave, as a criminal, as the very lowest of the social order.

Jesus had warned the Pharisees of a coming judgment. Those on the inside would suddenly find themselves on the outside: cast into outer darkness. When Jesus is crucified, He becomes the outsider. He descends into darkness, the accursed, the cast aside, the desolate, the forgotten. He enters the judgment that he warned the Pharisees about. He has come to enter our judgment as well.

Though the early church embraced the Good News of Jesus, they avoided creating images of this cross. In the middle of the second century, we already begin seeing artwork by Christians in the catacombs. We see images of Jonah, of the three young men in the fire and even Jesus as a shepherd but no images of the cross.

In the early second century, Justin Martyr writes, “For they charge our madness to consist in this, that we give to a crucified man second place after the unchangeable and eternal God, begetter of all things, for they do not know the mystery involved in this, to which we ask you to give heed as we expound it to you.”[4]

Archeologists have found a piece of graffiti about the cross dated to 200 AD. It is a picture of a man on a cross with the head of an ass. The inscription reads, “Alexamenos worships (his) god.” This graffiti is making fun of people who would worship a man hung on a cross.

“Among all the kinds of deaths there was none worse than that death,” writes St. Augustine. “Indeed, when very severe pains torment one, it is called excruciation, from the word crux (cross). For those crucified, hanging on the wood, fastened to the wood by nails in the feet and hands, were slain by a long drawn out death. For to be crucified was not to be killed by being struck down; but one was alive on the cross for a long time, not because a longer life was chosen, but because the death itself was being protracted so that the pain would not be ended too quickly. He wanted to die for us. We say too little: he deigned to be crucified, having become obedient even to the death of the cross.”[5]

Worshipping a man as God who had been crucified was unthinkable to Jews and Gentiles. And yet, the Spirit worked through this story to open hearts and establish faith communities. People all across the empire turned to this crucified man as Savior. Eventually Constantine legalized Christianity and his mother embraced the faith. The Gospel traveled throughout the world through Christian Roman Soldiers, converted pagan tribes, and Christian missionaries.

People are still turning to the crucified one as Savior of the world. Only four years ago, the English historian Tom Holland published “Dominion” where he discusses the inexplicable mystery that the church formed by worshipping a man who was executed in the most shameful manner of the empire. He sees this radical shift as the beginning of a new world that altered all of Western society.

Gradually the images followed. Images of Christ on the cross appeared in the 4th century, but his eyes were open, which indicated he was resurrected. It was not until the 10th and 11th century that images and sculptures appeared with Christ suffering on the cross. Today, it would be difficult to imagine a church without some image of the cross. Our faith is not primarily symbolized by an empty tomb but by a cross. The humiliation of Jesus is the exaltation of humans.

So far, I’ve been focusing upon the external aspect of the work of the cross, and how it’s shame would eventually become its glory. But the deeper story is the transformation of the heart and the hope of all creation. On this day when we celebrate Christ’s redeeming grace in the work of the cross, we must pause to reflect upon God’s grace revealed in the cross.

We need to go back and reflect on the creation story. We start with Paul’s statement in Roman’s 8:20-21, “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”[6]

In Genesis 1-2, we see God creating a world that reveals His goodness. It is good and in light of creating humans, it is very good. The Lord is intimately involved for creating and sustaining every aspect of His world. The Gospel of John reveals that “All things were made through him that is Jesus the Word, and without him was not any thing made that was made.”[7] “Then John says, In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”[8] Humans were made to bear the very life and light of God. Some church fathers like St Maximos believed that Adam and Eve were translucent to this light. They shined out with the glory of God. It would seem from these early passages in Genesis and later passages like Romans 8, humans played a distinctive role is serving and ruling this creation in and through the love of God. (Moses)

Sadly, we come to Genesis 3-4. Humans turn away from God and suffer a broken communion with God and one another. By the time we get to Genesis 4, human blood is shed on the ground. Now creation is suffering directly under violence and sin and humanity. The ground is crying out for vengeance.

In his wonderful book, On the Incarnation, Athanasius emphasizes that all things were created from nothing and dependent on God for existence. To turn from God, separates humans from the very source of their existence. He writes,

[W] hen humans despised and overturned the comprehension of God, devising and contriving evil for themselves, as was said in the first work, then they received the previously threatened condemnation of death, and thereafter no longer remained as they had been created, but were corrupted as they had contrived; and, seizing them, death reigned. For the transgression of the commandment returned them to the natural state, so that, just as they, not being, came to be, so also they might rightly endure in time the corruption unto non-being.[9]

In this state of separation, humans were moving to non-being and eventually non-existence. The sin of turning away from God is the sin of all humanity and is called idolatry. Gradually, humans lose their humanity and become beasts: killing, betraying, exploiting, enslaving, and on and on. As we have seen in our own country and throughout the world. Athanasius helped me to see that sin unravels humans and ultimately all creation. In the words of Isaiah, “it is coming undone.” We physically destroy one another and the earth. We emotionally, relationally, spiritually corrupt the creation.

Jesus descends into the lowest point of this unraveling. In the age of the Roman empire, the lowest point was crucifixion, the cross. Christ assumes every aspect of human corruption in mind, heart, and body. In his death on the cross, he dies a criminal, though innocent. He is crushed, humiliated, and descends to the very lowest corruption of humans. Because Christ is fully man and fully God, he can unite to a corrupt humanity while united to an incorrupt Heavenly Father. Thus, in His resurrection, humanity is raised from the dead and up into communion with Father, Son, and Spirit.

Our union with Christ changes everything for us and for all creation. Even now, His redeeming grace is rippling out to every aspect of creation that has been subjected to futility. We long and groan and strain forward to the day when all God’s people will enter the redeemed and all creation will be raised up into His glory. In Christ, we are priests, we are God’s instruments of reconciliation. And yet, we are weak, and we grow weary. Paul writes in Romans 8

For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.[10]

This is why we continue to celebrate our faith through the image of the cross. In the cross, we see the paradox of humiliation and exaltation, of death and resurrection, and sin and redemption.

Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen

[1] Rowan Williams, God with Us: The Meaning of the Cross and Resurrection—Then and Now (London: SPCK, 2017), 21.

[2] Robin Jensen, The Cross: History, Art, and Controversy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2023), 8.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Php 2:5–8.

[4] St. Justin Martyr, St. Justin Martyr: The First and Second Apologies, ed. Walter J. Burghardt et al., trans. Leslie William Barnard, vol. 56, Ancient Christian Writers (New York; Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1997), 31.

[5] Augustine of Hippo, Tractates on the Gospel of John 28–54, ed. Thomas P. Halton, trans. John W. Rettig, vol. 88, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 85.

[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ro 8:20–21.

[7] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 1:3.

[8] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 1:4.

[9] St Athanasius the Great of Alexandria, On the Incarnation: Translation, ed. and trans. John Behr, vol. 44a, Popular Patristics Series (Yonkers, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011), 59.

[10] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ro 8:22–28.

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Rev. Dr. Les Martin

Head of Christ by Rembrandt (1645-1650)Pentecost+13 2025
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
Deuteronomy 30:15–20, Psalm 1, Philemon, Luke 14:25-33

O Lord God, grant your people grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and with pure hearts and minds to follow you – From the Collect of the Day

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

I stood before you on August 3rd to inform you that the doctors had determined I had a bad heart. Briefly, I am happy to tell you today that the procedure I had some 17 days ago now seems to have been a success. I’m grateful to God for a new lease on life.

In that same announcement, I also alluded to the fact that I have a bad heart in other ways- spiritual ways. Truth is, we all do. Today in Deuteronomy 30 verse 15. God tells the people of Israel about their options, moving forward. He says that he has set before them life and good, evil and death. In verse 19, he pleads with them to “choose life.” In truth, that’s not just their choice, it’s my choice, it’s the daily choice of all of us, really. Problem is, we have bad hearts. Verses 17 and 18 of the same passage read as follows:

But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. (Dt 30:18-18, ESV)

We know from the history of Israel, that their hearts did indeed turn away, again and again, and they did indeed perish in their idolatry, again and again. So do we.

Proverbs 14:12 says the following “There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way to death.” (CSB) That, friends, is both the heart of the matter, and what’s the matter with our hearts. You see, we don’t have to be particularly actively evil or wicked people to wind up in a mess. Rather, it’s simply the case that what seems naturally right and good to us leads to death. This is because our hearts are not neutral territory. Absent the truth of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit, they are deceived- fatally so. Our Collect this morning reminds us that they are constantly subjected to “the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil.” Throughout history, the church has said that the work of Christian living is to renounce- to decide that we will no longer give allegiance to- those temptations, to that way that seems so right to us but actually deals us destruction.

The world, the flesh and the devil. These are the “three foes of man” – as they were called in the medieval Church. They are constantly seducing our hearts, enticing us to go off in a way that seems appealing at first glance, but actually only reaps a harvest of painful consequences. Let’s consider them in reverse order.

The devil is at the heart of the problem with our hearts. Back in Genesis 3:4-5 he offers us the original lie, the original temptation that humanity swallows hook, line, and sinker. Regarding eating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, he whispers:

Surely you will not die, for God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will open and you will be like God (NET)

You will be like God. Yours will be the kingdom the power and the glory. Everything you desire is within your grasp, and it is your right. If it feels good, do it. If you can conceive it, you can achieve it. Have it your way. Building our lives on this lie is indeed the way of evil. Believing this lie, we no longer love God above all things and our neighbors as ourselves. We are God, and our neighbors- like Onesimus in our Epistle today- are our slaves, to be used for our pleasure and cast off when they don’t meet our needs. Self-idolatry, self-worship- it’s so subtle, so common place. We place ourselves at the center of our universe so easily.

The desires of the flesh are always the next logical next step. Having declared ourselves masters of our own universe, the question is: What do I want? What am I hungry for? What do I desire? Rather than being satisfied with the daily bread provided for us, we begin to listen to the internal voices of our cravings. This may cause us to look backward to either the cucumbers and leeks of Egypt, or just the freedom of youth. Cravings may also be more fantasy-based, imagining a life of physical pleasure, unlimited financial resources, or some form of fame, esteem or even physical appearance that would make us feel better about ourselves. Whatever our particular desire is somewhat irrelevant. What’s universal among broken humanity is the unfolding process: we first declare ourselves God, and then we seek to satisfy our cravings.

Enter the world. The culture waters we all swim in-those of decadent, end-stage consumer captialism-provide for our cravings, either with real things and people, or with the illusions of virtual life and digital intimacy. Like the people in Pixar’s 2008 film WALL-E, it is easy for us to grow fat, indolent, and lazy as we fill ourselves with all the stuff our society says will make us happy.

“If your heart turns away… I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish.” They did, we do, obsessed with self-worship, consumed by our wants, buried under our mountains of things.

As I mentioned earlier, our baptismal life in Christ necessitates the renunciation of these three foes of mankind. If, as the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous states, “Selfishness – self-centeredness… is the root of our troubles,” (Big Book, p 62) then the answer to renouncing “the devil and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God” (BCP 2019 Baptismal liturgy) lies in what Christ commends in verse 26 of our Gospel reading today: we simply must choose God first, above even self. For John Calvin, self-denial is the way Jesus offers us freedom from what he terms the “deadly pestilence of love of strife and love of self.” Denial of self- turning instead to God and our neighbor as the focus of our attention- is the escape from selfishness. Self-denial is the gift Christ gives us that enables us to dedicate ourselves to God and to seek the things which “are of the Lord’s will.” This is not to ignore a healthy self-identity, mind you, nor overlook legitimate self-care. It is, however, the work of “right-sizing” ourselves- recognizing that the Lord is God and we are not. Like that old saying says: it’s not about thinking less of yourself, it’s about thinking of yourself less.

What of “the sinful desires of the flesh that draw you from the love of God?” (BCP 2019 Baptismal liturgy) Jesus teaches in verse 27 that we must bear our cross. In Galatians 2:20, the Apostle Paul writes:

My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (NLT)

We always need to remember that as fallen humans we have our wants and our needs confused. We do not really know what is good for us, only what we desire. When we can come to trust in the Son of God and in his provision of what is truly necessary- for our daily bread- it becomes easier, if not exactly easy, to crucify our internal cravings for immediate and never-ending pleasure and soothing.

The world, it seems to me, wants to give us that pleasure, those wants- on credit. We buy now, pay later. Thing is, what we buy neither lasts nor satisfies- the point is the acquisition that never ends: there is always some new thing, some new dream that we are encouraged to go after. And the costs- the consequences of this way of living- are so very high. Addiction, broken homes, damaged and discarded relationships, a life of stress driven by the anxiety to either get ahead or just pay off our financial debt, a life of illness driven by quick-fix consumption of unhealthy foods, substances, and ideas. Hence our baptismal liturgy calls us to “renounce the empty promises and deadly deceits of this world that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.” (BCP 2019 Baptismal liturgy). The things of this fast-food, single-use, disposable life do indeed corrupt and destroy us. Jesus, in verse 27, urges us to “count the cost” of the kind of lifestyle we are building. To have the discipline to walk closely with him in the life he has given us to live, as opposed to grasping for some kind of fantasy lifestyle that was never meant to be ours, despite what the world suggests.

Some thoughts about this life of renunciation. First, it is not so much about doing something different- although it entails that- as it is about seeing something different. Its about seeing how much peace there is in not trying to be God anymore. Its about understanding that the commandments of the Lord really are the best way to live- that they provide freedom to live, not restriction of life. It is about seeing that this altar, this font, these relationships, our spouses, families, friends and work are the place in which God is making us holy and transforming us into his likeness. In the givenness of our lives is where we find grace. We don’t have to search for it anywhere else. In fact, such a search may well lead us only to the dead-end consequences that are always the result of rebellious self-seeking. Just to see this- to confess these truths- is to allow God to begin the re-fashioning of our bad hearts into hearts that delight in him. And as our hearts learn to delight in him, our mind will be renewed, and our lives will follow suit.

Secondly, remember that we won’t always get it right. We will still quite often err, siding with the world, the flesh, and the devil. When we do- when we have wandered far in a land that is waste, with the consequences of the choices we have made weighing us down- then we have come to the place of hope. Remember this: discipleship is not the Gospel. And the Gospel is this: that when we were still far off, Christ loved us, died for us, and brought us home. There is always forgiveness for the repentant heart. The way of renunciation, the way of discipleship is fruit that grows out of our rooted relationship in Christ, not the other way around. We can always find mercy and forgiveness in Jesus, even when we have been too much with the world, the flesh, the devil.

This past week, I began cardiac rehab three days a week. You know- the diet, the treadmill and the weights. Why? Because the fact is this: the doctors have fixed my heart, have given me a new life. But what I do with that life is up to me. Effort is required to make sure I use it to the fullest, and in the best way possible. In his mercy, Jesus has given us all new life through his shed blood and the waters of Baptism. What we do with it is up to us. The life of renouncing the world, the flesh, and the devil, of giving allegiance to Christ and him alone- that is our spiritual cardiac rehabilitation. It enables us to live the kind of lives that the children we are are invited to live. The very best way of living there is. May God give us the desire to pursue it.

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Last Supper by Peter Paul Rubens (1630-1631)Pentecost +12 – Ever Growing Community of Christ
Rev. Doug Floyd
Colossians 4:2-6

Today marks the end of our summer long reflections on Colossians. This week I reread all the sermons on our website, and then I reread the book of Colossians. One theme that surfaced again and again is our rootedness in Christ. This made me think of a little book I read with some friends in college, The Green Letters by Myles Stanford. This book was one of a several books that introduced me to a life shaped by God’s abundant grace as revealed in Christ.

Here some 40 years later I am still learning about this life of grace. I still love reading with God’s people and learning from God’s people. We are bound together in Christ and through Christ we are bound to saints across the ages. This is a treasure.

We have talked about how the community of Colossae was ordinary, even insignificant, and yet they were loved by God. When they heard the gospel, the Spirit opened the door of their hearts, and they received this good news. They were raised up into the great communion of love.

While Paul is addressing the personal and individual faith of each member of the community, we must not forget that he is addressing the whole fellowship. At the end of chapter 4, he encourages them to pass this letter on to the church at Laodicea, and to read the letter that he wrote to the church at Laodicea. While these letters may address specific concerns of each community, they are intended for the body of Christ across space and time. So, we hear these words addressed to us today.

Even as Paul focuses our attention upon the redeeming and glorifying work of Jesus Christ among us, he emphasizes the unspeakable glory of Christ Jesus who is the image of the invisible God. The Good News that was hidden for ages has been revealed. It is Jesus Christ, the firstborn of all creation.

“For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” [1]

“He has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present [us] holy and blameless and above reproach before him.”[2] As ordinary and even insignificant people, we have been reconciled to God. Our hope is hidden beyond the veil of this life before the very throne of God. We live in and through the reality of this sacred communion of love as revealed in Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Our relation to one another is shaped in Christ. Our relation to the culture is shaped in Christ. We have tasted the sweet love of God, and we will never be the same again.

Even as we set our minds on things above, we turn our hearts out to a culture in need of the good news of Jesus Christ. We do this in prayer, thanksgiving, and wise hospitality toward those outside the faith.

“Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.”[3] Here is an exhortation to pray, watch, and give thanks. This is certainly applicable to each of us in our daily lives, but it also speaks to the community. The letter is being read aloud when the community gathers. In this community, outsiders have been welcomed. Love has been poured out in fellowship, in the peace, and in the supper of the Lamb.

As often as the community gathers, we are invited to lift up our voices in prayer. To be watchful. To give thanks. “Prayers of the people” offers some guidance to our prayers, but we can lift individual voices as well. I appreciate when some people cry out for specific individuals and for situations our world. Consider how Sherry has encouraged us to pray for specific places of persecution like Nigeria. As the covenant community, we offer priestly prayers for a world in need. Even as we pray, we are called to be watchful in thanksgiving.

There is one sense in which we are always watching for the coming of the Lord. There is another sense in which we are watching for those who would seduce us from the truth. In 1 Peter 5:8, we read “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”

We respond to these attacks with humble hearts, trusting God’s provision. In our culture, these attacks may also look more like social pressure, but in many cultures, Christians face tne threat of physical, emotional, and legal violence. The people of God remain vigilant and humble themselves under the mighty hand of God. At the same, we are watching to see what God is doing in our community and in the region at large. How is God calling us to serve.

Consider Geoff’s exhortation to help provide food for the hungry. We pour out our lives in prayer even as we pour out our resources to the community in need. I exhort each of you to keep watchful and when you sense a great need to share it with our whole community, so that we can pray and serve together.

Next Paul asks for prayer. He writes, “At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison— that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak. [4] Paul opens this letter praying for the Colossians and now he asks them to pray for him. The Colossians and the folks at St. Brendan’s are fellow servants with Paul.

He is writing from prison and is asking them to pray for an open door. Is this so that he might escape? In Acts 5, the Apostles are arrested and put in prison. An angel of the Lord lets them out, and they begin preaching again the next day. I don’t think Paul is asking to be let out. He wants an open door for the Gospel.

In Acts 4, the church prays to preach boldly with the good news of Jesus Christ. Like the Apostles in Jerusalem, Paul is asking his fellow believers to pray that the Gospel might have an open door. From prison Paul can address soldiers and write letters. Consider the soldiers who hear. Some of these soldiers will eventually bring the Gospel to the uttermost reaches of the empire.

Every week, we pray “For all those who proclaim the Gospel at home and abroad; and for all who teach and disciple others.” We want to the Gospel to go forth through open doors to the hearts of the people. Not so that the “Christian team” will grow stronger but so that insignificant, beat down, and discouraged people in slave to sin will be reconciled to God.

Now the whole church is encouraged to walk out their calling in the community beyond the church, to walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.”[5]

We go forth as children of light who shine out like stars in the universe. We bring words of hope, hands of healing, gracious hospitality. When I eight or nine, my sister and I joined my parents and their youth group out on the street in New Jersey, handing out tracts. We were “witnessing.” I have no doubt God used our small service. Even in college, I took to the streets with a handful of tracts. As it turns out, I ended up talking to one or two people all afternoon. It seems I’ve always been a teacher even when I tried to be an evangelist.

Though God can and will use this service, I think this outreach can take all sorts of shapes. It might be as simple as talking with the checkout clerk at the grocery store. We all have different gifts, and hospitality can take different shapes in our lives.

In the past, I held movie nights and house concerts for sinners and saints alike. I was trying to find ways to open our lives and love to those around us. I had a friend who set up a dream both at the Flea Market. “Dreams for two cents.” People always walked up and talked with him.

One way that our community might reach beyond ourselves to a world in need is through prayer. Kelly and I went to a conference once when a man in our group shared how he used to buy gas from the same market every week. The clerk was a goth girl. He would talk to her when he paid. Then he asked his house church to start praying for her. Eventually, he told her about the group. She came. Eventually she embraced Jesus and later became a missionary.

That sounds like an open door, like watchfulness, prayer, thanksgiving.

Each week we gather as priests before God and worship, pray, receive the blessing of Christ, and go out with the Good News on our lips and in our feet. May the Lord have mercy upon us and teach each of us how we might be instruments of gracious hospitality and holy reconciliation in a world desperate for the love of God.

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Col 1:16–20.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Col 1:22.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Col 4:2.

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Col 4:3–4.

[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Col 4:5–6.

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Dr. Christopher Graham

Jesus Eats with Sinner by Sieger Köder (2015)Pentecost+11 2025 – Bearing Fruit
Dr. Christiopher Graham
Colossians 3:18-4:1

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

How are we to be shaped this morning by the 142 words, the nine verses that Sherry read from Colossians chapter 3 verses 19 to 4:1 for us. More specifically, how are we to be shaped by those six verbs: submit, love, provoke not, obey, work heartily, treat justly and fairly.

When I told my friend and colleague that I was preaching on this passage, a man who I respect very much for his homiletical skill, which is just a fancy way to say he gives really good sermons. When I told him that this was my pass passage, he chuckled.

Then he said, “You’ve just got to steer into it.” If you’ve ever taken a driver’s instruction course, then you remember these words as the instructions you give to someone when they find themselves in a potentially life-threatening skid. Having lived in Vermont for five years, I can attest to the fact that the words work, but you can’t overthink them, you can’t think too hard why it actually works.

You just have to trust the advice, because it’ll keep you on the road. And I believe that my colleague’s advice is wise for us this morning if we want to be shaped by just these words this morning. Of course, it feels more intuitive when you’re in a skid to steer out of the skid.

It seems easier in the same way to take and avoid the words that we have before us this morning to avoid Paul’s words. In fact, maybe some folks actually read what Father Doug sent out and aren’t here this morning because they’re avoiding these words. I don’t know.

I’ll let Father Doug ask them. In fact, there are well worn strategies that preachers, teachers, and readers use to avoid hearing just these words. I want to share three of those strategies this morning so that you know that I am committed to not using these strategies.

Because I don’t think they’re helpful in letting us be formed by just these 142 words in 9 verses. First, I will avoid the temptation to take us to another of Paul’s letters. There are times when it’s entirely appropriate to go to other books and letters of Paul to help us understand a given passage.

Father Doug did this several weeks ago when looking at in Colossians, the brief verse that deals with us as the body of Christ. And in Colossians, it just gets a verse. But in 1 Corinthians and Ephesians, it gets an extended treatment, and so Father, Doug helpfully took us there to help us better understand it in Colossians.

So there are times when it’s appropriate, but not this morning, because typically, we would go to other letters this morning to avoid these words, submit, love, provoke not, obey, work heartily, treat justly and fairly. We would go to other passages in Paul’s letters where he applies these words to everybody, or he applies them to both sides equally, but not here. Here he gives these specific words to specific people, wives, husbands, fathers, bond servants, or slaves, if you will, masters.

To turn into these words this morning means that we acknowledge that he has a word for us this morning with these words. I don’t know what was going on Colossae, that he just gave these words so directly without any sort of fluff to or explanation. And I don’t know why He gives these words to us this morning, but he does.

And we need to hear these words as a means to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord pleasing him in all respects. The second approach I will not take this morning is to describe what it means. For wives, husbands children’s fathers, slaves, and masters, to do these actions.

But Christopher, isn’t that actually paying attention to the words? No. That is Christopher, drawing from a very constrained perspective with a lot of biases, giving you a description and pretending that it’s universal.

And then I, if I were in your position, know what I would do, I would take my description, compare it with the other descriptions you’ve heard from other teachers and preachers. Find the one that is the most palatable to me, and then give myself to that description. And if we did that, we would be aiming at the wrong thing.

We’re not to aim at that description, or any description. We are to aim at these words and what Paul has to say to us in the book of Colossians. Finally, I will not steer out of the curve by trying to contrast the historical context of Paul with our context today.

And then to find some sort of universal principle that we can take from Paul’s words and then apply them in any given situation today. It’s a handy trick. But it’s not allowing us to hear just these words.

The fact is, I don’t know why. In God’s ordering of time, the apostles, Paul, even our Lord Himself, did not take as His first course of action, for example, to dismantle institutions like slavery. I don’t know.

But I do know that if I pretend somehow to take the principle to take the words that are given to slaves and masters and Colossians to extract some sort of principle, and then to say, well, it’s just like you submitting to your boss or me submitting to my boss, I know that this is to do injustice to Paul’s words. It’s quite possible that no one who hears my sermon this morning is in a relationship that is described as the Slave Master Bond relationship. But to principlize this so that it applies to me and my boss is to avoid the reality that there are an estimated 28 million people to date who are still in slavery.

And if they heard these words, that would mean something very profound to them. So we’re not going to take that route. Instead, we’re going to steer into the words and realize this that even as we live in the reality that Paul spoke about in the previous chapter, you remember these words from last week.

Here, there is not Greek and Jew circumcised, uncircumcised, barbarian, Scyithian, slave, free, but Christ is all and in all. Even as we live in that reality, Paul recognizes that we bear fruit even in our most intimate and even fraught relationships. Because you and I are now connected to Christ, your earthly reality changes in light of that.

We are not taken out of the messiness of life And in fact, what our passage this morning shows us is that we remain, even in the messiest of relationships and our most intimate relationships, even in these, we can walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing him, bearing fruit in every good. And so, in fact, that’s a great place to start, turning into the skid, turning into these words, is to recognize that we are in the fruit section of the letter. Of course, Reverend Burnett, Father Clint last week launched us well into this section last week.

And we would do well to remember that the description we have here, the words that we have here flow out of the words that we heard last week. There is then, a logical and literary connection between the verbs submit, love, provoke, not, obey, work heartily, treat justly and fairly, fairly, with the adjectives and nouns we heard last week, holy, beloved, compassionate, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, love, peace, and thankful. That our verbs this week are tied and should be consonant with the fruit of the verbs last week, bearing with one another, forgiving each other, teaching, and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns, and spiritual songs.

There is continuity, only because we have to divide it up somewhere for the sake of preaching, do we separation of a week between those words and these words? I do wish, though, that maybe we could have gotten a running head start into, you know, the words for today instead of just starting with submit. But that’s above my pay grade, as they say.

It would be good to remember when we encounter these words today that the very nature of fruit is to be attractive and appealing. And why? For the nourishment of those who are consuming and for the propagation of the plant.

Paul doesn’t choose his metaphors lightly. He chooses them knowing what they mean, and he knows that even the fruit of these words should be attractive and appealing. And so here’s just a question for us, as we grapple with these words in our relationships, are we bearing fruit in our relationship with each other, even our most intimate, even our most fraught relationships, in such a way that they nourish and multiply.

Are we submitting in such a way that our spouse is encouraged and in turn finds ways to submit to those in authority over them? Are we loving in ways that our spouses are built up, for example, and in turn loving others? But as we have seen time and heard time and time again through this series, perhaps maybe every sermon in this series, the fruit is not the fruit without roots.

These actions are merely actions unless they are connected to the one who is the root. Remember, Paul has said earlier in this letter, this, therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in Thanksgiving. And Paul does not let us forget, even in this section of the letter that our fruit, our actions, are a result of our connection, our communion with Christ.

Again, as Reverend Burnett pointed out last week, the words that this section, if then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father, Set that your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. Here it is, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. And even in our passage this morning, Paul reminds us that our ultimate orientation, even in our earthly relationships, is toward Christ.

Wives, be subject to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord. Children be obedient to your parents in all things for this is well pleasing to the Lord. Bond servants, with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord.

Whatever you do, do your work heartily as for the Lord. It is Christ, the Lord whom you serve, and to masters, you, too, have a master in heaven. At our most fundamental level, our relationship, our relationships, are governed by the reality that we are all in Christ, and we orient ourselves to and from Christ.

If we do not recognize that, if we do not focus on that, then our actions, even these actions, do not nourish and give life and multiply. They become merely transactional. I love you only as you submit to me, I submit to you, only as you love me, I obey you, only as far as you don’t exasperate me, I will not exasperate you, only in as much as you obey me.

As a child of the 70s, the 1970s, that is. I can testify to the fact that it is possible to so focus on the family that you can miss the one who gives life to the family. Without Christ as the root, without connection to the root, submission becomes merely passivity.

Love, even the most extreme forms of love, giving one’s body to be burned, giving one’s possessions to the poor, even all of that becomes noisy gongs and clanging cymbals. I promise that’s my only reference to another non-Colossian letter. “Obedience is learning simply how to kiss up, suck up for self-preservation.

Treating justly and fairly becomes meeting standards that are mandated by some regulatory body. Which leads me to my third and final point, and that is, so how are we to stay connected to the roots? The one who gives life for these actions.

Well, Paul has already told us that in the letter. The church is that which allows the fruit to draw from the roots. To make this point early in the letter, he switches quickly from the language of fruit and roots to head and body.

You’ll remember, this is what he said in chapter 2, verse 19, that from Christ, as the head of the body, the whole body nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments grows with a growth that is from God. In fact, Paul uses this language to at that point to warn against associating and becoming dependent upon those who are not a part of the body. Because they offer a connection that does not bring nourishments and growth.

And in looking at the verse just preceding our passage, you remember, it says this and whatever you do in word or deed, do everything, in the name of the Lord Jesus giving thanks to God the Father through Him. Again, last week, Reverend Burnett ended his sermon saying this, “The result of Christ’s peace ruling in our hearts is that we might be Thanksgivers or people who live a Eucharistic life. If we live this kind of life, the gospel message about Jesus will then live in us and provide a song in our hearts that we can use to teach each other.

And we will need to be taught by each other every single day. What does it mean that we gather from the roots through the church? I think that Father Clint’s message last week and his quote here, his conclusion, point us in two directions.

First, we learn from each other. We learn from each other. We are willing to help and to be helped, to help each other discern if our actions are truly nourishing and fruitful and in concert with that which is our Lord, to help determine whether our actions are like a green apple Jolly Rancher, which are wonderful in flavor, that offer little nourishment, or really a Granny Smith.

Whether our actions are like a banana flavored Laffy taffy. Why? Or bananas.

We learn from and help each other discern what is and what is not fruit in our lives. And by the way, let me just say that this goes in two directions. It may be that there are things in our lives that are really more like the Laffy taffy and that we need to be called out on and spoken to about, it doesn’t feel like this is fruit.

And there are things that maybe be happening in our lives, I can attest, which we’ve never experienced before, and we need someone to tell us, “No, no, no, that’s fruit. That’s good. You need to you need to cultivate that.

The second way that Father Clint’s words last week point us to how we stay connected with the plant and therefore to the roots is in referencing the Eucharistic life. And in this, he pointed us to a way that the church keeps us connected to the root or to the head. Our interaction with each other in the liturgy and on the Lord’s Day, our service to and before God.

You see, when we hear God’s Word from our brothers and sisters, from the Old Testament and New Testament, when we hear those words read aloud, we can hear them and respond to them. We can hear Sherry this morning say those words from Isaiah and the words from Salvation, and we can be reminded that even when some of our earthly relationships fail, there is a God who is a just God, who is our refuge. And we can respond and take comfort in that.

We can hear others in the confession, even as we join with them, to confess that we have not submitted or loved, or obeyed, or worked heartily, that we have provoked or exasperated. When we come together, we can hear Father Doug and Father Les offer the words of absolution and comfort, and we are recipients of the Masters mercy. Grace and comfort, When Jeff, Stephanie, or Gail, say the words, Christ’s blood shed for you, we have communion with our Lord. who submitted to the Father’s will, so that he could love us to the end. who, taking the form of a servant, did not come to be served, but to serve.

We have communion with that, Lord. When you take my hand and say, “Pace, you manifest Christ peace in my fraught, complicated, dizzying world. Each time we gather, that is, we place ourselves in a position where we may be filled with the knowledge of his will, in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

So as to walk in a manner worthy of a Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God, we find ourselves in a place being strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, and giving thanks to the Father who is qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints of light.

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Rev. Dr. Clint Burnett

Jesus Christ from Hagia Sophia (late Thirteenth Century)Pentecost+10 2025
Rev. Dr. Clint Burnett
Colossians 3:1-17

Good morning, grace and peace to you this beautiful morning. I bring you greetings from your sister parish in Knoxville, Old North Abbey, and we pray that you are well, and we trust that God and His faithfulness is moving you.

Christ is moving among you, sanctifying you and using you for His good purpose in beautiful, Maryville, Tennessee. Years ago, to prepare for my application to graduate schools, for my doctorate, I had to undertake a standardized test known as the graduate Record Examination or GRE for short, which is a prerequisite for admission to many American graduate programs. Maybe you have had to suffer through the GRE.

The test goal is to measure one’s reading comprehension, understanding of mathematics, writing capability, and critical thinking skills. To prepare for the exam, I purchased an exam prep book from Amazon. I read through it.

I took the practice exam, and in the end, I did not achieve the score that I needed to get into the graduate schools to which I was applying. Therefore, I bought a second exam prep book, and I did the exact same thing. Once again, to reading through cover to cover and taking the practice exam, I did not do as well as I needed.

So, I bought a third exam prep book. Now, this book was exactly like the first two, say for one critical difference. The difference was that at the beginning of the book, the author of the book informed the reader that one’s test score is related directly to one’s perspective about the exam.

Rather than seeing it as a boring, long, and laborious test, the author of the book encouraged readers to see it as an opportunity to learn and to grow and to show off one’s skills. Therefore, when I came to a short story with questions about the migratory habits of seals that tested my reading comprehension, I should not say, “man, another story about the migratory habits of seals. Rather, I should say, “Oh, boy, I get to learn about the migratory habits of seals.”

I must say, after putting this advice into practice, reading through that exam prep book, and taking the practice exam, I finally achieved the score that I needed. Thereupon, I immediately registered for the GRE, took the test, thanks be to God, scored what I needed to score to get into graduate school. What’s interesting is I reflect upon my journey through the GRE, is that, among those three books, my reading comprehension, my understanding of mathematics, my writing capability, and my critical thinking skills did not change that much.

The only thing that changed in the process of studying for the GRE was my own perspective about the test. Now I contribute my success in that test to just that. Instead of dreading it, I embrace the GRE.

I became excited about it, and I looked at it as an opportunity to learn. And a somewhat similar and much more important way, St. Paul and our passage this morning from Colossians, is trying to accomplish the same thing for us, getting us to change our perspective.

His main goal in Colossians chapter 3, verses 1 through 17 is to have readers alter their perspective from an earthly one to a heavenly one, which by God’s grace will result in holy changes in our behavior and for the glorification of God. He accomplishes this objective by doing four things in our passage.

First, St. Paul exhorts us to reorient our area of concentration. Second, God’s grace will produce in us the removal of ungodly vices. Third this will allow us to robe ourselves in heavenly virtues, and finally, number four God and the gospel will reign in us.

Let’s begin with our first observation. St. Paul exhorts us to reorient our area of concentration. The Apostle begins this by noting that because of our baptism into Christ, which he has just talked about in chapter 2, God has put us believers in the highest place of honor in the cosmos. He has raised us spiritually to heaven and seated us next to God, the Son, who is enthroned at God’s right hand.

Let me say that one more time, because of our baptism, he has raised us spiritually to heaven and seated us next to God, the Son, who is enthroned to the right hand of God the Father. Because of this divine and mystical feat, St. Paul encourages us to do two things.

We must search for the things above. The verb has the connotation of action, of actually doing something. And the Bible uses it frequently to describe, for example, in the old Greek version of the Old Testament, how the future king Saul left his father’s house to go out and search for those lost donkeys, which eventually led him to Samuel and his anointing as a king.

Therefore, we must actively seek out heavenly matters in our lives. But once we find these heavenly matters, St. Paul then encourages us to be minded of them.

This verb is one that St. Paul uses a lot, especially in the letter to the Philippians. And it’s really kind of difficult for us to translate, because it has the idea of actually thinking critically about something, and then concentrating on that very thing, and then letting this critical thought and this concentration result in a change of action in our lives.

To drive home this point, St. Paul reminds us that we have died. We have died to sin, and we have died to ourselves and our baptism and then been united with Christ.

To the point that our own lives no longer exist, we are hidden with Christ in God the Father. Now we get a clue about what heavenly things St. Paul is telling us to seek after and to be minded about in Colossians chapter 3 and verse 4, when he references Jesus’ second coming.

Therefore, he is exhorting us to concentrate, to seek out, to be mindful of the gospel story with particular attention to its end-result in goal. The second coming of Jesus, and the establishment of the fullness of God’s kingdom, here on earth, a kingdom of peace and holiness and righteousness. It’s only when we can reorient our area of concentration that, by God’s grace, we can then allow him to remove vices from our lives.

Thus, St. Paul exhorts us in Colossians chapter 3 and verse 5, to put to death, literally, to kill our earthly members, which are parts of our lives that distract us and draw us away from being minded of those heavenly matters. The apostle then provides a not exhaustive list of 11 total vices, which we are to flee from in Colossians chapter 3 verses 5 through 9 These include sexual immorality, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, greed, which he likens to idolatry.

Anger, wrath, evil, blaspheming, vulgar speech, and lying, particularly to one another. These vices only produce God’s wrath, which has started being revealed from heaven and will be completed at the second coming of Jesus. Such behavior should not be part of our lives now, even though St. Paul acknowledges that before we became Christians, we lived in these vices and lived in these sins.

And now, people who have been raised to heaven are to be co enthroned spiritually with Jesus. We whose lives are hidden with Christ in God, are called by God’s grace to put the evil that defined that old person we used to be far away from us. We’re literally to kill it.

This is not something that we do by our own power, but it’s something that God gives us the ability as Christians to do. And if we go back to chapter 2 and verse 15, we see the idea of stripping the rulers and the authorities of this age, probably evil spirits who have dominion over us, of their power over us. St.

Paul uses the same verb in our passage to talk about as stripping off our old man. We can do that because God has already taken away the power of any evil forces in the world to have influence on us if we just tap into that power. This reference to putting to death our old person brings us to our third observation in our passage.

As individuals who are now new men and women of God, spiritually co and thrown next to Jesus, we must robe ourselves accordingly. We are in the heavenly court, spiritually. Therefore, we should dress like.

As part of the new humanity of which Jesus is the first, St. Paul orients us and tells us once again, we are God’s elect, the chosen ones, God’s beloved, and saints in progress. In this new race into which we belong, there is nothing of value in the old race.

The old race is defined by death and sin and Satan. Hence, it matters not to his original audience, whether they be Jew or Greek, whether they be circumcised or uncircumcised, whether or not they are a barbarian or a Scythian, a free person or a slave. And today, in our own context, we might add whether or not someone is an American or not.

A Trump supporter or a Trump detractor, a Democrat, or a Republican, and the list of things that divide God’s people goes on and on. The reason that none of these distinctions matter for us is that as Christians, St. Paul tells us that the Messiah, Christ is all things, and that He is in all things for us.

He’s everything. He’s the only thing that matters. Therefore, at the end of the day, our new ontological existence, the very existence of our new being as Christians, trumps everything from our old lives.

Consequently, instead of focusing on the things that divide us, we must by God’s grace focus on these heavenly virtues of which St. Paul once again provides a non-exhaustive list, but this one is sevenfold. Compassion, mercy, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, and most importantly of all, he says, love, which is the bond of perfection in the church.

Along with these virtues, the apostle notes that we must put on one good work in particular, especially if we’re going to live together in the church, in the community of Christ. We must forgive one another of the sins that we commit against one another. Let’s just pause right there and reflect for just a second.

Since the earliest days of the church, the apostles recognized that God’s people, though spiritually raised and seated next to Christ in the heavenly places, we still are in our old self and sometimes we sin against one another. And instead of being surprised when a brother or sister sins against us, remember, perspective is important. We must look at it as an opportunity for us to be just like our Lord.

St. Paul says he forgave others. When we have an opportunity to forgive, we can be just a little bit more like Jesus.

And finally, this morning, if we reorient our area of concentration to heaven, which by God’s grace will produce the removal of these ungodly vices and allow us to robe ourselves in these heavenly virtues. We can then move on to our passage’s fourth observation. That is, we can let God and the gospel reign in and over us.

This occurs by allowing the peace that Christ produces. That’s what the peace of Christ here means. The peace that Christ produces in our lives to rule in our hearts is peace is not just the absence of strife.

This is not just what we have a ceasefire. This piece consists of safety, of spiritual health, of spiritual prosperity, of tranquility that only can be found in Christ and contentment, that only be found in Christ.

This is why St. Paul finishes the verse by saying, the result of Christ’s peace, ruling, in our hearts is that we might be thanksgivers, or people who live a Eucharistic life for the word here, be thankful, is the plural, adjectival, or just an adjective form of the word from which we derive Eucharist. If we live this kind of life, the gospel message about Jesus will then live in us and provide a song in our hearts that we can then use to teach each other, and we will need to be taught by each other every single day. This will result in our in our fellow Christians living that Eucharistic life, too, for the outcome of our singing is everything that we do, will be done in the name of Jesus, which gives thanks, the same word for Eucharist here, to God, through the word, that God has already done for us, through his Son, in the name of the Father, and of a Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen. Amen.

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Rev. Doug Floyd

The Meal by Sieger Köder (1996)Pentecost +9 2025 – Christ is the center
Rev. Doug Floyd
Colossians 2:16-23

Last week, Fr. Les reminded us of the center of Colossians. In chapter 2, verse six and seven we read, Therefore, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and firm in your faith just as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. (Col. 2:6-7, NET)

Jesus is the center.

Jesus is the center of our Christian faith and life.

Jesus is the center of Scripture.

Jesus is the center of all creation.

And yet, He is often displaced. As simple as this may sound, there are all sorts of ways that He is displaced. Politics can become the center of our lives. Finances can become our center. Children can become our center. These and other areas can easily become the focus of our lives instead of Christ. We don’t have to ignore any of these areas. Instead, we must learn to think of them in light of Christ. The late theologian Ray Anderson speaks of the inner logic of the Gospel. The Gospel helps us to see how all things are ordered in relation Christ.

It is easy for churches to de-center Christ. I love all the various streams of our Christian faith and have learned much from various streams. Yet, I’ve also seen some people can so focus on one aspect of their church that Christ becomes secondary to one key trait. I love Eastern Orthodoxy and have read deeply in it. Once I ate lunch with some Orthodox friends, they asked me, “Knowing what you know, how can you not become Eastern Orthodox?” My answer wasn’t too impressive. “I never felt like I was supposed to.”

In the late 80s, I worked for a Black Pentecostal church. Many of us had the strange idea that we were the only ones doing the work of Christ in the city. Our particular form took precedence over Christ. I used to think my passion and fiery preaching would reform the Southern Baptist Convention. I had to learn the hard way not to think more highly of myself than I ought.

But Christ my Savior is worthy to receive glory and honor and power. He is moving in the lives of people and churches and schools and government in ways that I cannot begin to grasp.

I have worshipped with Christians across this community and have discovered my Savior is there, working in the lives of the people, shaping the community as a dwelling place for His glory.

Over these last few weeks, we’ve emphasized how very ordinary was the church of Colossae. It could very well be that their ordinariness is the secret sauce of their community. They know that they “once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds.”[1] But Jesus “has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present [them] holy and blameless and above reproach before him.[2] In their ordinariness, they recognize their dependence on Christ.

Jesus is the center.

Other groups and false teachers might try to decenter Christ. They may mean well, but they emphasize ideas and rituals and experiences that refocus the life of faith. In one way or another, humans are really good about finding ways to worship ourselves above all. Eugen Rosenstock Huessy used to emphasize that the great gift of Biblical faith is God’s “No to humanity.” No we are not God. No we are not superior because we have knowledge. No we don’t get special recognition for practicing Sabbath, for fasting, for following the rituals of Anglican worship perfectly. We are not more important because we make good money, and we are not more holy because we’ve chosen the path of poverty.

Our spiritual experiences don’t make us more celestial than our neighbors. Our disciplines of faith may enrich us but do not make us more holy than the person beside us. It is Christ alone for the glory of God alone.

In today’s reading, Paul’s explains that turning to heightened spiritual experiences through fasting, beholding and worshipping angels, and having great visions beyond the veil can puff us up and separate us from the body, “not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.”[3] Imagine if your arm started growing and growing and growing. The body couldn’t support it. The arm could no longer function in conjunction with the body. If anything, this giant arm would become a disability. This is what happens when one trait or one gift is emphasized above all the gifts within the community.

This image of the body of Christ appears in other letters. In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul writes, “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.” [4] All the various parts of the body need one another. All the members of the body are one whole.

Even as Paul describes the body of Christ, he is helping us to see the mystery of the Triune God. One God, Three Persons: Father, Son and Spirit. When we speak of the work of the Son, we are not ignoring the Father and Spirit. For all three work together as God. Gregory Nazianzen writes,

No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the Splendour of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish Them than I am carried back to the One. When I think of any One of the Three I think of Him as the Whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking of escapes me. I cannot grasp the greatness of That One so as to attribute a greater greatness to the Rest. When I contemplate the Three together, I see but one torch, and cannot divide or measure out the Undivided Light.[5]**

Our Triune God has welcomed us into this communion of love.

At the same, He puts us into family, the church. We say Christ and acknowledge the work of the Father sending Christ, and the movement of the Spirit going before Christ and coming after Christ. This communion of love helps us to understand how we live in a communion of love with God and one another.

Christ is the head of the church, the life of His Spirit enlivens us corporately. As Paul writes in Ephesians,

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.[6]**

He gathers us up as slaves from Egypt and breathes new life into us. We are no longer dead in sin but living children. And get this, He has “made us alive together with Christ.” Made alive together. He has raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.The inner communion of the Triune God shapes the inner communion of the people of God. We are raised together. We are seated with Him together. One Body. One People.

Now and in the ages to come, He will reveal the immeasurable riches of His grace in us together. One Body. One People. One Church. As a local expression of the church, we are bound together. When writing the Corinthians, Paul responds to some who want letters of recommendation. That would be like recommendations people write about us on LinkedIn.

Paul says in 2 Corinthians, “You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all.”[7] If you can hear this, we also are the letter of recommendation for Paul’s ministry. We are bound to him through the wisdom God has spoken to us in him. In that sense are evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are a living witness of the Risen Lord and we are being changed from glory to glory.

As a local body of believers, we are bound to Christ. He is our center. In and through Christ, we are bound to one another in love. At the same time, we are bound to the communion of saints across the ages in Christ. He is the head. Christ is the center. We are not trying to find ways of getting ahead, getting more glory than others. In fact, we are look for ways to celebrate the people around us.

Thus, Paul can exhort in Philippians, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”[8] Each of you are gift and Christ is revealing his glory in and through you. At the same time, He is calling you and me to honor and serve those around us.

As we refocus Christ as center, as our head, we see our world as a gift of Christ and as a revelation of His glory. Whether we participate in politics, arts, music, film, and of course our children and grandchildren, we can see all these in and through Christ.

The Celtic peoples have a long history of writing praise poems to people. They saw it as worship of the Lord. Here is part of a mid-thirteenth century poem defending praise poems;

“To praise man is to praise
the One who made him,
and man’s earthly possessions
add to God’s mighty praise.

All metre and mystery
Touch on the Lord at last,
The tide thunders ashore
In praise of the High King.[9]

Thus the 20th century Welsh poet, Bobi Jones, can write praise poems to the people around him and consider this praise of God. Here is an excerpt from his poem “The People I Have Loved.”

Come breeze’s breath, that I may praise the people I have loved so freely,
The children with children’s ignorance gift for possessing wonder,
The lads and the lasses in their heathery summer of fun and in earnest
Their beauty of believing. I know they can be nothing always but
Right. Come help me in the presence of my countless loves:
Middle-aged people who have turned the ideals of their youth
Into the trenches and fashion their lives, and old people
I have loved patriots, philanthropists, saints. Once in a while
My hearts sobs within me after them
From loved of their singing and sorrowing. When their merriment
And their grief beat over me, I knew I could do no less than sweat for a time
That the magic that made them a net might remain for always.

So let us rejoice in Christ’s redeeming grace. He has rescued us from sin and death and opened our eyes and ears to the glory of God all around us. Let us give thanks for the people here today, for our families, our parents, our children and our grandchildren. Let us rejoice in our country, our leaders, and all the ways God’s blesses us. Let us rejoice in all these people and things as reminders of the abundance of God’s love revealed in Christ.

Christ is the center. Christ the head. Christ is our all in all.

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Col 1:21.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Col 1:22.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Col 2:19.

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Co 12:12–13.

[5] Gregory Nazianzen, “Select Orations of Saint Gregory Nazianzen,” in S. Cyril of Jerusalem, S. Gregory Nazianzen, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, trans. Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow, vol. 7, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1894), 375.

[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 2:4–7.

[7] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 2 Co 3:2.

[8] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Php 2:3–4.

[9] A.M. Allchin, Praise Above All: Discovering the Welsh Tradition, University of Wales, Cardiff, 1991

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Rev. Dr. Les Martin

Christ Among the Poor by Georges Rouallt (1935)Pentecost+8 2025
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
Colossians 2:6-15

Don’t let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world – Colossians 2:8, NLT

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

Anglican bishop and scholar NT Wright would have us realize that we have reached the key point of Paul’s letter. He writes:

Verses 6 and 7 sum up the centre of what Paul wants to say. Everything that’s come so far…prepares for this. Everything that’s going to come after this leads on from it.

So, let’s hear those 2 verses again:

Therefore, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and firm in your faith just as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. (Col. 2:6-7, NET)

There it is. The main point of the letter, and of our lives in Jesus Christ. In the past few weeks, we’ve kind of already said as much. Last week, Fr. Doug reminded us that:

The mystery of all creation has been revealed to us. It is not a math formula. It is not the secret to wealth. It is not great power. It is Jesus. He has come to reconcile all things to God.

Jesus has come to us, been given to us. And how are we to live as a result? Back in our first sermon, Dr. Graham put it this way:

Our ordinary posture is one of simply hearing and receiving. I’m sorry, that’s it.

Having received Jesus and now united to him in baptism with all our transgressions forgiven, we are to simply- as verse 6 says- live our lives in him. Which leads us to two questions this morning: Why can’t my sermon stop here? Why doesn’t Paul’s letter stop here? Because we refuse to believe that’s it! If we are honest, many of us- if not all of us- really believe that it must be harder than this. More must be required. As Tullian Tchividjian writes in One Way Love:

We conclude that it was God’s blood, sweat, and tears that got us in, but that it’s our blood, sweat, and tears that keep us in.

More must be required. It can’t be that simple, that easy. Our history and theology are littered with a multitude of attempts to fill in the gaps in what verses 6 and 7 say, to add to the truth, and thus be able to do what it “really takes” to be saved. We are given “just Jesus,” and invariably turn it into “Jesus + something else that is needed.”

Now, this is not a new problem. It was a problem in the Colossian church as well. In verse 8, Paul warns them not to be deceived, captivated, robbed and ripped off by empty, deceitful- and yet persuasive- philosophies, folk tales, and competing spiritual traditions.

We’re not really sure what “Jesus + system” the Colossians were buying into. There is the Law with it’s moralism and works, of course, that perennial temptation, but it seems that they were flirting with more than just that. Some have suggested Phrygian mystery religions, others Gnosticism, others that they were picking up the ascetic and spiritual practices of the Ebionites. Maybe it was simply the Greek worldview. We don’t really know, and in some sense, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is, they were tempted by the belief that more is required- that they needed “Jesus +,” as opposed to being rooted in the faith they were taught.

Solomon may have been wiser than any of the kings who ruled in Jerusalem before him, but that didn’t make him immune to this approach. In our reading today, he highlights his pursuit of first wisdom and then pleasure to improve his life. Elsewhere in his story- for example in 1 Kings 11- we learn of his indulgence in idolatry and witchcraft, as he explored the false religions of his foreign wives.

It seems to me that these are the 3 common alternatives to being firm in a “Just Jesus” faith: First, the pursuit of extra knowledge, or Gnosticism, secondly, a focus on pleasure to make our lives more palatable, or Hedonism, and lastly, occult, magical, or pagan practices, which when you get down to it, are really all techniques of control.

And so today we have Jesus + Stoicism or Marxism, or Jungian psychology. Jesus + the American dream or recreational drugs or sexual libertinism. Jesus + shamans, or psychedelic retreats or the Prosperity Gospel. Even Jesus as just one of many gods. You can add your own examples, beloved, because they are legion. It’s not just the Colossians who add something extra to the faith they have received; it’s us too, right here in 2025.

But what does this really get us? What is the result of all these extracurricular additions to the faith? Solomon tells us he is studying both wisdom and pleasure to try and make sense of the meaning of human life under the sun. Spelled S-U-N. Why? Because, he says, human life is “an unhappy business.” But what he finds is this: the more our wisdom about life and the human predicament increases, the more our sorrow does as well. It’s the same with pleasure- and it goes without saying that his idolatrous and occult practices lead to the same end, if not not much worse. In Chapter 2, verse 11 he writes:

Behold, all was vanity and striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun. (Ecc. 2:11b, ESV)

Let’s clarify this a bit- while idolatry, witchcraft and all other forms of spiritual control are always a dangerous dead-end- it’s not the case that knowledge per se or rightly ordered pleasures are bad. God has given us minds and intellects to use, and living in the 21st-century, we see the value of that. For me personally, the life of the mind is a great joy. It’s the same with pleasure. Provided it stays within appropriate limits of use, and within our moral and ethical boundaries, it’s a good thing.

God gave us creation to enjoy. No, the problem Solomon is running into is something other than knowledge and pleasure being bad in and of themselves. See, he’s looking for all this wisdom and all this pleasure to have a greater purpose. Specifically, he’s looking for it to give meaning to existence, to provide some framework that makes sense of human life, toil and suffering. And that’s the category error, because nothing under the sun (S-U-N) can do that.

No philosophical system, earned degree, or even conspiracy theory can offer a compelling account of why the innocent suffer. We may enjoy the fruit of our modern economy, industry and technology, but no amount of hard work, number of vacations, no 401(k), not even our vaunted medical system can address the ultimate futility of merely human life. We may eat, drink, and be merry-we may build bigger barns- but inevitably strife, suffering, sickness, and death await. In the end, it all amounts to chasing after the wind. Nothing in our lives will change this, indeed nothing in all creation. The answer we seek must come extra nos (from outside of ourselves).

As Christians, we do not live merely under the sun. (S-U-N), we also live and move and have our being under the Son, spelled (S-O-N). Jesus Christ, the loving and personal organizing principle of creation, is that answer to our dilemma that comes extra nos. Jesus- and our life in him- is what truly delivers us from futility and chasing after the wind. That’s what Paul is trying to get the Colossians- and the people of Saint Brendan’s- to understand today.

In verses 7 and 8, he urges us to turn away from empty philosophies, human reasoning, high sounding nonsense, and esoteric systems, instead trusting in the truth we have received.

In verses 9-13, he reminds us that no mere human ritual or works of the Law are the answer to our dilemma. It may be the case that humanity left to itself is dead in its sin, however, the solution lies not in anything we can do about it, but in what comes to us extra nos. In baptism, our transgressions, and sinful nature are canceled through union with Christ. The old Adam is buried, the old heart is circumcised, and we are- even now, in this life – alive with Christ. There is simply nothing within humanity’s grasp that could possibly accomplish that.

Verses 14 and 15 speak the last word concerning spiritual entities, occult practices, and even the Law. The fact of the matter is this: when the charges against us were taken by Our Lord to the Cross, when he cried out “It is finished,” the power of these things over us was finished as well. No condemnation, no subjection to hostile forces, no need to seek help from some other spiritual force need remain. Their impotence and shame is our victory- we need pay them no more attention at all.

So often we muddle along in this vale of tears, living lives of futility and chasing after the wind- life under the S-U-N. We forget all too easily that ours is a life lived under the S-O-N, united to him in baptism, rooted in his person, work, and love.

We may say “I know Christ is King, but…” and then substitute some other politics or philosophy, sucked from the fruit which our grandparents picked in the Garden. Gnosticism. Higher knowledge than the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Or, “I know what Jesus taught, but…” and then flip over to some lesser way of seeking to bring ourselves joy. Hedonism. Putting pleasure in the place that belongs to life in Christ.

Or perhaps, “I know that my sins are forgiven, my present and future are secure, but…” and then seek spiritual power and security either from our own works, or from some spirituality alien to our God and faith. Idolatry, witchcraft. Seeking power, control, and safety somewhere other than in the blood of the Cross.

When the moment of our testing comes, whatever comes after that “but” in the sentence shows what our hearts really trust in. Whenever there is such a “but,” we are engaging in a “Jesus +” kind of life. Paul is urging us not to be captive to those “buts” and the competing ideologies they represent. “Just Jesus,” he is urging, not “Jesus +” We are complete through our union with Christ, who is the only authority we have or will ever need. In the words of 1 Corinthians, Christ crucified may be “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,” but we know and trust that he is in fact “the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (1:23-24, NET). Or, as Brennan Manning, once put it:

Grace is enough. He is enough. Jesus is enough.

Let’s end where we started, with verses 6 and 7 again:

Therefore, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and firm in your faith just as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. (Col. 2:6-7, NET)

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Rev. Doug Floyd

ScreenshotPentecost +25 2024
Rev. Doug Floyd
1 Kings 17:8-16, Psalm 146, Hebrews 9:24-28, Mark 12:38-44

Jesus is teaching in the Temple. He is engaging with Sadducees, Scribes, and his disciples. He sits down near the offering box and is watching people go into the Temple. Many fine people with long robes walk past and fill the treasury with large sums of money. If we were following common church building advice, we might say, “Quick put them on a committee.” “Make sure to greet them.” “We need to get them involved!”

Then comes a widow woman. She’s so poor that her two copper coins only equal one penny. Suddenly Jesus turns to the disciples. “Did you just see that?” I wonder if the disciples were about to comment on her tiny gift. Before they can complain, Jesus says, “She just gave more than all those wealthy folks combined!”

What!?

They gave out of their abundance. She gave out of her poverty. That was all she had and she gave it. She gave all she had to live on.

What!?

How could she survive? Jesus doesn’t tell us, but her act recalls another widow who gave all she had.

Before we tell her story, let’s get the picture in our minds. Elijah is a wild prophet of a man. He seems to move across Israel like the wind and speaks or acts as the Lord directs. In fact, he is almost like YHWH in the midst. His words don’t fall to the ground. It goes forth from His mouth and does not return void. I am not suggesting that Elijah is a preincarnate appearing of God, but rather, the word of God rests upon him and sounds through him like the roaring wind.

Israel is corrupt. The king, Ahab, has married the daughter of King Ethbaal of Sidon. She is from a culture that worships Baal. This worship can involve sexual perversion and even human sacrifice. Baal is an agricultural god, assuring fruitful harvests, but he eventually is seen as a storm god, which also connects him to agriculture but also emphasizes his power. This power is bought through oppression, perversion and blood.

It must be stopped because it is corrupting all the people of Israel. Elijah launches an attack against Baal worship. If Baal worship is about controlling harvest and the rain, Elijah will stop the rain. James 5:17 tells us that “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth.” [1] He shut the heavens. His word did not return void.

After Elijah prays, he goes to Ahab and tells him that there will be no rain except at his word. See how Elijah is acting like God-in-the-midst? Elijah must also survive this drought. The Lord sends him to the brook Cherith, and he drinks the water and is fed by the ravens. Think about this, Elijah does what he sees “the Father doing or what the Father tells him to do. This sounds a bit like Christ. But Elijah is an incomplete image. He is not the exact image of the Father but is speaking and acting out a word of the Father for a specific place and time.

He has come to bring judgment upon Israel for abandoning her God. At the same time, he will raise a remnant of the faithful who will learn to trust God is the darkest and most difficult seasons of life. Even when Israel falls and the people are taken captive, there will be a righteous community who trust God and will serve the Lord in the pagan lands.

Now back to Elijah and the widow. The brook dries up. No more water or food. The Lord tells him to go see a widow in Zarephath (zehr fath). He goes to the city gate and sees her gathering some sticks. “Bring me a drink of water.” “And while you’re at it, bring me some food to eat.”

Elijah is not longer in Israel. He has left Israel and entered a pagan center, and yet his authority is still recognized. She replies, “As the Lord your God lives (notice she refers to Elijah’s God not her god). She says, “I have just a little flour and a little oil.” I’ll make a fire with these sticks and make one last meal for my son and myself. We’ll eat it and then we’ll die.

Elijah looks at her. “Do not fear.” He has walked into a pagan city. Met a widow who is at the end of her rope. And invited her into the feast of God. But she doesn’t know it yet.

He says, “Don’t fear. Do what you said but first give me a little bite to eat. Then you fix some food for you and your son.”

Then suddenly the Word of the Kingdom of God breaks out in their midst. For when he speaks, we can already sense the coming Wedding Feast of the Lamb, we can already get a sense of Christ’s body and blood given for us.”

Elijah says, “Here’s why my God, the God of Israel, says to you, “Your jar of flour will not run out. Your bottle of oil will not become empty before God sends rain on the earth.” This is the Gospel. God knows your fears. He knows your struggles. He has not abandoned you.

Think of all the struggles in our church community, in our county. In our world. We face health crisis. We face fears that we ourselves might not have enough. We may fear the liberals. We may fear the conservatives. Our world can make it tempting to give in to despair. I assure you there are many people all around us who face the dark cloud of fear and pain and even despair. Some of us may feel that at times.

We know there are others in this county who struggle and at times feel like giving up. Many of these people may not go to church. Some may even be in the county jail. But God has not forgotten them. God has not forgotten you just as he never forgot the widow. He knows our cares and worries and struggles and stress.

One more thing about this widow who gives all she has to feed Elijah. She is from Zarephath (zehr fath). This is in the land of Sidon. The king of Sidon is King Ethbaal. His daughter is Jezebel and she is married to King Ahab of Israel.

God sends Elijah into the far country. The very land of Baal worshippers. The very culture that oppresses the weak, commits sexual perversion, and even spills human blood to appease Baal. He sends Elijah there to redeem the widow and this pagan people from their deathlike ways.

The widow does survive the drought. But her son dies. She is distraught. She finds Elijah and cries out, “What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son!”[2] She seems to think her son has died because of her own sin.

Listen to the next couple verses, “And he said to her, “Give me your son.” And he took him from her arms and carried him up into the upper chamber where he lodged and laid him on his own bed. And he cried to the Lord, “O Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by killing her son?”[3]

Did you hear that. She had made a room in her home for Elijah. Her house had become a dwelling place, a Tabernacle for the man with walked with the Word of YHWH on his lips. As he cries out to God, the Lord hears his cry and raises the boy back to life.

Listen to the final verse of this story, “And the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.” [4] This pagan woman who lives far from the covenant is brought near by the Word of God to and through Elijah. Her house has become a dwelling place for the Lord’s prophet.

Idolatry dehumanizes and destroys people. It is everywhere we turn in our world. But Christ is not afraid. He has come to redeem those who are far off.

Karl Barth says that, “[Jesus Christ] goes into the far country, into the evil society of this being which is not God and against God. He does not shrink from him. He does not pass him by as did the priest and the Levite the man who had fallen among thieves. He does not leave him to his own devices. He makes his situation His own. He does not forfeit anything by doing this. In being neighbour to man, in order to deal with him and act towards him as such, He does not need to fear for His Godhead. On the contrary. We will mention at once the thought which will be decisive and basic in this section, that God shows Himself to be the great and true God in the fact that He can and will let His grace bear this cost, that He is capable and willing and ready for this condescension, this act of extravagance, this far journey. What marks out God above all false gods is that they are not capable and ready for this. In their otherworldliness and supernaturalness and otherness, etc., the gods are a reflection of the human pride which will not unbend, which will not stoop to that which is beneath it. God is not proud. In His high majesty He is humble. It is in this high humility that He speaks and acts as the God who reconciles the world to Himself. It is under this aspect first that we must consider the history of the atonement.”[5]

God goes into the far country to rescue the widow and her son. God goes into the far country to rescue you. He loves our pagan world full, and in Christ, he has already gone into the far country to rescue all who are sick, lost, discouraged, disillusioned, hateful, sick, in utter darkness and despair. He is reconciling this world to Christ.

Let us cry out like Elijah for his healing grace in our lives, in our family, in those still trapped in the bonds of sin and death. Lord, help follow you into the lives of those you are leading home by your saving grace.

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jas 5:17.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Ki 17:18.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Ki 17:19–20.

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Ki 17:24.

[5] Karl Barth, Geoffrey William Bromiley, and Thomas F. Torrance, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of God, Part 1, vol. 4 (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 158–159.

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Rev. Dr. Les Martin

All Saints’ Day 2024
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
Sirach 44:1-14, Revelation 7:9-17, Matthew 5:1-12

Today we observe the Feast of All Saints. It began in the fourth century as a catch all feast to remember all the martyrs of the Diocletian persecution.

By the ninth century in the British Isles, it had moved to November 1 and later Pope Gregory IV expanded this observance to the whole Western church. It is followed on November 2 with the Feast of All Souls, where we remember all the faithful departed, not just those who have left a name, and the day before All Saints or All Holies Eve is where we get Halloween when we remember and ward off the less appealing spirits. But what is a saint?

The word comes from the Latin “sanus” meaning only the Greek equivalent Haggios appears 229 times in the Greek New Testament, so a saint is a holy one or a set apart one, an exemplary model, an inspired teacher, a worker of miracles. They are often an ascetic who denies the world and more often than not, they are considered as possessed of a special relationship with God. The term saint is first of all used for named saints: Saint Mary, Saint John, Saint Brendan, the famous men mentioned in our reading from Sirach today. Saint can also be used to refer to all the faithful departed, the people who left no name, and yet their deeds live on both throughout Christian history and particularly in our lives, more broadly the term saint is used for all Christian people.

That certainly how Paul uses it. Now there’s a problem inherent in this definition and it has to do with the accretion over time of legends and stories and how that shaped how we view things. I think it part of God’s providence that October 31st is also Reformation Day.

That we say something about the reform of the church, right, before we go in into remembering all these holy people. Because it was a problem then and a problem now. The problem now takes on a certain psychological reality for us that has a huge theological impact, and that problem is this.

When we use stained glass language to describe the saints, when we talk about them in such exalted terms, well, it separates us from them. They become Christian superheroes rather than our older brothers and sisters. And so that number three of the definition Paul’s usage that all Christian people of our saints tends to get forgotten underneath all the trappings of tradition.

I want to take a hard left turn today and suggest my own definition of what a saint is. The saints of God were primarily saints of God in their disappointment, which means that All Saints Day would be a feast for remembering all those who have endured their disappointment in a profoundly Christian fashion.

I’m serious. Let me explain. Have you noticed that life is difficult?

It doesn’t take too many years of experience to learn this. My young son Isaiah, 18 months old, is already starting to say no, not just in the defiance sense, but in the existential sense. He wants something he can’t have and I don’t give it to him and he says no.

Life is difficult. There’s that lost job. The poor health. The failed relationship. The enemies we have, the general sense of cultural malaise and decline. There’s this overwhelming sense that things shouldn’t be like this. Fill in your blank for the this.

That it’s just too hard It’s a sense that’s almost universal. And it’s universal not just in 2024, but through all human life. And thus, for the saints of the church, too. Because no human life is free from disappointment.

Let’s consider the famous ones in a way you may have never thought of Saint Mary scorned as an unwed mother with a sword through her heart at Jesus’ passion. Saint Benedict and Martin Luther 1100 years apart, they both went to Rome, the political, cultural, and religious capital of their society only to find it morally and spiritually bankrupt, religious disillusionment. Julian of Norwich and Saint John Paul II, both endured severe, excruciating, long term illnesses, and Saint Teresa of Calcutta well, when her journals came out, we learned that even as she was serving the poor so courageously all those years, she suffered from depression and a sense of spiritual darkness.

Then there are those less well known. Hebrews 11 mentions them. I’m going to start reading at verse 33 It’s kind of interesting when you think of saints.

Through faith they conquered kingdoms, administered justice, gained what was promised, shut the mouth of lions, quenched raging fire escaped the edge of the sword gained strength in weakness, mighty in battle, they put foreign armies to flight, and women received back their dead raised to life. Les, I thought you were talking about disappointment. He doesn’t stop there.

Others were tortured, not accepting release. Others experienced mocking and flogging, even chains and imprisonment they were stoned, sawed apart, murdered with the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goat skins.

They were destitute, afflicted, ill-treated, they wandered in deserts and mountains and caves, and lived in the openings of the earth. Saints. There’s the disreputable priest and theologian who suffered scorn; the mother whose kids are lost in drugs. My first spiritual director, who died with Lou Gehrig’s disease, unable to speak.

My pastor friend who has been widowed, not once, but twice, faithful Christians all choked by disappointment. You can fill in your own, too. Because the fact of the matter is disappointment is ubiquitous, even for the saints This may be common human experience. It may be where we begin, but what makes a saint a saint is that it is not where they end. Faith and hope and love and date enable a saint to persevere to the end to persevere in their disappointment.

Faith echoing the words of Hebrew 11 that in Christ we can be sure of what we do not see hope that God is building his future right now in the present age, and that as his saints we are the living stones, the building material of that kingdom love, saints are so full of Christ’s love for them and for all creation that in the midst of disappointment there is none-the-less strength to endure and share that love with others. So Saint Mary can say, let it be to me, according to your word. She can endure the death of her son, stand at the cross and find herself in the upper room at Pentecost, the birth of the church. Benedict and Luther faced with a corrupt Rome, they don’t run away, they don’t stop attending their congregations or give up in the face of religious corruption.

They dedicate their lives to the work of reform. Mother Julian and Saint John Paul II produced profound theological and spiritual insights, not despite their suffering, but in their case precisely because of it. Mother Teresa may have felt abandoned to her dying day, but the poor and the dying of India did not feel abandoned. They were loved and felt it from her.

That broken priest and theologian who suffered scorn, left behind works that lift those to this day that the church has forgotten the attics, the mentally ill. The hopeless that mom well, she’s gone too, but not before she prayed her kids back into the faith. The spiritual director with ALS, he died, a really tragic death, but he made me who I am today. That pastor friend of mine well, he’s still alive and having lost two wives, he is an invaluable resource to day to widows and particularly to widowers.

Again, you can fill in your own. Disappointment is common, even for saints, but what makes a saint a saint is enough faith and hope and love to endure in a profoundly Christian fashion. It is enough to trust Christ with both their life and their death. Which is why I now want to turn to the one kind of saint in the definition we haven’t talked about you and me. It is the clear teaching of the church that we too are saints set apart holy, living stones of the kingdom of God, and yet there is still that lost job, the poor health, the failed relationship.

There are enemies in the ever-present cultural decline. Thoreau said, “We are like the mass of men who live lives of quiet desperation.” How do we endure our disappointment in that same profoundly Christian fashion? If the saints teach us anything I want to leave you with three little nuggets today, first of all begin with the end in mind.

Begin with the end in mind. Christ is the Lord of time, which means that where we end up cannot compare with the sufferings of the present time. The most useful thing I have to share with my patients is not any wisdom I have.

It’s the words we heard today from Revelation 7. I read it to them in their rooms. I read it over their graves.

Revelation 7 today paints a picture of our end. We come out of the great tribulation, sparkling white. No more hunger, thirst, or tears, no more pain, no more disappointment.

Our song today said it well, and notice there is no conditionality in the words no conditionality it is imperative and indicative. We will feast in the House of Zion. We will sing with our hearts restored.

He has done great things. We will say together we will feast and weep no more. If you can’t begin with that end in mind, please keep coming.

Other otherwise the disappointment it’s going to choke you. Number two, don’t dwell on suffering. These days it’s common to dwell on suffering.

It’s common to see the glass as half empty, or even more so, but there’s an old neurological reality barred into our brains what we focus on determines our experienced reality. We say that again, what we focus on determines our experienced reality. Now, this isn’t psychology.

It’s a spiritual insight. Paul knew it forgetting all those things behind. I press onward toward the things that are ahead.

Instead of dwelling on disappointment, Philippians 4:8 says, to think on that which is true and knowable right and pure, lovely admirable, excellent and praiseworthy in other words, on Christ, it’s not just a matter of beginning with the end in mind, it’s stained focused on that, despite appearances to the contrary, how, what’s the secret? It’s mundane really. Saint Benedict said always we begin again with nothing that is harsh nothing that is burdensome. We hear the word, we take the sacrament, we join in fellowship, even on a time changed day.

We seek encouragement and prayer and slowly, certainly, Christ in us builds us into those living stones, causing faith and hope and love to grow in us to grow substantially enough that although the disappointment never goes away, it becomes unimportant. Lastly, I would encourage you to recognize Christ’s work, not so much his work on the cross, but what he’s doing in the present, theologian Peter Leithart puts it this way. Jesus announces the kingdom, which, in essence, means announcing God’s future and the future of God.

Jesus comes announcing that that future is arriving. God intends to rule over all things and he is beginning to rule over all things now. He intends to set Jesus on the throne over the whole cosmos, and he’s beginning to do that now.

He’s going to defeat evil and put his world back together and he’s beginning to do that now the future is arriving and the future is secure in God’s hands. He is the God of the future and he is establishing the future in the present, and the kingdom which is God’s future world arriving in the present is not driven by anxiety, but by trust, because within this kingdom we know that the future is secure. We know that God has everything under control.

We know that God is our heavenly Father who will care for us. And so we too can trust God not only with our deaths, but with our lives. Despite appearances to the contrary, we will feast in the house of Zion.

We will sing with our hearts restored. He has done great things. We will say together we will feast and weep no more.

Happy All Saints Day.

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Pentecost +23 2024
Rev. Doug Floyd
Isaiah 59:9-20, Psalm 13, Hebrews 5:11-6:12, Mark 10:46-52

…justice is far from us,
and righteousness does not overtake us;
we hope for light, and behold, darkness,
and for brightness, but we walk in gloom.
10 We grope for the wall like the blind;
we grope like those who have no eyes;
we stumble at noon as in the twilight,
among those in full vigor we are like dead men.
11 We all growl like bears;
we moan and moan like doves;
we hope for justice, but there is none;
for salvation, but it is far from us. [1]**

The word of Isaiah’s song take hold of me. I feel them in my bones. Here are a people cast aside. Blind and eyeless. Stumbling in the dark. The goodness of God is far from them. They’ve followed the rituals of the Temple, but Isaiah says these supposed righteous acts are filthy rags that cannot cover their oppression of the poor and weak. In their idolatry, they are not only blind to God but blind to their neighbor. Yet all the while, they think they are righteous.

Makes me think of a song by The Call from the 1980s. He sings,

Do, you feel protected inside the white walls?
A world neglected heads for a fall
A fate suspended each day is a gift
A world offended, God what is this?

He says, “We’ll walk in the front door
And proudly raise our heads”
I say, “Man you must be joking
Our hands are covered in blood red”

When we read Isaiah, we think of ancient Israel, but he is speaking of the human condition, and his words ring as true today as they ever have. Our hands are covered blood red. Lord have mercy on us.

Israel cannot save themselves. We cannot save ourselves. Amid pronouncing judgment, Isaiah sings words of hope and healing.

The Lord saw it, and it displeased him
that there was no justice.
16 He saw that there was no man,
and wondered that there was no one to intercede;
then his own arm brought him salvation,
and his righteousness upheld him. [2]

Despite judgment, the Lord does not abandon His people. When He comes to redeem Israel, He will do so much more. In Isaiah 49:6, we read,

“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to bring back the preserved of Israel;
I will make you as a light for the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” [3]

God comes to redeem His wayward people and redeems all of us wayward people. This sets up our Gospel story today. Jesus goes to Jericho. Mark doesn’t tell us any details of this visit. Jesus is on His way to Jerusalem and stops by Jericho on the way. Mark writes,

“And they came to Jericho. And as he was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a great crowd, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the roadside.” [4]

We know nothing of the trip to Jericho except one. Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, sits by the roadside. Jesus is on His way to Jerusalem, but He stops in Jericho. Has He stopped for a blind beggar, sitting by the roadside?

Most people have no time for this blind beggar. In fact, they tell him to be quiet. Who is this blind man? His name is Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus. That’s all we know. He is a real flesh and blood person that desperately needs the grace of God. At the same time, the presence of this blind man reminds us that Israel is blind. The people do not have eyes to see or ears to hear Jesus. He also reminds us that our age also tends to be blind and deaf to the ways of God. Instead of standing in judgment on our surrounding culture, I suggest we begin with the cry of Bartimaeus, “Jesus Son of David have mercy on me.”

The blindness reminds us that in many ways Israel is still in exile. In Isaiah, we see how idolatry results in blindness, deafness, and lameness. They become like their idols. Eventually, they are exiled to Babylon. Though some Jews eventually return, they are still in exile. The people live under subjection. They long for the coming Messiah to set things right, but when He comes, they cannot see Him. He doesn’t look or act like the Messiah they had hoped for.

This is a challenge all through Scripture. When the exiles return to Jerusalem, they rejoice. As the Psalmist declares,

1 When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dream.
2 Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of joy;
then they said among the nations,
“The Lord has done great things for them.”
3 The Lord has done great things for us;
we are glad.[5]

But then the difficulty of return sinks in. There are enemies in the land. Rebuilding the Temple and the city prove difficult. The joy fades.

Job and his friends didn’t expect that God would allow the righteous to suffer.

The disciples don’t expect the Messiah to die on the cross.

When Jesus comes to His people, they don’t always recognize Him. When Jesus comes to us, we may not always recognize Him. Our expectations can get in the way of beholding our Savior. People in our culture and world may cry out for justice but they may not be able to see true justice when it comes.

All of us could learn from Bartimaeus and cry for “mercy.” He cannot see but that doesn’t stop him from crying out for mercy. The crowds try to silence him, but he cries out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Jesus says, “Call him.” So they call him. “Take heart. Get up; he is calling you.” Bartimaeus is ready and waiting. He springs up. This image looks like resurrection. Jesus calls him and he springs up. Jesus restores his sight. The newly sighted man follows Jesus on the way. Where is Jesus headed? To Jerusalem.

Before Bartimaeus could not follow Jesus to Jerusalem because He was blind. The law prohibited him from coming near the Temple. If we look at Jesus’s miracles, we discover many conditions that prevented people from drawing near. They are blind, deaf, lame, and have leprosy. They are outside, on the margins. They also remind us that Israel still needs true restoration. Our world is filled with people who are wounded and wayward. Some refuse to return to church. They desperately need the healing touch of Christ Jesus. We desperately need His healing touch.

We want eyes to see. Ears that hear. Our heart that responds to the call of Jesus. So we cry, “Lord have mercy!”

The good Lord does heal us and call us into His path of healing grace. By His grace, we become healers. I see signs of His healing grace at work all through our community. So many people have told me that they found healing here. I believe there is a charism of healing in the whole community. Our community is filled with people who pray for others, serve one another, extend the hand of friendship, and more.

As we are coming to the close of the church year in November, I would hope that we all might take time to ask the Father about this gift of healing and how we might pour out our lives to one another and to the community around. Let us follow Christ to the broken, to wounded, to those on the margins and those who have fallen through the cracks.

Amen.

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Is 59:9–11.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Is 59:15–16.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Is 49:6.

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mk 10:46.

[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ps 126:1–3.

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Jesus Honni (Jesus Reviled) by Georges Rouault from Miserere (1922)Pentecost +22 2024
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
Isaiah 53:4-12, Hebrews 4:12-16

But he was lifted up for our illnesses. He carried our pain in the name of the living God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The first open heart bypass surgery where the heart is exposed, stopped, and life is sustained by a heart lung machine while the operation takes place was pioneered by Dr. John Hessam Gibbon of Jefferson medical school in Philadelphia in 1953. 


I observed my first open heart bypass in Evanston, Illinois in 1992, when I was a chaplain at Saint Francis Hospital. It’s a heady thing. He was a 53-year-old Indian man with three blockages by the time I entered the operating theater, which was cold. No one told me how cold it would be. 


He was already sedate, surrounded by people in insulated blue gowns. The incision was made the sternum was cut with a saw. The ribs were spread open with something that looks kind of like an old-fashioned jack. 


Major veins and arteries were detached cut and attached to a heart lung machine and then, with the tiniest jolt of electricity, the heart stopped as the blood went out of it, it deflated. We have those pictures of the heart, the models, and the drawings we see, and the heart is this big, rather impressive muscle that keeps going our whole life. No one told me when it deflated how small it would be except for the intervention of the machines, this gentleman was clinically dead. 


And then the repairs began. Some four-and-a half hours later another small shock nothing. Another small shock. Nothing. 


Dr. Murphy took his gloved hand and flicked the heart, and it started again. Four-and-a-half hours later, life resumed, but better, newer, reborn. A chest cut open, a heart not beating. 


In this case, under these conditions, it was a medical miracle, but in another scene, idt could be the scene of a crime or the result of a horrible accident. surgery or violence. The only difference is intent an expertise. 
The intent to heal rather than harm and the skills to do just that. Today in Hebrews four, we read these words (verse 12-13):

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword, piercing even to the point of dividing soul from spirit and joints from marrow. It is able to judge the desires and thoughts of the heart and no creature is hidden from God, but everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must render an account. 


You pay attention to those words. It seems clear that Christ intends to operate on us. And if you think about that for a minute, that’s really terrifying. 


Most of my patients in the hospital today have some degree of denial about the illness when I first meet them. and we are no different when it comes to the spiritual sickness of our own hearts. I’m not that bad any more that means I haven’t committed murder or adultery. I’m not that bad and yet there’s that anger I can’t let go of. 


That judgmentalism that is like reflexive. The lack of forgiveness, the lack of love, the pride, the arrogance. is it that I’m not that bad or am I in denial? I can manage it. 


I got this. And yet my life is a history of failed discipleship efforts, self-help that doesn’t help. Problems in our relationship with others, with ourself, with God, then over the course of a lifetime build up like barnacles and eventually are hard to ignore. 


In truth, they can only build up so long. Over time, if we are honest and bold, we come to recognize the spiritual sickness of our heart, sin we call it, and in the words of the old general confession, the memory of our sins is grievous unto us, the burden of them is intolerable. And if we’re lucky, that’s when the denial dies or dies again, because in truth, it’s an ongoing process. 


And when the denial dies, we realize that we need heart surgery ourselves. If we get beyond denial, we next have to contend with shame and fear. My favorite definition of shame is as follows a pervasive negative, emotional state, marked by chronic self-reproach and an unending sense of personal failure. 


Perhaps we resonate with those words because in this day shame is one of the enemy’s most powerful tools. It’s wicked really. Think about how it works. 


We sin whether through intent or inadvertently weakness, we sin and shame fastens upon us so that rather than confessing rather than thinking seeking help, rather than opening our heart to those closest to us, we hide. just like our ancestors did in that garden. The hiding, that sense of being an impostor, that sense of having a false self creates emotional tension in us. That tension builds and builds and builds till we need release. 


So we sin and then we have shame and then we hide. And then there’s emotional intention and it builds and builds and builds and we need release, and so then we sin And there is no health in us. If by some miracle of God, we are willing to take the risk to say yes, I did that and I need help. 


Well, we’re not out of the woods yet, because next comes fear. Many of us come to Saint Brendan’s wounded by the church. Kate and I certainly were wounded by authoritarian pastors who use God’s law as a cudgel, not a scalpel wounded by fear of performance where we don’t measure up, we’re just not good enough. 


We don’t look like church people, we don’t live like church people. We don’t sound like church people fear of other Christians who are all too ready to judge. My favorite bumper sticker I ever saw in Pittsburgh. 


I couldn’t find one to buy, said, “Lord Jesus, I love you save me from your children.” So often if the denial goes away, if we can overcome the shame, the fear of God, the fear of his word, the fear of this place. can be too much and we still don’t get the surgery we need. We are embarrassed at the extent of our illness and afraid of those who say they would help afraid that will be too often an act of violence, not healing. This is where we have to turn to Christ’s expertise. 


Christ’s expertise, so that we can learn to trust in spite of wherever our journeys have taken us. Christ expertise is not a degree from Johns Hopkins. It is not his teaching or practices even. 


Christ’s expertise is who he is. Hebrews again verses 14 and 15 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens Jesus the son of God, let us hold fast to our confession, and here’s the money for we do not have a high priest incapable of sympathizing with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way just as we are yet without sin His expertise as a surgeon, as a judge, if you will, his expertise lies in the fact that he’s one of us. We don’t much like that verse. 


We pretend it doesn’t exist. The author to the Hebrews tells us that he was tempted in every way, as we are. Boy, we don’t want to think about that if we’re honest. 


All those coping mechanisms, all those escapist fantasies, he gets it He gets us. He is for us and he not only has a plan to save us. He is the plan to save us. 
And the plan is not so much heart surgery as it is a heart transplant. Ezekiel 3:26-27, “I will give you a new heart and I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh I will put my spirit in you.” 


I will take the initiative to hear that? Do you hear that? He will take the initiative. Gonna say it again. 
He will take the initiative. He does it for us. In what Luther called the happy exchange, we get his heart that loving heart, that blessed heart, that compassionate heart, that sinless heart, and he gets our heart of sin and stone and takes it to the cross where all that dies while he goes on living.

As Isaiah says today, “he lifts up our illness.” 
He carries our pain, which means we don’t have to any more For two to three days after heart surgery, the pain is intense. They give heart surgery patients, pillows. They think they’re being cute, they make the pillows in the sign of a heart or the shape of a heart. 
I’m not sure that the patients really find that all that amusing. But at any rate, they’re in so much pain, they don’t care a pressure on the sternum helps and so for two to three days, you see them half sedated, half in agony just hugging that billow to their chest.

Do you see the irony? 
This is after the surgery. They’re better now. But the pain is so bad. 
Sometimes new life doesn’t feel like it at the start. Martin Luther writes, “Christ’s word breaks through and wounds. It takes away every ground of trust and ascribes redemptions solely to the blood of Christ.” 


This is a health bestowing wound. For these weapons kill in order to make alive. dying to self is hard because it involves dying. Growing up into him who is the head is hard because it involves growing up. 


The pain is real in this assembly now, my friends, the pain is real. but I assure you it is not senseless violence. It is not punishment for your sin either. It is surgery with the goal to cleanse and heal us after care is important post-surgery. 
It’s important in the church too. It’s why we must endeavor to be a safe place full of humble and loving people and clergy, a place where his word can safely operate on us in the words of Hosea 6, the Lord both tears and heals. It needs to be a place where we can receive his word of forgiveness, his very body and blood as it transfusion. A place that can remind us in our struggles and pain well, that can remind us in the words of saint John Paul II, “We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures. 
We are the sum of the father’s love for us.”

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Edith Cavell – Imitation of Christ by Brian WhelanPentecost +21 2024
Rev. Doug Floyd
Hebrews 3:1-6

“Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. 3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4 having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.”[1]**

The book of Hebrews opens with God who created the world and speaks to His people. He created the world through Christ Jesus, speaks to His people through Christ Jesus. He reveals His glory through Christ Jesus and has redeemed His people through Christ Jesus. Jesus is the center of this book.

Now let me back up to God as creator. If we jump ahead to verse 10 of chapter 1, we read,

You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands; 11 they will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment, 12 like a robe you will roll them up, like a garment they will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will have no end.” [2]**

The writer quotes Psalm 102, which emphasizes the distinction between God and His creation. In Psalm 102, the psalmist is struggling, is discouraged, is taunted by his enemies. He looks to the God who is not bound by His creation but over and above His creation. The writer of Hebrews references this verse but here he is focused on the supremacy of Christ. As we read the letter, we learn that the hearers of this book are also facing some struggles that have caused discouragement.

The writer draws upon this image of God as Creator, but he combines it with the focus on Christ who is fully God and separate from creation and who is fully man and has entered creation in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Christ bears witness to God the Father. Christ has entered our suffering, our discouragement, our struggles. He bears witness that we have not been forsaken, but we have been redeemed. As Hebrews 2:18 says, “For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”[3]

Now we finally get to chapter 3. Once again, we return to a creation image. This time the focus is on the Temple or Tabernacle.

“Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, 2 who was faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses also was faithful in all God’s house. 3 For Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses—as much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself.” [4]**

Moses served the household of Israel. He directed plans for the Tabernacle and the eventual Temple is still based upon the plans he received on the Holy Mountain from God. Moses served the household of God, but the builder of all things is God.

We learn from Hebrews and John 1 that all things have been created in and through Christ. When the Father speaks, He creates in and through the Son and by the power of His Spirit. Jesus is not simply another Moses. He is the builder of the house. He is the redeemer of the house.

The writer has been talking about the creation, about the household of God’s people, and about the Temple because the whole letter is leading us beyond the veil to the Most Holy Place. All this finds consummation in Christ Jesus.

Listen to the end of our passage, “Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, 6 but Christ is faithful over God’s house as a son. And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.”[5]

We are His house.

First, Christ has incorporated us into the household of God. Consider Ephesians 1:5-6, “In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.”[6]**

We’ve been adopted into the house of God to the praise of His glorious grace. We are the family of God, but we have also been formed into the Temple of God. Ephesians casts this glorious vision of us being raised up as a Temple of Praise unto God that shows forth His praise to the powers that be.

Ephesians 2:19-22 reads, “19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”[7]**

This same theme is reiterated in 1 Peter 2:4-5, “4 As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, 5 you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”[8]**

Even as He has adopted us into His family, He is raising us up into a Temple. Being adopted into the family or God and being raised up as the Temple of God reveals a profound change that has happened in Christ. When Jesus Christ descends into humanity and later into death, the old creation dies in Him. When He is raised again, He raises up a new creation. We are raised together with Christ. We see this kind of emphasis in Romans, Corinthians, Ephesians and other places. 2 Corinthians 5:17 offers this as a snapshot, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”[9]**

In Christ, we are a new creation. In this new creation, some fundamental things have changed. There is no physical Temple. We are the Temple. We are the very place where God has come to dwell. We bear image to God.

In Jesus Christ, Heaven and Earth have come together: he is fully God (heaven) and fully man (earth). God the Father and His holy angels dwell in heaven. It is a purely spiritual realm. That is non-physical. But Jesus has taken a body. He is spirit and He participates in the spiritual realm of the Godhead and heaven, but He has also entered into the physical creation. When He redeems us, we also live as a people who bring together heaven and earth.

We pray in the Lord’s prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” Through us. By His Spirit, the Kingdom is being revealed in and through us. At different times and different places, this can take shape in different ways. In our Gospel today, Jesus calls the rich young ruler to sell all he has and give to the poor. Think about His call. It looks very much like the action of God. Who says in Isaiah 57:15, “For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy. I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.”[10]** The rich young ruler is being called to embrace the people our Father embraces.

Jesus leads us along a similar path. He leads us to pray, serve, and care for those in need. It may be that someone will come to mind. We may become aware of a need, and in that need God may be calling us to help meet that need. We don’t have to worry that we won’t hear him. He can lead us. He can speak to us in the way that we hear. In our Daily Office, we pray Psalm 95 every day. This Psalm ends with a call to listen for His voice.

Edith Cavell was a nurse in World War 1. The daughter of an English Vicar, Edith began nursing as a way of caring for her father during an extended illness. After his recovery, she received formal training in nursing and eventually went to Brussels in 1907 to train much needed nurses. “By 1912, Edith was providing nurses for three hospitals, 24 communal schools and 13 kindergartens. In 1914 she was giving four lectures a week to doctors and nurses alike.”[11]

She returned on occasion to stay with her widowed mother in Norfolk. When she heard that the Germans had invaded Belgium, Edith felt certain her call was to return to Belgium. She instructed her nurses to care for all wounded irrespective of nationality. An underground was established by some of the Belgium royals, but Edith was a member of the Red Cross and she should have not participated. She couldn’t turn a blind eye. She helped the Underground rescue 200 Allied soldiers. Eventually two soldiers were caught. Edith was interrogated. “Had I not helped”, she said, “they would have been shot”. This sealed her fate. The next day on October 12, 1915, Edith was shot. Her faith led her to care for the wounded, put her life at risk, and even forgive her killers. In Edith, we see firsthand a place where heaven meets earth.

Most of us may never face the threat the Edith did, yet when I look around this room, I see people who pour out their lives for others. St. David of Wales spoke of the little kindnesses of caring for others, befriending others, and loving others in the dailyness of life. I thank God that I see these kindnesses all through our community.

We become the point where heaven meets earth. It may not always seem significant, but I would suggest that Christ is working through us to restore a creation that cries out for the sons of God to be revealed.

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Heb 1:1–4.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Heb 1:10–12.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Heb 2:18.

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Heb 3:1–3.

[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Heb 3:5–6.

[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 1:4–6.

[7] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 2:19–22.

[8] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Pe 2:4–5.

[9] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 2 Co 5:17.

[10] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Is 57:15.

[11] “Edith Cavell’s Life & Legacy” https://edithcavell.org.uk/edith-cavells-life/

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Rev. Dr. Les Martin

St. Michael and All Angels
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
Genesis 28:10–17, Psalm 103, Revelation 12:7–12, John 1:47–51

Everlasting God, you have ordained and constituted in a wonderful order the ministries of angels and mortals: Mercifully grant that, as your holy angels always serve and worship you in heaven, so by your appointment they may help and defend us here on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

In the name of the living god, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen Today is Michaelmas or the feast of Saint Michael and all angels. If you’re from a non-liturgical tradition, that sounds really confusing. Michaelmas is the English contraction of Michael mass, the mass of Saint.

Michael just as Christmas, is the Christ mass. And this feast of the angels originated in the Christian East with the veneration of saint Michael somewhere in the third century. It began to spread to the west in the fifth century, and it is culturally associated with the beginning of autumn in school, many religious institutions and English institutions have Michaelmas Term rather than the rather pedestrian false semester.

Father Doug mentioned the blackberries, the other thing that Michaelmas is known for is eating goose. I could find no particularly good reason for this except that gooses have wings. It started as the feast of Saint Michael, but grew to include all angels, those messengers of God that appear in scripture and tradition.

Saint Paul, as we know, talks about principalities and powers. Scripture also mentions thrones and dominions, angels, and archangels. These are apparently beings who guard, who deliver messages, who protect, who lead the people of Israel out of Egypt, they console our Lord after his temptation in the desert, and also in the garden of Gethsemane.

They are even responsible for the jail break of a couple of apostles, and they have roles in the final consummation of all things in revelation. By the late Middle Ages, there is a particular focus on four archangels. Michael, the protector or warrior, he can first read about him in in Jude one nine, Gabriel, the messenger found in Daniel and Luke, Raphael, the healer found most extensively in the apocryphal book of Tobit. I think chapter 12 and then Uriel, the angel of the afterlife or the the angel of death found in the apocryphal book of second Esdras. These became the focus of the feast and they’re kind of a holistic focus. We have protection.

We have communication, we have healing, and we have the last things. angels that surround all these key events in our life. So that’s kind of what we celebrate today. It’s a major feast.

It used to be a holy day of obligation in the Roman church. That’s what we celebrate, how we celebrate it is another matter. I don’t know if you remember what CS Lewis said about the devil.

He said the problem with the devil is you can either pay him too much or too little attention too much or too little. I think the same can be said of angels. Sometimes we can spend too much attention on them.

I think of two things that I’ve experienced in my own life around that speculation and the desire for power. um speculation, in other words, we can spend an awful lot of time saying, well, just what are angels? What are they? I kind of had this question.

Many of you know I was an an atheist and a in a convert from scientific materialism. And when I began to accept the idea of God that was one thing, but then there were these additional creatures and I love Jesus pretty well, but but I didn’t know what to do with these additional creatures. They seemed superfluous to my materialistic mindset.

So I ran around and I came across things like Mortimer J Adler, the founder of the Great Books curriculum who said that the best way to think about angels was as was to think of them as minds without bodies, not very helpful to a former materialist. There is the Jewish medieval philosopher Maimonides who seems to collapse angels just into the material world. If you read Maimonides long, he seems to be saying that angels are just things like gravity and planetary rotation.

It’s it’s just the strings behind the creation that we don’t see. All that stuff is angels. Well, if that’s the case, science has erased angels.

And then there was new age thought that said that angels were everything from demigods to the lost people of Atlantis to ancient aliens. In other words, the more I read about what angels were, the more uncomfortable I got, the less impressed I got. And I had the overwhelming question, what does this have to do with Jesus?

An offshoot of that, of course, is I grew up in the 80s and 90s, and particularly coming out of that new age thought it wasn’t just trying to understand angels that was important. It was that other grand human temptation to try and control them. I don’t know how many of you remember the angel Taro cards books on how to communicate with angels, uh the the fascination, not only in popular culture on TV with kind of benign African-American women angels on CBS in the evenings and also with how we might get favors from these semi-Christian semi-pagan beings.

Again, what did it have to do with Jesus? All of it seemed somehow misplaced, somehow wrong, and so for a long period of my Christian journey, despite my love of medieval life and medieval festivals of which Michaelmas was such a big part, I just kind of pushed angels to the side. It was too baroque, two florid, too confusing, and what did it have to do with Jesus?

I’d made the error of paying too much attention, turn into the error of pain too little attention. because, although the temptation for a former materialist with an enlightenment mind may be just to throw angels away, they’re in scripture. We can’t do that. They’re there, they’re real. Jesus as in our gospel today, mentions them clearly. So maybe the issue is not to give them too much attention, but we better not give them too little attention either.

So what’s just right? That’s why I want to switch this today from the question not so much of what angels are. but whose they are. not what they are, but whose they are. Did you notice that all those archangels that I mentioned, Michael, Gabriel Raphael, Uriel, their names all end in what?

“El,” the Hebrew word of God for God. El angels are of God. angels are from God, so I don’t know if there are photonic energy or minds without bodies, but I know where they come from. They are from God who knows they are is what it’s important.

The great theologian of the 20th century, Karl Barth puts it this way. “God’s action in Jesus Christ is called the kingdom of heaven.”[1] From this kingdom, God selects and sends his messengers, the angels, who proceed the revelation and doing of his will on earth as objective and authentic witnesses, who accompany it as faithful servants of god and man, and who victoriously ward off all opposing forms and forces of chaos.

Now it’s hard to read Barth. Let’s see what he’s saying. Once upon a time scripture tells us there was discord in heaven, at least twice in scripture, it’s mentioned clearly.

There was discord in heaven. That discord was dealt with through the mind of God and Jesus Christ, through the blood of the lamb, and through the expulsion of those who would not follow God. We were not privy to that, but that is what we were told. and following that expulsion, there is no discord in heaven. heaven is at one, the kingdom of heaven is as Karl says, is centered around, God saving action in Jesus Christ.

The ranks of angels and archangels, and all the company of heaven as we put pray in the liturgy, surround the self-donation of God for us for our benefit, and in anticipation of that in proclamation of that as the follow up to that, God sends his messengers objective. Yes, they’re real, authentic, Jesus testifies to them. Witnesses who accompany us as faithful servants that God’s work would be done.

Angels are real angels are active, but Karl reminds us that angels are not the main thing. Jesus Christ is. Look at the contrast in our readings today. Jacob is at Bethel and he’s on the run.

Is Jacob off is and he stops and he lays his head down and he has a vision, a vision of a ladder going to heaven with angels ascending and descending on it and he recognizes that this is a profound thing that in some way this is the gate of heaven that this is a holy place. Jump ahead to John today. Jesus references the story, but with a profound difference. what are the angels ascending and descending on?

Not an it, but a who not a ladder, but Christ himself. Whatever an angel is it is immaterial to us. None of our business.

Who’s an angel is? Is all that we need to know? Whatever they send out into the world comes from Jesus Christ, whatever they take back to heaven goes through Jesus Christ.

The center isn’t some rickety old ladder, even if it reaches all the way to heaven. The center is the Son of God. So what does this do to our cosmology?

We can say that we serve a creative God who has ordered the universe in ways that we have discovered and in ways that we have yet to discover. I suspect also in ways that we will never discover. He has put everything together in accord with his will, just so.

It is very good. And in this world, there are beings that serve and worship God as our collect says. They serve and worship God angels, yes, but maybe Maimonides is right too also physical laws, thermodynamics and gravity worship God in their own way. the beasts of the field in their nature and those of us in the church, all creation is drawn together each in our place in the order to serve and worship him who is God.

There are also beings in this world that help and defend us on behalf of God angels, yes, but also fellow saints throughout history and throughout these seats. Science, medicine, and government, yes, even in this day and age, I dare say government, rightly construed all these things help and defend us on behalf of God. It’s like looking in the back of a TV.

There’s all those silver lines. It used to be wires, but now it’s silver lines. I don’t know what they all do, but they work together in concert to produce the picture I watch.

That’s how creation is. And somewhere in that mass is angels. and they do their part in service to a loving God. In our Christian life, if we’re not careful, we can so often major in the minors.

We find ourselves obsessing over things like our prayer life or are we reading enough, should I fast, what about pilgrimages? We can even obsess about things like denominational traditions. You can make too much of Anglicanism. Angels can be like that.

It’s almost as if we are to celebrate them today and then put them back in their place in service to God, where they’ve always been and always will be. To use another analogy. We know the power of electricity.

We like electricity. But when we don’t have electricity, it’s not so much that we want the wires connected. The wires themselves without power running through them would be useless.

It’s not the wires. It never was. It was always the electricity.

It’s not the angels per se. Wonderful friends and companions, though they may be. It’s Christ.

It’s always Christ, so the key with this feast is to neither make too much or too little of the ministry of angels to never create confuse the creature with the creator in celebrating Michaelmas in the end, we are not so much celebrating the angels as Him who made them.

[1] “God’s action in Jesus Christ, and therefore His lordship over His creature, is called the “kingdom of heaven” because first and supremely it claims for itself the upper world.” Karl Barth, Geoffrey William Bromiley, and Thomas F. Torrance, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of Creation, Part 3, 3rd ed., vol. 3 (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 369.

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Pentecost +18 2024 Revision
Rev. Doug Floyd
Mark 9:30-37

35 And he sat down and called the twelve. And he said to them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” 36 And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, 37 “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.” [1]

Jesus sits down to teach his disciples. Now this is a Jewish tradition. We see it all through the Gospels. Jesus often sits down to teach. When I’ve taught at Messianic churches, they expect me to sit down. For this morning, we are going to follow that pattern.

A child is apparently playing in the midst of them, and Jesus picks up and holds the child. Who is the child? Some have suggested that it may be Peter’s child because they are most likely at Peter’s house. We know that Jesus is addressing the disciples, and His Word is ever alive.

Hans Urs von Balthasar reminds us that when we read about Jesus addressing the disciples or addressing the crowds, His Word is alive and present right now, so he is addressing us as well. That’s why I set a stool out here, not for me, but to help us think about him and the way he would be addressing his disciples. So he’s addressing us this morning.

Who is the child?

Think of the children you know or have known. It could be one of your children. It could be one of your grandchildren. Maybe your niece or nephew. Maybe your friend’s child. Jesus is holding this familiar child. He encourages the disciples to receive this child. For in receiving this child we receive Jesus and in receiving Jesus, we receive the Father in heaven.

Children had no formal legal status in this world. While adults have developed skills, make decisions, and can exert control, the child is totally dependent.

Peter Marty writes, “In the Greco-Roman world, children were the least-valued members of society. A father had the right to punish, sell, pawn off, or even kill his own child. Treatment of children in the Jewish community was more positive. But even there, Jewish children could be diminished socially and religiously. In Mark 10:13–16 we find the disciples shooing children away from Jesus and Jesus getting irate over their action. In the Judaism of our own day, children are not required to adhere to the commandments before the bar mitzvah (twelve years), since they are not considered mature.”[2]

Even the disciples didn’t understand the role of the child. In Matthew 19:13, parents are bringing their child to Jesus and asking him to bless them. The disciples are trying to stop them and even rebuke the parents. Jesus says, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”[3]

In his book, A History of Childhood: Children and Childhood in the West from Medieval to Modern Times, Colin Heywood argues that in the Medieval world children were just considered little adults.[4]Their clothes looked like a miniature version of the adult clothes. Even in the early nineteenth century, Dickens depicts the difficult life of children in his novels. In Nicholas Nickleby, a headmaster beats a child to death. Dickens himself worked at a factory as a child while his father was in debtor’s prison.

Then things change in the Victorian era. Partly because of Charles Dickens’ novella A Christmas Carol. He creates a modern Christmas with the child at the center of the family. The Victorian idolized their children and treated them as a separate stage in life from adults. As we move toward the present era, children are still seen as a separate age. In fact, many adults want to revert to childhood. It is common among some adults to buy toys for themselves, and even to talk about the difficulties of “adulting.”

Jesus offers an alternate view from the ancient world and from today. He picks up a child who is the very weakest and lowest member of society. He identifies himself with the child. In Matthew 18:1-4 Jesus says, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” 2 And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them 3 and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” [5]

In our Mark passage, Jesus identifies with a child and says that as we receive them, we receive Him, and ultimately, we receive the heavenly Father. George MacDonald picks upon on this theme when he writes, “Jesus is represented in the child, for that Jesus is like the child. Therefore God is represented in the child, for that he is like the child. God is child-like.”[6]

G.K. Chesterton develops MacDonald’s theme when he writes, “Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”[7]

Jesus tells us to receive the child and to be converted and become like children. He invites us to emulate the child.

I asked you to think about a child you know or have known. There’s all sorts of children that might go through our minds. For many years, I’ve had a house group in my house, and when my brother’s family was much younger, they would come over to the house group, and his son was two or three years old, and he would sit on my knee, and the whole time I taught he didn’t move completely still. His sister would go sit with Kelly, and they would draw the whole time.

But not all children are that way. We’ve had children pee on our couch. We’ve had children color on our tablecloth with a marker that does not come out. Some of you may have thought of children who throw temper tantrums. Some children can be holy terrors. Screaming and fighting and destroying the house. We can distinguish between a childishness and a childlikeness.

To be childlike is to be dependent, to be weak, to be needy. Children have an inexhaustible capacity for wonder. The world is a wonder. Chesterton said of wonder “If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it a thousandth time, you are in frightful danger of seeing it for the first time.”[8]

Children have a surprising resilience. They are always learning. Always mimicking. It is said that the average four-year-old asks up to 400 questions a day. Dallas Willard has said that children are more transparent than adults. Their faces reveal their heart. If they are happy or sad or angry, it shows instantly on their face. Whereas adults have learned to hide ourselves beneath a cloak.

Children can also be pretty selfish. Their neediness can cause them to think that the world revolves around them and their needs. They can scream. Embarrass parents in public. Fight with siblings. Lose patience quickly. And much more. We see these childish behaviors in our politicians, entertainers, and all through our popular culture. If we’re honest, we see these behaviors in ourselves. We all can be pretty childish.

As the disciples are following Jesus to Peter’s home, they are arguing about who is the greatest. They completely misunderstand the call of the cross and the weight Jesus now faces. Instead, they are consumed with their own status in the world.

In another place, Jesus asks them if they will depart, Peter replies, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”[9] Peter’s response sounds very much like a child totally dependent on the parents.

Jesus knows the disciples have been arguing about who is the greatest. Jesus sees their childishness. He picks up a child and tells them, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.” [10]

Jesus has received them. He has received his very selfish disciples. And he cares for them as a father. Jesus has received you and you and you. He has received each of us in our childishness and our childlikeness. He holds us. He cares for us. He will not forsake us. Like a child, we are learning to be totally honest, totally bare before him for he already knows us. He will lead us like a parent, like a shepherd. He will bring us home.

He will perfect us and receive us into glory. As Jude reminds us, 24 Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, 25 to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.[11]

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mk 9:35–37.

[2] Peter W. Marty, “Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B,” in The Lectionary Commentary: Theological Exegesis for Sunday’s Texts, Volume Three, ed. Roger E. Van Harn (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 244.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mt 19:14.

[4] Colin Heywood, A History of Childhood: Children and Childhood in the West from Medieval to Modern Times, Polity; 1st edition (December 21, 2001).

[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mt 18:1–4.

[6] George MacDonald, “The Child in the Midst,” in Unspoken Sermons (London: Alexander Strahan, 1867), 17–18.

[7] Chesterton, G. K. Orthodoxy (Illustrated) (St. Dismas Catholic Classics Book 4) (p. 43). Publisher. Kindle Edition.

[8] G.K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill.

[9] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 6:68–69.

[10] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mk 9:37.

[11] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jud 24–25.

View Details

Rev. Dr. Les Martin

Pentecost +17 2024
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
Mark 9:14-29

“I believe, help my unbelief!”
+ In the name of the Living God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Introduction

Jesus, Peter, James and John have just been on the mountain. There, Jesus had been transfigured in glory, and conferred with Moses and Elijah, who are the fullness of the witness of both the Law and the Prophets about his fulfillment of both which would occur very soon on a hill outside of Jerusalem. Here, he had been audibly confirmed by God the Father as his one dear Son.” So, onwards to Jerusalem, But, remember, there are the nine disciples who did not go up the mountain. They are below in a gentile town, teaching and ministering while the others are away and Jesus, and the others have come to join them. It’s not surprising to find them in a gentile town: Mark has been deliberate in laying out throughout his Gospel the two, parallel missions of Jesus: to the Jews, and to the gentiles. We’ve had feedings and healings in Marc, both directed first to the Jew and second to unbelievers. In Mark 5:46 Jesus raised Jarius’ daughter from the dead, today we see him raise a gentile boy from sickness into health. The transformative love and healing power of Christ is comprehensive: Jewish girl and gentile boy. And it all takes place under the looming shadow of the cross. This context provides us one, or possibly two, clear messages from our reading today. But, there’s another message. I want us to examine in this time. Because I think this story isn’t primarily given to us as yet another story of healing rather I think it’s a story about being deaf and mute.

Deafness, Muteness

Let’s look closely at who’s deaf and mute in this story:

The obvious answer is “the boy.” And that’s correct: we learned that, from childhood, he has had a disordered spirit that renders him both deaf and mute, unable hear and to talk and throws him into seizures.

However, he is not the only “mute” person in the gospel today: the father is also mute in his own way. His ability to be what a father is– loving protector and nurture of his boy– has been muted by the inability to read his son of this disease. Today, we actually see him at the level of desperation, reaching out to these nine disciples of a Jewish rabbi, taking a chance on unproven, experimental, foreign medicine. When Jesus finally arrives, we also see that his faith, though present, is also somewhat muted. Back in chapter 5, Jarius, the leader of the synagogue, had enough desperate faith to risk offending Jewish sensibilities by kneeling before Jesus in an active worship, knowing that he was the one who could restore his little girl to life. The boys father has enough faith to give the disciples a try, to give Jesus a try, but there is a sense of hesitation about it. Instead of worship, a conditional statement is offered: “if you are able to do anything, have compassion on us and help us“. It’s obviously Faith, but hesitant, conditional, faith – faith that goes only so far. It’s been muted. Further, he is deaf- although his ears work perfectly fine, he cannot hear the promise of God in the presence and words of Jesus.

A deaf and mute boy, a mute and deaf Father, deaf and mute disciples. In this story, the only person with any meaningful words is The Word. The only one really saying anything is Jesus.

Then, there are the disciples. Remember the nine at the beginning, the ones in the crowd at the start of the story? They were not on the Mount of Transfiguration, so they too have a kind of deafness. They didn’t hear Jesus talking with Moses and Elijah, haven’t heard him explain his mission, or his proclamation as the beloved Son by the Father. Instead, while waiting in this Gentile town, the father brought the boy to them, and they were unsuccessful in healing him. When Jesus arrives, there’s now a crowd around them, and an argument has ensued with the scribes. Their ability to become effective apostles of Jesus Christ – which one day they will be – is muted. They have no words: words of healing that will properly restore this boy to health, and apparently no words to silence the Scribes either, something Jesus was always expert in. It’s as if they are silenced by what they did not hear up on that mountain.

Now we know that Jesus heals the boy, but if this is less a story about healing miracles, and more story about being deaf and mute in the things of God, about uncertain faith and witness, about silenced hopes and really loud fears, then the most important thing to look at today is not really the healing. Rather, it’s about the relationship of faith to deafness and muteness.

And this isn’t some abstract, theological flight of fancy, because the reality is we are so often deaf and mute too. Deaf to the promise of a new creation, as the world about us seemingly crumbles. Deaf to the still, small, voice as it is drowned out by the noises of social media. Deaf to the Christian way of life, as it is lost in the morass of so many “lifestyle choices.” We have been rendered mute when the doctor says “there is no cure,“ we have been silenced by broken relationships – especially those that seem irretrievably broken. We are mute so often in the face of the suffering and brokenness we see in those dear to us, and in our very real inability to help. Despite our years in the church, we can find ourselves mute when the world turns to us for a word of faith, a connection to God, or just some help in making sense of our broken and aimless culture.

Deafness, and Jesus, the Word

Our reading from Isaiah today comes from one of the “Songs of the Suffering Servant,” which the church has always confessed to be a prophetic statement about the nature and ministry of Jesus. In chapter 50 verse four, we read “the Sovereign Lord has given me the capacity to be his spokesman, so that I know how to help the weary“.

To be a spokesman, someone has to have a word. One cannot be mute. The word that our Lord has for the weary, the suffering, the people in our gospel reading today, and for us is first of all himself. We confess that he is the word of God present with God from the beginning and slain from the foundation of the world. He is “Emmanuel Jesus.“ God with us. The God who saves. Further, this word of God, the suffering servant also has words for us:

Matthew 11:28 “come to me all you are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest”

John 16:33 “ in the world you have trouble and suffering, but take courage – I have conquered the world.”

Matthew 9:6 “ The son of Man has authority… To forgive sins”

John 14:3 “ I go and make ready a place for you, and I will come again and take you to be with me, so that where I am, you may be too.”

Remember how I said that our Gospel reading today is immediately proceeded by the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain? Do you remember what God the Father said? From the cloud he spoke these words: “This is my one, dear son, listen to him!”

The cure to our deafness is listening to Jesus.

God the Father tells us on the holy mount: listen to my Beloved Son – who he is, my words spoken to you, and the words he says. This is the message that will sustain you in weariness. Do you remember the words we sang in the opening of this service?

He speaks; and listening to His voice,
New life, the dead receive,
The mournful, broken hearts, rejoice,
the humble poor believe.

When the circumstances of our life are just too much, we can become deaf to the goodness of God and the promises of Christ. The antidote is to listen. To listen to the word of God, and the words of God. That’s where we begin, as Paul tells us in Romans 10:17 “faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the preached word of Christ.”

Muteness, Jesus, and Prayer

Now, if we are listening to Jesus in our gospel passage today, we also need to think a little deeper about prayer. Because, at first, “the words of the Word of God” do not sound, particularly comforting to anxious, weary disciples, but rather judgmental. In verse 18, the father of the boy exposes their weakness: “I asked your disciples to cast it out, but they were not able to do so.” They were mute. Jesus responds by lamenting about the “faithless or unbelieving generation he finds himself in.”- one that is both deaf AND mute. The disciples go onto ask him privately about this failure in their ability as exorcists, in Jesus, states that this kind of demon “can only come out by prayer.”

It’s really important to keep these words of Jesus in the context of all that we know about what it means to live of faith. Regrettably, we often think of faith as some kind of “substance”- I either have faith, or I don’t. It’s a thing – or a work – in our possession. We can make a similar assumption about prayer. Thought of this way, prayer is a tool, a weapon used to force changes in our life, according to our will. Sometimes, even a tool in which we attempt to change the very mind of God, to force him to act. If only the disciples had just prayed harder, or longer, or with the correct technique, they could’ve healed that boy. That’s too often our unconscious assumption. This is an assumption born of our deafness, I think. And it is why we are so often muted, despite praying so very much.

Instead of a tool, a weapon, or something “we do” Christian author Horace Williams, Jr. reminds us that

“ prayer is about having purposeful and intimate conversations with God.”

And CS Lewis writes

I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time- waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God. It changes me.

It’s our end of the relationship. When we listen to the words of our loving God, our deafness is healed, and our faith in Jesus grows as a byproduct. We learn the nature and character of our God, and are able to put our trust, allegiance, and hope in him. When in prayer we loose our muted tongues, directing their focus, not so much to the world or trying to get fixes to our problems, but to the very heart of our loving Savior, we engage in our part of the relationship. Now, it must be said that we often do get fixes to our problems, or maybe to our desires and vision, but that is secondary, not primary. It is never the main thing. The main thing is the relationship with Jesus. Unbelief and muteness are driven away by prayer: when we are heard, our trust, allegiance, and hope in Him is strengthened more and more. It’s how all friendships grow, isn’t it- all relationships. The Christian life ultimately is a conversation with God, a relationship with him. He does most of the talking, we do most of the listening, but it is a true both–ways conversation. And it’s living in that conversation- neither deaf nor mute- that is the essence of faith. As Saint Augustine says: “we pray that we might believe and believe that we might pray.”

Conclusion

In truth, when faced with the deafness and muteness of the boy, his father, and the disciples in our gospel lesson today, Jesus doesn’t offer them merely a fix to the pickle that they’re in. He’s not just offering the boy healing, although he does. He is offering him relationship. He is not just offering the Father an end to sleepless nights, worry, and impotence – his own form of mutness. He is offering him relationship. He is not offering his disciples secret teaching that will lead them to possess greater power when they encounter the demonic. That would merely be offering them greater faith in their own power, rather than his. He is offering them relationship. As we wander about unhearing and silent in this deconstructing world, beset by our own illnesses, doubts, fears, and uncertainties, Jesus isn’t offering us a “quick–fix,” either. Rather, he points us again to the relationship we have with him: washed and baptism, fed at his table, listening to his word, and today anointed for healing, he reminds us that to be the answer to our problems is too small a thing. His longing has always been to be our Lord, our savior, our friend

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Rev. Dr. Les Martin

Pentecost +15 2024
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
Ephesians 6:10-20

+In the Name of the Living God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today, we come to the end of our sermon series on Ephesians, with Paul’s analogy concerning the “Full Armor of God.” Some might think I count myself lucky to have avoided last week’s sometimes controversial reading on the duties of husbands and wives, but honestly I would’ve rather avoided this weeks’ reading, personally. Why?

Well, if both Deuteronomy and Mark today warn us about “messing with the message” by either adding or subtracting from it, creating human traditions that matter more than the Commandments of God.

Teachings about the “Full Armor of God” can certainly fit the bill. Just glancing at the internet in preparation for this sermon, here is what I found:

• Learn what the Full armor of God is and how to use it in Spiritual Warfare
• 30 Practical Strategies to put on the whole armor of God
• Suit Up in Prayer: God’s Armor Never Rusty
• True meaning of each piece of the Armor of God

The thing is: to treat the analogy of the armor of God this way is to make it a “totem” or an object subject to our control, ripped out of the context of the letter to the Ephesians. It can become the worst form of pick-and-choose Christianity, ignoring what Paul is getting at in the logic of his message.

It’s not a new problem, this fascination with the pieces of this metaphorical armor and seeking the esoteric, hidden meaning of them and their uses. Way back in the 1500’s, John Calvin writes:

We must not pay too much attention to the detail of each piece of armor, since all Paul intended was an analogy to a soldier’s equipment. It is silly to try to work out why righteousness should be a breastplate and not a girdle!

So, my hope today is to sidestep the volumes of dubious reflection on the “full Armor of God” and instead place this image back into the contextual narrative of Ephesians where it belongs, no focus on our role in spiritual warfare, no fascination with “sword drills,” rather a look at what this armor really is, what that says about our life in Christ, both now and going forward.

When we think about the armor, the first thing we must understand is that Paul is always using word pictures and analogies. If I say my wife is like a rose, the incorrect knowledge to take from that to say, I wonder how many thorns Kate has. It’s an analogy. It’s not the first word picture Paul uses in Ephesians. In chapter two, he talks about citizenship as an analogy. In chapter four, he talks about darkness versus light and the old man versus the new man, echoing Romans in Adam and in Christ. What exactly is the word picture here? Yes, a Roman Centurion. But there’s something deeper for insight. Let’s look at where Paul drew his armor imagery from by turning to the book of Isaiah. I will read it because I still haven’t convinced you to bring your Bibles.

• Isaiah 11:5: “Justice will be like a belt around his waist. Integrity will be like a belt around his hips.”
• Isaiah 49:2, “He made my mouth like a sharp sword. He hid me in the hollow of his hand. He made me like a sharpened arrow. Hid me in his quiver.”
• Isaiah 52:7, “How delightful it is to see approaching over the mountains the feet of a messenger who announces peace, a messenger who brings good news, who announces deliverance.”

In Isaiah, we see imagery of belts of justice and integrity. We see a mouth. Don’t think of the mouth, but words like a sharp sword. And we see the feet of a messenger who announces peace. This is clearly the imagery Paul is drawing from. And it’s not a surprise that Paul would use Old Testament imagery. He does it often. In Romans, we have Abraham in Romans 4, Adam in Romans 5. He’s not taking the story as it was in the Old Testament. He’s building on it. He’s using it as analogy. The issue here is this, if the armor imagery is drawn from the book of Isaiah and is an analogy, if it isn’t pointing to some spiritual sword or breastplate or the like, then what does it represent when Paul is using this imagery, what does it point to? Now, thankfully, Isaiah is happy to give us the answer: only the answer isn’t a what.

It’s a who.

The Church has always received these particular words of the prophet as his revelatory perception of who the Messiah, the coming King. Listen to how St Jerome, centuries before Calvin puts it in his commentary on Ephesians, from what we read of the Lord our Savior.

Throughout the scriptures, it is manifestly clear that the whole armor of Christ is the Savior Himself.It is he whom we are asked to put on.

It is one and the same thing to say, Put on the whole armor of God and put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Our belt is truth and our breastplate is righteousness. The Savior is also called truth and righteousness. No one can doubt that he himself is that very belt and breastplate on the prince. On this principle, he is also to be understood as the preparation of the gospel of peace. Christ Himself is the shield of faith and the helmet of salvation. He is the sword of the Spirit because he not holy.

Scripture is the word of God, living and efficacious, the utterance of which is stronger than and sharper on both sides our armor, this armor of God is Jesus linguistically, that’s how analogies work when we speak about the full armor of God. As Christians, if we’re standing on Isaiah, if we’re standing on Paul, if we’re standing on church interpretation, what we are really speaking about is our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, if the armor is Christ Himself, how do we put it on here? As the letter concludes, we would do well to look backward through its teaching and what we have learned, namely that to be clothed in Christ as verse 11 today suggests now a better right reading might be to come into union with Christ has everything to do, not with what we should do, not with what we should be aspiring to, but with what already has been done in the context of Ephesians.

We can say it clearly, putting on the armor is being baptized. Let’s think back over our sermon series and what we’ve learned about Ephesians in our very first sermon, the consensus of faithful scholars is that Ephesians is baptismal catechesis. It’s the teaching of Paul for those preparing for baptism, focusing on the work and purpose of Christ and how we should live in light of this having been united with Him in baptism elsewhere in the letter twice in chapter one, the bulk of it, verses three through 14, and later in chapter five, verse 14, Paul is deliberately lifting early church baptismal liturgies and hymns as he instructs those about to be baptized.

By the time we come to chapter six, interpreting put on the armor, in light of Paul’s general approach of using word pictures, specifically analogies and Old Testament imagery, and in light of the baptismal argument he is making in Ephesians, brings us to this unescapable conclusion, the armor is Christ, and we were clothed in it in baptism, that’s when we put it on for those about to be baptized. It’s something that will happen, which is why we put on the armor of Christ when you’re instructing catechumens. But for us, it’s past tense. We are clothed in Christ. We are empowered with the strength of His might. Understanding the armor of God this way also helps us understand what it’s for. Armor is a good visual.

I think that’s why Paul uses it goes all around us in terms of how it’s a good visual for how Christ shields and protects us. But again, it’s less helpful if we take the image to literally. We see that today, because what does armor suggest? Friends? Armor suggests war and that we specifically are the warriors. What are the choices for Warriors? Fight or defend? Fight I must claim the world. I must claim this culture. I must claim my family, or at the very least, I must claim myself for Christ.

Don’t like fighting. How about defending?

I need to make a strong, protected tactical retreat. I’ve got to back away from this godless age, this degenerate culture, and from the attacks of the enemy.

See the problem when we think about armor too literally and we think about warfare too literally. There are two things I think that are the inevitable result. One we think it’s somehow up to us, not Jesus, to win the victory.

It’s all on. Less problem is less can’t do it. The deeper, more painful problem, as I look at the church today, though, is over time. If we think in this way, we can actually become more like us in our spirit, Christians who are always aggressive, always defensive, not at home in our Father’s world, lacking the blessed feet of peacemakers, not servants but soldiers, not a community that

unbelievers would want to join.

Church history and Christian culture today can show us the ugly truth of what we look like if we follow the role road of Christian violence to its logical end and. It, but because the armor is Christ and putting it on is baptism, Paul encourages a different course in the letter one that would make no sense. Militarily, he doesn’t say attack. He doesn’t say defend. Twice in verse seven and in verse 13, what word does he use?

Stand?

Not attack, not defend, just right there in the middle of the battle that is raging all around us. The advice is, stand, stand, because it’s not our fight, it’s Christ’s and it is finished, as he said one Friday, stand, because those flesh and blood people that we are so tempted to attack aren’t even who we’re fighting against. Stand because although we do still struggle against the powers, chapter 1:22 reminds us that they are already under Christ’s feet. He has already given us the victory, even if it isn’t fully realized yet

Stand.

Not attacking or retreating, but standing, not aggressive or fearful, but standing the Call of the church is to stand not blown around by every wind of doctrine, but rooted and grounded in love, compromising neither our witness to the truth of Christ or our loving service in the name of him who lifted up is drawing the whole world to Himself, loving ambassadors, patient teachers, selfless servants, not Centurions. On the night of his betrayal, Jesus taught his disciples in the upper room in John 16:33 we hear him say these words. I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace in the world. You have trouble and suffering but take courage. I have conquered the world.

In this world, we have trouble in suffering. Look around at the world today. You don’t even have to go that far. Just look around at our little community here at Saint Brendan’s and think about what individuals are facing right now.

We do still struggle against the rulers, against the powers, against this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil.

We struggle, but the role of conquering them, well, that’s not ours. Christ has subdued them, and so we stand hard pressed, but not crushed, perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not abandoned, struck down, but not destroyed.

We stand clothed in our baptismal identity. We strand in we stand in Christ, whose grace, in the words of today’s collect, always precedes and follows us. It’s Christ’s grace that’s doing the attacking and the defending. He’s got us coming and going in his grace. So as we conclude Ephesians, we find that we have come full circle back to the truth of chapter one.

You remember chapter one, don’t you? I talked about my little boy and how I love to put things in my pocket and say “In, in, in.”

Beloved, that’s Ephesians.

We stand in Christ,

in, in, in.

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Jesus PantocratorPentecost +14 2024
Rev. Doug Floyd
Ephesians 5:15-6:9

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.[1]**

N.T. Wright has suggested that Romans 8 draws upon the image of the Tabernacle in the Wilderness.[2] The Holy Spirit comes to dwell among the people. He also suggests that Romans 6 draws upon the image of the Hebrews slaves being rescued from Egypt. Just as they are rescued from the house of Pharoah, a slave master, we have been rescued from sin, which has kept us enslaved. Romans 7 draws upon the image of the giving of Torah, the law. The giving of the law at Sinai was seen as a great gift among the people.

In 7:12, Paul says that “the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.”[3] Yet it became death for the people because their hearts were sinful. The law was a gift to raise up Israel as a kingdom of priests and kings, but instead the people turned against the law and fell under the curse of the law. Jesus comes to bear that curse and rescue His people (and all peoples) from death.

Then in 8:2 we read, “For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.” We are free from the law of sin and death and the Spirit has been poured out upon us to lead us into the fullness of the sons of God. “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.”[4] Men and women alike we are sons of God, and by His grace we are being led by the Spirit of God.

All creation has been waiting for this. In 8:19-21 we read, “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.[5] The restoration of the sons of God is leading to the restoration of all things in Christ.

If you’ll remember, this is mentioned in Ephesians 1:7-10. “In [Christ] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”[6] And we are discovering together, “what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great mightthat he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places,far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”[7]

I say all this to remind us that when Paul gives instruction, it is Torah, which means instruction. But this Torah is not under the curse of sin and death, but rather, it is the law of the Spirit of life. In each of his letters, Paul draws from the deep well of Israel’s history to point to Christ, to teach the way of faith, to offer instructions for living as the sons of God. This wisdom for living has not changed but we are changed by the Spirit. We have been redeemed in and through Christ. We are being raised up by the Spirit of life. And we read these instructions as a people who are free in Christ and do not stand under the curse of the law.

In our lesson for today, Paul begins with a series of aphorisms that sound like the book of Proverbs. He writes, “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.”[8] Dallas Willard once said that if you have a retreat on knowing the will of God, you will almost always get a crowd. People want to know the will of God for their lives, and it often seems elusive. But the will of God comes by instruction and the fear of the Lord.

Listen to the call to wisdom in Proverbs 2.

My son, if you receive my words
and treasure up my commandments with you,
2 making your ear attentive to wisdom
and inclining your heart to understanding;
3 yes, if you call out for insight
and raise your voice for understanding,
4 if you seek it like silver
and search for it as for hidden treasures,
5 then you will understand the fear of the Lord
and find the knowledge of God.[9]**

The son of the king, or the son of God listens to his Father. Seeks wisdom from his father’s guidance and instruction. He prays for wisdom. He seeks it like great treasure. And low and behold, he discovers the fear of the Lord and the knowledge of God. The writer of Proverbs goes on to say that wisdom and understanding and discretion teaches us the way of righteousness and justice. It protects us from those who would seek to seduce away from the path of life and from those who become disillusioned and leave the path of life because they walk through difficult seasons.

We learn and know the will of God not through a mystical experience or through some type of esoteric knowledge. We grow in wisdom and knowledge of the truth by the Spirit, and we walk in the way of the Lord. If we come to a situation where we are not sure what to do, we offer it to God, trusting that the Lord can correct our path. Sometimes I have strongly sensed His guidance. Other times I’ve drawn from the wisdom of walking in His way to make a decision. There have been times, when I ignored warnings, thinking I could make a difference when I couldn’t. I hope and pray those times are few, but each time I’ve learned in those situations as well.

Paul continues this aphoristic wisdom of pairing one thing to do and one thing to avoid. Don’t get drunk but be filled with the Spirit. Beneath this piece of wisdom may be the wisdom that in your struggles don’t rely on drunkenness to bring you joy but turn to the Spirit and to the Spirit-filled community for encouragement and joy. In the community of faith, we encourage one another through especially through music in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. There is a distinct joy in singing together.

Now Paul turns to instruction about husbands and wives, parents and children, bondservants and masters. But first, he says that we give thanks to God in all things, and we submit to one another in reverence. Before he ever speaks of wives submitting, he says that we all submit to one another.

We honor and serve one another in reverence. In Philippians 2, he spells out this reverence more fully. “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus…”[10] Then he proceeds to describe Christ humbling himself to become a human, a servant and eventually a cursed one upon the cross. All this was in service to us that we might be raised up with him.

We humble ourselves before one another even husbands before wives. We know this clearly because Paul will suggest that husbands love their wives as Christ loved the church, and we just saw in Philippians what this love entailed: a great humbling in the service of love. There is a beautiful mutuality in the love between a man and a woman. Submission does not look like enslavement but love. It takes shape in different ways between a husband and wife and even in different ways at different seasons of life. This passage deserves more attention but for now we will move on to parents and children.

Now Paul draws upon the fifth commandment, and the fifth commandment in some ways draws upon the first commandment. In Deuteronomy 5:16 we read, “Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.” [11]

This command speaks to the unique relationship of parent and child, while also drawing upon the ultimate parent-child relationship between God the Father and his children. It can also point forward to the nature of authority relationships in culture.

In the home, the parent is a caretaker, a teacher, a friend, an authority, and more. The child learns the nature of relationships and how to live in this world from the parent. The child’s initial understanding of God comes from the parent. What a tragedy when parents turn from God and lead their children away from God as Father. We all will have authorities in our lives. If we fail to learn who the true God and Father is, we will be subject to slave masters just as the children of Israel were subject to Pharoah. They lost their identity and became slaves. I would suggest there are many slave masters in our world: in government, in business, in relationships. Eugen Rosenstock Huessy suggested that though Germany had some of the most intelligent people in the world, their lack of faith in God made them vulnerable to a slave master, and Hitler stepped in and filled that role.

We see Israel becoming subject to alien powers again and again because they fail to trust God as Father. The first commandment is given to protect them from the heartache and destruction that inevitably comes by turning from the Father. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. ‘You shall have no other gods before me.”[12]

The parent (father and mother) is an early model of God the Father. The true place of catechesis, of training in the way of the Lord and the way of wisdom is the home. To forsake this call is a cruel curse upon the child. The parent teaches the child many things about living from cooking to forming friends to dressing to speaking and more. Most of this instruction is not spoken but modelled. Some of it is spoken. Children begin to mimic the parent.

Even in adulthood, we realize habits and language patterns that we picked up from our parents. This mimicking or mimesis is a form of memory. Memory takes shape in life experience. Sometimes we are doing something like cooking or eating or engaging in an activity that we did with our parents and the memory of them floods our minds. The past becomes present.

In the Eucharist, we participate in the memory of Christ’s life given for us. By His Sprit, this memory becomes present and active in our lives by the power of the Spirit. The Eucharist become true food, sustaining us and strengthening our faith, and changing us in the way of Christ.

Now back to the parent-child relation. Paul flips the command and says parents don’t provoke your children to anger. The parents must learn to honor the glorious person the child is becoming and lay down their lives to help develop and serve that person. Now Paul extends the command outward to the world when he speaks of bondservants and masters. The bondservant would be someone who owes a debt and pays it off by serving a master.

The rules for bondservants are far gentler than or credit system. So, we should always be careful about judging Paul and this ancient practice. We go out and work and part of that money pays for debts. We enter into a kind of parental/master authority relationship with our bosses or if we work on our own, with our clients. Many people complain of bad managers. In fact, there are TED talks that discuss the inordinate number of narcissists running companies.

If we follow the model Paul offers, we discuss a different way of thinking about authority figures. The employee or bondservants submits as unto the Lord, trusting the Lord to watch over them. There have been some managers and management science thinkers who realized their role was really to help employees develop into the people they were meant to be because in the end, the employee will serve the company better when they are helped to develop. In fact, some managers and companies have realized they sometimes help develop their employees to eventually move on to the next challenge in life. One of the great thinkers in this field was Peter Drucker. Later in life, he lamented that his theories had been used to reduce workers to resources instead of persons.

In these various relationships today, we’ve been considering how the Spirit of God gives us wisdom in the home, the church, and the world. By the Spirit of life, we, the sons of God, obey the will of God by serving one another and our world. Of course, we fall short and need God’s mercy even as we need to extend mercy to one another. We are growing up as sons of God who are being used through these often-small ways to transform our communities and our world for God’s glory.

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ro 8:1–2.

[2] In Romans 8, Paul explains that what Torah could not do, God has done in the Messiah’s death and the gift of the spirit. The spirit now dwells within Jesus’ people, as in the wilderness Tabernacle, to give them the life the law had promised. N. T. Wright, Into the Heart of Romans: A Deep Dive into Paul’s Greatest Letter (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2023), 24.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ro 7:12.

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ro 8:14.

[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ro 8:19–21.

[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 1:7–10.

[7] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 1:19–23.

[8] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 5:15–17.

[9] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Pr 2:1–5.

[10] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Php 2:3–5.

[11] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Dt 5:16.

[12] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Dt 5:6–7.

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Christ’s Entry Into Brussels in 1889 by James EnsorPentecost+13 2024
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
Ephesians 5:3-14

I am resolved to know nothing among you But Christ, Jesus and Him crucified. In the name of the living God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We are continuing our study of Ephesians, and as I did last time I preached, I want to back up, because a week is a long time and a month is even longer. In chapter one, we had an overview of the book, what it means to be in Christ. In Chapter Two, we saw how being in Christ gives us new life as individuals and as one body, especially as Jew and Gentile, are united in the Lord. And then in chapters three and four, we turn from the vertical relationship we have with God to our horizontal relationship with each other, focusing on the role of the speaking offices of the church in creating a unity of belief and doctrine that transform us into a new man in Christ, thinking first followed by action, which brings us to our reading ror today, Ephesians 5:3-14.

Writing in the 16th century, the Lutheran theologian Erasmus Caesarios commented that this chapter contains those habits that Paul encourages under the general heading of Love, against which he tells the Ephesians not to sin so as not to destroy the unity of doctrine, peace, harmony and edification of the church in our own age. The New Testament scholar Charles Talbrook says it more bluntly, the book of Ephesians simply presumes that conversion leads to moral renewal: habits and moral renewal, moral renewal and habits.

At first blush, this sounds sensible, obvious even. It may even sound doable, but when we really think about it, friends, this is not good news, because in the matter of habits, we’re a mess. Most of us want to change something in our lives, something about ourselves, but it’s hard, isn’t it? It’s hard.

A 2018 study in the journal American Clinics of North America says that 44% of US residents want to lose weight, and so they go on diets, 44% but within two years, most of those studies have regained more than they lost. AA, arguably the most successful addiction recovery program out there, nonetheless, humbly, states that only 13% of those who engage in their form of sobriety stay sober for 10 years or more. One in 10 change is hard. I could brag about my marriage that in our eight years of marriage, my wife, Kate and I have had no new arguments, and that sounds pretty good until you realize we’ve been actually just having the same two to three arguments for eight years,

Change is hard.

Paul today talks about vulgar speech, foolish talk, coarse jesting. Have you noticed what passes for public conversation today? Social media and the words in your heart, your heart, even if they never come out? Paul talks about sexual immorality, impurity of any kind, and greed. Have you noticed the world we live in? Have you noticed what’s marketed to us these days as virtues? At one level, I’m kind of an optimist. I truly believe that most people, and certainly most Christians, want something different in their lives and in themselves. False, but we wind up settling for the same old patterns, getting what we’ve always got, or maybe in a burst of enthusiasm, we try to change, and I don’t want to make light of it, we try so hard, we eventually fail, discouraged and dejected when I can’t even stay off social media for the sake of paying attention to my son. How do I think I can handle anything more complex?

Change is hard.

One of the hardest things I’ve come to realize in my own Christian life and in pastoring others is not so much that people don’t want a more Christian life, a more sanctified life, a more successful life, it’s that they’re beat down, worn out, and somewhere along the way, they’ve just given up. Our self-help plans, our Almighty willpower: just don’t work.

So how do we change? In an August 19, 2019, article in Psychology Today, Dr Justin Brewer argues that the key to lasting change isn’t us, perhaps pragmatically, but nonetheless honestly. He says, that the key to getting rid of old habits, the key to changing is simply finding a bigger better offer.

Finding a bigger, better offer, talking to the founder of AA, Bill Wilson, the famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung, admitted that alcoholism was medically hopeless, medically hopeless, and that the only way a cure could be found was in a transformative spiritual experience, a bigger, better offer.

So here is where we are at this stage in looking at what Paul’s saying in this chapter, moral renewal requires good habits of the heart. Problem is we don’t have the best habits. Change is hard, if not impossible. We need a bigger, better offer to do what Paul’s suggesting today. We need a transformative, spiritual experience, and so in Paul’s thinking, then we have come full circle. We started with our vertical relationship with God. We’ve been talking about the horizontal, but if we’re going to have a lasting horizontal change in our behavior, our relationships, in our lives, we have to flip back to the vertical again. We don’t have it in us to live like this.

What’s required is a transformative spiritual experience in verses five and four. Today we’re going to work backward. Paul shows us that the real problem we are facing isn’t bad habits, it’s what’s underneath. And he’s going to show us how a properly ordered, vertical relationship with God is provided to us.

It’s not our striving, not our willpower, it’s what clothes us in the garments of the new man. Let’s listen to verse five. Again, chapter five, verse five, if you’re following along, for you can be confident of one thing, that no person who is immoral, impure or greedy, such a person is an idolatry has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.

Idolatry.

When we hear the word idolatry, many of us think of the kind of things that Kate and I dealt with in Nigeria. I remember going to Pankshin to a cultural festival, and there were the servants dressed in their traditional garments, holding their spears, and in the middle of them, they were holding it proudly. I have a picture. It was a jar, and they looked defiant and arrogant as they hold their jar, the source of their power. It can be a jar, a statue, even a tree. That’s what most of us think of when we think of idolatry. And it’s dangerous, because when we think of idolatry that way, we inevitably think of something that happens over there. You know, in Africa,

Idolatry is more common and ordinary than that, and it’s right here at home.

C. S. Lewis says, “And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history— money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery— the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy,” echoing Martin Luther, and Kyle Idleman in his book Gods at War. He writes, idolatry isn’t just one of many sins, it’s the one great sin that all others come from. Calvin in his 1559 Institutes of Christian Religion Puts it this way. I’m translating from the Latin “the human condition is driven by idolatry.” It’s common, it’s ordinary, it’s right here, because the God most of us truly worship is ourselves, our belly, our head, our heart, our hopes, our fears, our wants. You see when Paul says that greed and immorality are that the person who practices them isn’t an idolatry, or what he’s saying is the issue isn’t the greed, the impurity or the immorality that the issue is the fact of the matter is, the person is an idolater. It’s not our habits, per se, that are the problem. It’s that our habits have been formed in service of and worship to a false god the self.

My grandmother used to sing me a song when I went to bed at night and went, “I love myself. I think I’m grand. I sit in the movies and I hold my hands.” Despite the humor, is the human condition to the extent that we are immoral, to the extent that we are impure, to the extent that we are greedy, it’s because our spiritual worship is of ourselves and our own desires. Late Modernity in the West is nothing more than a psychologically fine-tuned method to help us worship ourselves and our desires and thus buy more stuff. And so we worship the idol of self because it works for us. It scratches the itch, it fulfills the need, at least for a season, at least until it doesn’t.

And if it doesn’t, there’s always something else to buy. But, but, but, but to those whom God has called eventually, a better way is shown, exchanging self-idolatry for the worship of the true God in Christ, let’s consider verse four. Neither should there be vulgar speech, foolish talk, or coarse jesting, all are which, all of which are out of character, but rather Thanksgiving. Not vulgar speech, not foolish talk, not coarse jesting, not the degenerate language, the endless outrage and bitter complaining in our culture, in our lips and in our hearts, enough of that it’s out of character. Rather, our lips, our hearts, our culture, at least in this space, is to be filled with thanksgiving.

Not the holiday.

We’re not talking about turkeys and stuffing that gets in idolatry real quick and not merely an attitude of gratitude. No, the word “thanksgiving” is eucharista. What does that sound like? Worship?

Eucharist what we’re doing right here today. Our bitter hearts, our bitter worlds, are transformed not by picking ourselves up, dusting ourselves off and starting all over again. They’re transformed from without by the word of God, Christ, Jesus, through preaching, through bread and wine become body and blood through the waters of baptism. Truly, as he said today, he is the bread which came down from heaven to give life to the world. Do you hear that word? Give? Not me working myself up and taking? He gives. The heart of Pauline theology is the relentless assertion that God in Christ is reconciling the whole world to Himself. Thank you very much.

Our moral renewal. And I know some of you are trying so hard and you’re so discouraged and you’re so hopeless, our moral renewal, friends will never be accomplished by discipline, self-help or just plain trying harder. We need a bigger, better offer. We need a transformative, spiritual experience. In other words, it’s something done to us, for us, it’s an outside job, and we are the recipients. Way Down in verse 14, you notice Paul broke into song again,

“Awake, O sleeper,
and arise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.” [1]

Probably an old baptismal hymn again, these words can help us understand how change really happens for us and to us awaken. And someday we wake up. Maybe it’s a sudden alarm like a heart attack or divorce, or maybe it’s the slow process of returning to consciousness and seeing the disarray and disappointment in our lives all around us, we just find, upon awaking that we are sick and tired of being sick and tired.

Change is hard, but Christ awakens us.

Awake, oh, sleeper,

One of the main things about being awake is that you realize that you have been asleep. We’ve been lost in the dreams and nightmares of a world in which we and our desires have been God for us, and being our own god, we find that we have not inherited paradise, but have wandered far in a land that was waste. We realize that for all our good intent, self-help, self-determination, self-anything just isn’t cutting it. This self is our enemy, and we don’t need rehabilitation. We don’t need renewal. We need resurrection, because we’re dead in the same old, same old. It’s like the movie Groundhog Day, except it’s just not funny.

Change is hard,

but Christ repents us awake. O sleeper, rise from the dead, called by God, we are washed in the waters of baptism, and mercifully, it drowns us. It kills us, finally dead to self, with nothing to lose. Lose and nothing to control. We can begin again, new women and men clothed in Christ, fed at his table, listening to his word, no longer isolated and miserable, which is always what happens when we worship the idol of ourselves. We wind up isolated and miserable.

We are instead here in the church, where the vertical and the horizontal meet, here we are saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Jesus Himself the cornerstone. Change is hard, but Christ resurrects us, awake o sleep. Arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light in such a place, transformation just happens. I know that’s terribly unsatisfying to you. You’ve been trained to get 10 to 10 action points from the end of a sermon, but it just happens. Seeds just grow. Fruit, just sprouts. We grow up into him who is the head, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but always progressively and always certainly.

It’s an outside in job.

One of the strangest things in my life, because I am somewhat of an irascible man, is when I find the fruit of the Spirit coming out of me.

Didn’t plan it, didn’t expect it. Bam, there it is. Moral renewal and new habits eventually grow in us as we grow up into him who is the head, we are at first surprised, then overjoyed, then confident that in some halting way, we are indeed becoming inheritors of God and His dearly beloved children change his heart, but Christ changes us. You.

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 5:14.

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Pentecost +12
Rev. Doug Floyd
Ephesians 4:17-5:2

The story of the Good Samaritan begins with a question. Jesus declares that the heart of the law can be stated in the following commands, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”[1] To which a Pharisees responds, “And who is my neighbor?”

Jesus proceeds to tell the story of a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. He falls among robbers and is stripped, beaten, and left half dead. A priest and a Levite walk by without stopping. Then a Samaritan sees him and has compassion. He binds his wound, pours on oil and wine and takes him to an inn where he can heal.

The priest and cultural critic Ivan Illich once suggested that this story of the Good Samaritan is about the end of ethics. Illich like to provoke, so his initial response strikes us as odd. Then he proceeds to explain that ethics give expression to a value system of a given tribe or ethnic community. The Samaritan’s community would frown upon him helping the enemy of their people. But Jesus opens the way for people to freely serve one another across tribal restrictions. The story anticipates a new kind of ethics not rooted in ethnic divisions but a common humanity.

Our letter from Ephesians invites the people to leave behind the way of life of the Gentiles and follow in the way of Christ. It’s not that the Gentiles were without ethics. The ethics of a given society may have some overlap with Christians values, but they may also allow and even support behaviors that are antithetical to the Gospel.

Paul is writing to people living in the Roman empire. The historian Tom Holland used to consider himself a classicist in that he believed his values were congruent with the classical societies of Greece and Rome. But the more he studied these cultures, the more he realized his values had been shaped by Christianity. This was the beginning of a move toward Christianity. Holland discusses the expectations for rulers in Rome. These men were predatory and expected to be so. It was a way they demonstrated their power.

While we’ve been blessed by the freedoms we enjoy in our culture, there are still many ways in which the dominant cultural values are antithetical to Christianity. We look to Christ and the community of the faithful.

In Ephesians four, Paul contrasts living under the old self versus living as the new self. He uses the language of clothing. He says, “Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”[2]

Now on the one hand, Paul is talking about our personal responsibilities and the life we live, but simultaneously he is talking about our corporate self. In chapter two, he speaks of Jews and Gentiles being raised together in Christ. Then he goes on to discuss what has happened to the Gentiles. He writes,

Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— 12 remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15 by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.[3]

Christ has brought those who were far off near by his blood. He has broken down the wall between Jew and Gentile and made one new man. Christ is the head of this new man and the church is His body. We are all bound up in Christ. In the book of Romans, Paul contrasts those in Adam and those in Christ. He says,

[D]eath reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. [4]

Adam is a type or a picture of the human condition in sin. Adam points toward the one to come: Jesus Christ. Paul continues in Romans 5:15,

But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.[5]

Markus Barth suggests that this kind of imagery is behind our passage in Ephesians. The old self or Old Man was all humanity born in Adam, that is born in transgression. The new self or New Man is being raised up into Christ.

I mentioned that he uses clothing language. He says, “put off your old self.” Now think about this. In the story of Adam and Eve, we see the image of humans trying to clothe themselves in fig leaves. All humanity tries to dress ourselves in our own righteousness. But we are bound in sin. Isaiah says that “all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.”[6]

Under the “old self” we are bound to unrighteousness. Humans “are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.”[7] This is not to say that humans do not have any virtues. We can find codes of behavior in ancient societies that have some parallels with the 10 Commandments. At the same time, we can see abuses of the poor and weak and all sorts of sexual perversions that are considered acceptable.

Even in our contemporary culture we see this mix of hardness of heart alongside some acts of kindness. As the church, “God has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”[8]

We seek to be clothed in Christ, in the way of holiness, in the way of communal love. For we are members of one another. Our bodies are in service of Christ. The hand that steals is to become the hand that works and serves and gives. The lips that curse are to become the lips that encourage and bless those that hear. We can extend Paul’s exhortation to the whole body. The feet swift to shed innocent blood become the feet clothed in the Gospel of peace.

Even as we recognize our need and desire to be clothed in Christ and His righteousness, we acknowledge that Christians have often followed in the paths of the surrounding culture and defended ungodly behaviors such as racism, hatred of enemies, taking advantage of the weak and defenseless. We acknowledge our own capacity to follow in cultural patterns that are antithetical to the way of Christ. We ask God for mercy. We ask God to reveal our patterns of sin and death. We pursue Christ.

Even as Christ has forgiven and continues to forgive us, we seek to forgive one another. We follow Christ in the way, seeking to imitate him in word and deed and in laying down our lives in love.

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Lk 10:27.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 4:22–24.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 2:11–16.

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ro 5:14.

[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ro 5:15.

[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Is 64:6

[7] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 4:18–19.

[8] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Col 1:13–14.

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Rev. Dr. Les Martin

Pentecost +10 2024
Rev. Dr Les Martin
Ephesians 3:8-21

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

Well, we’re continuing our study of Ephesians.

But if you’re like me, when we study a book, we sometimes need to refresh before moving on. I’m going to back up a little real quickly. Looking back, in what we’ve read so far, Paul has been addressing the vertical dimension of the Christian life, the third dimension. In chapter one, we talked about how the most important thing in all of Ephesians is being “in Christ.” In chapter two, Paul applies this to the emerging Christian community, and their most pressing concern about being in Christ is how Jews and Gentiles relate because heretofore Jews have been separated from the rest of the world. In Christ, Jew and Gentile are raised together: the dividing wall has been removed.

Now we look ahead to chapter four. Paul moves from the vertical relationship with God to the horizontal relationship with others. The Christian life brings the vertical relation and the horizontal relation together in him, and it’s kind of nice because these form a cross. We go from the vertical to the horizontal. Here in chapter three chapter four 16, we have an interlude. A pause unnecessarily is from the vertical to the horizontal that if you don’t study the book as a whole, it seems kind of odd.

Paul is talking about himself. He is always injecting himself into his letters. The only reason I like it is because I inject myself into my sermons.

Paul writes,

7 Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power. 8 To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, 9 and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things, 10 so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. 11 This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, 12 in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. 13 So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory.

14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

20 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. [1]

He is grounding us in chapter one, this Christ, who does everything, and he’s hinting about what’s going to come, but he is also focusing on himself.

Why? Well, as you’re going to see next week, when Paul says that,

11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.[2]

As I argued in the first sermon on the series, Paul lays out ethical and practical implications for the Christian community. Why does Paul have authority to do this? To answer this, means we’ve got to talk about apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers.

I did not come to the Christian faith from the womb. For my first 17 years, I attended church about three times. I didn’t attend Awana Camp, RCIA, or Vacation Bible School. When I came to faith by the grace of God, I didn’t like Christians, so I studied the Bible on my own for about three years. But there were things I didn’t understand, so I eventually needed help beyond myself.

We this pattern throughout Scripture. We see it with Ethiopian eunuch, who Philip approaches. “So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. (Acts 8:30-31)

We see a similar pattern in our reading from Second Kings.

You know the story you just heard it. There is a lot of humor in it, but we don’t necessarily also get the added costs of Elisha. Everything he knows about how to be a man of God and the time of Israel, comes from Elijah.

And it’s time for Elijah to go.

Now, like I said, the greatest prophet, the greatest interpreter of what it means to be a faithful man in that age, and I suspect the schools of the prophets are both saddened that Elijah is leaving but not too sad since the shining star has moved on.

As Elisha follows Elijah, the sons of the prophets come out in each town., They say to him, “Do you know that today the Lord will take away your master from over you?” And he said, “Yes, I know it; keep quiet.”

We can read it mockingly or we can hear his anguish. This happens three times. Then Elijah strikes the Jordan with his cloak, and the cross on dry land. Then there’s a chariot of fire and a whirlwind take Elijah up into the heavens.

If we stopped there, it would not connect to what we’re talking about in Ephesians at all. But it doesn’t stop.

He turns around. Not uncertain, not broken. Grieving certainly as human being. But he is well-trained.

He understands what’s just happened, even if he doesn’t understand it God details. He understands that God will not leave the people without a teaching authority. And he’s now it.

He has asked for a double portion of Elijah’s anointing. Twice the authority, twice the miracles. To make this point he himself strikes the Jordan and it parts. He comes back into the land, in the midst of people not standing in his own strength. He now stands in the place of Elijah. He stands in strength of the God lie due to formation. Its formation. Elisha is able to be who he is, because of who Elijah was.

Let’s turn back to Ephesians.

One of the problems we have in our modern age is our smorgasbord faith. I’ve said something similar before but you know, if you want a heart surgeon, you don’t want me. I am not trained in that. If you want a pilot to fly a plane, well, my wife, not me. No, no, we’re just saying, Hey, you can’t find them in the supermarket. One of the problems and one of the benefits of our hybrid liberal culture around religion is there’s no state church, no official voice.

I think a lot of the problems has come with it. And with the abundance publishing anything under the sun: TV, and radio preachers is when it comes to formation in Christianity, it’s a free-for-all. There is no guidance in the tradition. It’s like the book of Judges. By the time of death, it’s so often we have done what seems right in our own lives, in our own eyes, in our pursuit.

But Elisha went to school. The Ephesians went to school under someone who was trained and authorized. It’s going be interesting as we peek ahead at this next week: Unity comes through unity in faith. It comes through apostles and prophets, and evangelists and teachers and pastors. In other words, it comes from someone like Paul saying, “We are are talking about how Christ is all in all. I’m going to tell you how to live. But to do that, built into this is what I’m going to tell you about my own life.

So much of modern Christianity is us kind of rummaging around and trying to figure out what works for us. And although a great diversity of riches has been released, and that really is a good thing. There is also great confusion about what we’re doing and why.

It is the roll of Paul not just in Ephesians, not just for the Romans, not just for the Corinthians but for us to say, “Wait a minute, this is who Jesus is. This is what he did; this is what it means.”

And that role is also in the role of Elisha. For good or evil, that role is also in people like me and Fr. Doug today. It’s not so much a free-for-all as it is a long obedience in the same direction.

You see, what I do and what Fr. Doug does is not maybe what you think we do. We have a very circumscribed role. And that’s good. It’s teaching what Paul’s teaching. And again, we’ll make it more clear next week. And providing the sacraments. And helping people come back to the truth. That’s it.

That’s it, the rest of the ministry, that’s what you do. What we do is work to be a foundation that you can build on, not us so much all of it, except that one of the reasons we go through this is not just for tradition.

There is a uniformity to the tradition. There’s a uniformity, that gives us access to the vertical in front of the vertical to the horizontal. Still may seem vague. Let’s go to our Gospel today and see what happens. We’re in chapter six; it’s a boat trip. And he said that in context for you, what’s happened before us, they just fed 5000,

Jesus has called the disciples to go on ahead. They get in the boat and the waves are beginning to be hard to pull. It’s a struggle.

If this is the the story we find in other gospels, the water is filling the boat.

In the midst of their work, they’re struggling. Then Jesus comes walking on the water. And they’re afraid. Are they afraid of the water? They are fishermen. Or are they afraid of Jesus walking on the water because you don’t want to see people walking on the water. But either way, they’re afraid.

They’re afraid. It says they cried out and were terrified, but immediately Jesus spoke to them, “Have courage. It is I. Do not be afraid.” He got into the boat with them and the winds ceased. They were completely astonished. Here’s the key part because they did not understand about the loaves and their hearts were hardened.

I like to say that I would have understood the loaves. You just can’t feed five thousand out of five loaves and two fish.

What I know is that they the disciples are struggling. They are disciples, not yet apostles. They’re struggling with the wind and the rain and this crazy walking ghost of Jesus. They misunderstand about the loaves, because their hearts are hardened. They’re afraid. We’re catching them in their first year of seminary.

The good news is they will come to understand about the loaves. They will cease being tossed around in every wave of doctrine, and disciples will become apostles and their little boat will become the Ark of the church. And there will be a unity of confession. And the truth of that confession, the truth of the vertical will work out into the horizontal and transform the world.

I don’t know what Elisha was like before he started working with Elijah. But I imagine there are many things he didn’t get.

Whenever he says Paul is writing this way, there’s there are many things that the Ephesians don’t know about how to live in unity with Jews and Gentiles.

It’s never been done.

Paul turns to himself not in a self-centered or self-serving life, he says, “I get that you don’t get how this equals this. Don’t worry. Listen. One of the reasons I came to the church all those years ago was that’s what I desperately needed. Jesus has come to me and I love all for about three years just reading the Bible not going to church. There’s no way because I didn’t like Christians particularly, sorry.

But I did not understand what I was reading. There was no one to interpret. We don’t understand on our own, and particularly with this the myriad of social media offerings, curriculum offerings, radio, TV preachers, the books you can buy, we don’t know how to understand the loaves.

Paul says, “I was called to explain to you.”

Elisha even in his grief, can nonetheless ask for a double portion and part of that same river and do twice the number of miracles that Elijah did.

In the little bit that Doug and I can do is point to Christ. These vestments are supposed to represent Christ not us. We say that Christ that warms your heart. Heres that Christ that you heard about yourself. Here’s that Christ that gives you hope. And here’s this community that you have to live with.

Understand how can you believe in this? And how can we hear it is there someone to preach to us? That’s the connection from the vertical to the horizontal. It’s the ministry, the Ministry of Paul and chapter for the ministry of apostles, prophets, evangelists and teacher and pastors. It’s the ministry is saying, here are the common needs, but not what you do. And that’s the ministry that turns you from fear to harvest.

Paul’s role as apostle is crucial to the Ephesians and us. The continuing ministry is crucial, so that we can figure out how to live in the love and power of the God who is reconciling all things to himself.

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 3:7–21.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 4:11–14.

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The Risen Lord by He QiPentecost +9 2024
Rev. Doug Floyd
Ephesians 2

“You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” Ephesians 2:19

In 1967, Armand Nicholi, Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, began teaching a class on Sigmund Freud. Students asked their professor if he could talk about a counterpoint to Freud to help them better understand Freud. Nicholi remembered reading “The Problem of Pain”during a time of heightened suffering. He decided to revamp the course and use C.S. Lewis as a counterpoint to Freud.

He ended up teaching the class for over 35 years, and in 2002, he decided to put the class into a book, “The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life.” “Ultimately, the book asks the question, which man was happier, more satisfied? Is it better to be a believer or an unbeliever?”[1]

Nicholi never wanted to answer the question. He wanted students to debate it. But his book tells a slightly different story. And here I quote from the Harvard Gazette.

Nicholi’s book, however, tells another story. In response to the question of happiness, the evidence is clear: Lewis wins, hands down. After his conversion, or, as he called it, his transition, he underwent a profound change from gloomy, introverted pessimist to cheerful extrovert, described by a close friend as “great fun, an extremely witty and amusing companion … considerate … more concerned with the welfare of his friends than with himself.”

And contrary to Freud’s conviction that a spiritual worldview is incompatible with reason and intelligence, Lewis’ transition to Christianity came about as a result of a long and difficult period of critical reasoning and examination of the historical evidence. Determined to establish for himself whether Jesus was indeed the Son of God, Lewis read the New Testament in the original Greek, applying the rigorous methods he had learned as a literary scholar. Finally, he could not escape the conclusion that Jesus was exactly who he claimed to be.

Freud, by contrast, was a dour pessimist who argued violently with most of his friends and colleagues. His opinion of human nature was low. He once wrote to a friend that he found “little that is good about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or none at all.”

Faced with suffering in his own life or in that of others, Freud’s only answer was to “endure with resignation.” He followed this philosophy consistently, stoically enduring the pain and discomfort of the cancer of the palate that afflicted him in the last two decades of his life. He died by assisted suicide at the age of 83.[2]

I would highly recommend reading this book.

I thought of this book when I was reflecting on Ephesians 2 this week. C.S. Lewis was transformed from death to life, from loneliness to friendship, from fear of intimacy to the risk of love. Ephesians 2 tells us that God has rescued us, given us life, and raised us into a communion of love with Him and the people of God.

This whole movement might be characterized as death and resurrection. I want to reflect upon this movement tease out some of the ways it looks in our lives. Listen to how Paul speaks of death and resurrection:

4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.[3]

In many ways these few verses summarize the key ideas in this chapter. Here are at least four ideas we can consider:

• We were dead in our trespasses
• Made us alive together in Christ (he speaks of resurrection in past tense—this has already happened)
• Raised us up with him (we are seated with Christ in heavenly places)
• Immeasurable riches of His grace

We were dead, and we’ve been made alive. What does this mean? We were dead, and we’ve been made alive. Think of the prodigal son story. He wants his inheritance and demands it from the Father, essentially breaking relations with his family and his community. He goes away to a far country and is ultimately left alone, left poor, and starving.

These images could make us think of ancient Israel. The people turn away from God and become idolaters. The twelve tribes split into to factions and go to war. They eventually become two different nations: Judah and Israel. The people mistreat one another: the rich take advantage of the poor. Sexual immorality abounds. The people are blind and deaf to the word of the Lord and even kill the prophets. Israel and Judah are both invaded by foreign powers, their countries are destroyed, and the people are led into captivity.

These are images of death. The people have descended into Sheol. Ezekiel sees the people as a valley of dry bones. Paul sees the Gentiles as a people “alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”[4]

The Jews, God’s covenant people, lived as the Gentiles around them, so that the prophets could even say that Israel and Judah were even more foul in their sin than their neighboring pagan nations. Paul will write of the Jew and Gentiles together, “all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”[5]

In Romans 3, Paul quotes the Psalms and says,

“None is righteous, no, not one;
11 no one understands;
no one seeks for God.
12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
no one does good,
not even one.”
13 “Their throat is an open grave;
they use their tongues to deceive.”
“The venom of asps is under their lips.”
14 “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16 in their paths are ruin and misery,
17 and the way of peace they have not known.”
18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” [6]

All humanity is dead in their sins. They break relationships. Son turns against father. Father turns son. Husband against wife. Our lusts control us. The world lives in a state of Sheol.

But God has not abandoned us. In the middle of this death, Paul writes, “But God, being rich in mercy…”[7] Some people envision God as an angry overlord. No. No. No. But God being rich in mercy. Hallelujah. Rich in mercy.

When you see your past and present failures, remember broken relationships, feel shame that still may follow you, remember, “But God being rich in mercy.”

Because of the great love with which He loved us. You are loved by the God who called you into being, by the God who sustains you even in this moment, by the God who knows your sin and failures better than you. He loves you with a great love.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—[8]

This is resurrection. Back to the Prodigal Son story. When the son finally returns home with the idea that he can negotiate a place as a servant, the father speaks the word of life over the son. He is a son not a servant. The father says.

24 For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate. [9] This is resurrection.

Jesus did not leave us in our low estate. While we were dead in trespasses, while we were sinking in the jaws of the evil one, He took hold of us, raised us up together. Now this word together is important. Paul is telling the people that God raised the Jew and Gentile together. He raised up the factions that have divided humanity. Think of the relations you’ve known that have broken. Made alive together.

Jesus becomes the very peace between you and the Father in this resurrection. Jesus becomes the very peace between you and others. He has made a way for us to know the true reconciliation with Jew and Gentile, Father and Son, Mother and Daughter, Husband and Wife, young and old, liberal and conservative, rich and poor, and so on. If you have broken relations this morning, lift them to Jesus. Only he can bring true and lasting peace. Only he can restore.

6 “and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,”[10]

The very people who were dead in trespasses have been raised up with Christ and our seated with him in the heavenly places in Christ. But we are here. What does it mean to say that we have been raised up with Him and in Him. This is our condition. We are no longer far away. We’ve been brought near to the very throne of God. We are no longer aliens, but we have been adopted by the Father in Heaven through the blood of Jesus.

We are part of the family. Just as a child can run and jump in her father’s lap, we come boldly and joyfully before our Father in heaven. We can share our failures, struggles, joys, and victories. Thus, we live as beloved children of the Father. And this might be a good way to help us think about our calling as priests and kings.

We cry out to the Father on behalf of this suffering and sinful world. We live in this world as ambassadors of a heavenly kingdom as a people called to reconcile all creation to the Father in heaven. We are serving our world even as we are worshipping our Father.

Let me read the whole passage again,

4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.[11]

The Father is pouring His Spirit upon us in and through Jesus Christ. This outpouring is nothing short of His immeasurable love, His surprising joy, and His bountiful grace.

Grace upon grace upon grace.

All this love and joy and grace is transforming us into the very lovers that God created us to be. Beloved let us love the Lord our God with all our heart, and all our soul, and all our mind. Let us love our neighbor as ourselves.

Let us rejoice and give God all the glory.

[1] “The Question of God,” The Harvard Gazette, September 19, 2002 < https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2002/09/harvard-gazette-the-question-of-god/>

[2] Ibid.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 2:4–7.

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 2:12.

[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 2:3.

[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ro 3:10–18. (See Ps. 14:1–3, 53:1-3, Ecc 7:20)

[7] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 2:4.

[8] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 2:3–5.

[9] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Lk 15:24.

[10] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 2:6.

[11] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 2:4–7.

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Rev. Dr. Les Martin

Pentecost +8
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
Ephesians 1:1-14

Forever resolved to know nothing among you except Christ Jesus and him crucified in the name of the living God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Being hot natured and a man of my generation at home, my preferred dress is a T-shirt. I wear T-shirts and shorts year-round. In Nigeria, that wasn’t so hard. During my years in Chicago and Pittsburgh, it was a little more challenging. The difference now though, is that I wear T-shirts with pockets on them.

And I don’t like them.

I don’t think they’re stylish. And they can also be hard to find. I have to order them online. Why do I wear shirts that I don’t like? Because of my son. Many of you may have seen that one of the things Isaiah really likes to do when I’m in my clericals is to find my pectoral cross and pull it out. In addition to that, what you may not have noticed is that he likes very much to put it back in with some degree of force. I would be at home and my shirt didn’t have pockets. Isaiah would find a ball or a toy or what have you, and would be very frustrated that there was no pocket sometimes he would pull the neck of my shirt back and shove it down to my stomach. For the sake of my wardrobe, I decided it was better to get pockets, toys balls, the salt shaker or what have you. From time to time, Isaiah will grab something and run over to daddy and pull the pocket as hard as he can and with great force, shove whatever he has in his hand down in the pocket, and say quite triumphantly “In.”

Believe it or not, that makes me think of Ephesians.

Today, we begin a series of weeks lasting until early September, where our Epistle readings will be from the book of Ephesians. We’ll cover major sections of each chapter of the book. And if you want a guideline for what you’ll be hearing, whenever you hear Ephesians read, you can think of my son, and my pocketed T-shirts because the underlying theme of Ephesians is kind of like that. It’s the joy and delight of God the Father putting us “In” Christ. Our joy and delight in being found in the right place “In” Christ.

By way of introduction to the book, I just want to say a few things. Ephesians is widely considered one of the two most important letters in the New Testament with Romans. It’s the earliest book in the New Testament to be referred to as Scripture in 250. Polycarp refers to Ephesians as Scripture. Although it’s written to the Ephesians, the earliest manuscripts don’t say “the Ephesians.” So it was more likely a circular letter where the people in Ephesus made the most copies. We start seeing “To the saints in Ephesus” written in, so we call it Ephesians. This circular letter is a teaching first about the gospel and then its ethical implications.

It seems largely directed to a Gentile Christian audience. If you read it, it looks like it’s possibly a baptismal instruction catechism. And our portion today appears to be Paul’s edit of some preexisting material: verses three through 14, particularly if you rearrange them and put them in a poem form, verses three through 14. Quite possibly an early hymn. I tend to think of them as liturgical prayer probably used at baptism or the reaffirmation of baptismal vows.

So the latter is most likely baptismal instruction to Gentile Christians, and the verses we have today can serve as an overview for the whole land. In case you missed it, this passage focuses on what it is to be in Christ, both in terms of our spiritual identity, but also the lives we live. The letter is encouraging, but not in a superficially cheerful way.

And that was necessary because I want you to think about the world that the Ephesians lived in. It was a world of tribal and regional factionalism, factions fighting one another all the time, held together only by the strong arm of the Pax Romana. The Roman Empire, as Tacitus said, had a distinct way of enforcing peace, they’d make a desert of whatever city resisted them, and then they call that peace. The reality is, it’s the piece of the Roman Empire, but it’s the piece of a sword. It’s the sword that keeps the factions together. It was a world of hostile powers, political, economic, and supernatural. A world of “anything goes morality,” what we might call loose living, which had twisted even the beliefs and practices of the Roman cults and civil religion into a parody of what they had originally been intended.

If we take the Corinthian correspondents seriously, we see that that loose living has even gotten into the Christian community. It’s tribal conflict, factionalism, hostile powers, moral degeneracy, and confusion in religion. The answer to all this, according to Ephesians, it’s been rightly found in Christ in Christ.

The promise is that in Him, we are saved. In Him, we find unity in our lives, marriages, households, churches, communities, the whole world. In Christ, the whole universe will be put right. This is one of the areas where I wish I wasn’t in a typical American Anglican church because I’m going to walk you through the verses. If someone near you has a Bible peek on, because Paul’s Greek is bad enough but Paul in English can be incomprehensible. In verses three through six, what we have in this liturgical prayer that Paul is reworked is praise of the Father. Listen to this blessing.

It is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms in Christ, for he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love. He did this by predestination us to adopt adoption as his legal heirs through Jesus Christ, according to the pleasure of His will, to the praise and glory of His grace, that he is freely bestowed on us in his dearly beloved son.

The first three verses are praising the Father for what he’s done. Why? Well, it doesn’t sound like praise to some of us who’ve grown up in certain traditions. He’s praising the Father for predestination, hallelujah. If you’ve ever been scared about whether you’re saved, if you’ve ever wondered what you’re doing is good enough. If you’ve ever wondered if God is really that nice guy, Jesus, or some angry, invisible God, predestination is not something you’re inclined to praise God for.

Yet our Anglican fathers in the 39 articles put it this way in article 17. Predestination to life belongs to God’s everlasting purpose, and a godly consideration of predestination. And our election in Christ is full of sweet, pleasant and unspeakable comfort to godly persons. In other words, predestination election, the certainty of your salvation based on God’s action is good news. It’s good news.

Why would we praise God for that? It’s scary. Well, it’s scary if we focus on two things incorrectly, when we focus on ourselves and think about predestination The question always arises, am I good enough? Did I do enough? Let me help you know, and know. If we focus on us the answers are negative. The other problem is if we focus on the future, will I be saying the future is dark and scary. So the problem becomes, we focus on ourselves, we know we’re not good enough, and we focus on an uncertain future. And predestination sounds like Gotcha.

One wrong step, buddy.

However, if we change our perspective to what the Bible teaches about predestination, and what the earliest Protestant churches taught about the about predestination, things get better. It’s a matter of changing our perspective. Notice, there’s no double-edged sword here, there’s not what our Calvinist friends called Double predestination, article 17, is clear.

All it’s going to talk about is predestination to life, there is the mystery of why some are saved, and some are not. There is the mystery of what about the Hindus? We don’t address that. We don’t know the mind of God. What we do know is the mind of God regarding predestination to life.

We focus on Christ, Chosen of the Father, and choosing all of you, rather than what we can’t do. Well, it’s a little different. Again, let me go back to my son, our house is usually scattered with toys at this age, we clean up four or five times a day, and there’s no point in it. But what it means is that when I’m sitting there on the floor with my pocket, a t-shirt on, Isaiah is busy, because he’s going to go on the floor, and he’s running,choosing toys, putting them in my pocket.”In.” Friends, that’s Jesus. Choosing choosing choosing. It’s not about what you did or didn’t do Saturday night, and I don’t want to know about as your pastor. It’s about what Christ is doing. Choosing, choosing choosing. And if we focus on that, which means we’re focusing not on the future, but on the past.

Well, suddenly predestination feels pretty good.

My predestination was before the foundation of the world, and God’s loving, not dangerous heart, in God’s desire for me. And through the work of the church through the work of Holy Scripture through the work of the Holy Spirit, I was chosen, with at least as much enthusiasm as my little 15-month has for his plastic zebra. Father Gerald McDermott, the Anglican theologian puts it this way, “We have to view predestination retrospectively, rather than prospectively, looking at what happened, rather than our fear about what might happen.”

Look at me. I am a man from a violent, drug addicted, dysfunctional home. On top of that, I was an atheist and committed atheist. There is no reason I should be standing here like this. If it weren’t for predestination to live, my family pattern had its path laid out. My belief system had its path laid out. God chose a different path; I didn’t. He did. Sometimes I’m putting this collar on in the mornings and I just laugh and I’m like, You got to be kidding me. You got to be kidding me. But the reality is, if we focus on Jesus and what He has done great things he has done. Praise the Lord. Then, predestination to life is full of comfort. Do you want to know you’re saved? I used to say this all the time in in Nigeria because they worry about this to look around for a minute. Just Just look around.

You’re here You’re here.

They’re all better than Saturday. You’re not somewhere else. You’re here. And if you think being here this morning has nothing to do with you think again. It’s in spite of you that you’re here. And you know it, you know it, you know it, you know it. And so predestination to life. It’s comfort, and we praise God because it’s the church father, Ambrosiaster says, “Divine love, is the motive of God’s predestination will.”

Verses seven through 12:

In Him, we have the redemption, through his blood, the forgiveness of our offenses, according to the riches of His grace, that He lavished on us in all wisdom and insight. He did this when he revealed to us the mystery of his will, according to the good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, toward the administration of the fullness of the times to head up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth. In Christ, we too have been claimed as God’s own possession, since we were predestined according to the purpose of him, who accomplishes all things according to the counsel of his own will, so that we who were the first to set up on Christ would be to the praise of his glory.

It’s all about Jesus.

He’s not just one human, who bore all of humanity’s sin. He is also the one human who was elected, in whom the Father predestined all of us to life, just as he took all that sin on him. So he is the conduit of the Father’s choosing love, choosing you and you and you. “In,” “In,” “In.” Clement, writing in his epistle writes this, “God elected the Lord Jesus Christ, and through him, us, for his own people. Christ is the condemned, Christ is the elect, condemned because he took our sin, and we are left because he is Good Friday, all of our wickedness on him, Easter morning, all of his vindication, pouring out of the tomb, and washing over all of us.” In Him, we have redemption through the blood. In Him, we have forgiveness of our offenses, we are claimed as God’s possession, and it won’t stop with us. As the fifth century church father, Theodore, puts it, “The ultimate goal of all this predestination, the ultimate goal of this transformation, the ultimate goal of all this choosing is the complete redemption of all things.”

God’s gold is nothing less than the complete redemption of all things. “Keep your disciples quiet,” they told Jesus on Palm Sunday. He said, “Well, I could. But the rocks would sing.” One day, the rocks will sing. Because everything will be chosen and loved and restored in that predestination of Christ that we shouldn’t be so afraid of.

Verses 13 and 14.

And when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, when you believed in Christ, you are marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit, who is the downpayment of our inheritance until the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of his glory.

In verses 13 and 14, we turn to the Holy Spirit. Have you noticed why I think this is a prayer we started out with God the Father, we talked about the Son and now we’re talking about the Spirit. It’s Trinitarian we turn to the Holy Spirit, God activity in the world and in our lives, which means whenever we’re talking about the Holy Spirit, it’s answering the questions of how great how does this happen? And for what, what’s the purpose, how and for what, how and for what, how? We’ve been over that to Jesus’ choice, through the preaching we somehow heard. I don’t know when I first heard about Jesus. But I heard through the gift of faith, remember faith isn’t something we work up it’s a gift. And then were sealed by the Holy Spirit sealed is a liturgical word. We have our faith and then the means of grace, baptism, Eucharist, for Anglicans confirmation, we are sealed, we are confirmed in the faith, as a down payment for when it gets really good one day. We’re guaranteed.

This is a deposit baptism isn’t deposit the body is a deposit. We are guaranteed that one day we’ll get the full inheritance on that day when the rocks seen. That’s the how, what’s the for what? Well, what for what is in our worship? Yes, we’re supposed to Praise God. Praise God for the gift of His Son praise God for the mystery of election. But also for praise in our lives. The reformer, Johannes Bugenhagenputs it this way. “We are to be holy in faith. Notice not by works. We are to be holy, in by faith inside of God, and united to one another.” In mutual love. Holy in faith, God justifies us, God makes us right. And then the call is we are united in mutual love. But let’s be clear, let’s get rid of that modern notion again, love is not a feeling.

Kate and I are going on nine years of marriage.

If love were a feeling, we wouldn’t be going on nine years of marriage. Love is an action. In Ephesians 2:10. Paul will say we are “God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we might walk in him see it’s by faith not works.”

There are works but they’re God’s works. We’re just the hands and the feet are good news in him. Our lives in him become good news for the world. As the election of Israel was such good news, that it could sustain the community of faith through all those years of persecution and exile. So is our election in Christ for the church even today? And we need it, don’t we? We need it.

Like the Ephesians. We are living in a world of tribalism. We live in a world of hostile powers, both earthly and demonic. We have morally flexible, self-chosen lifestyles. And yes, we have a Compromised Church. Looking around at the world today, it’s evident we need a reset. Looking at the events of just this weekend, it’s evident that we need to reset Christ is that reset in him. The church is a witness to that reset through our praise and through our love.

The funniest thing I say about Isaiah is that he’ll get so excited with those toys. He’ll grab up too many, and my pocket is only so big. And so he’s trying to get the zebra and the lion in and he loves the koala. You can’t forget the claw and then there’s the gorilla and they’re beginning to overflow and he’s pushing harder with some frustration going in, in in and they just won’t fit.

We need to tell the world. What we need to remember ourselves is unlike my pocket. In the heart of God. There’s always room.

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Pentecost +7 2024
Rev. Doug Floyd
2 Corinthians 12:2-10

It’s vacation season. Folks are taking off by plane, by car, and some even by boat. I love a road trip.

A few years back we drove with my friend Izaak out to Yellowstone. On our way back, we took the Lincoln Highway. The Lincoln Highway starts in Times Square, New York and crosses the upper Midwest and goes all the way to San Francisco. It was the first coast to coast highway in America, and it was expressly designed for automobiles. The developers encouraged people to travel on the highway by partnering with folks to build motor lodges along the route, so travelers could have a place to rest for the night. In 1928, Boy Scouts spread out along the highway and installed concrete markers with a bust of Abraham Lincoln and the inscription, “This highway dedicated to Abraham Lincoln.”[1]

Highways tell stories across generations. If you’ve driven 25E to Kentucky, you’ll cross the Cumberland Gap. This passage was used by the Indigenous Tribal nations and was mentioned by Abraham Wood in the 1670s. Later, explorer Thomas Walker introduced this passage to settlers of the region, and Daniel Boone used it 1775 in his exploration of western Kentucky and Tennessee.

We not only walk ancient paths, we drive over ancient paths today. Some signs along the way tell the story of that road or that spot on the road. The Lake Moeris Quarry Road in Egypt dates back to the Old Kingdom period in Ancient Egypt and is considered the oldest paved road in the world.

Roads play an important role in Israel’s history. The people travel to Zion for great festivals. They write and sing songs about travelling on these roads. Consider Psalm 84:2, “My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.” [2] Later in the psalm we read, “Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.” [3] Here we see clearly the image of travelling to Zion.

With this in mind, we see how the physical road becomes an image or symbol of the journey toward the Lord and toward the way of obedience to the Lord. In Psalm 119, the psalmist sings the complete song about the glory of the law or the glory of Torah. In the midst of this song, we hear, “Lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it.” [4] And, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”[5] The physical path and the spiritual path becomes clearer in light of God’s instruction. The psalmist is on journey toward God for worship and for refuge.

In our second lesson today, Paul speaks of a man who was caught up to the third heaven, into paradise. It seems clear from the passage that Paul is speaking of himself. When did he have such an experience? We can tell from the Acts of the Apostles that Paul had many unusual encounters, but many people think this specific encounter happened on the road to Damascus.

Think about it this way. Paul’s journey to Damascus is a road trip story. He believes this journey is in service of Torah and the Temple. He is not moving toward Jerusalem but away. He’s physically moving away, but unbeknownst to him, he is also leaving Jerusalem symbolically. He’s moving away from the true way of Torah, the true way of the Lord. He’s moving away from God’s instruction because he has turned against the very way of the Lord, which he discovers in this encounter.

Suddenly, Paul’s Road trip is interrupted. When a road trip is interrupted, it can be stressful. When Kelly and I were driving up to Boston a few years ago, we had reservations at a hotel in Virginia. When we stopped at the hotel, they informed us that they had overbooked the hotel and didn’t have a room. They sent us to the next closest hotel in that chain, which was 30 miles out of the way. It was in the opposite direction of where we were headed. We had planned to drive through Maryland but now we were in Pennsylvania. We stayed on that route and saw some wonderful sights as we drove in to Philadelphia.

Paul’s interruption is a little more dramatic. He falls off his horse before the glory shining down. Suddenly, he is being addressed by the Lord Jesus. He is blinded in the light. At the same time, his eyes are opened to the light of glory in the face of Jesus. In this encounter, Paul comes to see that he was on the wrong road. He had missed the way. Paul, the expert on Torah, failed to see the true implications of Torah. He had opposed the very way of God in the burgeoning church.

We don’t exactly know what all Paul saw on the road to Damascus, but he says he was caught up to the third heaven, and he peers into paradise. This vision blinds him, and he must be led into Damascus where he waits for three days. Finally, Ananias comes to pray for Paul. The scales fall from his eyes.

The Lord will show Paul how much he must suffer for His sake. This great Pharisee was a Hebrew of Hebrews and recognized for his brilliance and passion. But now his path has changed. He moves from glory to suffering. Even as his external glory fades, Paul will grow inwardly into glory. In one sense, Paul returns to the path of his vision.

He was transported to the third heaven and peers into Paradise. The word Eden means paradise. In some sense, Paul is returning to Eden, to the home of humanity. This will be a path of suffering and death as Paul details in 2 Corinthians, but it will also be a way of glory.

As I was meditating on Paul’s story, I thought about the Hebrew exiles in Babylon. Isaiah prophecies they will return home on a highway of Holiness right through the middle of the wilderness. The Lord will not abandon them even as they pass through fire or water. He will lead them home.

Some of the exiles eventually return home with a commission to rebuild the Temple. It will be more difficult than they ever imagined. When it is finally finished, it will be disappointing. The exiles struggle to finish and Haggai steps forward to exhort them. God is working don’t lose hope. Haggai speaks the word of the Lord to the people,

“For thus says the Lord of hosts: Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. And I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the Lord of hosts. The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts. And in this place I will give peace, declares the Lord of hosts.”[6]

This rebuilt Temple will never match the glory of Solomon’s Temple and yet Haggai suggests that it is more glorious. After this Temple, there will be a Temple that the people will not even recognize as the Temple of the Lord. Jesus Christ is the most glorious Temple of all but He will appear even less glorious. As this Temple of the Lord ascends the cross and dies on Calvary, he will ascend into glory. In his weakest moment, with his life poured out, Jesus will reveal unspeakable glory.

He is leading us into this same glory. Outwardly, it looks weak and crumbling but it contains a glory of God that will transform everything. Now think back to Paul’s vision. Third heaven. Paradise.

I might suggest that Paul is led to an ancient road. This road is older than any road known on earth. It is the road that led out if Eden. Humanity banished from the Garden of Eden. An angel with a flaming sword blocking the entrance. Paul returns home by this way. This is one of the great stories in all of literature. It is the story of home, away, and home again.

Adam and Eve begin at home in the Garden of Eden. But in their sin and rebellion, they must go away. An angel with a flaming sword blocks the entrance. God promises to make a way that will one day bring them and us home.

This brings us back to the Temple and the Tabernacle. In the book of Exodus, we read details about the creation of the Tabernacle. All the details can make it confusing. These details such as the candlesticks and flowering branches that burn with olive oil communicate images of Eden. Walking through the Tabernacle, the priest is ascending the Holy Mountain, leading to the Garden of Eden. The Holy of Holies is the place where heaven and earth are united and man stands before God.

But only the High Priest can ascend to the Holy of Holies. There is an image of two angels guarding the ark of the covenant. Zeal for the Temple will consume Paul to the point that he wants to destroy the church. But Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem is no longer the Temple. Jesus has replaced a Temple made by hands. In Christ, all can draw near to the throne of mercy and grace. Once Paul has had this encounter on the road to Damascus, he will say,

“If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. 7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” [7]

He is walking the ancient road to Eden, he is walking toward Christ Jesus. He is returning to our true home. To return home is to pass through this flaming sword: the way of the cross, the way of death and the way of life.

We follow Christ into this way of death and life together. We are dying. We are growing weaker. We will face failure and struggle and difficulty. But we are also being renewed and prepared for glory. We are immersed into the love of God which is so vast and great that we can never find the end of it. He is embracing us, transforming us, leading us home and into glory.

The beauty of this road to death and glory is that we are not alone. Jesus has made a way. He will lead us into the fullness of love and joy and glory. He leads us into the great communion of love, Following Jesus, Paul has gone on ahead into this way of glory. Peter, James and John have gone on ahead. We are not alone; the great communion of saints goes on ahead. We help encourage one another as we walk through difficult places of fire and water.

When we literally walked through fire, the body of Christ upheld me and Kelly in prayer and encouragement. We experienced the tangible love of God from the people of God. I hope that we all might be graced to love and strengthen and help one another through the difficult places.

I have said before that my basic understanding of spiritual formation is the knowledge of the love of God. We must know God loves us and this love is relentless, unshakeable. At the same time, we will walk through places that will stretch our souls and may cause us to question God. In these valleys of the shadow of death, we will ultimately discover a deeper, fuller vision of God’s love.

Each of us are walking in a way. There will be places of joy and places of grief and struggle. Psalm 84 assures us that the Lord will turn these places of weeping into places of fullness.

“As they go through the Valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools. They go from strength to strength; each one appears before God in Zion.” [8]

We are going from strength to strength, from glory to glory even as we are walking through the valleys in our lives.

As we walk this way, let us encourage one another, bless one another, and come to the table together, feasting on the very life of Christ.

[1] Origins of the Lincoln Highway https://www.lincolnhighwayassoc.org/history/#:~:text=The%20highway%20started%20in%20Times,Lincoln%20Park%20in%20San%20Francisco.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ps 84:2.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ps 84:5.

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ps 119:35.

[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ps 119:105.

[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Hag 2:6–9.

[7] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Php 3:4–11.

[8] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ps 84:6–7.

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Rev. Dr. Les Martin

Pentecost +6 2024
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
Deuteronomy 15:7–11, Psalm 112, 2 Corinthians 8:1–15, Mark 5:22–24, 35b–43

I am resolved to know nothing among you, but Christ Jesus and him crucified in the name of the living God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Well, if it was late autumn, instead of late June, I would look at these readings and assume that the compilers of our ACNA lectionary want me to preach on stewardship. But it’s late June. It’s the wrong time of year and not enough people are here.

I’ve had to try and figure out what they’re trying to get at. I don’t understand this lectionary. Deuteronomy today starts out with a discussion of how to help the poor and how to treat slaves. And in Second Corinthians, we have Paul’s stewardship sales pitch to the Corinthians, to be as generous to the church in Jerusalem, as the Macedonians have been during their time of famine. Boy, that stewardship sermon just preaches itself. However, when we read today’s Gospel, something just doesn’t fit. And it becomes clear that what we’re dealing with today is something related to stewardship.

But deeper, far more profound. I want to tentatively put it this way. How can we possibly live a life of abundance and generosity? In a world of suffering, and scarcity? How can we possibly live a life of abundance and generosity

in a world of suffering and scarcity? Let me put it more practically for you. How do I give what I really want to the church, to poor people, to the organizations I support when I can’t even meet all my expenses? How do I go to church regularly with all the demands on my time? How do I risk helping my neighbor when I’ve been hurt and burned so many times? How do I draw close to God? When I’m so wounded, or burned out? Or angry? or what have you? That’s the question. So often our answer amounts to some version of I’ll get around to it. Because we’re here on Sunday morning, we’re the ones who are trying right. It’s not that we want to shirk our dirt duties, but with all this weight on us, our answer is usually I’ll get around to it.

I’ll get around to it when I’ve paid off my mortgage. I’ll get around to it when the kids don’t have Sunday morning sports. get around to it when I’m stronger. I just need some time. Problem is sometimes too many times. In this world, those conditions just aren’t ever met. We suffer and suffer and are paralyzed and are suffering living lives of quiet desperation. A rat race that never ends. Gospel abundance and generosity are just always a little bit out of reach. And it makes us feel bad but we’re just so tired. And so despite our very real, very good intentions, life is just too much. We get frozen in fear and in pain and didn’t lack this is way more serious than stewardship. It’s about nothing less than the question of what can make a difference in our lives as they are right now. What exactly is it in the midst of all this? It makes us distinctly Christian. Today’s Gospel provides the answer it’s two stories of two people or better I prefer to say it’s it’s two instances of the exact same story from very different perspectives. We have Jairus. He is an archon, a leader of the synagogue.

We don’t know if he’s a rabbi, but at the very least he’s a vestryman. He’s our “in” character. And we have this unnamed woman, how often they’re unnamed, ritually unclean due to her illness, she can’t even go to synagogue.

She’s our “out” character. The Inside Man and the outside woman, one accepted one excluded, same problem. Unlike us, they’ve tried. Not bad people they’ve tried. Jairus is a stalwart member of the synagogue law and tradition, the righteousness of life have been his life blood. Do this and you shall live do this and you shall prosper. Right up until this little girl gets sick. And all that law keeping doesn’t solve the problem. The woman has tried to she’s gone the medical establishment route. And then just as now she has spent all her money on the doctors and is worse than she was before. You impoverished, sick, ritually unclean. She tried. But it didn’t solve her problem. Indeed, in a twist of irony in the story, it says she’s been sick for 12 years, for all of Jairus his daughter’s life. She’s been sick.

The Inside Man is hopeless. The outside woman hopeless. They tried what they knew to do. And as I say, I assume there’s no malice, no manipulation, good or bad things happen to good people. And their life was interrupted by illness and potential tragedy. And that appeared to be the only future there was not going to be any I’ll get around to it.

What a wonderful place to be. Not because it’s comfortable, it’s not. But desperation produces something interesting in both these characters. Faith in Jesus that provides a certain hope. We know the story so well, we miss the drama and we miss the pain we miss the real suffering. It’s just a little story we learned in Sunday school. But what does it take for a leader of the synagogue to wander out in the street and kneel at the feet to worship? Jesus, this Jesus it takes desperation. But it also takes faith. He knows. He doesn’t say I hope, I suspect. He says come and lay your hands on her so that she may be healed and live. This isn’t a shot in the dark desperation and agony has produced faith. And so the vestryman The pastor, whatever he was, he goes and does the one thing that you should never do. He kneels at the foot of a man and worships. “Come and help me Jesus.” And this woman broke, excluded, hopeless and so very sick. You know how you feel when you’re really sick. She pushes her way through the crowd and dogged determination because she’s got in her head. She doesn’t even need to talk to Jesus. She doesn’t even need Jesus gaze if she just touch, she’ll be healed. Desperation leads to faith leads to hope.

Jesus transforms their suffering. It’s so easy for God. But notice, he transforms it, our modern ears want to say he eliminates it. Those 12 years still happened to that woman. They’re not gone, they never will be. Jairus will go forward into life recognizing that all them good people at the synagogue saw him kneel in the street to Jesus. Their suffering is transformed. Their suffering is alleviated. But God loves us too much to say that their suffering is erased. Now how do we live in generosity and abundance? The Gospel doesn’t tell us but what do you think their stories and their beliefs were?

After their encounter with Jesus? What do you think they had to say about suffering and scarcity and abundance and gratitude? After that day we don’t want to make this into a happy ever after I’m sure there were controversies. I’m sure they had other problems. Jairus’s daughter will still die one day. But what did they have to say about the nature of suffering compared to the nature of God? We don’t know. But I know this whatever they said, however they put it the center of those words would be and would forever be the person and work of Jesus Christ.

I really want to stop here. Because what I have to say next is sometimes suffering doesn’t end does it? Sometimes healing doesn’t come. What then? What then faith and the touch of Christ’s body still makes the difference. I’m gonna say that again, because it’s a hard pill to swallow.

Faith and the touch of Christ’s body still makes the difference. That’s the lesson of these Macedonians. Paul is talking about. Did you hear it very clearly, in the midst of their persecution and their lack is when they became generous. There was no “I’ll get around to it.” It was like, “We have nothing Let’s share.” Why? Because of Christ. They are generous to the church in Jerusalem in the midst of their suffering and poverty.

Not once it’s passed. What if the healing doesn’t come? In chapter 12 of the same letter. Paul tells a story about himself. He talks about that mysterious thorn in the flesh.

We don’t know what is, but we know that it troubled Paul enough that not once but three times he said, “Hey, God, look what I’m doing. Can you get rid of this please?” And the answer not once, not twice, not, but three times was, “No.” Let’s not clean it up. The answer was no. Not necessary to get rid of it. My grace is sufficient for you. And it was whatever that thorn was, Paul carried it. And in the midst of his suffering, and perhaps in part because of the purification of His suffering, His ministry survived and thrived. Nonetheless, one of the great things about that secular renewal movement, Alcoholics Anonymous, is they get this in a way that sometimes the church doesn’t. Once someone admits they have a problem with alcohol, and they turn their lives over to this higher power God who can and will restore them to sanity. Once they said those words. They’re told to get busy. 12 hours sober, you can at least make the coffee. One hour sober, clean up the ashtrays, couple of days sober, you can at least greet people, there’s something you can do. They say it’s not when you’re ready, when you’re healed. It’s not I’ll get around to it, it’s actually the secret is in the middle of your suffering, don’t get busy. AAA gets that right now, when the healing hasn’t come. The mystery of this world, mystery of this life, for those of us in faith

Some of our life situations get better. Some don’t. Some are healed, some are not. And even in the midst of a miracle; Life is life: Jairus his daughter, Lazarus, they’ll all pass away. But in Christ with Christ. The mystery is that there doesn’t have to be getting around to abundance and generosity. We are not as the world is someone who says when my situation improves, then I’ll be the person I always wanted to be. No, we have the option and the grace to be that person already. Because in Christ, that person that person you may be too tired to know you are too weary to know you are too sick to know you are too afraid to know you are that person is here already. And we benefit from one another in the midst of our suffering, not just in spite of it.

We too today will force our way through a crowd to get to the body of Jesus. And He will touch us and we will touch him. And it’ll be enough if it’s not a message that the world gives, or appreciates, gee, less, it’d be enough. Thanks for that that’s really encouraging. It will be enough. The best the world can get are some quotes out there. You know the world sees this as grim and some of the more grim people in our world have tried to play with the irony of it. Nietzsche: the best he could come up with is that which does not kill us makes us stronger. Really? Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms says the world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong. Broken Places notice many not all and those that will not break who will not break it kills. That’s the closest secular wisdom can get to the mystery we’re talking about.

I prefer what Paul says later in this letter. Listen carefully to these words from chapter four. “We have this treasure in clay jars to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are experiencing trouble on every side, but are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are persecuted but not abandoned. We are not down but not destroyed. We are always carrying around in our body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be visible in our body.”

It’s not grim news. It’s good news. You know Christ gave His most when his life was at its worst. in union with Him we find much to our surprise that although it’s not easy, we can do the same. His stream is made perfect in our weakness. Glad you’re here today. Get up, have something to eat. partake of His abundance and be thankful

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Pentecost +5
Rev. Doug Floyd
2 Corinthians 5

Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. (1 John 3:2)

We are created for glory. We are moving in and toward glory. In 2 Corinthians, Paul says that the glory of God is shining out in us, and we are growing up into that glory. At the same time, we are wasting away. Our bodies, vessels of clay, are in decay.

We are frail, filled with doubt, falling down. Our bodies will fail us. Our minds will fail us. We are fading away.

Paul is telling us this in 2 Corinthians. We are weak. We grow weary. We may even despair of life itself. We may lose hope. We may lose jobs. We may grow sick. We will die. We will be forgotten. Think about people from other eras. Consider Shakespeare. Most of you will recognize his name. Some of you have read his work. Some of you may even know some of his biography, but you also may know that many of the details of his life are subject to question.

Now think of the countless people alive during his lifetime. We may know the names of a handful of people or possibly even a few dozen. But most of the people in his lifetime have already slipped into the fading pages of history. You are also fading. I am also fading. We will be forgotten.

The next generation may remember us. If we’re lucky our memory will persist in the second or third generations. Soon we will only be a name. Then the name will fade from earth.

Do not be dismayed. This is the way of all things. Even as these bodies crumble back into dirt, we will be clothed with an eternal body not made with hands. Christ enters our helpless estate; in the cross he condescends to the depths human sin and brokenness. As he rises from the dead, he rises with the promise to lift us up into his love. By God’s goodness and grace, we will be swallowed up by life. We will shine with the glory of God.

Yet we are still weak and weary. Our failures and frailties remind us that the old creation is still present. New creation is overtaking this old creation. Even now we sense it. Even now we long for glory that will not fade. There will come a point when this ole world, this old body will seem like the blink of an eye. One moment we were complaining about failing knees and tired limbs, and the next moment unfolding glory upon glory upon glory.

How do we live in this moment? How do we live in a time between times? The glory is already growing within us, but the old life still remains. We feel it in our bones. Our brokenness.

One way we live in this moment is to acknowledge our failures. By God’s grace, we learn to face those broken places within us in light of God’s reconciling love. He does not forsake in our pride, in our anger, in our sadness, in our loneliness, in all our faults.

At his darkest, weakness moment, the light of Glory shines upon Paul and he encounters the Lord on the road to Damascus. With this hope of God’s reconciling love, we are free to be honest. When we come to the altar to receive of Christ’s body and blood, we bring our utter weakness, our fear, our temptations, and even our successes. We come as children totally dependent on the love of God in Christ.

In this dependence, we learn to depend upon one another. I need you. I need your prayer and encouragement. You need me. We are not independent, God created us as interdependent upon Him and those around us. In this place of trusting weakness, a glory is revealed that would otherwise be hidden by the light of our own fading glory.

The church fathers speak of translucence. The sinful mind makes the world opaque to God’s glory. But as the Sprit reconciles us to God, our eyes began to see the glory in all creation. Everything is pointing us to the love of God in Christ. The very people we thought were wearisome and tiring, we now see through eyes of wonder. They are revealing a sacred glory wholly particular to them.

I’ve sat with families of the dying or those who have died, what I’ve often beheld is the mystery of glory. I am often awestruck by the glory of God in our midst. Even now the people beside us are a wonder and glory to behold. Treat them as such and give thanks to God for them.

As you step out into the world of weariness and sin, remember that God has drawn you to Himself and is sending you out with His reconciling love. Pray for the people you meet along the way: the people beside you in the store, the people you work with, study with, drive beside. I assure you that many people do not know the depths of God’s love even the faithful churchgoer. Pause before other people. Share the gift of presence. Listen to them. Trust that God can love them even through your weak and weary limbs.

When the Good Lord formed the clay and breathed His very life into humanity, He celebrated His creation. “It is good. It is very good.” That is, it is just and true and beautiful. You are a work of His glory and beauty. Never forget. He loves you with an unfathomable love.

Share this love with a world in darkness. He can make His appeal to a sinful world through you and He can call the dead to life through you. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.[1]

Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. (1 John 3:2)

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 2 Co 5:21.

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Pentecost +4 2024
Rev. Doug Floyd
Psalm 92

Our Psalm today is the only Psalm designated as a Sabbath Psalm. The name of the Lord occurs seven times as a reminder of the seventh day. The Mishnah, a collection of oral traditions of Judaism, states that Psalm 92 is “A psalm, a song for the world that is to come, for the day which is wholly Sabbath rest for eternity.”[1] In that sense, the Psalm carries the promise of a world to come.

This joyful Psalm is filled with the praise of our God. But then in the middle of the Psalm, we read about the wicked:

6 The stupid man cannot know;
the fool cannot understand this:
7 that though the wicked sprout like grass
and all evildoers flourish,
they are doomed to destruction forever;
8 but you, O Lord, are on high forever.
9 For behold, your enemies, O Lord,
for behold, your enemies shall perish;
all evildoers shall be scattered. [2]

This language of stupid does not indicate a low IQ, but rather a person who has intentionally turned a blind eye to the ways of God. John Paul II speaks of this person as a cruel person who hurts others with no consideration if the consequences. He writes, “The adjectives used here belong to the language of wisdom and denote the brutality, blindness and foolishness of those who think they can rage over the face of the earth without moral consequences, deceiving themselves that God is absent and indifferent.”[3]

This sounds like many places on the earth. How do we praise the Lord in a world filled with such brutality. In fact, many people mock the phrase “thoughts and prayers,” suggesting we need to do something but what? Put a post on Facebook? Sign a petition? March in a protest? Will those actions elicit change?

Think of all the wars enveloping the earth right now. I looked number of wars on planet. There are over 50 conflicts, impacting multiple countries in the world right now. Last year, over 95k people were killed in the Ukraine and the year before over 100k. There are five key conflicts in the world, and these are impacting multiple regions. These include Myanmar, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Muslim Insurgency in the Maghreb, which has spread to at least 15 African nations, the Sudanese Civil War, and finally the Russia-Ukraine war. These are considered major conflicts that have cost the lives of 10,000 or more people in combat in this year or last year.

How can we rejoice in the Lord when evil seems so overwhelming on our planet? I think of the late German theologian Jürgen Moltmann who died at age 98 last week. He was drafted to fight in the German army as a young man. He was a musician and had assumed he would never have to fight.

The thought of war terrified him. He was captured right after he entered the conflict and held in a POW camp in Scotland. It was there that he found out about the German atrocities. Grief overwhelmed him and many soldiers died from grief. But Moltmann heard the gospel from a Scottish family and this gave him hope for the future.

In one of his books on a “Theology of Play,” Moltmann writes about a passage from Zecheriah 8:5, “And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in its streets.” [4] For Moltmann, it is the hope of the future found in the Gospel that allows the children to play and that allows us to rejoice even now.

Today’s Psalm us fills with that hope. Those who ravage the earth, one day will ravage no more. Like grass, they will fade and perish and be scattered. But the “Lord, [is] on high forever.” [5] The Psalmist can now sing and rejoice in the Sabbath while anticipating a Sabbath that one day will bring true shalom to all creation.

Let’s back up to the beginning of the Psalm.

1 It is good to give thanks to the Lord,
to sing praises to your name, O Most High;
2 to declare your steadfast love in the morning,
and your faithfulness by night,
3 to the music of the lute and the harp,
to the melody of the lyre.
4 For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work;
at the works of your hands I sing for joy.
5 How great are your works, O Lord!
Your thoughts are very deep! [6]

The focus of this Psalm is not on human works or human efforts. It is the glorious works of King YHWH. The Psalmist can open the day with rejoicing and can seal the night with more rejoice. In fact, in Psalm 119, the Psalmist pledges to lift of holy praise seven times a day (Psalm 199:164).

I think this has inspired the pattern of prayers offices in the church. Lifting holy praise doesn’t have to be a service or even a long prayer. Think about this. We give thanks before every meal. My dad patterned a way of thanksgiving where he would offer praise and thanks before the meals for our food, our home, our freedom and more. If we offer thanks before meals that is three times a day. Many people offer thanks when they wake or when they shower. They thank God for the new day. Many people also offer thanks at the end of the day before they sleep. This makes five times a day. If we follow Paul’s admonition to give thanks in all things, it is easy to see how we might already be lifting holy praise seven times a day and possibly more. Of course seven marks completion or perfection. We offer perfect praise in and through Christ Jesus.

In his commentary on Ephesians, Markus Barth wrote that the Lord so overwhelms us with His goodness and grace that we eventually become praise. We are living, walking songs to our king. We live for the praise of his glory. Even as the wicked oppressors fall, the Psalmist rejoices in being raised up.

“But you have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox; you have poured over me fresh oil.” [7]

This is actually a picture of a ruler being raised up. Think of David being anointed king. Or of Jesus being raised up as Lord of All. As disciples of Christ, we a priests and kings in this family. We are like a wild ox whose has been exalted and anointed with oil. As priests and kings, now do we rule in prayer and worship. Let us never denigrate this honor before God.

Now the Psalmist points us to the future. These next verses have always given me a special hope as I have faced health problems for most of my life. I would read and reread these promises. I did not want to fade away or grow weary in well-doing but grow up as a fruit bearing tree before the Lord.

Let us rejoice in these final verses as we hear God’s purpose for us.

12 The righteous flourish like the palm tree
and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.

First we see two different trees. A fruit bearing tree and a tall tree the very image of stability. Christ is raising us in Him. He is the vine, and we are the branches.

The Psalmist continues,

13 They are planted in the house of the Lord;
they flourish in the courts of our God.

This word for flourish is a word that has to do with blooms. We are growing and blooming in God’s presence. Then this beautiful promise.

14 They still bear fruit in old age;
they are ever full of sap and green,

Age cannot silence our song of praise. We visited my mom yesterday at a memory care home. Though her body has grown frail and her memory is weak, the girls told us that my mom loves to talk about Jesus. She is still bearing fruit in old age.

We all live to

15 to declare that the Lord is upright;
he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him. [8]

[1] Jacob Neusner, The Mishnah : A New Translation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 873.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ps 92:6–9.

[3] John Paul II, Audiences of Pope John Paul II (English) (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2014).

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Zec 8:5.

[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ps 92:8.

[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ps 92:1–5.

[7] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ps 92:10.

[8] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ps 92:12–15.

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Pentecost +3
Rev. Doug Floyd
2 Corinthians 4:13-18

Thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.” – ISAIAH 57:15

We live in a world where people are striving for success. I looked up book titles on success. Here are some of the ones I saw:

Joy of Success – 10 Essential Skills for Getting the Success You Want
Five Doors of Success
The New Psychology of Success
12 Universal Laws of success
7 Spiritual Laws of Success

I also browsed Youtube.

How to Raise Your Vibration to Attract the Financial Flow, Freedom, and Abundance
How to Brainwash Yourself for Success
The Mindset of High Achievers

All these titles would have probably been a hit in ancient Corinth. This was a status driven culture with plenty of new wealth. In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he is dealing with people who are turning their spiritual experiences in status symbols and are now competing with one another. We also see hints of brokenness in the lives of the people. There is sexual immorality, gluttony and even drunkenness. This makes me think of one more book on success.

Years ago, Clay Christiansen wrote a book on success. He was a professor at Harvard Business School. He had been a Rhodes Scholar and studied at Oxford. He talks about attending reunions with fellow Harvard Business School grads. Initially some were running Fortune 500 companies. They were leaders in their various fields. These were the fortunate few who had the training and the access to the highest levels of our culture.

Gradually fewer people attended reunions. Christiansen discovered divorces, broken families, children who would no longer talk to their parents, and even some graduates ended up in prison.

Christiansen began talking to his students about what success looks like. He eventually wrote into a book, “How Will You Measure Your Life?” For him measures of success include spiritual life, family life, and moral life. He challenges many of the conventional success metrics.

This makes me think of something James Houston, the founder of Regent College in Vancouver, once said. He suggested that what we call success may just be strengths that have developed while compensating for some inner brokenness. Many successful people are still like wounded children.

He talked about one of the most successful lawyers in Vancouver whose life just shattered. He was good at law, but he was a broken man.

The Apostle Paul writes 2 Corinthians to broken people. Some people who are caught up in the success drive may not even be able to hear Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians. I think that was true in Paul’s day and it is still true today. He emphasizes words like weakness, despair, suffering, affliction and weakness.

It’s hard to believe the people at Corinth could hear him because they were so driven to success. I think Paul speaks to the heart of the people, emphasizing the deep bond between him and this community and the Lord. Those who have ears will hear.

As a short preface to today’s reading, Paul opens 2 Corinthians with a blessing from the Father. He sometimes uses opening words to highlight what will become a focus in the letter. Paul writes,

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, To the church of God that is at Corinth, with all the saints who are in the whole of Achaia: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.[1]

He makes clear that God refers to our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Then he adapts a Jewish benediction. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort…” Paul is saying the Father is the source of all mercies. We desperately need His mercy and comfort. When someone shows us mercy or comfort, it is still the grace of God that touches us in that act.

Paul opens this letter reminding the Corinthians that he has been comforted in his own affliction, and he knows the Corinthians need this mercy and comfort as well. Paul can extend this blessing because he knows affliction firsthand, and he knows the comfort of the Father firsthand.

Paul realizes that suffering can be a way of sharing in Christ’s sufferings. Paul has been beaten for the faith, imprisoned for the faith, and yet the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has been present to him in those dark times. Paul goes on to say that in some of these difficult situations he was burdened beyond his strength and despaired of life itself.

Have you experienced those places of darkness and suffering where God seems so far off? Like the cry of the Psalmist in Psalm 88,

14 O Lord, why do you cast my soul away?
Why do you hide your face from me?
15 Afflicted and close to death from my youth up,
I suffer your terrors; I am helpless.
16 Your wrath has swept over me;
your dreadful assaults destroy me.
17 They surround me like a flood all day long;
they close in on me together.
18 You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me;
my companions have become darkness. [2]

Jesus entered this very place of darkness and grief on the cross. In his death, he enters communion with a world that is sinking in despair. Just as the Spirit of Resurrection calls Christ to life, so he will not abandon us to the grave. Paul writes,

“…we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.” [3]

Never take lightly the prayers of God’s people for those in the depths of suffering.

In today’s passage from 2 Corinthians 4, Paul emphasizes that God not only sustains us in our weakness, but he leads us into communion with Christ and oddly enough, communion with one another. He pairs a series of ideas together:

Affliction and Glory
Death and Life
Wasting Away and Being Renewed
Transience and Eternal

We hold these contrasting ideas together in the place of suffering and death. We don’t lose heart during suffering and weakness because we know that God is trustworthy. Drawing from the creation story, Paul talks about how God can bring glory in the darkest places. He writes, “For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”[4]

He goes on to list some of the troubles:

“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So, death is at work in us, but life in you. [5]

Even as he has despaired to death, he knows that the life of Christ is working in the communities that Paul has bound his life to. We Protestants don’t always think deeply about how we are bound together with one another and how God’s grace may be working in us to bring life and strength to others through us. By His gift of grace, we are participating in the death and life of Christ.

In this communion of suffering and comfort, death and life, we are entering into the weight of glory. It is a joyful thing to follow Christ in this way of the cross, this way of resurrection. This looks nothing like the success of the world. It gives us no status or bragging rights before a world driven by accomplishments. But it does immerse us into the love of God in Christ and teaches that Christ went to the cross for the joy before. We follow Christ in weakness and frailty and the way of the cross for the joy set before us.

Thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.”

ISAIAH 57:15

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 2 Co 1:1–4.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ps 88:14–18.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 2 Co 1:9–11.

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 2 Co 4:6.

[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 2 Co 4:8–12.

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Disciples Eat Wheat on Sabbath, James Tissot (1886-1896)Pentecost +2
Rev. Doug Floyd
Deuteronomy 5:6-21, 2 Corinthians 4:1-12, Mark 2:23-28

Today we have the privilege of revisiting the 10 Words from the book of Deuteronomy. Our Gospel reading recounts the disciples plucking heads of grain in a grainfield on the Sabbath. These readings draw me to revisit the glory and wonder of Sabbath-keeping. Over fifteen years ago, I was drawn to meditate upon the 10 Words or Torah. It is so rich and speaks to our own lives. I ended up leading several retreats on Sabbath to clergy, other Christians, and even to businessmen.

There is so much worth reflecting upon in Torah and in the Sabbath, we can only touch the surface. If anyone is interested, we could do a day retreat on Torah and another one on Sabbath.

I will start by recommending Abraham Joshua Heschel’s book, The Sabbath. It is one of the most beautiful recollections of Sabbath observance I have ever read. This book gives us a sense of how Eastern European Jews lived into the rhythms of Judaism and how they translated it to American soil.

I’ll open with a memory of Heschel’s daughter Susannah about Sabbath-keeping. She writes the following:

“When my father raised his kiddush cup on Friday evenings, closed his eyes, and chanted the prayer sanctifying the wine, I always felt a rush of emotion. As he chanted with an old, sacred family melody, he blessed the wine and the Sabbath with his prayer, and I also felt he was blessing my life and that of everyone at the table. I treasured those moments.

Friday evenings in my home were the climax of the week, as they are for every religious Jewish family. My mother and I kindled the lights for the Sabbath, and all of a sudden I felt transformed, emotionally and even physically. After lighting the candles in the dining room, we would walk into the living room, which had windows overlooking the Hudson River, facing west, and we would marvel at the sunset that soon arrived.

The sense of peace that came upon us as we kindled the lights was created, in part, by the hectic tension of Fridays. Preparation for a holy day, my father often said, was as important as the day itself. During the busy mornings my mother shopped for groceries, and in the afternoons the atmosphere grew increasingly nervous as she cooked. My father came home from his office an hour or two before sunset to take care of his own preparations, and as the last minutes of the workweek came close, both of my parents were in the kitchen, frantically trying to remember what they might have forgotten to prepare—Had the kettle boiled? Was the blech covering the stove? Was the oven turned on? Then, suddenly, it was time: twenty minutes before sunset. Whatever hadn’t been finished in the kitchen we simply left behind as we lit the candles and blessed the arrival of the Sabbath. My father writes, “The Sabbath comes like a caress, wiping away fear, sorrow and somber memories.”[1]

The bond between humans and Sabbath is so deep that Heschel describes the Sabbath like a bride that has come to her people. People wear special clothes, eat special foods, and enjoy one another while giving thanks to God. He says that the days of the week were counted in relation to Sabbath: three days until Sabbath, two days until Sabbath, preparation day, Sabbath, day after Sabbath, two days after Sabbath, three days after Sabbath. Thus, all of life moves in light of Sabbath.

I understand how reading someone like Heschel can cause some people to become Sabbatarians. I have friends who attend the Messianic Synagogue in Knoxville. While some are converted Jews, others are Gentiles who fell in love with Jewish practices. I think it’s fine to practice Sabbath-keeping instead of worshipping on the Lord’s Day, but Scripture makes it abundantly clear that our day of worship is a personal conviction.

In Romans, Paul is writing to a community of Jews and Gentiles, he gives freedom for how we practice our faith. He writes, “One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.”[2] I’m going to return to Paul and the New Testament in a minute. First, let’s consider the command given in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5.

There are distinctions between the two commands. In Exodus 20:8-11 we read the following:

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. [3]

This command is given to the recently freed Hebrew slaves from Egypt. They are at Mt. Sinai. And the Lord tells them to “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” The rest of the command will explain what remembering and keeping it holy looks like. No work. No one in the household shall work: sons, daughters, servants, livestock, or even sojourners who are staying with the family. In other places, the people will be told not to gather manna on this day but will be given grace to gather extra manna on the day before.

While the other nine commands specifically focus on guarding relationships, this command focuses on time and space. Heschel calls the Sabbath, “a Sanctuary built in time.” It promises a day of rest to the family but also to the servants and animals. This is a day of Shalom, of peace and worship. It anticipates the Shalom, the peace and justice and glory that will eventually be restored to all creation.

This Exodus command is linked to the creation story. In verse 11, we hear, “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

It celebrates the Lord as Creator, but also emphasizes that on the seventh day, He was finished with His work and rested. Obviously, the Creator doesn’t need to rest, but He sets aside a day as holy, a day of rest, a day that points to completion. Now think about this in relation to the Hebrews at the bottom of Mt Sinai. They are just beginning a long journey to the Promised Land. They are commanded to rest every seven days and celebration completion. The Creator will lead them to a true and lasting place of rest.

The writer of Hebrews picks up on this theme in chapters three and four. He points out that the people failed to enter rest even after they entered the Promised Land. In chapter 4:8-10 we discover, “For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.” [4]

Throughout most of history, people have lived in the sixth day, the day of man’s labor. The seventh day is the rest of God, and the writer of Hebrews points out that this rest is found in Jesus Christ, our great high priest. Through Him we come boldly to the throne of mercy and grace.

We’ll return to this idea in just a moment. First let’s look at the Deuteronomy command.

12 “ ‘Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. 13 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 14 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. 15 You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. [5]

This time we are told to “observe the Sabbath and keep it holy.” We are to keep it, to guard it. Moses is telling the young generation the day before they enter the Promised Land. They must guard this day as set apart. It is a reminder of God’s faithfulness to His creation. Once again, the command includes rest for the entire household including servants and guests.

This younger generation must not forget their story. So Moses reminds them, “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.” [6]

This generation was born in the wilderness, but they are to remember the slavery in Egypt and God’s deliverance firsthand. This is our story too. For we were slaves in Egypt. Paul connects this story with the redemption story in Christ Jesus. In Romans 6, he talks about how in Christ we are no longer enslaved to sin. We are free in Christ Jesus. By the time we get to Romans 8, Paul says that “the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.”[7]

Just as the children of Israel are to remember their story as they observe Sabbath, we are to remember our story. We also were slaves: slaves to sin, but Christ has set us free, and now we truly can enter the rest of God in and through Christ Jesus and by the power of His Spirit.

The Exodus Sabbath command emphasizes God as Creator who leads His creation to completion or perfection. That is to Sabbath Rest. The Deuteronomy command emphasizes God as redeemer or sustainer of His creation. He creates us and He recreates after we have suffered the ravages of slavery to sin. He does not forsake but is leading us to perfection, to glorification, to Sabbath.

With this in mind, we realize it is not a certain Sabbath practice or Sabbath day that redeems us but Christ alone. And yet, Sabbath practices from people like Abraham Joshua Heschel can help us remember the goodness of God in the land of the living. This part is sometimes difficult for people.

We almost want a law that you must worship this way, on this day. But that is not the way of the Spirit. I am not in charge of your spiritual growth. I can pray for you. You can pray for me, but in the end, it is the Spirit of the Lord through Christ Jesus who will present us blameless before the Father. We trust in His goodness and grace alone.

As we develop practices that rehearse our Sabbath in Christ, here are a few things to keep in mind.

1. Sabbath is about resting in God’s faithfulness and remembering His promise to glorify us.
2. Sabbath touches the beginning of all things in creation and the end of all things as it points to God’s perfect shalom over all creation.
3. Sabbath practice moves out from person to community to the greater world around us.
4. Even as we celebrate God’s good creation, we celebrate human creation even though we realize that sin and brokenness can impact all things.

Our practices of rest and remembering touches all the members of our household and can take shape in all sorts of ways. Bob Goff tells of bringing Sabbath rejoicing to his whole neighborhood by starting a New Year’s Parade. Abraham Joshua Heschel spent time with friends and played music with friends. There is no limit to the beautiful ways God can use us to point to the glorious Sabbath rest for humanity and all creation. Music, art, feasting, laughter, story-telling, and much more can all play a role in bringing the hope of Christ to our weary souls and the weary souls of others.

My Messianic friends greet one another on Sabbath with the words, Shabbat Shalom. The peace of Sabbath. I leave you today with this blessing in Christ Jesus: Shabbat Shalom.

[1] Heschel, Abraham Joshua. The Sabbath (FSG Classics) (pp. 3-4). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ro 14:5.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ex 20:8–11.

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Heb 4:8–10.

[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Dt 5:12–15.

[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Dt 5:15.

[7] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ro 8:2.

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Peter Van Peborgh

Peter Van Peborgh
Easter 6 2024
Philippians 4:4-9

I’ve known Doug for a few years. And I foolishly contacted him and said, “Hey, I’m going to be in Knoxville and am coming to your church.” Next thing I know, he sent me a message saying, “Hey, can you preach?” So you’ve already got him to blame for what happens this morning. I’m from Church of England, and we have a lay ministers called lay readers who wear a blue stole normally. We’re not ordained in any way,but we’ve had some training, and we help me classes. We do all the non-sacramental stuff, basically. We even do funerals.

I send you I give you the greetings from my church. Our churches is in Somerset? The original Somerset, not the ones you’ve got scattered all over the USA. Your original Somerset? I was preaching over there last week. I told them about you and got their permission to give you their greetings. And you’ll be pleased to know that these nice English people send to their greetings to you. comes from the congregation from our minister. From everybody there. The church is called St. John’s.

I want to talk to you this morning, about something personal. I’ve been a Christian for more years than I’d like to remember. I’ve been a Christian since 1963. It wasn’t always very easy. I used to say the right things. I used to think the right things I used to do the right things. And somehow it wasn’t quite what I was what I thought it would be like; it certainly wasn’t whatever people told me shouldn’t be like.

After several decades, about 10 years ago, something happened. Something happened for no apparent reason. Prayer came alive for me. I found it much easier to pray since then. The passage I want to talk about today is what it says in Philippians. Please, this is not a method. This is not a formula. I’ve discovered two secrets, to having peace in my Christian life. Hopefully, maybe some of you will know this already. I believe the Lord wants me to talk about this morning. It’s to do with openness and with gratitude. The Old Testament the psalms are full of praise to the Lord. In the New Testament we are enjoined to confess: we confess that Jesus is Lord and we confess who we really are.

Confession. Do you find it easy to come to the Lord with absolutely everything in your life? However wonderful it is? Well, however wonderful you think it is, or however awful. The things you are truly, utterly and completely ashamed of.

Doubt is one of the secrets we confess to God. For goodness sake, He knows what you are like. He knows you better than yourself. So what are you hiding? Why are you hiding? Confession? Don’t forget if we confess our sins, He is for faithful and just to forgive us our sins. The first thing is complete openness with God, not just the good things. But also the things nobody knows apart from you. And him of course, be honest, honest.

The other element is gratitude.

You can be grateful for great things. We can be grateful for small things. You can be grateful for things that happen to you. My granddaughter graduated from East Tennessee State University yesterday. Thank you, God. This morning, I have a rather nice eggs on toast from Phillip. Thank you, God. There’s nothing too small. And there’s nothing too big to talk to God about. There’s nothing too irrelevant to talk to God about. There’s nothing that you can’t understand that is too big to talk to God about. So we are talking about taking those two together; we are talking about openness to God. The far end, the confession and, and the other, more joyful, perhaps end wishes to do with gratitude.

I found over the month ago that this really came together for me. As I was talking to my spiritual director a few a weeks ago, and it all fell into place. All these things I’ve talked about were happening. That’s when I suddenly realized that confession and gratitude, take them together in your life, lead to peace. Now we have peace with God because we belong to Him. He loves us more than we could possibly know. This is great to know of course, because He cares about us infinitely. And I found that because I have this openness to him. I’m still struggling with it at times, okay, I’m not perfect, just yet.

Confession and gratitude together bring about peace in my life. I’ve got some medical problems, and I don’t know where they’re going. I’ve been under the independent hands of our National Health Service. I’ve had some tests; I haven’t got the results yet. I could worry if I want to. We’re also trying to sell our house at the moment to move into a smaller house that we can better look after. And three, lots of people have said that they would come to look at our house. Every one of them cancelled before they turned up at all.

The point is, the point is, I’m at peace about the situation.

Our second reading struck me that it’s saying exactly what I’m trying to say. I don’t know why I’m even standing here. I mean, you heard me so a few minutes ago. The peace of the Lord in confession and gratitude. He speaks a peace where we realize all things are in his hands. I hope have said a few things that are possibly helpful, or at least some of you. Just take this away with you. Confession, plus gratitude equals peace. And if you can do put that into practice in your life, you will certainly find but I certainly found that peace descended.

I got more peace and love I used to have and the closer you get to God and confession in gratitude, the closer you will get to this peace. Amen.

Lord, help us to put into practice that you want us to be, to confess to you all things, and to be great grateful to you also for all things that you bring our way. Thank you that these things will lead to peace not only with you, but peace, in our own lives in the things that happened to us from day to day. Amen.

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Rev. Dr. Les Martin

Easter 5 2024
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
Acts 8:26–40, John 14:15-21

This Easter, we have been looking at the transformed understanding of the disciples brought about by the encounter with presence of and teaching of the risen Jesus in their midst. This transformation turns frightened followers into apostles, witnesses of Jesus who are sent out on mission and turn simple fishermen into authoritative teachers of the truth of the gospel. Today’s story from the Acts of the Apostles regarding the apostle Philip, and the Ethiopian eunuch reveals this transformation in their understanding, particularly in four areas. The missionary faith of Jesus, the Word of God and Holy Scripture, the effect of the preaching of the Word of God, and the prevenient, or common grace affected by the one who is making a people for Himself.

When it comes to Jesus’ faith, as opposed to what went before, Jesus’ intent is quite clear. He demonstrates it in his work in His earthly ministry, with the Samaritans, and with Gentiles. In John 10:16, he references the other sheep, not of this fold the house of Israel. Acts 1:8, shows us Jesus commissioning His apostles to be witnesses in Jerusalem, to the leadership establishment, secular and religious in Judea, and Samaria, to Jews, both Orthodox and heretical and to the farthest parts of the earth. That’s kind of you and me. And to put it plainly, he says in Matthew 28:19, go and make disciples of all nations, by teaching, and baptizing. This is key for understanding our story today.

Now, it’s notable when the apostles first heard this, they were reluctant to do it. They stayed in Jerusalem, kept the Temple observances, and often locked the doors. So much so that by Acts 8:1, we have the story of God permitting a great persecution in Jerusalem that has the effect of scattering the infant church all over the place. This allows the spreading of the faith. And it’s the context for our lesson in Acts today. But let’s back up a little because we are always reading through the lens of many years of history.

Who is this Ethiopian? Well, what can we surmise, he’s a eunuch. He’s been castrated. Probably a slave, although Near Eastern slaves often did better than what we think of as slavery. He’s been castrated so that he can serve in the court of the Queen. Modesty prevents me from explaining why that might be useful. He’s also a foreigner. He’s a black African, which means that he’s likely a proselyte, or an observer, an admirer of the Jewish faith, but he could never enter in. He could never be clean or fully accepted. Because he’s blemished by castration. He will never be good enough.

Who is he? Who do we have here? We have an important, likely wealthy court official. Why likely wealthy? He’s riding in a chariot, and he can afford a private scroll. He’s a foreigner who is a seeker. But in the eyes of the Judaism of the time he is perpetually unclean, and to the Jew, he will never be able to become one of us. Now, Judaism in general was not a missionary faith anyway, converts were rare and hard. The path was hard for them to succeed. In some ways, that’s still true. The best most could hope for back then was to kind of hang out in the court of the Gentiles that we’ve talked about, looking on from afar as God dealt graciously with his people. But what the apostles are learning is that the faith Jesus proclaims is different. Again and again, he draws on the prophetic text and says plainly himself, that his goal is to make one people out of all people fill up today acts accordingly.

It’s so important, he doesn’t see the Ethiopian’s defects. He sees his sincere, if limited, faith and interest. So that’s one thing that’s changed for the apostles. The second one’s a little harder to understand, I hope I do. Do justice by it. Jesus in Matthew 28 said, teach them all that I have commanded you. Well, what did Jesus teach? The Eunuch is studying Isaiah 53:7-8, about the one who is pierced. It’s Jewish scripture. It is the Jewish Bible. Philip at the invitation of the Eunuch, enlightens his understanding of this scripture, with the proclamation of the Word of God. And you may have missed what I just did there. So I’m going to say it again. Philip enlightens this scripture, with the proclamation of the Word of God. Boy, that sounds strange, doesn’t it? It would have to the Jews to see for the Jews, the Law and the Prophet, prophets were the Word of God in the story.

For us, there is a different interpretive lens. In effect, Jesus is the Word of God, who says that he is the key to understanding scripture. So we have two kinds of things working together, but also in a healthy tension. There is the received scripture, what we commonly call the Word of God. And then there is the Word of God, Jesus, who sets himself as the arbiter and interpreter of Scripture.

If you doubt me, remember, in Luke 24:27, the road to Emmaus story, it says that, beginning with Moses and the prophets, Jesus interpreted to them all things written about him in the Scripture. He kind of said, great guys, you got the Bible, but you’re sad, because you didn’t understand. Let’s start over. With the disciples in the upper room just later in the chapter, Luke 24:45, Scripture tells us, then he opened their minds so that they could understand the Scripture. And even with his enemies in John 5:39, in Jerusalem before the Jewish authorities, before the Jewish priests and leaders, he says, he says to them, listen to the clear dichotomy he’s setting out he says, you study the Scriptures, because you think that in them, you possess eternal life. And yet it is the same Scriptures that testify about Me. What we have here is relevant to us today depending on the tradition we’ve come from, it’s quite common to take this book and just assume that it’s self-evident. And that every part of the book, every kind of literature, everything contained is of equal value, that there is no golden thread as it were that winds through the story.

Well, that’s not what Jesus is saying. To the Jews of his time, and to us today. He says, “There is a central message to Scripture, there is a central interpretive lens through which believers need to make sense of this book, The Word of God, Jesus himself.” This is called christocentrism. The idea that Christ is the center of the story. Christ is the key to underserved understanding Scripture, the word of God, Jesus Christ interprets the words of God for His people, which means that if our interpretation of the Bible doesn’t consistently and clearly point to the person and work of Christ, we’re getting it wrong. All scripture testifies to me (Jesus).

This is what leads to historical theologian a guy named Dr. Jaroslav Pelikan, to say, “Follow the scripture of the law and prophets correctly understood and interpreted, was taken to be the word of God, it would be more accurate to say that scripture was to be understood and interpreted on the basis of the Word of God, which was then verified by Scripture. What does that mean? I come to this book, assuming that Jesus is the way to understand it. And lo and behold, what I find is throughout this book, the book tells me that Jesus is the way to understand it.”

The Word of God interpreting the words of God, our own Anglican Church Father, CS Lewis puts it a little more plainly, he says, “It is Christ Himself, not the Bible, who is the true Word of God. The Bible, read in the right spirit, and with the guidance of good teachers will bring us to him. Where we get crosswise sometimes is, we’ll get bogged down.”

I remember when I was a new Christian, I was thinking that one read a book from the front to the back. And I got into Leviticus, not a new Christian months old, and I thought I had somehow slipped from the Word of God into a public health document. Everything was about mildew. Everything was about mildew, and I was trying to find God and I didn’t know what he had to do with mildew. Later on, I figured that out. But the reality is, if you don’t come to the book, with an understanding that Jesus, as our colleague says, is the WAY the TRUTH and the LIFE, the book can be mystifying. For the Jews of the time, the book was the end of itself. And thus they focused on things like Leviticus.

Thus, the Ethiopian eunuch would never be good enough. But this transformed understanding of Scripture taught by Jesus enables Philip to work with the eunuch. He doesn’t see barriers he sees faith, he sees someone sincerely asking the answer to the eunuch question. To whom does this refer is Jesus? What’s the effect of Phillips work? Well, that gets to the second part of Matthew 28. Teach them all that I have commanded you, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Elsewhere in the book that the unit was reading in Isaiah 55:11, we hear that “My Word will not return to me empty, but will accomplish that for which I purposed it.” Again, who’s the word? Jesus. Jesus will not return to the Father empty, but will accomplish that for which he is purposed. And that’s what we see. Let’s look at verses 35 and 36. Real clearly, verse 35. So Philip started speaking, and beginning with this scripture, the one that eunuch was reading, proclaim to him the good news about Jesus.

In other words, he did the teaching, just like he was taught by Jesus. He started with Isaiah, but he went back through and follow the golden thread showed how all the prophecies, all the stories point to Jesus. He proclaimed the Word of God using the words of God. That’s what he did. What’s the effect? What is always the effect? Look at verse 36. There’s the effect. Now as they were going along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, “Look, there is water. What is to stop me from being baptized?” See how quick that is? See how quick that is? He’s gone from confusion to commitment. Just in the time it’s taken Philip to explain the thread to him. And he’s not just like, “Well, I don’t know, maybe I’ll weigh it. He’s like, look, there’s some water.” Remember, remember, it’s the desert. It’s probably not a lot of water. And I don’t know if I’d want to get in desert water if you’ve ever seen desert water, but he’s excited. He says, “Look, there’s water. What’s to prevent me from being baptized?” Nothing You see, when the living active Word of God Jesus is proclaimed. His power always results in repentance, conversion, and baptism. Whereas our sincere but sometimes misguided ways of evangelism decrying sin frightening people with hell, proclaiming God’s love as conditional, not unconditiona.l Well, that doesn’t always have the same good results does. We might say that that common phrase Jesus saves, could be expanded to say, preaching of Jesus saves. It is the instrument of formation. It’s such good news that it drives people to drown and rise to new life. And that’s what Philip does, because he knows that the revelation of Jesus is good news for all people, even Ethiopian eunuch.

The last transformed understanding I want to talk about is the understanding of God as the actor. In the whole story, the answer is Jesus. The disciples are seeing that God in Christ is going ahead of them. You may remember I said that on Easter, but he’s going ahead of them not to just prepare a place for them. He’s going ahead of them to build a people for Himself. theologically, this is known as prevenient grace or common grace. It’s the action of the Holy Spirit in a person’s life that precedes their conversion, and prepares them for it.

Prevenient grace, common grace means that the spirit was already active in the youth, the Ethiopian eunuch’s life, in the life of all those we care about. Because if you’re like me, as I talk about such things, you’re not thinking about the Ethiopian eunuch. We worry about people’s salvation. We worry about it generally. But especially we worry about the salvation of those we love. Problem is worry does very little, poor and ham-fisted evangelism based on intellectual arguments, fear and criticism? Well, that does even less.

The good news is Jesus is going ahead of us. I am an unlikely Christian. Some of you know some of my story. Many of you don’t. I’ll tell you, I was raised in a very dysfunctional family of origin. And I was raised outside the faith. My grandfather was a scientist and a materialist. As a result of that childhood, I was cynical, skeptical, traumatized, deeply, deeply wounded. I’d learned the lesson not just of that abuse, but also of our general society very well. With all due respects to the poem, I had learned what Invictus tries to proclaim that I am the master of my fate and the captain of my soul. And so friends and adults tried. I think I went to a lock-in at Central Baptist once. I was taken to a couple of evangelism events. I had more copies of Josh McDowell than I knew what to do. But it all fell on deaf ears. It all fell on deaf ears because I was so wounded. I was so hurt, because after all, if there was a God, would I have lived the life I’d already lived? The problem was these people were answering the questions they thought I had. They weren’t answering the questions. I did have.

But God. But God, God put me in the choral music program at the secular public high school of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where because it was a competitive choir, what did we sing? We sang the great church music of the ages. As a non-believer, I nonetheless can say, we sang, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” And those words wore on me.

My fascination with medieval studies opened me to a world where Faith wasn’t a problem where faith wasn’t people always threatening me or my family. But where faith was an integral part of a functioning society, where faith produced the most beautiful things in the world. And God put in that skeptical mind the love of truth, a willingness to find the truth, however unpalatable it was to my preconceived notions. And eventually, slowly, imperceptibly, my soul changed, so that when my conversion happened, it was easy. It was effortless. I was just ready.

The Ethiopian eunuch foreigner, high official, from a land outside Israel, castrated, unclean was an unlikely convert. But on that day, likely due to the prevenient grace of God for years before he was just ready. Philip was just lucky enough to be there. We’ve been looking at transformation, this Eastertide I want to suggest that the greatest transformation in the minds and hearts of the disciples was the deepened realization that Jesus actually is who he says he is, and actually does what he says he does.

That’s the real gift of the Holy Spirit, what he promises from our reading today. In the Gospel of John, if we go down just a few more verses, listen to what Jesus says in verses 25 and 26. He says about that spirit. I have spoken these things while staying with you. But the advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and will cause you to remember everything I said to you. The reality is the explosive growth of the church.

It’s not because John or James or Phillip or Peter were somehow evangelism masters, because they’ve gone to some conference and learn 10 effective tools, or that they handed out Josh McDowell books. The reality is that the secret to the explosive growth of the church is the Spirit helped them remember their Lord, and the Spirit helped them to understand him more. He does the same for us. That having been said, Listen again to the collect for today with new ears, “Almighty God, whom truly to know is everlasting life: Grant us so perfectly to know your Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life, that we may steadfastly follow his steps in the way that leads to eternal glory; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”

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Saint Barnabas by Anonimo LombardoEaster 4 2024
Rev. Doug Floyd
Acts 4:23-37

Peter and John have been released by the Sanhedrin. They return to the community of believers in Jerusalem. The whole community joins together in prayer, asking God for boldness in proclaiming the Gospel and God’s blessing to stretch out His hand to heal and reveal signs and wonders that glorify His name. As they are praying, the place where they are staying begins to shake, and they are all filled afresh with the power of the Holy Spirit.

The community experienced a depth of love and communion between one another, so much so that they were sharing their resources to make sure no one went without. Some people were selling lands and offering the proceeds to the apostles as a gift to the whole community.

This is when we meet Barnabas for the first time. His name is Joseph, but the apostles called him Barnabas, which means “son of encouragement.” He sold a field and gave the money to apostles for the community.

36 Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas (which means son of encouragement), a Levite, a native of Cyprus, 37 sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet. [1]**

We don’t really know anything about Barnabas before that. Some thought that he was part of the 72 that Jesus sent out. Others suggested that he was converted by the proclamation of the apostles in Jerusalem. The one thing we do know is that he had a reputation for encouraging people in the community, so they ended up calling him Barnabas.

What a blessing! People who encourage others are a gift from God. In our daily walk and in the challenges of life, we often face difficulties and trials. A timely word of encouragement can lift the spirit and renew the heart.

The next time we hear about Barnabas, Paul has shown up in Jerusalem. The disciples are afraid of him because they don’t believe he is really a disciple. Barnabas befriends him. He learns Paul’s story of conversion, and he tells it to the apostles. Then Paul was given freedom to come and go in the community. Because of Barnabas, Paul’s unique ministry is recognized by the Apostolic Fathers.

Barnabas next appears in our story when the disciples hear about a community of believers emerging in Antioch. Up to this point, the Good News has been proclaimed only among the Jews. Some of those at Antioch begin sharing the Good News to the Hellenists, and a great number of them believed and turned to the Lord. The disciples send Barnabas to Antioch to find out what is going on. In Acts 11:23-24 we read,

23 When [Barnabas] came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose, 24 for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord.[2]**

Barnabas goes in search of Paul and brings him to Antioch. For the next year, these two meet with the community and teach them in the way of the Lord. Now the prophet Agabus eventually comes to Antioch and declares that a famine is coming. The church decides to send money to the church at Jerusalem, and they send out Barnabas and Paul as official representatives from the church.

After Barnabas and Paul deliver the financial gift to the church at Jerusalem, they return to Antioch. They bring John Mark, Barnabas’ cousin,[3] back with them. Barnabas and Paul are sent out with John Mark to bring the Good News to the empire. John Mark assists them as they travel across the region of Cyprus. We read earlier in Acts 4 that this is the place where Barnabas is originally from.

As they travel and preach in the synagogues, we see the authority placed upon Paul. Soon this journey will be identified with Paul’s ministry. As we continue reading in Acts, Paul’s name will precede Barnabas. Paul and Barnabas will continue traveling but John Mark decides to return to Jerusalem.

Paul and Barnabas continue their mission, seeing miracles and experiencing persecution. A great many Gentiles comes to the faith, and Paul and Barnabas do not require circumcision. This causes a conflict with some who have traveled from Jerusalem to see Paul and Barnabas’s ministry. They eventually decide to return to Jerusalem and present their case to the elders of the church.

The elders do not require circumcision, but do ask the following:

abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well.[4]**

They send a letter and Judas and Silas to accompany Paul and Barnabas as they travel back to Antioch. After spending a little time in Antioch, Paul and Barnabas decide to take another missionary journey. But there is a conflict. Barnabas wants to take John Mark again, but Paul refuses. So, they take two different journeys. Barnabas and John Mark go one direction and Paul and Silas take a different route.

At this point, Barnabas drops out of the story in Acts. Unfortunately, some people have taken this to mean that Barnabas makes the wrong decision and as a result fades from the story. But this is a failure to consider the larger New Testament picture. It is true that Barnabas fades from the story. But the ministry of John Mark increases.

At the end of 2 Timothy, Paul sounds as though he is preparing to die. He writes,

6 For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. 7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8 Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.[5]**

He feels as though many have abandoned him. People have left him. Some have done him great harm. He even says that, “At my first defense no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me. May it not be charged against them!”[6]**

Luke alone remains by his side. Then he makes a request of Timothy. “Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry.” [7]**

The same Mark that Paul refused to travel with on the second missionary journey has become valuable to Paul in his hour of weakness. Then we discover that at the end of 1 Peter, he refers to Mark as his son. This is why the church has often considered the Gospel of Mark as giving voice to Peter because of the intimate bond between Peter and John Mark.

The Gospel of Mark is also considered the first Gospel and most Biblical scholars believe it influenced the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Now we come to the end of our story.

Barnabas fades from the New Testament, and it is not clear what happens to him. What we do know is that Barnabas was such great blessing at the church at Jerusalem, he was renamed “son of encouragement.” We also know that his authority and discernment was so recognized that the elders at Jerusalem send Barnabas to find out what is happening in Antioch. He guides this fledgling community and invites Paul to join.

Barnabas plays a key role in encouraging Paul’s ministry and inviting him into various opportunities to serve and teach. Later he will do the same thing with John Mark. Both Paul and John Mark will emerge as key leaders in the New Testament church.

In a culture of self-promotion that often overflows into the church, I think we need to celebrate Barnabas and pray for more Barnabases. It would seem to me that Barnabas models Paul’s exhortation in Philippians 2 to esteem others better than yourself and to have the same mind as Christ in serving and laying down your life for others.

Barnabas also gives us a living example of 1 Corinthians 12. There are a variety of gifts: some are exalted and some are hidden but all are valuable. This makes me think of our community. Everyone here has received grace gifts from the Lord to serve the body and reveal His lovingkindness. I celebrate each of your gifts and pray that the Holy Spirit might fill you and use you for His glory.

Now let us pray:

Grant, O God, that we may follow the example of your faithful servant Barnabas, who, seeking not his own renown but the well-being of your Church, gave generously of his life and substance for the relief of the poor, and went forth courageously in mission for the spread of the Gospel; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Collect for St, Barnabas, June 11)

O God the Holy Spirit, Sanctifier of the faithful: Sanctify this Congregation by your abiding presence. Bless those who minister in holy things. Enlighten the minds of your people more and more with the light of the everlasting Gospel. Bring erring souls to the knowledge of our Savior Jesus Christ; and those who are walking in the way of life, keep steadfast to the end. Give patience to the sick and afflicted, and renew them in body and soul. Guard those who are strong and prosperous from forgetting you. Increase in us your many gifts of grace, and make us all fruitful in good works. This we ask, O blessed Spirit, whom with the Father and the Son we worship and glorify, one God, world without end. Amen. (11, BCP 2019)

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ac 4:36–37.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ac 11:23–24.

[3] See Colossians 4:10.

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ac 15:29.

[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 2 Ti 4:6–8.

[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 2 Ti 4:16.

[7] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 2 Ti 4:11.

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Easter 3
Rev. Doug Floyd
1 John 1:1-2:2

During this Eastertide, I am reflecting on how the Apostles were changed after the Resurrection and after Pentecost in particular. The story begins on the day Jesus rises from the dead. We find the disciples behind a locked door, hiding in fear of the Jews.

Last week, our readings pointed to Peter. Jesus suddenly stands amid the trembling apostles. He is alive. He invites them to touch his hands and side. Jesus speaks the word of peace to his beloved friends. Then a few minutes later, He speaks the word of peace again.

Seven weeks later at Pentecost, these trembling men become bold witnesses of the Resurrected One in and through the power of the Spirit. In our first lesson today, Peter and John are called to address the Sanhedrin. The leaders are astonished that these common, uneducated men, speaking with such boldness and knowledge of Scripture.

Now I might point out, that Scripture refers to the Old Testament. At this point, there is no New Testament. The apostles defend the Resurrection of Jesus Christ by quoting the Old Testament Scriptures.

I think Biblical scholar Luke Timothy Johnson might help us to think about the New Testament. He suggests that the writers of the New Testament are bearing witness to a divine encounter with the Risen Christ. The Old Testament, on the other hand, is the story of Israel, God’s Covenant People.

As the apostles write letters, deliver sermons, and tell the Gospel story, they draw upon this story of God’s Covenant People to point to Jesus Christ who fulfills of the covenant story of Israel and has called them personally by His Spirit to bear witness to His Good News for Israel and eventually all the families of the earth.

Our first lesson takes us through the Acts of the Apostles. Throughout Eastertide we will read stories of the original Apostles, the praying community in Jerusalem, and the various leaders who will play a role in the emerging church.

Our second lesson throughout Eastertide will take us through the letter of first John where he is bearing witness to the risen Jesus Christ who has gathered this community and is calling this new family to love God and love one another. John is also responding to people who have left the community because they believe they’ve had a deeper spiritual revelation. They’ve broken fellowship with the community while also denying that Jesus is Lord. In their rejection of the Gospel, John refers to these people as antichrists.

He is instructing this community and exhorting them to continue in the way of fellowship with Jesus Christ and with the community of faith. What we discover in reading John’s Gospel, John’s letters, or the Revelation of Jesus Christ is that John gives us a mature vision of Jesus Christ and His relation with the Father. Just as Peter’s sermon last week revealed his confession of Jesus as the one who fulfills the prophecies of Scripture and who is leading all creation to restoration in God. This week, we encounter John proclaiming Jesus as one who physically resurrected and who is the eternal life of God made manifest.

In all his writing, John sees Jesus as a glorious Word who is in communion with the Father, through whom all things were created, and who stands as the ancient of days judging and guiding His church into all life.

With this in mind, let’s look at what we read in 1 John 1. John opens his letter with a description of Jesus Christ and His relation to John and the apostles. He writes,

1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— 2 the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— 3 that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. [1]

Jesus makes the very word of life manifest in the physical world. John says we have seen, we have touched, we have heard, and now we proclaim. Jesus who lives in communion with the Father was made manifest to the apostles. He became a human and dwelt among them. This is not to say that the apostles understood what was happening. They knew Jesus was sent from God, but the Gospels make clear that they consistently misunderstood who Christ was or what he meant. They are still misunderstanding who he is when they encounter him after His resurrection.

But then by Pentecost, they are filled with the Spirit, are clearly transformed, and bearing witness to Jesus Christ. Notice what John does in these opening verses. He emphasizes that this word of life was with the Father. This is similar to the opening of the Gospel of John.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God.[2]

Then also notice how John connects this communion to all creation:

All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.[3]

The Father and the Son live in perfect communion. Out of this perfect communion, God creates a world that will bring Him glory and that will become our home. We are not simply over and above creation. We are part of creation. So we were created out of the loving communion between Father and Son.

Now we return to 1 John 1:3. John says, “that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” [4]

The church has done an excellent job and making known that in the cross of Christ, we are brought into communion with God. Even as Jesus has communion with the Father, He has made a way for us to enter the sacred communion between Father, Son, and Spirit.

In 1 John as well as in the Gospel of John, chapters 13-17, we see that this Good News extends to our relationships with others. The cross of Christ has removed the barrier that separates humans. In Ephesians, Paul emphasizes that the cross has removed the dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles. John will emphasize that the cross is root of all human relations.

Think about long-term relationships. Maybe marriage or long-time friends. Humans let down one another, We offend one another. We even betray one another. Years ago, I read an essay by Thomas Merton where he talked about the difficulty, we have in sustaining long-term relationship. He encouraged Christians to commit themselves to cultivating long-term relationships where they could begin to discover the meaning of commands like love one another as I have loved you.

I would suggest that what often happens in American Christianity is that people commit to building to friendships and churches for short spurts of time. Think of a hundred-yard dash. I fear Christians thought they were running a hundred-yard dash when in fact they were running a marathon.

John is writing his letter to a community that has suffered from people with short-term commitments. They stayed for a while until something more exciting came along. They turned from the true faith and even tried to persuade others to leave.

John says that if our faith does not take root in loving one another, it is not real faith. Here is a quote from 1 John 2:9-11.

9 Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. 10 Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. 11 But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes. [5]

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is calling us to a lived reality of loving one another. Think of it this way. We are living on mission in this culture. Think of yourselves as missionaries. How will this culture know we are on mission from God? In the Gospel of John, we read,

By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” [6]

Consider yourselves as missionaries in this culture who are proclaiming the reality of God by living in faithful love to one another. This means forgiveness, patience, growing in grace and truth. We can only do this by the power of the Spirit. We are growing up into Christ. At the same time, we are learning the reality of living in faithful love toward the people around by serving, giving, and even considering others better than ourselves.

This is not an invitation to be abused by other but to love faithfully and fully.

John is a living model of Spirit-filled love that transforms us and the world around us. Let us pray that we might also grow up into the reality of faithful lover. John records Jesus prayer in the Gospel of John chapter 17. Listen to this excerpt.

22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. 24 Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” [7]

May the words of Jesus prayer become a lived reality in our lives.

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Jn 1:1–3.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 1:1–2.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 1:3.

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Jn 1:3.

[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Jn 2:9–11.

[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 13:35.

[7] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 17:22–26.

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Easter 2, 2024
Rev. Doug Floyd
Acts 3:12, 13-15,17-26; John 20:19-31

The disciples are huddled behind a locked door for fear of the Jews. Suddenly Jesus stands in their midst, saying “Peace be with you.” He tells these frail and fearful disciples that He is sending them out. They are His witnesses.

Jump ahead seven weeks and these same frail and fearful disciples are empowered by the Holy Spirit. As we watch and hear them address the crowds, we behold Spirit of the Risen Christ speaking and moving through them.

While Luke is telling the story of these disciples in Acts of the Apostles, he is also helping us to realize that the earliest Gospels are not Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They are not even the epistles of Paul. The earliest Gospels are the spoken by the disciples under the power of the Spirit.

When they refer to the Scriptures, they are referring to the Old Testament. If we look at Peter’s sermon today, we see certain patterns. He begins with an event. Peter and John encounter a man begging at the Beautiful Gate as people went in the temple. The man asks Peter and John for alms.

John tells the man, “Look at us!” Peter says, “I don’t have any silver or gold but I’ll give you what I have. In the name of Jesus Christ, stand up and walk.” Immediately the man gets up and starts walking and leaping and praising God.

The crowds sees this miracle and presses in around Peter and John. Peter stands up and interprets this event in light of the Old Testament. He will connect the miracle, with the Old Testament and show how all this points to Christ and especially to the culmination of all things in Christ.

Peter explains that this man was not healed due to Peter and John but in and through Jesus Christ. As he does this, he connects Israel’s history to Jesus. He says, “The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release him. 14 But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, 15 and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead.”[1]

Just weeks before, Peter was huddled in a locked room in fear of the Jews. Now Peter is emboldened by the Spirit of the Lord and he confronts those Jews who handed Jesus over to Pilate and demanded His crucifixion.

Then Peter’s sermon takes a turn. He tells the very people who were guilty in turning against Christ that they acted in a way that fulfilled ancient prophecies. “But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled.”[2]

Peter invites the people to repent. He says, “Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, 20 that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, 21 whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.”[3]

This dense paragraph points to ancient prophecies while pointing ahead to the promise of restoration in Christ. Specifically, Peter points back to Moses but it is clear he is drawing upon Abraham, David, and most likely Isaiah.

The Lord blesses Abraham and tells him, “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”[4] This promise points to a blessing that will extend to all families. It is a promise of restoration to the nations who have been corrupted by sin and death.

Moses speaks of another prophet who is to come. This prophet is Jesus. But now the Spirit of Christ is speaking through the disciples. The kingdom is extending through God’s witnesses.

Let’s go back to Peter’s statement: “Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, 20 that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, 21 whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.”

Peter speaks of restoring all things. I’ve noticed that many contemporary commentators either skip over this phrase all together or focusing primarily upon the Jews and Gentiles brought together as one new man in Christ.

Origen links this verse with Zephaniah’s prophecies. This passage emphasizes both God’s coming judgment and raising up a people holy unto the Lord. Zephaniah says,

8 “Therefore wait for me,” declares the Lord, “for the day when I rise up to seize the prey. For my decision is to gather nations, to assemble kingdoms, to pour out upon them my indignation, all my burning anger; for in the fire of my jealousy all the earth shall be consumed. [5]

After this purifying judgment, the Lord will raise up a people holy unto Him.

“For at that time I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, that all of them may call upon the name of the Lord and serve him with one accord. [6]

This cosmic vision of Christ comes through in the sermons of the Apostles and the writings of Paul. I fact, the most quote passage from the Old Testament in the New Testament is Psalm 110.

1 The Lord says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” 2 The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies! [7]

Paul uses this text to emphasize the cosmic rule of Christ over all things even death. He writes,

24 Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27 For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.” But when it says, “all things are put in subjection,” it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him. 28 When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all. [8]

This kind of thinking will come to dominate the way the early church understands Christ. Just think, seven weeks earlier the disciples are huddling in fear. Now the Holy Spirit has come upon the disciples, and they are getting a glimpse of the magnitude of Christ’s rule.

In this season of Eastertide, we are facing the risen Christ. As we listen to these texts during Eastertide, I would pray we would begin to get a glimpse of the glory and power and wisdom of Christ. Like the disciples, I think we are subject to see the enemies of the faith as overwhelming. Some Christians are overcome with fear, overcome with anger, overcome with a sense of powerlessness.

With a renewed vision of our Lord and Christ, we discover that we can trust Him and rest in His absolute faithfulness.

Just as the early disciples were witnesses to the risen Lord, we are witnesses to Christ. The Spirit of God rests upon us and he can open our eyes to the beauty of the Lord. Even as we see the enemies of God in culture, we need not huddle in fear but we can live as joyful witnesses of Christ our Lord.

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ac 3:13–15.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ac 3:18.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ac 3:19–21.

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ge 12:3.

[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Zep 3:8.

[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Zep 3:9.

[7] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ps 110:1–2.

[8] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Co 15:24–28.

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Stations of the Resurrections No. 1 by Laura JamesEaster 2024
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
Mark 16:1-8

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

They were afraid.

It doesn’t sound like much of an Easter message. The Gospel we have today is the traditional reading for Easter in the old western lectionary. But honestly, it just doesn’t seem to have much of an Easter feel. Mark reports that the women at the tomb are alarmed, full of terror and bewilderment. And then they were afraid.

Despite the messenger’s announcement of good news, despite his attempted reassurance of them, that they have nothing to be afraid of the sight of the empty tomb does not fill them with joy, but rather fear. Why were they afraid? Some 2000 years later, it seems strange to us. So much so that this seems an awkward Gospel reading, for the celebration of the resurrection. But we need to remember that we have the benefit of hindsight that we know the story. And actually, that’s pretty good advice.

When thinking about the gospel narratives for almost the entire Easter season, we will see again and again the disciples expressing shock, disbelief, sadness, or as today, fear. For whereas we may see in the empty tomb, a sign of hope. The reality is all they saw at first was the absence of the body of their Lord. I mean, think about it. For most of Jesus’s followers, hope would have vanished somewhere between the end of the last supper, and his last breath on the cross. The thoughts of a great vindication, a last-minute miracle, the deliverance of their teacher and fit friend would have simply dissolved with that last breath. Nothing to do now, but to observe the Burial Rites and customs, pay final respects, and go on home, try to make a life all over again, crushed by the fact that Rome and the Sanhedrin and the priests had won.

The powerful always do, to go home and grieve this great rabbi whom they had hoped was so much more. And, to realize that all those hopes and dreams that things could be different for them, had died with him up on that hill. Because think about it, when you discover an empty tomb, I imagine in that frame of mind, your first response is probably not to proclaim a miracle. Rather, it is likely that you will be asking yourself, “Why?” This strange young man’s words notwithstanding, as Mary Magdalene alludes to in the Gospel of John Chapter 20. I think the first response of his followers would have been “Who took him,” “Which one of the various authorities involved has snatched Jesus body to prevent the development of a shrine, the cult of a martyr?” And even if they were inclined to believe there was a resurrection, they had seen several resurrections after all: the synagogue leader’s daughter, the widow of Nain sun and Jesus’ friend, Lazarus.

Even if there was a resurrection, the question would mean. Well, where is he? Why isn’t he here? Just what is going on? Again, the young messenger addresses this, and we’ll think about that in a bit. However, for those at that the tomb, I can’t imagine that anything he says, could matter nearly as much as the manifest lack of Jesus, either alive or dead. The other Gospel accounts address some of these questions. But Mark chooses to leave us today with fear, uncertainty, and despair, those things that remain in the empty tomb.

After the traumatic three days that the disciples have endured, this liturgical year we will have to wait until next week, to hear of Jesus in the flesh, to receive His peace, and to understand the mission he commits to his disciples. For now, we are left with the two Marys in those first moments at the tomb, seen it empty, seeing the absence of Jesus, and the absence of hope. While an empty grave might contain with some tremendous possibilities, if you’re an optimist, it can also just be empty. The mere fact of an empty tomb can fall flat.

Our modern culture both forever trying to explain away the miraculous and attempting to give us something more accessible fills this season with images of rebirth. The caterpillar becoming a butterfly, chicks coming out of eggs, prolific rabbits, flowers and trees coming into bloom. But those symbols are talking about something different: cycles of rebirth and renewal.

That’s not much help to dead Jesus, post Good Friday. And it won’t be much help to you or me when it comes our time to be lowered into the ground. I don’t know about you, but I don’t need caterpillars changing, sap rising in trees, or animals mating. I need Jesus to be who he said he was. I need him alive and active. And that is why the messenger’s words are so important. If the women at the tomb had been able to digest them amid their shock, the story might have turned out differently. He has risen, the messenger said, but they either didn’t hear it or couldn’t process it. But not only is he risen, he is on the move.

Theologian Stephen Paulson refers to him as the free-range Jesus, the actual message to be carried to the disciples, if you look closely, is not that Jesus is risen per se, but rather that he is going ahead of them into Galilee. Jesus isn’t dead, he is very much alive. And his absence is explained by the fact that he’s going ahead of his people yet again, even as he went to the Red Sea and in the Wilderness of Sin, to secure a future a promised land for them. In John 14:2, Jesus tells His disciples, I go to prepare a place for you. And I think it can be helpful to invite to view the entire ministry of Jesus and thus his resurrection.

Through this lens, I go to prepare a place for you. On the cross Jesus had accomplished atonement for our sins, there is literally and “at-one-ment” between God and man. But having effected that reconciliation, having affected that atonement does not end Jesus’ preparation of a place for us. He dies descends to hell and rises again. Which means that whatever future we have in store whatever our fate is, there is no place that you and I can go from here on out that Jesus hasn’t already been. He sends the Spirit to create a tabernacle of Word and Sacrament, a temporary shelter in this world for those who are drawn to Him in baptism, until such time as the fullness of the kingdom will come. And he doesn’t stop there.

Our first reading from Isaiah 25 has a different flavor to me. It is read at many prayerbook funerals as a hospice chaplain. When I sometimes think I now know it by heart, it tells of the day when the Lord will prepare high on a mountain the last best feast for all the peoples. He will gather rich food, aged wine. But more profoundly, it tells of a time when our reading says the covering. But that’s not good Greek. It tells of the time when the shroud is removed. It is clearly burial shroud.

The shroud that has plagued us since the garden will be destroyed. More precisely, it says that death will be eaten. This is how great God’s love for us is at the end of all things. While we are consuming a feast, we did not merit we will see a new that it is because of God’s loving action through Jesus consuming death for us. So Isaiah reminds us, He will remove all our disgrace. Whatever yours and mine may be, He will wipe away every last tear from our eyes. And we will feast in a life that knows no ending. That is the place that Jesus is ultimately preparing.

If you’re like me, however great your faith, there may be times when you are as uncertain and afraid as the women at the tomb. Or, like Peter, you may be someone who struggles at times, with a weak faith, far too mindful of your betrayals of the way Jesus would ask us to live of the way you want to live. At those times, the absence of Jesus can seem overwhelming. And that empty tomb may fall flat as a source of hope. Beloved, the message of Easter today and always is nothing so small, so insignificant, as a mere empty tomb. More than that, it is that Jesus is alive and is ever going ahead of us. He is still preparing to place, blazing a trail, and where he goes we necessarily follow for our lives are hidden in Christ. Notice that the messenger specifically asks that Peter get the message. What does that mean? It means that wherever we find ourselves in our lives, headstrong, confused, even to the point of betraying the Lord we love, we are included. We are in Him. He will in no way cast us out. There is always room for Peter, and for you. And for me.

The glorified Christ theologian Robert Jensen reminds us is our final future. He is alive. And so will we be feasting with all peoples on the glorious grace of God. It has been the way of human history that death swallows us up and we go into the tomb. Christ has swallowed up death. And so now Strangely, the tomb he is and ours becomes a womb we live a new life with death behind us living in Christ now. Do not be afraid!

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Rev. David Freels

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Christ washing the feet of the Apostes. Mosaics in the monastery of Hosios Loukas.Maundy Thursday – Descending and Ascending in Christ

Doug Floyd
John 13

God is kneeling.
before a man who will betray him to his enemies.
before men who will deny him and forsake him.

The High and Holy One descends to the misery of broken people with broken hearts and broken lives, who keep on breaking His glorious creation.

Jesus descends into the mess and messiness of this creation marred by sin. He comes from the Father in Heaven. Jesus lives and moves and speaks in participation with His Father by the power of the Spirit.

On the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus shines with a light that is brighter than the noonday sun. The very Son who shined with blinding light atop the mountain, descends below the Pharisees, the Priests, the Tax Collectors, the Samaritans, the lepers and even the slaves. He descends to the valley of the shadow of death.

Tonight Jesus is kneeling before Judas, Peter, James, John and a band of world-weary disciples. His heart is heavy with the coming night. Even in this dark moment, he pours out his love. The Gospel of John tells us,

“Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.”(John 13:1)

He loved them to the end.

“Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper and laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself.” (John 13:3)

In this act of removing his garments, taking towel, girding Himself and serving the disciples, Jesus anticipates the even of the coming day. He will be betrayed by Judas, denied by Peter and abandoned by the disciples. He will be stripped, beaten, and hung naked before a jeering world. From the cross, he will offer his life in service to the enemies of God.

He loved them to the end.

In some ways, Maundy Thursday is an extended meditation on a love that does not stop, does not falter, does not retreat when everything is stripped away. In fact, the stripping away, the abandonment, the absolute humiliation of Jesus only serves to reveal a love that cannot be quenched even by death. Jesus loves them to the end.

He actively loves them in words and deed. He calls the disciples to himself. Even as He washes their feet, he will clean their hearts in his work on the cross. He loves them and calls them friends.

Even as we consider the love of Jesus poured out upon his disciples, we remember the love of Jesus poured out upon a world in need. Jesus kneels into the very heartbreak of humanity. He kneels into the darkness of man turned and turning away from the brightness of God’s glory.

We need only read the newspaper or watch the evening news to behold the darkness of humanity turning away from God into the nothingness. We need only look in the mirror to behold a human who denies God and betrays other humans. Though we dress up nice and convince ourselves that we are pretty good, we are all stained with sin and in desperate need of redemption.

God descends in Jesus Christ to the person in the mirror: To you; To me. He comes down into the dark struggle of the human heart. He descends into the utter sinfulness of sin that leads death, even death on a cross. In his fall, he gathers the fallen. Hans Von Balthasar writes,

[Jesus] wanted to sink to low that in the future all falling would be a falling into him, and every streamlet of bitterness and despair would henceforth run down into his lowermost abyss.[1]

In his humiliation, we behold a glory that is greater than the light of a thousand shining suns.

As G.K. Chesterton once proclaimed,

“Glory to God in the Lowest”

“Outrushing the fall of man

Is the height of the fall of God.”[2]

Jesus descends into the posture of a servant, a slave and serves his servants. His humility and coming humiliation reveal the very shape of God’s life, the very shape of God’s love. Jesus is the express image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15). Even as Jesus kneels to wash the disciples feet, he is revealing the life of God.

The same Glorious Creator who spoke worlds into being lives in a communion of love between Father, Son and Spirit. The very shape of God’s life looks like that of a servant kneeling before His friends. The Father, Son and Spirit live in a never-ending reciprocation of love. This never-ending circle of love is so beyond the grasp of sinful man that we only begin to get a grasp of it in the Jesus’ life poured out on the cross.

When Jesus serves his disciples, he is revealing the never-ending servant love of God. Jesus told the disciples in Luke’s gospel, “It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. Truly I tell you, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them” (Luke 12:37). This act of serving is not momentary but is the very nature of a God who loves without restraint.

As we behold Jesus, we behold the faithfulness of a God gives without holding back, who pours His whole being into the act of love. In Christ, we come to realize that the very life of God is a life of never-ending gift. Long before we know the love of Christ, we have been overwhelmed with the gifts of God in Christ.

By His Spirit, Jesus will lead His disciples to know this gifting God and participate in His life. Peter, James, John and each of us, fall into His descending love. Christ lifts up his children, his friends into the love of God. In the ascending life of Christ, we ascend into a never-ending communion of faithful love.

As we offer our words, our hands, our bodies in service, our meager offering is transformed. Jesus lifts up the very stuff of humanity into the light of God’s glory. Jesus takes hold of bread and wine. Human hands made this bread and wine. He lifts it up in thanksgiving. Then he offers is back to his disciples as real food and real drink: the body of Christ and the blood of Christ.

The mystery of humanity’s ascension into glory is hidden the mystery of Christ descension into sin and death.

Tonight we are falling down before Christ and before one another. In the act of washing one another’s feet, we are rehearsing the love of God poured out in our midst. Even as we kneel before one another, we are ascending, being lifted into Christ, into the glory of God, in the hope of all things made whole.

This formal act of washing feet is but a rehearsal for the daily of acting kneeling in service before our brothers and sisters. We are learning to descend, to humble ourselves before one another and before the world in service. We are learning to live in the reality of the gifting God, by giving ourselves to God and one another in worship. We trust in the faithfulness of God to meet all our needs according to his riches in glory. As we descend, we are being lifted up into the love of God.

We descend and ascend in the hope of Christ who loved us to the end, who is faithful and sure, and who is leading us into a love that will never end.

Originally delivered at Apostles Anglican, April 17, 2014

[1] Hans Urs Von Balthasar. The Heart of the World. Ignatius Press, 1980 (p. 43).

[2] G.K. Chesterton. “Gloria in Profundis” from Ariel Poems. Faber and Faber, 1927.

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Palm Sunday
Rev. Doug Floyd
Mark 15:1-39

Today marks the beginning of Holy Week. The Gospel today is sort of an overture for the whole week. The lectionary gives us the option of reading a shorter reading that includes Mark 15:1-39. If we choose the longer reading, we begin in Mark 14 and continue through vs 47 of 15. This reading takes us from Jesus and the disciples to the betrayal to the trial before the chief priests and eventually to the cross.

It’s like a preview of our coming week. Today we combine two services. We started with the Triumphal Entry of Christ into Jerusalem. This is a joyous celebration. Sometimes people want to equate thus joyful crowd with the crowd that shouted “Crucify Him!” I’m not convinced it’s the same group of people. In the Gospels, Jesus is often embraced by the poor and marginalized. The people who usually challenge Jesus are trying to protect their own authority.

Every week when we gather for worship, we come as the poor and needy, the marginalized. We rejoice because Jesus has welcome us home.

Our second reading today is the passion reading, The powers that be are trying to eliminate the threat of Jesus to their own little kingdoms. Today’s Gospel ends with Jesus breathing out His last breath.

Tomorrow is Holy Monday. We remember the anointing of Jesus body for burial, Jesus meets with His friends Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. Mary pours out expensive oil upon the feet of Jesus. Judas instantly rebukes, saying the money for the oil could have been used to help the poor. The Gospel writer points out that Judas did not care for the poor but was used to helping himself to the money in the purse. The Gospel reading ends with a threat to Lazarus.

“The chief priests made plans to put Lazarus to death as well, 11 because on account of him many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus.” [1] The Holy Week readings are filled with threats to the disciples, the people, and Jesus.

There is a tension building from day to day. On Holy Tuesday, we have the option of two different readings. In the first reading, Jesus confronts the moneychangers. In the second reading, Jesus calls out in the midst of crowds gathered to worship.

The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. 36 While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.” [2]

While many did not believe, the text indicates that many off even the authorities believed in but were in fear of being kicked out of synagogue.

Some call Holy Wednesday, Spy Wednesday for it tells the story of Judas making a deal to betray Jesus.

On Maundy Thursday, the tension in the air is tangible. Yet, this is also one of the most tender moments in Scripture. We see tender love of Christ for his disciple, and we hear his “new commandment.” He kneels and washes their feet. While the weight of the world bears upon His shoulders, Jesus is pouring His life and love into the lives of the disciples. Jesus tells the disciples, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.”[3]

Maundy means commandment. The image of the washing of feet and loving one another as He has loved us combine in this event. Jesus reveals the way of discipleship looks like humbling ourselves before one another and sacrificially loving one another as we see in Philippians 2.

Good Friday brings us to the crucifixion. This is a dark day, and yet, it is a most holy day, and in that sense it is glorious and filled with hope. It truly is Good Friday.

Finally Holy Week comes to the silence of Holy Saturday with Christ in the tomb.

When we consider the overall week, it might be easy to overemphasize the morbidly of Christ’s suffering. Some movies of the life and death Christ tend to focus on this morbidly. But actually, according to the Gospels, this is a story of every increasing glory. Each day of the week is revealing to a greater degree humans grasping for power. True power comes from God alone: not from the chariot, the horse or even human ingenuity.

Holy Week reveals the power of God revealed in weakness. Hans Urs Von Balthasar captures this sense in his work, “The Heart of the World.” He writes, “No fighter is more divine than the one who can achieve victory through defeat. In the instant when he receives the deadly wound, his opponent falls to the ground, himself struck a final blow. For he strikes love and is thus himself struck by love. And by letting itself be struck, love proves what had to be proven: that it is indeed love. Once struck, the hate-filled opponent recognizes his boundaries and understands: behave as he pleases, nevertheless he is bounded on every side by a love that is great than he. Everything he may fling at love—insults, indifference, contempt, scornful derision, murderous silence, demonic slander—all of it can ever but prove love’s superiority; and the black the night, the more radiant does love shine.” (43-44)

The Lord welcomes us into this unspeakable love through Jesus Christ. Though we live in a world of power-grasping and self-promotion, we are invited into the way of Christ. We are loved by an unspeakable and ungraspable love. The way of the cross involves following Christ into the way of humility where we consider others better than ourselves. We humble ourselves before one another trusting that the Lord has welcomed us into His glorious love.

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 12:10–11.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 12:35–36.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 13:34.

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Rev. Dr. Les Martin

Lent 5 2024
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
John 12:20–36

For I know nothing among you but Christ Jesus and him crucified in the name of the living God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today is a preview of Passion Sunday, when lent begins its painful and dramatic conclusion. By focusing on the final trials, sufferings and acts of Jesus, it’s kind of a peek ahead into the days of Holy Week, and especially to the theological meaning underneath Good Friday. It’s a peek ahead into a very hard time. Let’s look at the context like I like to do our reading today.

Jesus has been anointed by Mary at the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus. The same Lazarus who was recently raised from the dead. He has made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, what we will observe next Sunday with the liturgy of Palm Sunday. There’s the crowds, the shouting, the spectacle, the Jews pulling their hair out and saying the world has gone after him. And whether it’s Matthew, Mark or Luke tell us the cleansing of the temple happened in Holy Week or not.

It is clear through the first few days of Holy Week that Jesus is deliberately in increasing conflict with the Jewish hierarchy and the temple leadership. No more vanishing. His criticisms are harsh, direct, clear, day after day. Then after that comes our story today. And right after that, the last supper, and right after that. And after that. Our story tucks in right there between Jesus temple fight, and the Jewish leaders fighting back big time, indeed dealing a deadly blow. So at first thought it seems out of place and big a bit odd. We’ve got all this star wars like action with conflict and battle and intrigue. And right in the middle of it is a story. Some Greeks showed up and asked if they can see Jesus doesn’t seem to fit at first blush. But let’s look at it deeper.

It’s likely in the courtyard of the Temple. Most likely in the courtyard of the Gentiles where the unbelievers those who were not member of the Covenant community hung out. These Greeks go to Philip wanting to see Jesus, and Jesus gives the strangest answer. He doesn’t say yes or no. He talks about wheat dying, and how it’s his hour and how his soul is troubled. It’s unclear to me whether or not the Greeks actually get to see Jesus. Although I suspect they do.

The Greek say, Sir, we would like to see Jesus. Now I have a question underneath that. What is it they were looking for? What were they looking for? Well, it depends on who these Greeks are. There are a few possibilities. They could be wealthy Greeks living in the area up by the sea. That’s why they went to Philip. He’s from Bethsaida. Maybe they’re wealthy Greeks who have come into town to do some shopping and watch the Jews do their thing. thing. And here’s this troublemaker. Well, that would be a nice selfie. Sir, we’d like to see Jesus, Jesus as tourist attraction. Or perhaps these Greeks are from one of the many schools of Greek philosophers, the Stoics, the cynics, they abounded at this time, and were throughout the Roman Empire. If they’re Greek philosophers, perhaps they’re looking for a lively debate about who God is, what the meaning of life is, and what is the virtuous way to live it. We’d like to see Jesus and test his thinking. But most likely, given the location, these Greeks are part of the group who are known as the god-fearers, the process lights. There are people who have adopted some of the Jewish practices, they have a belief in the Jewish God, but for perhaps cultural or perhaps just physically understandable reasons. They haven’t gone so far as circumcision. They haven’t joined the faith, but are deeply sympathetic to it. Those are the kinds of people who would be in the court of Gentiles. And so what they would be asking is, Who are you, Jesus of Nazareth, in relation to all of this, to this temple we’re standing in to Jerusalem itself to the Judaism we are attracted to? We would see you Jesus. And I asked, What do you mean?

What do you mean? What were they looking for? It’s hard for us to see Jesus today. One reason is we don’t see too well anymore. Thanks to the advent of screens and modernity, even before that, we are too busy, too distracted, to see. Even when we do get a glimpse of Jesus, if we’re honest, if we’re humble, even after years of following him of looking at him, there is so much that we don’t understand. And so being inquisitive and creative creatures, we’re tempted to fill in the blanks. Now, some of that filling in the blanks is okay, it’s born out of a desire to identify, to participate to understand. That’s what Fr Doug was getting at. Some of its okay like this, this beautiful image.

What do we see in this image of a Native American Jesus, it’s not syncretism could be used for that, perhaps. But it’s not syncretism it’s the Native American people looking at Jesus and looking at the fact that he’s not just God, but that he’s human. And he’s like, they’re saying, I’m that too. I see myself in him. Because we have a child and we are raging introverts, not many of you have been in our home. But those of you have would notice that I have a wall of crucifixes for much the same reason. What I’m fascinated by is how cultures incarnate themselves in the Incarnate Word. This one’s from Colombia. You see a lovely Latina or Latin American Jesus on the cross. Hope for the fact that if you are of Latin American descent, it’s your humanity hanging there. It’s not someone else’s. It’s when comes from the Mcoli region of Uganda. It’s one of my favorites because they just carved it out of a branch is the branch grew. And you can see a Jesus who has hope for the people of East Africa because they look like him. And he looks like them.

Fr Doug and I were talking it’s why neither of us can get too excited about people who say, “Oh, I don’t like about white blond Jesus. That’s not who he was.” No, it wasn’t who he was. But it’s who he is. Just like he’s Native American and Latino, and East African. Last time I checked, the old song was true red and yellow, black and white. All are precious in his sight. And so we fill in the blanks on this blank slate, that is Jesus. And some of it is good, like I suggested, but some of it can go too far.

When what we are looking for, is not so much a god we can identify with. But a God who is like us, a God who we can control a god made in our own image, we begin to distort his image. What are we looking for? Do we like Marx? See, and Jesus the first communist? Do we like Charles Sheldon? Find the original self-help guru. He’s the guy who wrote the book in his stats that popularized that phrase, W.W. J. D. Are we looking for someone who just wants to coach us a little further you can do it you can do it. Put on a put on a little bracelet. And heaven is yours. Or maybe we’re looking for a strong American capitalist man. Like the one that ad executive Bruce Barton wrote about in his book The man nobody knows. If you haven’t read it, it’s from the 20s. You ought to read it. It’s a trip that Jesus fits right in the old TV show madmen? We could go on. Are we looking for a wandering Jewish mystic like John Dominic Crossan did? Are we looking for an ancient Near Eastern social justice warrior? As so many progressives do? Are we looking for the first Aryan man like the Nazis? Are we looking for a Viking battle chief, as in the Old Norse point, the heel young, whatever we’re looking for the temptation is to take our desires and place them on Jesus.

Success, freedom from pain, affirmation of our own beliefs, victory of those who don’t believe like we do. Justice, retribution. You can find it in Jesus, if you want to. Whatever we are looking for, however, whatever creative or destructive games with who Jesus is, there is only one Jesus we can ultimately see, however, dimly and that is the Jesus who is there. And he wants to tell us who he is today. In this reading today, he references another reading where he talks in language much like he did to Nicodemus. In John three, in our reading today, he says when he is lifted up, he will draw the whole world to Himself. And back when he’s talking to Nicodemus, in John chapter three, he says, as the serpent was lifted up by Moses, so must the Son of Man be lifted up. It’s interesting, isn’t it? Talking to the Jewish Sanhedrin leader, the ultimate inside man, and talking to the Greek proselyte, in the court of the Gentiles, the ultimate outsiders. Jesus uses the virtue virtually the same language about this serpent that was lifted up.

You remember the story, don’t you? Don’t you? In Numbers 21 verses four through nine. The short version is this, Moses and the Israelites are out in the wilderness, and they have displeased God they are sinning. And so he sins what are called fiery serpents to bite them and these fiery serpents are poisonous. And as they’re biting the Israelites, the Israelites are falling ill and dying, and they’re crying out to Moses. They’re crying out to God. Moses says, or God says to Moses, here’s the solution, make a bronze serpent, the image of the fiery serpents and put it on a pole, and lift that pole up in the middle of the camp. And when someone gets bitten, rather than dying, if they will just look, if they will just look at that bronze serpent, they will be healed. And live. The serpent on the pole is the sign of the problem, the sign of the suffering, the sign of the death. And yet when raised up under God’s mighty power, the sign of the problem becomes the solution, the sign of the suffering becomes the healing, the sign of death, becomes life.

And twice not once, but twice to the Jews and to the Greeks. When Jesus is asked who he is, he says, Well, I’m that pole. I’m that pole that Moses raised up, that’s me. That’s me. I want to suggest this is Jesus chosing the interpretation of who he is when he is being asked by those who are seeking Him. He is God Himself lifted up, bearing our sins, bearing our death, bearing our alienation, and providing in his own flesh, our forgiveness, our reconciliation, our life.

The serpent lifted up, this is what he would have us see. When we look at him. What was our original problem or at least the instigator of it? The serpent. The ultimate consequences lifted up high, become the source of life for those who can see. Now this may be beyond our complete comprehension. But that’s okay because on the cross, God’s love has comprehended us brought us all together, even if we can’t comprehend it. As the great Swiss theologian Karl Barth reminds us here is a truth we cannot understand. We can only stand under this truth. Here is the Savior who came among us with loud cries and tears, a Messiah who although he was a son learned obedience through what He suffered.

John’s Gospel implies that the cross is not to be understood, it is simply to be seen. It is to be lifted up high, forced upon our myopic view of the world placarded before any procession, which attempts to move toward God under its own string. The point being, we can’t get to him. He came up for us. And in seeing that we are free. That’s the gift for us this passion, tide and Holy Week, then not to do anything. If you still have those old WWE J D bracelets, you can throw them away now. See, we’re not supposed to do anything all together other than to see what God has already done. In the words of next week’s liturgy, the Palm Sunday liturgy, our Lord invites us to enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts, whereby he has given us life and immortality.

Writing in the fourth century, the bishop of Alexandria Athanasia says, it is only on the cross, that a man dies, with his hands spread out. And so it was fitting for the Lord to bear this also. And to spread out his hands, that with the one he might draw the ancient people in with the other he might draw the Gentiles and unite both in himself. For this is what He himself said, signifying by what manner of death he was to ransom all. When I am lifted up, I will draw all unto me. The Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world reigns in glory high upon his throne making atonement for all our sin and defeating death in the promise in the in the process. This act will draw all people, all people to the foot of the cross to see just who Jesus is: Nicodemus from the Jews; the Greeks in our story today are the first fruits of that calling and in a sense, so are we. God is making a people for Himself.

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Lent 4, 2024
Rev. Doug Floyd
2 Chronicles 36:14–23, Psalm 122, Ephesians 2:4-10, John 6:1–15

During Lent, our readings have invited us to an extended reflection on the Temple. We started with a reflection on Noah and the Ark. The ark is a portable Tabernacle through the waters of the flood. Throughout history the church has been called “The ark of salvation.” Last week, Fr. Les invited us to consider the cleansing of the Temple. The moneychangers expanded into the court of the Gentiles, and as Fr. Les said, “There was no room for the alien, the stranger, the sojourner, to come as close as they could, to the action.” This week we are reminded of the destruction of the Temple at the end of the Kingdom of Israel.

It might help to pause of consider some aspects of the Temple throughout Scripture. First, we might remember that the Temple is the dwelling place of God with man. The earliest image is in the Garden of Eden. Genesis 2 tells the story of God planting a garden in the East. He put man in the garden and “and out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.”[1] Food and communion with God and humans are linked all through Scripture. Genesis 2:10 reads, “A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers.”[2] This tells us that the Garden of Eden is actually below the land of Eden. The river runs down to water the garden. From the garden the rivers splits into four rivers and flow down to four different lands. Now we know, the Eden is at the top of a mountain. A river flows east to the garden. The Garden of Eden is also above the earth on a mountain.

Adam and Eve dwell in unbroken communion with God. We see God creating and instructing Adam, creating Eve, and leading them into communion with one another and with God. Thus, the Garden of Eden is a place where heaven and earth are united in a communion of love. This harmony is broken when Adam and Eve turned from the Creator and toward the creature. Adam and Eve must leave this place and go down the mountain to the plains below.

This is important to know because the various Tabernacles and Temples will recreate something like the Garden of Eden, where heaven and earth meet. The Temple is built on a mountain, Mt. Zion. If we read the descriptions of the elements in the Tabernacle and Temple, it is in some sense a recreation of the Garden of Eden.

This kind of imagery appears in various forms throughout Scripture. Moses goes up on Mt. Sinai to meet with the Lord. Here’s another interesting detail: food and drink are involved in the worship of the Lord. Moses ascends with the 70 elders up the mountain. In Exodus 24, we read,

9 Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, 10 and they saw the God of Israel. There was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. 11 And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God and ate and drank. [3]

This pattern of eating and drinking as a part of worship is consistent with the sacrifices of the people, the festivals of Israel, and even at the Resurrection of Jesus. In Acts 10 we read,

They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, 40 but God raised him on the third day and made him to appear, 41 not to all the people but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.[4]

The Tabernacle and later the Temple become the central symbol of Israel’s relationship to God. They are the connecting point between heaven and earth. In our reading from 2 Chronicles today, we hear about judgment on the people and the destruction of the Temple. For the Jew, this represented the end of the heaven and earth. It is unthinkable. Utter abandonment by God. In Babylon, Daniel continues to face Jerusalem and pray three times a day. The Temple is gone, but he still faces where the Temple was.

Then a strange and unexpected event. Ezekiel sees a wheel within a wheel come to Babylon. He sees the glory of God come to the place of the captives. The Jews are under judgement, but God does not abandon them. Eventually Ezekiel sees God’s breath resurrect the nation that is dead and restore it.

In the Gospels, we see Jesus eating and drinking with the people. Turning water to wine at the wedding feast, and even eating with Zacchaeus. In this sacred fellowship, Zacchaeus is transformed. In today’s Gospel, Jesus transforms a limited amount of food into an abundant feast for over 5,000 people. This is an image of manna (bread of heaven) but it also makes us think of the festivals and the worship of God’s people. Jesus is now the bread of heaven and wherever He goes, there is abundance. This all points to the true restoration of the Temple: the New Heavens and Earth.

This living Temple made up of God’s people rooted and grounded in Christ appears all through Paul’s writings. In our Ephesians reading, Paul is giving us a vision of the church as the Body of Christ and as the Temple of God. At the end of Ephesians 2, he describes this new Temple,

19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.[5]

This is not a static description of the church. It names who we are now, but simultaneously it points to who we as a people are becoming. This Temple of God will be fully revealed in the culmination of all things in Christ Jesus. We are the Temple and we are becoming the Temple. As Markus Barth once said, “Christ is christing us christward.” We are growing up into Him.

With this in mind, we consider our reading today.

4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. [6]

He made us alive together: Jew and Gentile have become one new man. We return to Ephesians 2:13-16,

13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15 by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.[7]

He has made us both one: Jew and Gentile. He has broken down in His flesh the dividing wall of hostility. The Temple separated Jew and Gentile. As Fr. Les pointed out last week, the court of the Gentiles was being crowded out by the sale of sacrifices. Jesus has removed the dividing wall between the races. Not only that, in the cross He has removed the veil that separated us from God. We are free to approach and partake of His unspeakable love. He is praying that both Jew and Gentile will know the heights and depths and width and breadth of God’s love.

14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. [8]

This communion of love is so important to Paul that he addresses it in one way of another in almost every letter. In Galatians, he rebukes Peter and the Judaizers for refusing table fellowship with the uncircumcised Gentiles. Why? Eating together is a sign of the kingdom come: communion with God and man.

In Galatians 3:28, he writes, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” [9]

In 1 Corinthians, he rebukes the rich for excluding the poor in the love feasts.

20 When you come together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat. 21 For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk. 22 What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not. [10]

Whether we are feasting on the body and blood of the Lord or simply eating and drinking together, we are acting out the sacred communion of God and man in Christ Jesus. This is a cause for great joy and call to great hospitality. We are called to welcome the outsider, the marginalized, the poor and the rich, male, and female.

We practice this image of the Temple, of the union of heaven and earth in Christ every week in worship. We also take this hospitality out this us into the greater community as emissaries of Christ Jesus our Lord.

This is great river that Ezekiel saw flowing out from the Temple. We see this same river in the Revelation.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.[11]

Lord have mercy on us and send us forth as your priests to a world in desperate need of healing grace.

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ge 2:9.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ge 2:10.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ex 24:9–11.

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ac 10:39–41.

[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 2:19–22.

[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 2:4–10.

[7] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 2:13–16.

[8] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 3:14–19.

[9] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ga 3:28.

[10] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Co 11:19–22.

[11] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Re 22:1–2.

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Christ driving the money-changers from the Temple
by Rembrandt (1626)Lent 3 2024
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
Exodus 20:1–21, Romans 7:12–25, John 2:13–22

I am determined to know nothing among you, but Christ Jesus and Him crucified in the name of the living God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We are back at the temple today. Just about one month after I preached about the temple on Candlemas. Just about one month after Jesus presentation as an infant. The lectionary now provides for us to see him as an adult. And he is not a silent character this time, one over whom words and prophecies are spoken. He is the actor here and he is angry. But it behooves us to ask, what exactly is Jesus doing? The most common answer, at least in modern exegesis is that he’s going after corrupt big business practices, the corruption of the temple hierarchy, and those selling in the temple. And there’s probably some truth to this.

If you read the prophets such as Jeremiah, the priesthood was thought to be financially corrupt. There is some evidence that exorbitant fees in the temple were being funneled to those who were fighting the Romans. Selling the sacrificial animals may have been driving unfair bargains, the exchange rates on the money may have been harsh. But then again, if you’ve been to the airport, that’s true even today.

The problem with that exegesis is that none of this activity is out of place in the temple, none of it. It needed to be there. Exodus 30 prescribes a sanctuary shekel for offerings, unique coinage. And if you’ve come from all over the diaspora to make your offering, you must go to the Casa de combo and change your money. And certainly, they made a profit doing it. Leviticus 1:3 details the various animals that need to be offered. And if you’re sailing from Carthage, you’re not going to bring your sheep with you. You’re going to buy one at the temple. So we might surmise that although corruption no doubt existed, and it should be decried, it would not in and of itself be a reason to destroy the whole system? Not when the law itself was responsible for the creation of this system.

I ask again, what exactly is Jesus doing? Well, he’s not just having a fit. Just like with the cursing of the fig tree, we can’t just make the side comment: Well, Jesus is human; He was having a bad day; He’d gotten in a fight with Peter and man; he let him have it. As Nicholas Perrin, the president of Trinity International University reminds us surely when Jesus cleansed the temple, he had something in mind: something particular not occasional or random. What exactly was Jesus doing? The Church Father Origen, the biblical scholar and theologian from the early third century, goes so far as to say that the cleansing of the temple is the most significant Christological revelation in all of Scripture.

Now, let me put that in English, and you’ll see what a statement that is. He says that in all the Scripture if you really want to understand Jesus as the Christ, the most significant story to look at is the cleansing of the temple. An odd assertion it may seem, but I want to suggest that Origen is correct. That what we see today is not primarily an attacking of shady business dealings. It’s an eschatological epiphany. Again, English, it’s a revelation of the way things are supposed to be a multi-layered picture of Christ’s person and work. Because I mean, think about this act. Again, it can’t just be a flash of temper, it’s premeditated. Jesus walks in, not with a retinue of armed guards, not with the companies of people he put into groups when he fed the 5000. He wasn’t forming an army to overthrow this place. No, he walks in and sees the tempo as he would have seen it every time he went all those years. And today, he does something different, no weapon at hand, he gathers up some chords, and starts making a whip. Again, that takes some time. There is premeditation. There is clarity of purpose.

He’s making a whip to clear out all the sheep and oxen. Just angry. He had time to cool down. And he does it with a strange authority. So much so that it will lead people to wonder. I mean, he’s not a priest. He’s not a member of the Jerusalem hierarchy. He’s an itinerant preacher from the sticks of Galilee. It troubles them so much that in verse 18, we have to get beyond the biblical language, the biblical language, has the Jews say, what fine, can you show us? What they’re really saying is who do you think you are? You see, Jesus is doing something unexpected. For a Jew showing up at the temple. He’s running around doing all this stuff like he owns the place. That’s because he is the place.

As verses 19 to 22 allude to today, the only temple that matters in Jerusalem, that day is the temple that is his body. blink and you’ll miss it, but everything’s changing. Christ is the fulfillment of what the temple has been. He is the temple. Christ is the fulfillment of the sacrificial system. He is the sacrifice. Christ is the fulfillment of the law. By his fulfilling of it, he has overcome the separation between God and man. He is the temple. He is the sacrifice. He is the priest. In Christ, we now see what a temple was always supposed to be. It’s what temples are today, we see the place of atoning sacrifice that restores a broken fellowship between God and man. You remember how the story goes, don’t you? Once upon a time, our fellowship was so unhindered that we would walk with God and the cool of the evening in the garden. And you know what happened, don’t you? And ever since then, the story is consistently one of God reaching out. And man pushing away. Even Exodus 20 today. Lovely story, isn’t it, we get the commandments. The commandments are good, but they’re not the most interesting part of the story. To me today. Moses comes down with the commandments, commandments that God cared about so much. The rabbinic tradition says they are what God himself wrote with his finger. Moses added the rest. He comes down with this new and better way to live and that the Israelite people say, Yeah, that’s great. Just don’t let him get near us. We’re very happy if you want to go up the map. out and into that darkness and fog and lightning and the trumpets. That’s great Moses, but don’t let him come near us.

That was the point all along, that he would come near us. Again and again God has sought out his people and his people have run to items, to strange practices, to foreign nations, to get away from the God who loves them. Why? Well confronted with the majesty of this God, who nonetheless loves us, most of us are more drawn to the pyrotechnics and our fear and nakedness bubbles up. It’s like when Les walks into a dinner and realizes he’s underdressed, he got the restaurant wrong, he got the dress code wrong. No one may care. It may be a room full of gracious people, but I cannot see that grace. I can only see my tennis shoes where dress shoes should be. From the time that Adam was crouching behind the leaves.

And God said where are you? Funny question that he knew exactly where he was followed by what have you done? He knew exactly what he did did. Ever since that time, we’ve been hiding in our nakedness in fear thinking somehow, we can get far away from God. Paul highlights the struggle today in our Romans lesson. It’s familiar to you. I know the good that I want to do and I don’t do it. And the things that I don’t want to do, those are the very things I do and there is no health in me. What is someone going to do? Who feels that way they’re going to cry out who can deliver me look around, see no one and hit for the bushes. Consider the temple the place that restores fellowship between God and man. Look at the architecture there are outside courtyards, one for the Gentiles, one for the Jews. There’s an inner courtyard, there’s a holy place behind the curtain, there’s a Holy of Holies all this is built at God’s request as a condensation to the fact consenting and love to us that we don’t want to get to near God, layer upon layer upon layer. The Wizard of Oz said, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” When dealing with God, we say don’t worry, I’d rather not. You stay there. I’ll stay here. Look at the priesthood. It is nothing more than a continuation the sacrificial priesthood of the original Israelite desire to have someone else do it for us. You know, on Yom Kippur, when the high priest would go into the Holy of Holies, to offer sacrifice on behalf of the people, they tie a rope around his leg. They were worried that maybe he had committed some secret sin himself and God would have had to get him out of there somehow. And they sure weren’t going in. Look at the sacrifice. Sacrifice is the point of the temple right to make the union between God and His people restored? Well, as Hebrews tells us, the problem with the blood of animals is that it has to be repeated. It’s ineffectual again and again. We slaughter the animals because their blood cannot atone perfectly, or completely.

He is the place. Consider the architecture of the new temple no longer designed to keep us at a safe distance. The new temple is the human body. Emmanuel God with us just like us. Notice I said a human body. It is not male primarily. It is not Jewish primarily. There’s room for a boy from East Tennessee and a girl from Jos, Nigeria. In fact, if there was anything that seems to have annoyed Jesus with most of the selling practices is the expansion of the business. Archaeological studies have shown that over time, the need for the money changers and the need for the animals had caused an expansion into the court of the Gentiles. There was no room for the alien, the stranger, the sojourner, to come as close as they could, to the action.

What was the problem with that? Listen to Isaiah 56:6–8. As for foreigners, who become followers of the Lord who loved the name of the Lord and want to be His servants, I will bring them to my holy mountain, I will make them happy in the temple where the nations may pray. The Sovereign LORD says this and says, to those who are the dispersed of Israel, I will still gather them up. The temple is the place where all humanity can finally come home to God. Only now there’s not so much room for you and me, in the court of the Gentiles. But in the human body, the new temple of Jesus, we are all found, because he has found like us.

We have a priest now who chose to be priest like us, and for us, tempted as every way in every way as we are yet without sin, able to sympathize with our weakness. Consider the sacrifice, the market difference in the sacrifice. Let me just read it to you. This is Hebrews 10:5-14: “So when he Jesus came into the world, he said, sacrifice sacrifice and offering you did not desire listen to this, but a body, you prepared for me. Whole burnt offering and sin offerings you took no delight in. Then I said, Here I am, I have come it is written of Me in the scroll of the book, to do your will, oh God.” The author makes it plain for us.

When he says above sacrificing offerings and whole burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire these which are offered according to the law. Then he said, “Here I am, I have come to court come to do Your will listen carefully, friends, he does away with the first in order to establish the second by His Will we have been made holy through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Every priest stands day after day serving and offering the same sacrifices again and again, sacrifices that can never take away sins. But when this priest had offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, he sat down at the right hand of God, where he is now waiting until his enemies are made a footstool for his feet, For by one offering He has perfected for all time.

Those who are being made holy, that you and me that you and me a temple with a human body for architecture, a priest who no longer is a part to do the work we are not willing to do but who became us to do the work he could only do a sacrifice that is effectual. And once for all. If you paid any attention to my preaching since I came here, much less this sermon, you might come away with the assumption that I believe that Jesus is not just the answer to everything. But that Theologically speaking He is everything.

Let me clear up that assumption for you. It’s not an assumption. That’s what I believe. You see, there are two ways to live this life. Give you some Latin The first one is called in carvaka: it literally means being enabled. Hey for being so turned over, looking inward at ourselves that we can see a belly button in curveball to say curve down on ourselves alive turned inward towards ourselves. The other way to live is quorum Dale. A life lived, not facing inward but facing outward, so that we might see the presence of God. Let me tell you the problem of my life. Right now. snapshot of my life right now. Man, I’m worn out and I’m scared.

Kate’s getting ready to go back to work. I don’t know what I’m gonna do with the boy.

Do I put him in daycare? Do I stay home? I mean, this isn’t a abstract notion in the Martin household. Were really unsure of what to do. And this isn’t like a goldfish. I say I can’t put food in the bowl and come back a few hours later. What do I do? What do we do? And that’s on the end of 18 months where I’ve been working four jobs driving 40 miles a day. And trying to keep my head above water as a new father. Who’s afraid he’s gonna bear break the boy dealing with a wife who’s 5000 miles from home. I remember what that’s like. Nothing familiar. No one familiar. And so I’m worn out and I’m scared. That’s my life right now. You see the problem with what I just said? In carvaka, if I say when I asked to describe my life, I almost always talk about myself. I never talked about God. It’s the problem of live too isn’t that it’s the tendency toward in carvaka. We’re either excited with how we’re doing about our discipleship. Have you noticed my phylacteries? How long they are?

Or more likely, full of nakedness, failure and shame. Hiding from the presence of God in the bushes.

Christ is everything. Acts 17:28 says in Him, we live and move and have you ever been in him? I need to get my head out of my belly button. Jesus says these strange words this Christ who is everything. He says zeal for your house will consume me. They remember that. And then about four short weeks the church will again stand on the mountain of Golgotha at the foot of the cross as he is consumed, a living sacrifice for you for me. For all of us, who when lifted up drawers the whole world male and female Jew and Gentile sinners all to himself. Zeal for your house will consume me. His zeal to be the temple, the priest. The sacrifice means that today he dwells here among us, in fellowship with us what he wanted all along, to be consumed by our hearing, and by our eating, that we might dwell with Him in Him in His manifest presence. That’s exactly what Jesus was doing. When He cleansed the temple. It’s what he is doing and what he ever shall be doing world without end. Amen

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The Sacrifice of Isaac by RembrandtLent 2 2024
Rev. Doug Floyd
Genesis 22:1-14

Abraham is called to “Go Ye Forth.” Lech Lecha. Some rabbis call him Lech Lecha, “Go Ye Forth.” Lech Lecha appears twice in Scripture. In Genesis 12 when Abraham is called to “Go Ye forth,” leaving behind is country, his family and his father’s house. This phrase appears a second time is in Genesis 22, when Abraham is called to “Go Ye Forth” and sacrifice his son Isaac. His life is defined by this call.

Think about the first command in Genesis 12. “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.’” [1] He leaves behind all that is familiar. The life and the people he knows. He is not even given a clear destination. He is to go to the land that the Lord will show him.

Think about your own past: your family and the place and people of your childhood. These things help shape our identity. Abraham must leave behind all that is familiar and step out into the unknown. Some of us have left our homes behind for work or ministry. Fr. Les even left behind this country and learned a new culture when he moved to Nigeria. Abraham’s identity is shaped by following the call of God to “Go forth.” His life will come to be identified through trust in the invisible God as he walks toward the future. . Popular historian Thomas Cahill even suggested that the possibility of an open future comes from Abraham.

When the Lord calls him, He also gives Abraham a promise. “And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”[2]

This blessing will come through Abraham’s offspring, but Sarah is barren. This concern for a child will occupy a great part of Abraham’s story. In Genesis 15, he considers making his servant Eliezer his heir. The Lord rejects that solution and tells Abraham that this offspring will be Abraham’s very own son

In Genesis 16, Sarah urges Abraham to have a child with her servant Hagar. And he does. Ishmael will be blessed of the Lord but he is still not the child of promise. This child will come through Abraham and Sarah. He must wait upon the Lord.

In many ways, Abraham’s whole story can be characterized through waiting upon this child of promise. Abraham and Sarah must trust in the faithfulness of God. In the mystery of God’s Providence, the child finally comes. Long after Abraham and Sarah have grown old and beyond child-bearing age. Their long path of barrenness reveals the world where they live. It is a barren world where humans have lost faith and turned away from God. The Lord is moving and opening a new future in this world. He will raise up a people of redemption through Abraham and Sarah.

God in His goodness is faithful to His promise. Sarah conceives and gives birth to a son. His very name Isaac will reflect the joy and laughter that comes with the fulfillment of God’s promise. The Lord has been true to His Word.

Then is our reading today: the unthinkable. The Lord tells Abraham to “Go Ye Forth” and offer Isaac in sacrifice. The faithfulness of God to His Word has been revealed in the birth of Isaac. How can we grasp this command. This child must be offered back to God. At the beginning of His story, Abraham must leave his past behind. Now he is called to let go of the future. He must stand in naked trust before God.

Consider a parent’s love for their child. Oh the pain for a parent to see their child hurt in any way. Now Abraham is not only called to let go of this child but to sacrifice hm. This is unimaginable. Listen to the words of John Calvin, reflecting on God’s command:

For the great source of grief to him was not his own bereavement, not that he was commanded to slay his only heir, the hope of future memorial and of name, the glory and support of his family; but that, in the person of this son, the whole salvation of the world seemed to be extinguished and to perish. His contest, too, was not with his carnal passions, but, seeing that he wished to devote himself wholly to God, his very piety and religion filled him with distracting thoughts. For God, as if engaging in personal contest with him, requires the death of the boy, to whose person He himself had annexed the hope of eternal salvation. So that this latter command was, in a certain sense, the destruction of faith.[3]

How could the Lord give a command that goes against His very word of promise? How could Abraham obey? Philosophers and theologians have puzzled over this story for ages. Sore Kirkegaard called this, “The Teleological Suspension of the Ethical.” That’s a mouthful.

I think Scripture suggests that the long years of learning to trust in the faithfulness of God, had reshaped Abraham. The Lord is completely trustworthy. We know Abraham’s mindset because the writer of Hebrews tells us. In Hebrews 11:17-20 we read,

By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back. [4]

The angel stops Abraham before he can sacrifice Isaac. A ram was caught in the thicket and Abraham offered the ram instead. Isaac was given back his life. We’ve been given back our lives for God our Father made a way through His Son Jesus. He is the author and finisher of our faith. We rest completely in His sure and faithful love.

We live in a world of suffering and sorrow, of sin and death. We will face times when we do not understand why we’ve been thrust into such suffering, but we can rest in God’s sure and faithful word. As we read today in our second lesson:

31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? 33 Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.[5]**

Throughout our entire lives we are learning to trust in God’s absolute, unshakeable love. Bad things will happen in this life. We should not assume that God is trying to punish us. When I got Covid and lost my kidney, God in His grace revealed His deep in such a profound way, I could never assume He took away my kidney. The suffering immersed me more deeply into His love. When our house burned down, all I could think about was how good God had been to give us so many joyful years in that home.

I was able to give thanks because the grace of God sustained me on both these instances. There have been plenty of times in my life that I was angry and cried out to God. In fact, when they first discovered I had kidney disease in High School, I was so angry especially at the doctor. As it turns out, God worked through that disease to work in my life and teach me the way of His love.

The child’s prayer over meals speaks deeply to me of the nature of our relation to God.

God is great,
God is good,
Let us thank Him for our food.

God is great. His rule is absolute, and no power can thwart His purposes.

God is good. He is just, trustworthy, and completely loving toward His children.

Let us thank Him for our food. Our life is a continual response of thanksgiving to God.

This little prayer is a helpful prayer as we follow Christ into the way of the cross. As we learn to trust Him in all situations and give thanks for His abundant mercy ad grace.

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ge 12:1.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ge 12:1–3.

[3] John Calvin and John King, Commentary on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis, vol. 1 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 560.

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Heb 11:17–20.

[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ro 8:31–39.

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Christ in the Wilderness by Ivan Kramskoy (1872)Lent 1 2024
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
Mark 1:9-13

Did we in our own strength confide our striving would be losing.
Were not the right man on our side,
The man of God’s own choosing
Dost ask who that may be?
Christ Jesus, it is he and he must win the battle.

This year marks my 37th Lent since I became a practicing Christian. And if I’ve learned one thing in those 37 years, it’s that having a holy Lent can be really tricky. For those of you who are new to liturgical Christianity, it does well to remit for us to remember that Lent is that season of 40 days prior to Easter, in which we commemorate Jesus time in the wilderness, and his endurance of the temptations that came from Satan. Lent later came to be seen as a time of preparation of the believer for Easter, and for Christian life, via prayer discipling our flesh, almsgiving, simple living, and self-denial.

Now, I would say that in my lifetime, as a practicing Christian, it’s that second meaning of Lent that has always received more attention than the first. It’s been about the disciplines, the work, the struggle, specifically our struggle. In my life as a practicing Christian, I’d say sadly, Lent isn’t so much about Jesus as it is about me. I mean, let’s be honest, Lent has become new year’s resolutions for Christians. And like New Year’s resolutions, Lent has had two bad outcomes.

One is we fail. We give up. We feel bad about ourselves or worse. The second bad outcome is that we succeed. And when we succeed, we start feeling like I’m all that I’m holy, I’m righteous. I’ve paid Jesus back for saving me.

At least until I eventually slip. In my third year of college, I was doing pretty well on my Lenten devotions. They were very important to me back then. And without thinking about it, one Thursday afternoon, I walked into Baskin Robbins bought a milkshake and drank it right in the middle of my fast. I was worse off, than if I’d never tried the level of condemnation that I placed upon myself. When land is just New Year’s resolutions for Christians, whether we’re a success or a failure, the problem is the focus is on us on what we’re giving up. Or if we’re really spiritually elite on what we’re taking on, or on how we’re doing with our walk. And the problem with this is, it means that inevitably, by the end of the six weeks lift is not holy. It’s frustrating, and defeating.

Why, because his Father Robert Capon reminds us, grace and forgiveness is a gift. And we are forever trying to turn it into a deal. The problem is, we can’t keep up our end of the bargain. If our expectation about length is that it is about us and our disciplines and our performance. Today’s readings are surprising. And if like me, you already feel like you failed in your Lenten desert observance a mere four days after Ash Wednesday. Well, today’s readings can be surprisingly refreshing. Look at the temptation of Jesus in Mark, and his battle to resist it. It doesn’t even rate a whole story. Instead, we get only the briefest of mentions two sentences, framed on the one side by the more important affirmation of his identity as the beloved Son in whom God is well pleased. And on the other side, by the Ministry of proclamation that begins in verse four, the temptation, blink, and you’ll miss it.

In Genesis, today, we have the end of Noah’s story, the flood is over. And God promises that never again will the judgment of our wickedness utterly destroy us. And in first, Peter, we hear that it’s even better than that. For those of us in the ark of the church, the flood of God’s judgment is actually a flood of mercy, a flood of preserving baptismal grace. In short, what we hear today on the first Sunday of Lent, challenges us to see our Lenten observance, focus not so much on spiritual disciplines, but on matters of identity, on who Jesus is, and on who we are in Him.

Identity I think, is what Lent is really about. Many of you know that in my day job, I work with the dying at Methodist Medical Center in Oak Ridge. At any given point, I have 20 patients in some stage of passing away. It is a rare day, that I don’t say goodbye to at least one person. And it’s a gift, a hard gift. But such a gift. I wanted to share something I’ve become aware of in working with the dying: they never ask me for a new spiritual book to read. The dying never take up fasting, or journaling, or suddenly want to start a practice of contemplative prayer. What the dying want is to tell their story. And for those who have the courage to face it, after a visit or two, inevitably, their story is a sad one. It’s a story of loss of betrayal, the betrayal of others, and yes, their own betrayal. It’s a story of compromised principles and values. And the shame and guilt that goes with it. In short, most people even if they wouldn’t use the word when they’re dying, want to confess their sin.

Sometimes the Focus starts out on others. Well, my Great Aunt Tilly never loved me and I was never her favorite. And that just set me on a bad path. But eventually, slowly, inevitably, the story eventually becomes I did that. I did that. I did. And when they are finally done when the anguish and the pain and the shame has all come out when the tears have been shared and there is nothing more to be said. That’s when in the silence so often they finally make eye contact with me. And the unspoken question always seems to be, “Does God still accept me? Do you?” Why do I share this because we are dying to beloved, some with disease but all of us with the passage of time and the heavy, heavy weight of our sins.

Now let me be clear, there’s nothing wrong with spiritual practices per se. If some pattern of prayer or devotional reading or fasting helps you live your life better go for it. You wouldn’t join a gym. Unless you wanted to exercise. You wouldn’t go to Neyland Stadium without wearing some orange. Christianity is a way of life. But let me be clear, the fact that Christianity is a way of life does not mean that we take on spiritual disciplines for some kind of sin management program. Our problem is not that we need to manage our sins, we don’t need management, we are dying. We need resurrection. Good news is that’s the business Jesus is in. And so we can’t let our spiritual disciplines our performance distract us from our fundamental Lenten observance. As sinners saved by grace, spiritual practices are not the main thing. The main thing is the question of our identity for fallen and redeemed in the flesh, and in Christ.

The Orthodox theologian for Fredrica Matthews-Green reminds us that at the heart of repentance, repentance is this repentance is insight. John Calvin reminds us that true and solid wisdom consists almost entirely of two parts, knowledge of God, and knowledge of ourselves. What my dying patients demonstrate is what the Lenten liturgy is designed to invite us to. We came into church today, full of sin and brokenness, exhausted, full of shame and guilt. We are villains and victims simultaneously. And if we are willing, if we’re willing to feel the weight of sin and death in our very being, if we’re tired and sick and scared, if we’re given space to tell our story of grief and wickedness and pains caused and received, what we have the opportunity to do that, not in the narrative. But through confession. Looking up, we hear the words of absolution looking further still we see his body and his blood given for us, given in place of us. The answer to the question is clear. Does God still accept you? Yes. Unconditionally, yes. That is the promise of our baptismal identity. In the words of our Collect today, each one of us can find here, a God who is mighty to save a God who’s about the business of resurrection.

In her book, Impossible Creatures, children’s author Catherine Rundell, writes the following. “Some sentences have the power to change everything. Now there are the usual suspects. I love you. I hate you. I’m pregnant. I’m done. I, I regret to tell you that this country is at war. But the words with the greatest power to create both havoc and marvels are these. I need help.” Beloved, if you’re like me this morning, and you just can’t, you just can’t today, you just can’t this week, you just can’t this lifetime. If your best efforts are insufficient, and you sell them even give your best efforts. If you have the insight, to recognize that fundamentally and I say this in all love, fundamentally you yourself are your own greatest problem, your own greatest obstacle. Well, then I invite you in the name of the church, to the observance of a holy Lent in the confession of five honest words. She hits us. I need your help. And I invite you as well. To hear our prodigal embracing savior. Say what you most need to hear your sins are forgiven.

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Rev. Dr. Les Martin Pentecost +15Rev. Dr. Les MartinEzekiel 33:1-11, Romans 12:9-21, Matthew 18:15-20 In the name of the living God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen. Well, at one level we have quite a potpourri of readings today. It’s kind of hard to see how they tie together. We have this terrifying reading from Ezekiel, at least terrifying for Father Doug…

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Pentecost +14
Rev. Doug Floyd
Romans 12:1-8

Jesus calls us to take up our cross and follow Him. What does that look like? Every Easter, we hear stories of some people who take this literally and are crucified. In college, I thought I was called to be a martyr, but I was called to die daily.

Our second lesson offers some clarification on that question. We begin with Romans 12:1-2. This is one of the most quoted passages in Romans. “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” [1]

Paul begins with an appeal to the mercies of God. Up to this point in the letter, the focus has been on the mercies of God. We have been rescued from enslavement to sin and death by the mercies of God. We have been filled with the Spirit by the mercies of God. We are loved beyond measure by the mercies of God. Our faith is rooted in God’s mercy and grace from first to last.

As a people who have known and continue to know the mercies of God, Paul calls us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice to God. There are no more blood sacrifices. No more animals are offered to God as worship. We offer our bodies as worship. What does this mean? Paul is going to offer examples of this spiritual worship throughout the rest of the letter. First, he explains our mind must be renewed, so that we can discern the will of God.

So Romans 12 opens with two issues worship as a living sacrifice that involves our bodies and a renewed mind that can properly discern the will of God. This is a reversal of Romans 1:18-32. At the beginning of the letter to the Romans, Paul explains that humans have turned from worship of the Creator to worship created things. As a result, they dishonored their own bodies and engaged in all sorts of impure actions. Secondly, their mind became debased and embraced all sorts of perversion.

Now the mercy of God has rescued us from the way of death. Our bodies have been restored for proper worship and our minds are being renewed for proper thoughts. These two go hand in hand: the body and the mind. The body and mind offered to God overshadow the rest of the letter. Paul explores what it means use our bodies and our minds in response to the mercies of God.

• Right thinking and acting about myself
• Right thinking and acting about my fellow Christians
• Right thinking and acting about people who treat me wrong
• Right thinking and acting about government
• Right thinking and acting about holy living
• Right thinking and acting about worship

The mercies of God have so overwhelmed us with God’s goodness that we are changed and are changing. In every circumstance, we are a living sacrifice of praise unto God. Our thinking is changed and being changed from the patterns of the world to the patterns of the kingdom. Or as NT Wright says, we “think as age-to-come people rather than present-age people.” The kingdom of God is breaking in all around. God’s kingdom is rooted in selfless love: just as Jesus modelled in the cross.

We are learning how to pour out our lives in love in all circumstances. The age of selfishness is coming to an end. We begin with ourselves in relation to the body of Christ. Once I taste of the mercies of God, I can rest in God’s faithful love toward me. I don’t have to earn that love, perform for that love, compete for the love. I rest in God’s love.

As I rest in God’s love, I don’t have to worry about proving something to the people around me. I don’t need to think of myself more highly than I ought, but I am free to think about those around me. My gifts are not to affirm my ego, but to serve those around me in love. Paul says that “we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.”[2]

Our lives are bound together in Christ. When one member is suffering, we carry that suffering. When one member experiences a blessing in job or home, we all rejoice. Interceding for one another is an overflow of the divine love that moves within us and between us.

Within any community of faith, there are a variety of gifts. Paul says, “Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.” [3]

This is partly where this discerning of God’s will comes in. We ask, “Lord how can I serve those around me?” Sometimes it may mean offering a listening ear. Other times it may mean physically stack chairs. And still other times it may mean giving to meet a need. Our whole person is offered to one another in service even as it is a living sacrifice to God. Worship involves singing and praying in the service, but it also includes physically serving, financially contributing, exhorting one another, leading in some situations and showing mercy.

Paul has started a list for us, but this kind of outpoured life can take shape in all sorts of ways and at all sorts of times. Sometimes it will mean that our life as a living sacrifice is inconvenient. That’s okay. We may need more inconveniences. Sometimes the outpouring of love is extravagant. What a joy!

I encourage you to take time to think of your life as a living sacrifice in light of the rest of Romans. Our mind and body is being renewed and taking shape in and through the wonder of God’s faithful mercy and love.

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ro 12:1–2.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ro 12:5.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ro 12:6–8.

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Pentecost +13
Rev. Doug Floyd
Isaiah 51:1-8

In our Psalm today, the psalmist exclaims the faithfulness of God. He writes, “The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands.” [1] He declares God’s faithfulness and then prays on the basis of that faithfulness. We like the psalmist trust that God in His steadfast love will fulfill His purpose for our lives.

I want to look at Isaiah’s song this morning in light of God’s faithfulness to fulfill His purpose in our lives. Isaiah is singing to the exiles in Babylon. Specifically, he is singing to those who pursue righteousness and those who seek the Lord. When Babylon destroys Jerusalem and takes the Hebrews captive, the people are guilty of idolatry. Turning away from God to other gods. As well as oppressing the poor both financially and sexually. At the same time, there are some who will suffer judgment who have been earnestly seeking the Lord like Daniel and Ezekiel. In Babylon, Ezekiel preaches to the captives. While many Hebrews assimilate into the Babylonian culture, we know a community of Hebrews emerges who seeking the way of the Lord.

Some of these exiles will eventually return to Israel. Others will form a community of observant Hebrews in Babylon. We know this because they leave behind the Babylonian Talmud, a collection of writings on observing Torah. Though imperfect, they are pursuing the way of the Lord. Isaiah sings a word of encouragement to this community. He is encouraging them that God is faithful to preserve them, to restore Israel, and to bring His light to all peoples.

In verse 1, he uses a rather odd image. He says, “Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the Lord: look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug.” [2] The church has often read this passage as referring to Abraham and Sarah who are mentioned in the next verse. The Lord gave a promise to bless the offspring of Abraham and Sarah and through this offspring to bless all peoples.

Abraham and Sarah are the head spring of the entire people of Israel. This nation bears the promise of God even as the complete fulfillment of this promise will only be made known in Jesus Christ. In verse two Isaiah writes, “Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him, that I might bless him and multiply him.” [3]

If you remember the story of Abraham and Sarah, you’ll remember that they wait and wait and wait for the promise of a child. Sarah is barren. Eventually, God’s faithfulness is made manifest, and Sarah gives birth to Isaac. From this barren couple, God will raise up a nation. Now Isaiah offers this image to the faithful exiles. You may only be a few, but God can multiply you just as He made Abraham and Sarah fruitful.

The next verse captured my imagination. “For the Lord comforts Zion; he comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song.” [4] Think of the waste places. When Babylon destroys Jerusalem, they salt the land, killing the life in it. The once fruitful city becomes a wasteland. The waste place becomes a haunt of wild animals. The beauty is dried up and it becomes a dangerous place.

The Lord promises to restore Zion and to make her wilderness like Eden. Imagine Eden. A lush garden with streams, watering the land, thick with rich fruit-bearing tress, and animals at peace with humans. In this pastoral scene, joy and gladness echo even as the people lift up thanksgiving and singing. Not only will the Lord restore Israel, He will set His justice as a light to the peoples.

The wisdom of God will go forth from Zion to all the peoples. We know this promise is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. In verses 6, 7, 8, Isaiah says that this promise of restoration and salvation will be fully realized even though the earth wears out and the moth eats them up like a garment, and the worm will eat them like wool. What does this odd image mean? It most likely refers to the unjust rulers. They may wield great power now but they cannot prevent the promise of God from being realized. Their kingdoms and the power will fade, but the righteousness of God will only shine brighter and brighter.

I think of this passage in light of Psalm 110:1, The Lord says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” [5] Or Revelation 11:15, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.”[6] All powers will eventually bow before the last king of Israel, Jesus Christ.

At this point, I want to backtrack a little. We’ve seen the end point, all the kingdoms of man will eventually submit to the kingdom of God. But now let’s got back and consider the transforming of the wasteland into a place like Eden. We might think of this as the kingdom coming. In Isaiah 51:3 we read, “For the Lord comforts Zion; he comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song.”[7] This is a simile. He will make her wilderness like Eden. It is speaking of restoration. But it is also a tangible, physical promise.

In order for the captives to return to Israel, the land will have to be restored so that they can plant crops. Scripture records the return of the captives as well as the rebuilding of the temple and the rebuilding of the wall. People physically had to rebuild temple and rebuild the wall. At the same time, they would have physically needed to restore the land. Planting trees and crops would have been a part of the restoration process.

As I was thinking about this, I decided to look up reforestation of Israel. When the Jews began to return again to Israel at the start of the 20th century, they were returning once again to a wilderness. Over the last 100 hundred years, Israel has planted over 250,000,000 million trees. I even found Christian ministries that have been dedicated to replanting trees in Israel. There are now lush forests in a land that was once a wasteland, and there is a commitment to plant more trees in the years to come.

In order to plant trees, you need water. Simcha Blass, a Polish Jew who immigrated to Israel in the early 1930s. As a water engineer, Blass came up with a variety of solutions to help with Israel’s water challenges. He planned the first modern aqueduct system in the Jordan Valley. He helped found Israel’s national water company. He developed the modern drip irrigation system. His inventions and leadership played a key role in Israel’s reforestation as well as providing water for the millions of people.

Now I think of this in light of Isaiah 51:3. “For the Lord comforts Zion; he comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song.”[8] God created Eden. He created streams and trees and a garden and animals. Then he invited Adam to participate in this creation in various ways: naming the animals, tending the garden, and so on. So we can say on the one hand that God created Eden, and on the other hand, that Adam took care of Eden. Both are true.

Now we can say that God restored Israel like Eden. We can also say that humans restored Israel: both ancient Israel and modern Israel. God provided the means and created humans with a variety of interests that have taken shape in restoring the land. This might help us to better understand the phrase “personal relationship with the Lord.” He creates us as persons: humans made to live in relationship with creation, with other humans, and with God.

Thus our personal lives have a creational dimension, a social dimension and a religious dimension and all three are interrelated. We serve God in all three areas. While some ancient Hebrews served God by teaching the Law or Torah to the community, other people guarded gates, built structures, wrote songs, and yes planted trees. The kingdom of God is made manifest through the people that trust in the Lord and walk in His way.

Some of us teach Scripture, some of write books, some of us raise children, some of show hospitality, and all of us can plant trees. As I was reflecting on this, I thought about Clifton Strengths Finder. This test uses 34 four themes to identity our top five strengths. It is designed for teams, but what I like is the variety of strengths it identifies.

Some strengths may seem obvious such as Achiever: People who have a great deal of stamina and find great satisfaction in being productive. Or the Command theme: People who can take control of a situation and make decisions. But what about the Arranger: People who can organize how all resources should be arranged for maximum productivity. Or the Deliberative: These people take every decision very seriously and have an eye for potential obstacles. Sometime these people are seen as negative because they are always pointing out problems, and yet we need their insight. Paul realized that people would not always make room for various gifts, so he emphasizes the variety of gifts within a community in Romans 12 and I Corinthians 12. A community needs a wide range of gifts. Not all gifts look spiritual. And yet, we need people who plants trees and purify the water.

The kingdom of God is realized through a wide range of gifts that we haven’t even identified yet. But we trust in that God’s timing, these gifts will be revealed.

When William Blake looked at industrial London, he wrote the bleak poems known as the “Songs of Experience.” He considered the Industrial factories in London as Satanic Mills. And yet, he also saw glimpses of the Kingdom of God breaking through. As we look around at our culture, we may see a wilderness, a waste land, a hopeless place. Our God can turn this wasteland into Eden, and He can do it in and through us. So instead of bemoaning the state of things, let’s start planting trees.

Let me end with William Blake’s poem Jerusalem. Even as Blake thinks about England, let us think about America and God’s faithfulness to fulfill His purposes in us.

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon Englands mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land.

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ps 138:8.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Is 51:1.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Is 51:2.

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Is 51:3.

[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ps 110:1.

[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Re 11:15.

[7] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Is 51:3.

[8] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Is 51:3.

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Rev. Doug Floyd Pentecost +11Rev. Doug FloydMatthew 14:22-33 When Jesus hears that Herod has killed John the Baptist, he goes to a desolate place to pray. Soon the crowds learn where he is and they gather around. Jesus has great compassion on them and heals the sick and cares for the needy. Throughout the day, more and more people gather until there…

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Rev. Dr. Les Martin Transfiguration 2023Rev. Dr. Les MartinLuke 9:28–36 I have resolved to know nothing among you except Christ Jesus and him crucified in the name of the living God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. I’ll try and remember this. In Nigeria, I had to preach with a microphone all the time and I couldn’t stand it…

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Pentecost +9 – Musted Seed KingdomRev. Doug Floyd1 Kings 3:3-14, Matthew 13:31-33, 44-50 I was sitting in a church service during the offering daydreaming. Walking across a desert, I felt overcome with heat and was so thirsty! I told the Lord I needed something to drink and a canteen came down from the sky. I’m really thirsty Lord. Please help. Then suddenly…

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Pentecost +8 – United with ChristRev. Doug FloydRomans 8 In the summer before my Junior year in High School, I got a job working in construction for a friend of the family. He required a physical for the job, so I went to my doctor. My blood pressure was so high that they admitted me to the hospital that day. For the…

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Pentecost +7Rev. Doug FloydIsaiah 55 Our house is being rebuilt after the fire last year. The cement block is complete, and they’ve put the plumbing in the basement. We are anxiously waiting and watching for each step. We printed out Scriptures that friends and family sent us and prayed them over the build, and then dropped the into the cement block. As…

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Pentecost +6Rev. Dr. Les MartinZechariah 9:9–12, Psalm 145:1-13, Romans 7:21-8:6, Matthew 11:25-30 “I have resolved to know nothing among you except Christ Jesus and Him crucified.” In the name of the living God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon…

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Pentecost +5 – Disciples of ChristRev. Doug FloydMatthew 10:34-42 Ever since we celebrated Pentecost, our readings have been stirring us to reflect on the nature of discipleship or calling. We are called as a covenant community, but we also walk out our specific vocations in day-to-day life. We heard Fr. Les’s beautiful baptismal sermon to Isaiah. In it, we, were all challenged…

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Melody Fagan Pentecost +4 2023Melody FaganJeremiah 20:7-13, Psalm 69, Romans 5:15-19, Matthew 10:16-33 At first listen, it could be difficult to find hope, to take the courage needed to bear witness to the truth as Jeremiah and the disciples were explicitly charged to do and to spread the good news without fear. For myself, it is easier to focus on that bad…

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Rev. Doug Floyd Pentecost + 3 – The Call of GodRev. Doug FloydExodus 19:1-8, Psalm 100, Romans 5:1-11, Matthew 9:35-10:15 What does it mean to be called of God? I grew up around stories of being called by God. These were usually dramatic stories. In fact, I remember people saying, “He’s running from the call” about someone they knew was called of…

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Rev. Dr. Les Martin Baptism of Isaiah Leslie MartinRev. Dr. Les MartinEzekiel 36:24–28, Psalm 27, Romans 6:3–5, John 3:1-6 Dear Isaiah. Today is the day of your baptism. This letter was the sermon for the day, which means that it was read in the church, and this is as it should be because although in one sense your baptism today is for…

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Rev. Doug Floyd Pentecost 2023Rev. Doug FloydActs 2:1-11 Right before He ascends, Jesus tells the disciples, “Behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” (Luke 24:49). Power. We live in a world that trades in power, competes for power, goes to war for power. More…

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Rev. Dr. Les Martin

Ascension 2023
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
Luke 24:44–53

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

Amen.

Isaiah is five weeks of age and I already don’t know my son. For the first two weeks right after his birth and then when we were back in the hospital, yes, I knew almost everything about him. Because of the emergency we faced I was his sole caregiver. I could tell when he was about to cry, I could look in his little eyes and figure out what his needs were. Now at two weeks old your needs aren’t so great, so that wasn’t so tricky. But what was the delight at that time was this sense of knowing him, really knowing him. But I had to go back to work and in three short weeks he’s changed. His eyes are more in focus. He’s starting to coo and his behaviors, the cues I thought I had understood are all different and I’m missing it. And for all the talk about the bonds between parents and their children, for all the focus on mothers and their children, I’m struggling in vain to find discussions of what it’s like to be the dad who has to go back to work and no longer knows his son.

Darn it, they don’t tell you how hard it will be. Absence. After my grandma died I kept her sliding closet doors shut. She had been my champion growing up, my anchor in a very dysfunctional family, and when she left, there was a profound hole in my life. So for a long time, as long as I could, I kept her closet doors shut. Not because I was afraid to deal with her clothes, but you see my grandmother wore a very pungent and specific smelling lilac perfume and she wore a lot of it. And as long as I kept her closet doors shut when the day was too hard and the grief was too great and I just couldn’t take it anymore, I could open those doors and take a half step in and it was a little bit better. The reality that she was gone. Absence. Kate is longing for her mother to be here right now to enjoy her grandson, but above all, to help out. The consulate has not yet been helpful.

We send our children out into the world to live their lives and we confront the empty hours and the empty rooms, divorce, death, the constant moves in our society to find better employment. Absence. We understand absence, which is why we think we might understand what’s going on for the disciples today. Three years of ministry with Jesus. Think about all that we don’t have recorded. The hours spent walking, eating, talking, laughing, and then he died, horribly and painfully died. Absence. But then he was back and there were 40 days of renewed fellowship teaching wonder, gratitude and joy. Then comes the ascension. When Jesus goes to the Father, he was going away all over again. As Barbara Brown Taylor puts it, “It seems like the day we were left behind.” But seems is the key word here. It seems like the day we were left behind because there’s something about the ascension that is not like the absences so common in my life and in yours.

That’s evident by the end of our gospel reading today, where in verse 52 it says the disciples return to Jerusalem with great joy. I do not have great joy for the things I miss with my son. The grief is cooled, but after all these years, I do not have great joy that my grandmother is not here with me. We do not have great joy at the lack of rootedness in our lives. Absence simply does not produce great joy. But on the ascension, great joy there is because finally, ultimately the ascension is not about the manifest absence of Jesus. It’s better understood as a feast where we celebrate Jesus’ presence. Jesus is now present to the Father where having lived a life as a flesh and blood human he continues his priestly work on our behalf. The author of the book of Hebrews puts it this way.

In chapter four verses 14 to 16, very famous, you know the words. “Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, namely Jesus, the son of God, let us continue to hold on to our confession for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way just as we are yet without sin. So let us approach the throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Jesus is now present to the Father. What this means is that we do not have to lose our hope in trials and suffering because although we will all do our part, it’s not simply the case that Les will pray for you or St. Brendan’s will pray for you, but Christ himself, seated at the right hand of the Father prays for you.

What’s more He lived our kind of life, our flesh and blood kind of life, tempted in every way as we are. Now we don’t like to think about that. It follows on that he didn’t sin, thank God. But we don’t like to think about the fact that Jesus was tempted in every way as we are. But it’s a good thing because when we are going through the hard things in our lives, Jesus who is present to the Father knows and it’s not just an intellectual kind of knowing, it’s a flesh in blood, yeah, I’ve been there, done that kind of knowing. He knows how we have suffered. He knows what we are struggling with and so he knows just what kind of prayer to pray. You see he’s not absent from us. He’s present to the mercy seat for us. Presence, that’s not all. In the ascension of Jesus humanity, us, the very us-ness that makes us us is now present to God.

Flesh and blood, blood type, DNA, strands of hair, present to God, just as it was meant to be from the beginning in the garden. In the kingdom of heaven finally at long last, real humanity, our humanity sanctified in the risen and ascended body of Jesus walks with God again. The curse of the fall, that real separation and absence is no more. Saint Augustine puts it this way, “It’s not the word, meaning Jesus, in his divinity. It’s not the word that is improved, but the human race which has its origin in him and through him that is the one who receives improvement. Because of us Jesus ascends to glory.” Barbara Brown Taylor makes this point even more clear saying, “Jesus has not only brought God to us, he has also brought us to God.” And so it is not the case that Jesus is absent from us. Rather it is the case that we are now present to God.

In Jesus, we are back where we had always belonged. Where there is one now, he has led the way so that one day, on that last day, finally there will be many. Presence. Peeking ahead one week to Pentecost we can also say that Jesus is still present here with us but in a much more fulfilling way. Well remember that he had said to the disciples in John 16:7, “It is for your benefit that I go away.” Interesting. It was not to my benefit that my grandma went away. There’s no sense in which that was to my benefit. So how is it to our benefit that Jesus goes away? Well, again, I said we’re peeking ahead. The answer, they say the answer in church is always Jesus. In this case, the answer in church is the Holy Spirit. We have a problem with the Holy Spirit in our modern age. The closest understanding we have of the Holy Spirit, if we’re not theologically educated, I think comes from the work of George Lucas.

We turn the Holy Spirit into the force and the Holy Spirit ceases to be a he, a person. He becomes an it. He becomes kind of a warm tingly feeling or our sense of intuition, but that is not what the Holy Spirit is or what he is about. Remember what the New Testament says again and again. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of Jesus, the spirit of Emanuel. God with us, still with us, but in a new way. Luther put it this way, “This is the office and work of the Holy Spirit to reveal through the gospel what great and glorious things God has done for us through Christ, namely that he has redeemed us from sin, death, and the devil’s power that he has taken us into his grace and protection and that he has given himself utterly and entirely for us.”

Jesus said, when the spirit comes, he will remind you of everything I said and did. But there’s more. He’s not just a reminder. The Holy Spirit is the actualizing power of Christ present in the world now. What do I mean by that? The actualizing present power of Christ present in the world now. Well, I mean something really simple. During the years of his ministry, when Jesus was present in Jerusalem, he was not present in Bethany. When Jesus was present in Bethany, he was not present in Nazareth, having for a whole variety of reasons chosen to take human flesh upon himself. He was only one place at one time, but now through the spirit that we are waiting on, something remarkable happens. In the reformation it’s known as the ubiquity of Christ. Ubiquity is a fancy word meaning everywhere, all at once. Jesus is present here, Jesus is present in Australia, Jesus is present wherever we go, whenever we go.

Matthew 18:20 says, “Whenever two or three are gathered in my name I will be with them, present. In every faithfully preached sermon, present. In every rightly administered sacrament, present. In every believer exhibiting the fruit of the spirit, which are actually a description of the character of Jesus, present. In every congregation, operating in the gifts for the building up of the body and the witness to the world, present. When we don’t understand this, we begin celebrating the real absence of Christ rather than the real presence. Presence. He is here. He is here for you. The famous hymn written by Chatterton Dix says in three stances what I’ve been saying for 14 minutes, listen to the words. Hallelujah, sing to Jesus. He’s the scepter, he’s the throne. Hallelujah, he’s the triumph, he’s the victory alone, hark the sounds of peaceful Zion, thunder like a mighty flood. Jesus out of every nation has redeemed us by his blood.

Here’s where it gets better. Hallelujah bread of heaven, here on earth, our food, our stay. Hallelujah, hear the sinful flee to you from day to day. Intercessor, friend of sinners, earth’s redeemer, our great high priest, where the songs of all the sinless sweep across the crystal sea, and it gets even better. Hallelujah, not as orphans are we left in sorrow now. Hallelujah, he is near us. Faith believes nor questions how though the clouds from sight received him when the 40 days were ore shall our hearts forget his promise, I am with you forever more. Christ simply put is not absent from us. Rather he is actually more present in more places than he ever was when he walked the earth. Interceding for us in heaven he is nonetheless here with us now and so rather than mourning his absence, we like the disciples, soon to be apostles can worship and not just worship, but worship with great joy.

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Easter 6 2023
Rev. Doug Floyd
John 15:1-17

The air is filled with tension. Jesus has been talking with the disciples about going away. Judas left the meal abruptly and Jesus spoke of betrayal. Peter, their bold leader, was told he would deny Jesus. The disciples are confused and troubled. Jesus is saying things the disciples cannot fully grasp. Twice He tells the disciples to not let their hearts be troubled. He also tells them he will not leave them as orphans. Then He says that the ruler of this world is coming.

It’s time to go. Jesus leads them, out of the upper room and toward the garden of Gethsemane. The city is filled with tension as well. It is Passover, and pilgrims have come to the city from all over. The chief priests and the Pharisees have been making plans to kill Jesus. He no longer walks openly among the Jews. The disciples could feel this dread hanging in the air.

As they walk to the garden, Jesus speaks of vines. But He also talks about a threat facing the disciples: persecution and death. “I am the true vine and my Father is the vinedresser.” Branches that do not bear fruit will be taken away and burned. Others will be pruned to make them even more fruitful.

Jesus continues to focus on this image of Himself as the vine and the disciples as the branches. He is speaking of the deep interconnection between His life and the life of the disciples. Abide in me and I in you. Remain in me and I in you. In this relationship of abiding, this communion of lives, the very fruitfulness of God will be made known.

Even as Jesus speaks of the mystery of the Him abiding in the disciples and them abiding in Him, He commands them to love one another as He has loved them. This mystery of abiding love must also exist between the disciples. As Jesus is telling them these things, he calls them friends for now He is making known to them all that He has heard from the Father in heaven.

This little story changed my whole understanding of calling and ministry. When I was in college, I read Andrew Murray’s little book “Abide in Christ.” It consisted of 31 meditations on the same theme: abiding in Christ. Murray said that he hoped that by reinforcing the same theme over the course of a month, readers would begin to see a way of faith that is rooted in a trusting faith in Christ.

Even as reading his book, I still felt like I didn’t grasp what it meant to abide in Christ. I began to read John 15. I would read today’s passage day after day. Then I would go back and read the passages surrounding today’s passage: John 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17. For three years, I followed this pattern: reading and soaking in John 15 and then rereading the entire last supper narrative from John 13 through John 17.

I was searching for something to help me understand this notion of abiding better. As it turned out, I didn’t discover some new and innovative insight. Yet, I was changed. Sitting with these last words of Jesus day after day, year after year changed me. I believe the Holy Spirit was reshaping me, reorienting me in the communion of love.

What was the secret of abiding in Christ? Well, it seemed there was no secret. This language of abiding seems rooted in the idea of tabernacle, which is a dwelling place for God and man. In the Old Testament, the Tabernacle and later the Temple were the very place where heaven and earth meet. Where man and God dwell together. Now, this tabernacle is Jesus. He is the dwelling place, the abiding place for God and man.

To abide in Christ is simply to rest in Him. We trust His Words, we trust His life, we trust His absolute faithfulness. Resting in Him gives us this picture of letting go. Think of resting in the embrace of someone you love. A child rests in the arms of her father or mother. A husband rests in the embrace of his wife.

When I was sick as a child, my mother would hold me and rub my back. I could relax. This was as much a part of the healing as any medicine. When I can’t sleep at night, Kelly will sometimes embrace me. In that place of peace, I often drift off to sleep. When Jesus tells His disciples to abide in me, He is calling them to rest.

He is also calling them to live in Him: to let His words dwell in them, fill them, guide them. The Holy Spirit will come as part of this abiding. He will lead the disciples and us into this place of abiding. The Holy Spirit will be communicating God’s love and ways in words and beyond words: heart to heart, deep to deep. He will be speaking to the imagination, bringing timely words and thoughts to memory. Like the embrace of a loved one, He will comfort our weary souls.

I grew up hearing the Gospel as a personal decision between me and God. Most of the sermons of my youth came to a climax with a call for a personal confession of faith. This is part of our inheritance from the Reformation. It is also part of our heritage as Americans. We are individuals, and we have the freedom to believe. This is all good, but it tends to leave out something. We are individuals with a personal faith in Jesus Christ, but at the same time we are called into a community of faith.

The extreme individualized understanding of the Gospel can be seen all across our culture where people substitute participation in the community of faith with television or Internet church. In the 1980s, Robert Bellah published an intensive study of faith in America called, “Habits of the Heart.” He determined that Americans were a very religious people and this religion was by and large a form of individualism. In other words, it was another form of self-reliance, self-improvement, self-fulfillment.

We contrast that with the words of Jesus. In the midst of the distressing environment in Jerusalem, in the middle of the difficult words that Jesus speaks to His disciples, He speaks a word of peace and comfort. Abide in me. All fruitfulness will be rooted in this communion of love. Then He tells the disciples love one another as I have loved you. In other words, even as you abide in Christ, abide in one another.

Love God, love one another. The two are inseparable. In the tabernacle of love, you are bound to Christ and to one another.

This morning I included a quote from the Romanian theologian Dumitru Staniloae in the bulletin. He writes, “It is not isolated individuals whom God wishes to save through supernatural revelation, but the great multitudes of believers in a mutual and common responsibility towards himself, for all must help one another on the way of progress towards the goal of perfection and eternal life, and help strengthen their own communion based on communion with God. In fact, the communion among them is a constitutive part of their own perfection and of their progress towards that perfection.”[1]

He is speaking about the other side of individualism: the communion of saints. The Eastern Orthodox use the term “sobornost” to speak of this great communion. This beautiful word extends to all the cosmos. All creation is called into the great communion of love between Father, Son, and Spirit. Before we try to tackle all creation, lets simply return to the text at hand.

Jesus says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.”[2] The disciples will face great challenges: rejection, persecution, and even death. Even as they are called to abide in Christ, they are called to abide in one another. The two are intertwined. They will face the challenges before them together as a community. We might use Jesus’s language and speak of this calling as friendship. As friends of God, we become friends with one another.

This kind of love takes all sorts of shapes in the New Testament. In Philippians two, it takes the shape of a humility that allows us to pour out our lives for one another.

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself…[3]

In Acts, it takes the form of feeding the widows or sharing resources with one another or praying for Peter when he is in prison. In all these situations, we are seeing the very life of Christ taking shape in the community of faith. It takes the form of Paul and Barnabas serving together. It takes the form of Paul mentoring Timothy and Titus. It takes the form of showing respect to older men and woman in a congregation and treating them as elders.

We need one another. We need the local community of faith right here around us. We need the great communion of faith that extends beyond our walls to the greater community, across the world, and even across time.

As we face the challenges of our world, let us abide in Christ, rest in Christ. Let us also rest in His family: in friendships with one another, in prayer and service toward one another, in time spent cultivating life with one another.

[1] Dumitru Staniloae, The Experience of God: Volume One, The Holy Trinity. Holy Cross Orthodox Press, Reprinted 2022, p. 24.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 15:12–14.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Php 2:3–7.

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Rev. David Freels

Easter 5 2023
Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life
Rev. David Freels
John 14:1-14

It is good to be back with you again. I know some of you are familiar and it looks like some new folks who’ve joined the church or are visiting today. I haven’t been here probably over maybe about a year, but I always enjoy it and I look forward to coming out and being with you. This gospel that Doug just read today, starts very beginning of chapter 14, but you need to go back a little bit to understand what’s going on. What we’re going to be talking about today, is we’re going to be talking about struggle and trust.

I think that’s something that all of us experience. We struggle and we struggle to trust, and I know I do, and that’s what a lot of this is about. When I say you have to back up, because what He’s saying is, “Don’t let your heart be troubled.” Why are they troubled? Well, they didn’t do chapters originally, they just told stories. This is all one scene. In chapter 13, you’ve got Judas’s betrayal is predicted. You’ve got Peter’s denial’s predicted.

You’ve got Jesus is basically telling them, “One of you’s going to sell me out and the rest of you are going to let me down too, but don’t be troubled.” I know I’ve mentioned him before. There’s a guy that wrote a great commentary called Frederick Bruner, and he’s my go-to guy on the gospels of Matthew and John. A lot of my thinking has really been shaped by Dale Bruner. What he said made sense to me when he wrote not just don’t be troubled, but really the meaning behind it is don’t be too troubled.

We’re going to be troubled. I don’t think Jesus is saying, “Just don’t be troubled.” Jesus Himself was troubled in, again, what we call 13. It tells us that Jesus was anguished. Jesus was troubled. It makes sense when you think of it as don’t be too troubled. Don’t be so troubled that it paralyzes you, that it causes you to want to just give up. Don’t be too troubled. This is all rather depressing what He’s just said to them. Chapter 14 again, is He’s lifting them up, but what just happened, the things He’s just told them was pretty depressing.

Here He is, the next thing you know, He’s lifting them up. They were grieved at what He had told them. They were grieved when they heard that He was going to be betrayed. They were grieved when He said that, I’m sure Peter was really upset, that he was going to deny Him. They were grieved when He talked about going away. I think that’s really what got them, that He was going away. Then Jesus comforts them, “Don’t be too troubled.” Again, if that was me and these guys were, “Jesus, where are you going? Jesus, what’s going on, Jesus?”

If it was me in my flesh, I’d be like, “Will you guys just shut up? Did you not hear what I said? One of you bozos is off right now selling me out. The rest of you, you’re going to scatter.” If it was me, because I’m not Jesus, I want to be like Jesus, but that would be my reaction. I got to tell you, there’ve been plenty of times in my life and I’ve been a believer for about as long as I can remember.

Because as a child, I was just told this was the truth and I believed it. As a teenager, I fell in with some awesome folks and young life leaders at my high school, and I threw myself into that. I’ve gone to church my whole life and adult life. I’ve always been a believer, but I never really questioned. But as I got older, and I got married and had kids, and experienced things in life and jobs, and got fired from jobs and then worried over. There were times when I’d be like, “Jesus? Jesus, where are you? Where have you gone?”

I can understand where the disciples are coming from. I find them a comfort to me right now when I read the way they’re reacting to this. But Jesus’ response to them is just so beautiful. Don’t be too troubled. “Don’t be too troubled. I’m going to my Father’s house. It has many rooms. I’m going to prepare a place for you.” I always read I’m a lot like the disciples here. I’m a lot like Philip and Thomas, I’m very literal. When I think about this house, how many of you growing up or maybe now, even think of Jesus, He’s going to prepare a house?

Like rooms in heaven, a mansion. That’s how I always pictured this, He’s going to add on rooms. In a Jewish home when a young man got married, they added rooms to the house and made the house larger. That’s the analogy, the illustration Jesus has given. But I always just thought, “Man, what kind of house am I going to have in heaven?” I don’t know about you, but my dream house has always been the Swiss Family Robinson House at Disney World. I went there in ’72, I think, when it opened.

I’m just like, “Man, that is the most awesome house in the world, all these different layers and stuff.” If Jesus were talking about a literal house, I would like, “Can I put in a request? I’d like mine to be like kind of like this awesome treehouse.” My grandson’s 11 and he’s a really good baseball player. We’ve got a deal when he is in the majors, he’s building me a treehouse in his backyard to live in. That’s going to be where I retire. The disciples were really literal too, okay? They were literal guys.

What do you mean? What do you mean, Jesus? They want Him to spell things out. I am thankful that they were that way because they were that way, He spells it out. He spells it out for them and He spells this out for us. Because the house that He’s preparing by going away, by dying, by being raised and coming back, the house He’s building is us. The scripture that was read this morning about the living stones, we’re the living stones. We’re being crafted, we’re being crafted now.

Maybe there is a literal house in heaven. But this is all not just for in the sweet by and by, this is for now, because we’re not just being shaped for later. We’re being shaped in the here and in the now for later. There is going to be a later, I believe that. But this house that’s being built, this holy house is being built for us, in us, by Him. He doesn’t want us to be too troubled, too troubled so that the work on that house stops.

It’s great when our house is a peaceful place, isn’t it? My house, when I moved back here to Tennessee, I lived in Florida for about 20 years, not 20 years, I lived in Florida 12 years, 11, 12 years. When I moved back here, my house contained my kids that were starting high school, my teenage children. My father died and my mother moved in with us. There’s no easy way, she and I didn’t get along from the time I was about 10.

We’re going on 50 years now that oil and water, we don’t get along and she’s still alive and we’re all still living together. You got to imagine, my kids were teenagers and then my mom comes in, who we don’t get along that well. I’m going crazy on one side here and I’m going crazy on the other side here, and then I was going crazy inside. My house was really, really troubled. I thank God that in the last couple of years, she’s 90 now, in the last couple of years there’s been some real movement in me with my mom.

I’d be lying if I said that’s all changed now and I’m a new man. No, it’s like most things in life, it’s two steps forward and one step back, but it’s a change that’s happening. It’s a change that I know I want to happen in me. Homes are usually places where we experience some troubles. I’m not going to talk a lot about it. Our Anglican home, I don’t know how many of you here came to the Anglican church from before, from the Episcopal church, have been through the travails of the last 20 years.

I was a youth director at a church when everything started to really happen when Rwanda came in and offered us cover. But our Anglican home is going through a severe remodeling. If I understood what I heard from a week ago, when all the archbishops were gathered, they’ve basically said to Canterbury, “We’re no longer a part of this. We are the Anglican communion, but we feel like you’ve left.” Am I paraphrasing that right? Close enough?

Okay. Well, so that’s a church, church home that’s struggling. Then there’s our personal homes where there’s struggle, there’s always struggle in homes it seems. Don’t be too troubled, though. This isn’t all there is. It’s just so easy when homes start coming apart to lockdown into a Hatfield McCoy kind of a mindset. That’s what I’ve always had with my mom. One of us is going to be the last one standing and it’s going to be me. I think she’s probably felt the same way earlier on, but it’s easy to lock into that idea.

We got to win this thing but you don’t win relationships. Relationships are like a dance, nobody wins a dance, you and your partner, one of you at the end of dancing. I’m going to go take my wife dancing tonight. We dance to the dance club every Sunday evening. And at the end of the dance when the music turns off, I don’t look at her and go, “I won. I win.” It’s a dance, forward, backward, to the side, it’s a dance. But when we become too troubled, when we become too troubled, it becomes a life or death fight.

It’s easy for our fears to take over. The disciples fears were running rampant and they did not understand. But Jesus promised them, “I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am, you also may be. You know the way to where I’m going.” Then Thomas, he’s so literal, “We don’t know where you’re going. How can we get there? We don’t know where you’re going.” Jesus, at that point’s got to be like, “Okay. We’ve been together for a while.” You’ve seen a lot of stuff, but He’s so gentle. I’m so thankful for that because I’m 61.

Like I was saying before, I’ve been at the church stuff all my life and there’ve been some places where I wanted to chuck it and they were as a priest. Some struggles even after being a priest that I was just struggling so bad, I just thought, “You know what? I don’t know. I don’t know,” which turned out to be a beautiful thing because where else would I go? He’s the one with the words of life. I was really thankful for that kind of a struggle. Jesus is saying, “If you believe in God, believe in me. If you believe in God, believe in me. Because when you see me, you see the Father.”

That’s really what I talk about with young men that Doug mentioned earlier about the Campus Mission. We talk about trying to understand they’re Christian guys raised in the church usually, but they’re Christian guys who are at 18, 19 to 20. Now, I meet with my guys that have graduated and they’re married. I try to do that follow up that’s really important in their late 20s. What we talk about is how do we figure out the way? How do we figure out what Jesus means when He’s going?

Where is He going and where is it He’s leading us? What does that look like? Jesus reassures them, “I am the way. I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” That’s a bold, exclusive claim. “No one comes to the Father except through me.” That means He’s not a way, He’s not an option for life, He is the way to the Father. He is the truth in flesh, God incarnate. Incarnate, you ever had chili con carne? That’s chili with meat. He’s God in meat, He is God in the flesh.

You see me, you see the Father. He is not a way, He is the way. He’s also not saying, “And I will come.” He says, “I am coming. I am coming to you.” It’s present tense, “I am coming to you.” It’s not something off in the sweet by and by, but it’s now. I am coming to you now in your struggles, in your questions. I am coming to you over and over at conversion, yes, at baptism, yes, at this table, yes, I am coming to you. When you are struggling, I am coming to you.

When the person that you’ve married looks at you one day and says, “I just don’t know. I don’t know about you anymore.” I am coming to you. When you’ve been in a job for 20 years and they tell you, “Yeah, we’re downsizing. We just can’t use you anymore.” I am coming to you. When we struggle with the biggest thing, our sin, and that’s our problem. Those other things are problems, but it’s our sin that’s the problem.

He says, “I am coming to you because I am the way you want to be with the Father. I am the way. I am the truth.” I am the life that reveals that and gives you life and begins shaping you. You, you holy stones into a holy place, into a dwelling place for my Father and I The Spirit, I will send you this comforter. My Spirit will go with you. I am the way, not just a way. CS Lewis says that what God’s arrangements are for others, we don’t know, but we do know that it’s only through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Just growing up, I just always thought you got to say certain words, you got to make a certain claim. I was really concerned about getting into heaven. Or actually, I was concerned about avoiding hell as a child more than I was about getting into heaven. Being friends with Jesus really didn’t play that much into it. The church I was growing up in had me pretty rattled about hell so I was really wanting to avoid hell at all costs.

There are obviously certain words that have to be said, certain things that have to be done. All I know is this. I’m thankful that it’s not left to us to be the final say-so on anyone’s eternity. God knows what He’s doing. God is holy and God will do it right. No one will come to the Father except through the Son. I don’t know exactly what that’s going to mean in some cultures and in some ways, but I know no one, I believe that, no one will come to the Father except through the Son.

We need to be a people that hold to that and believe that, because He is the way and He is the truth and He is the life, but we need to be a gentle people. You want to know what God is like? You want to know what God is like? You look at Jesus, He is a gentle man. He was a humble man. Jesus did not waterboard people into the kingdom. Jesus loved people into the kingdom. Jesus would ask, “What are you after? What do you want? What do you looking for?”

He would answer them when they told Him. Sometimes they walked away sad and He let them go. We don’t need to be overly concerned about who is in and who is out. How can we be a people that don’t become too troubled by that, when it’s somebody we care about in our family or when it’s somebody that we work with? Humility, the humility that comes from looking at Jesus and desiring Him. Humility and gentleness, and it can get messy. It can get messy, but we don’t need to become intolerant of the folks that it’s messy with.

My biggest problem, I always thought my biggest problem was my mother, if she just wasn’t the way she was. It never occurred to me that a huge part of my problem was how intolerant I was, my intolerance. I wanted her to change into the shape that I wanted her to be in. It’s easy to become intolerant with other folks that don’t agree with us or don’t believe like we believe, but we don’t need to at the same time in order to be tolerant, back off the truth.

That is what I’ve seen is the slippery slope of this idea of tolerance and intolerance. We want to be tolerant. That doesn’t mean letting go of the truth. How do we do that? Humility and drawing near to Jesus. Our faith doesn’t need to be something that we want to give somebody like a bitter pill so they’ll get better. Love the truth, love Jesus, believe Jesus. We don’t back off of that. We don’t back off of that, but we also want to be like Jesus. We walk the Jesus way.

That way is a way where salvation is exclusively through Christ alone, but it is inclusive of all sinners. There’s mystery in that. Now, I grew up in a little Southern Baptist church. I love the Baptist church. I’m spend the summer helping out at a Baptist camp. I’m thankful for my Baptist upbringing, but it may have been just been the church I was in, there was no mystery. There was no mystery. We didn’t like mystery, liked the answers, knowing the answers.

But there’s mystery with God. I like the mystery because with mystery, with accepting mystery comes humility. I have to trust God to be good. I have to trust God to know what He’s doing. I trust this Word to be the truth. No one comes to the Father, except through the Son and that is the truth. I have to trust God to know how to work that. Jesus lays out the truth for His friends, and then He’s mocked and He’s killed and He’s buried. That had to shake them. We know that it shook them.

This is a test also of their knowing Him. Honestly, it looks like they failed. I take a weird comfort in that. Maybe it’s a misery loves company thing but man, I fail. I fail. Jesus, Jesus is so loving and so gentle, Jesus knows that that’s going to happen to His friends. He’s telling them about it beforehand, He’s telling us too. We get the benefit of their experience. We get the benefit of their literalness and asking those literal questions, and we get the benefit of what happens to them.

Jesus tells them, “You’re even going to go on to do greater things.” We get to go on to do greater things. How am I going to do greater things than Jesus? Well, it’s been 2,000 years, the church has grown over 2,000 years just by sheer numbers alone. It’s greater. But these are guys that locked themselves in a room because they were terrified. Beloved, our world is watering down the wrong things and then it’s making its last stand on the wrong hills.

Just like our church is splitting, coming apart, this happens. Families come apart. But as followers of Jesus, let’s not plant our flag in a place of pride or in a place of I win. Let’s just side with Jesus. In a spirit of humility and mercy and love, proclaim the truth. No one comes to the Father except through the Son. I am not getting it right, but I am trusting that He does. I’ll confess to you, as we’re talking about how do we walk this way? How do I do this? Because see, we’re big on how do I do it?

How do I do this? How do I work this? Jesus, where have you gone? When we’re struggling, when you’re in trouble, when a marriage is falling apart, when your kids are headed off one way and it’s not the way you wanted them to go, and we’re struggling with that, “Jesus, where have you gone?” I find myself in those places from time to time, and I always will. We want to know how do we fix it? Of course, the Sunday school answer’s Jesus but I’ll tell you a way that this works for me.

Yesterday, while I’m putting some finishing touches on this, I’m thinking about this and I’m writing some things down. My phone buzzes and my mom has a special ringtone so that I know it’s her. It used to be the Darth Vader march, it really was. Then I realized, “You know what? That just reinforces the way I’m feeling. That just reinforces my frustration.” Instead of being a 60-year-old, I turned him into my 12-year-old self.

I got rid of that and now it’s something very pleasant but ringtones honestly don’t matter. The ringtone goes off, “Can you come downstairs and change my channel for me?” Yeah, I was just down there. But yes, I can come downstairs and change the channel. I go downstairs and change the channel. Then I come back to work on my sermon, and then it buzzes again. “Can you come down and heat this up for me?” Yeah, I’ll come down and heat that up for you. I go down and heat this food up.

Then I get back upstairs to work on my sermon for you about Jesus and about God, and about being holy. Then my phone buzzes again and it’s not hot enough. “Could you come down and reheat it again?” I’m like, “Oh my gosh.” The thing is, I’m not seeing in the middle of all that that I’m a jerk. I’m just being me in my flesh. I come back to write my sermon to you about following Jesus and being holy, and you see what it’s like? At that moment, it hit me.

While this is going on, at that moment it hit me. As I’m walking down the stairs, I’m just praying, “Lord, help me, help me. Help me to see her in a different way. Help change my heart.” You know what happens? He starts to do that. I go back and revert, but I know where to go and I know what to do. In other words, what I’m saying to you is that that’s the way. This is what it looks like. He shows up and change happens. While I’m sitting there working on my sermon, which is now gone on at least five minutes longer than I’ve meant for it too, He really does show up.

I am coming. He shows up and He changes us, and He brings that spirit of humility and love. He changes us. He does it, He does it in the here and the now. You know what? There’s going to come a time later when I’m going to see my mom and she’s going to be beautiful. She’s going to be somebody that I’m not going to recognize. I’ll be beautiful and you’ll be beautiful because we’ll finally be who we were meant to be, and created to be the people that God created us to be.

I don’t even think we’re going to spend any time looking at one another going, “Gosh, how stupid was I?” I don’t think there’s going to be space for that because to be honest, that would never end. If we spend our time in heaven apologizing for all the junk we’ve done, when would we ever love each other and have time to worship and be grateful? That’s all we’d be doing and I don’t think there’s going to be space for it, but that’s just my idea.

I think what there’s going to be space for though is you’re beautiful. Oh, you’re beautiful. That’s what Jesus is talking about, “I am coming. I am coming. I’ve made a home for you. I’m making a place for you.” I’m changing you, but you got to hold to this truth. We aren’t going to do this perfectly, but we can want to. I think that’s where it begins. Was it St. Francis that said, “I don’t know that I please you, Lord, but I want to please you”?

Was that St. Francis? I don’t know, but I love that. Where it begins for me, it’s not even I want to please Jesus or I want Jesus, but I want to want Jesus. I do want to want Jesus. I’m awake right now. I’ve got my collar on. I’m in a church. We’re talking about God. I’m really awake to the fact that it’s all about Jesus. I want to want Jesus more than anything. Now, that’s where it begins. We can want to, and all we need to do is ask.

Because Jesus says, “Anything you ask in my name, I’ll give you.” I used to think that was like, “I want a pony. I want a Corvette,” when I was younger. It’s none of that, thank goodness, or the world will be full of ponies and B-17 bombers and who knows what. Ask anything in my name, ask in my heart. Ask in the heart of my Father, I guarantee you ask God. Lord, give me more of you. He’ll do it. It may happen in a way that’s painful, there’s struggle.

It may happen in a way that your 90-year-old mom’s calling you about 40 times a day, telling you, reminding you to put a coat on when you leave the house. Even though you’re 61 years old and it turns you into a 12-year-old all over again. It may be through some struggles. It may be through some tough places. Look at what the disciples were going through. Look at what Jesus went through for us. Yes, it will come through tough places, but He will do it. He will shape us.

He will shape you into the image in which He made you for. Beloved, we’re going to be troubled, but let’s not be too troubled. Let’s remember instead, let’s remember as we say these words of faith we’re about to say. Let’s remember as we come to the table where we actually say, remember, let’s remember. Let’s do our best as we walk out these doors to remember. If you’re like me, before I get back across the bridge and over into Farragut, I will have begun to forget.

But that’s the beautiful thing is about being in community with one another and with Jesus, He keeps bringing us back. He keeps bringing us back. He keeps waking us up. Remember the Spirit keeps it worked, keeps it worked. Shaping, shaping, shaping, shaping us, shaping our hearts into the shape of the Father’s heart. We’ll remember again and again, we’ll remember. We’ll remember to hold to the way, and to the truth, and to the life. It’s not our story that’s about us.

That’s why I’m so messed up. I keep thinking the story’s about me. It’s His story. It’s His story. It’s about Him, and He has written us into it. Let’s remember, don’t be too troubled. Amen.

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Easter 4 2023
Rev. Doug Floyd
Psalm 23, John 10:1-10

Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”[1]He fulfills the role of shepherd for His people. He fulfills this role by laying down His life for the sheep. As the good shepherd, the true leader, He sacrifices Himself to rescue His wandering people.

On this Good Shepherd Sunday, I want to pause a few minutes over the much beloved Psalm 23 in light of the Good Shepherd. Psalm 23 might read as a description of different seasons in our spiritual pilgrimage. Jesus is leading into His fullness of life. I want to be cautious not to suggest the Psalm is suggesting a specific sequence in the life of faith, and yet we will walk through these various phases or seasons during our lives. We may repeat certain phases as well.

Our Psalm begins in infancy.

1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters. [2]

The baby is completely dependent upon the gentle care of the parent. The babe has no wants and trusts the parent who provide food, comfort, shelter, and care. In the story of Ancient Israel, we see God rescuing the people from Egypt. They are completely helpless and can only survive by trusting in His complete provision. From crossing the Red Sea to drinking water from the rock, Israel must rest in God’s direct provision for their sustenance.

Like Israel, we begin in a place of complete dependence. We cannot safe ourselves. We are helpless, sinful, blind, and enslaved. In His grace, He draws us to Himself and feeds our soul. His love covers a multitude of sins. He showers us with grace. He heals us. Feeds us. And guides us.

This makes me think of my experience in college. I had a profound encounter with the Lord on a mission trip, and I became aware of God’s Presence when reading Scripture. It truly was like green pastures. I was feasting on it all the time, carrying my Bible to classes and reading before class began. Every time I read; the Word came alive to me. The Lord was making me to lie down in green pastures.

We may have this same kind of experience when we learn something new. It may be easy to immerse ourselves because we are learning new things and it us a bit exciting. It would seem to me that there are seasons of feasting in our walk of faith when we consume the Scripture, meditations, teachings, and more.

Then the Psalmist speaks of growth:

3 He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness
for his name’s sake. [3]

Think of the baby growing into a child. By the age of four or five, the child becomes more aware of rules. They may repeat the rules to parents to make sure they are following rules. They learn obedience, they learn discipline, they prepare to become adults who will carry on the name of their family. The giving of the Law at Mt Sinai is the gift of God to transform the children of Israel into a kingdom of priests who will bring blessing to the world. The parent trains their child in righteousness, and in the same way, the Father prepares us to bear His name. We must grow up into Him, into the life He has called us.

We see this pattern with Jesus and the disciples. He spends time instructing them on the life of obedience. The Sermon on the Mount is a picture of this instruction. We call this kind of training catechesis. It may involve question and answer. The disciple is learning to internalize a way of life.

Now the Psalmist may specifically be talking about the Good Shepherd leading His children in the way of God’s absolute faithfulness. At the same time, we begin to learn what it looks like to live within the faithfulness of God. In Paul’s letters, he takes time to offer practical instruction for the churches. The handing down of Torah to Israel gave them specific instruction that played a role in them become a nation of priests and kings. We also see this kind of training in the Proverbs.

I was a rule keeper as a child. If you told me to walk a certain way, I would try to walk that way. At one point, my dad was trying to get his grass to grow, and I kept running through the lawn. We lived on a quiet street, so my dad said, “Doug stay off the grass. Go play out in the road.” I obeyed his command to the letter. A few minutes later my dad heard a car horn honking, and he came outside to see what was going on. I was standing in the middle of the road, crying, but I refused to move because me dad told me to play in the road.

There comes a point where we must learn that obedience requires wisdom and nuance. We learning to live by the Spirit of the law and not under the law. Consider the book of Job. It would seem as if the clear instruction of Proverbs is turned on its head. While familiarity with the way of discipleship is vital, we come to discover it is more expansive than we thought. The child must grow from mere knowledge to wisdom. They must learn when and how to apply certain rules.

Adolescence can be painful. The shifting from child to man is wrought with emotional and physical development that turns the youth’s world upside down. For some this season may shift from extreme joy to extreme anger to extreme sadness. I would suggest it might be like passing through the “valley of the shadow of death.”

In our lives, we will all walk through difficult seasons. I think our desire and prayer is often that we might by-pass these times of challenge. And yet, we know that Christ our Good Shepherd has gone before. He walk directly into the difficulty. He walked directly into the way of the cross. He has gone on ahead of us and prepared the way for our steps.

Notice the shift in Psalm 23 from third person to second person:

4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me. [4]

In the valley of the shadow of death, the Psalmist discovers a greater intimacy with the Lord. As we follow Christ in the way of the cross, we discover that His love, His grace, His peace is enough. As much as we would like to avoid pain and struggle and suffering, it is in these times that we come to know the love of God personally. We come to discover firsthand that our Lord is absolutely faithful.

This brings to mind an old Happy Goodman song. He sings,

“Well, I started out travellin’ for the Lord many years ago
I’ve had a lot of heartache and I met a lot of grief and woe
But when I would stumble, then I would humble down
And there I’d say, I wouldn’t take nothin’ for my journey now”

He repeats the refrain “I wouldn’t take nothin’ for my journey now” because he has discovered that “there’s nothin’ in this world that’ll ever take the place of God’s love.” This is something we discover firsthand and often in the middle of the valley of the shadow of death.

It is in these places of great struggle that God reveals His glory in our own unique life. He created me to be Doug Floyd and not someone else. He created you to you and not anyone else. He reveals His glory in and through the very person you are becoming.

This leads us to a second image of eating in the Psalm.

5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. [5]

A feast is prepared by the Good Shepherd in the midst of the enemies. The Lord is our host. He not only feeds us but feasts us. He anoints us . Our cup overflows. The anointing is an image of kingship. He is anointing us and raising us up in the very particular way we are called to bear His image. He is delighted in you are and the way you are called to bear His image in the world. He often reveals that glory in the midst of great trials when you feel weak. Always remember that even when you feel weak and overlooked and even forgotten that Christ the Good Shepherd has embraced you and called you and is glorifying you. There is no lack in the kingdom. Only abundance. My cup overflows with the goodness of God in the land of the living.

As I come to realize His faithful love is unshakeable then I can walk through the valley of the shadow of death, knowing that “goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” [6]

Lile Job, I can pray for my friends, knowing God has made me a priest in this world to share the abundance of that goodness and mercy to a world in need.

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 10:11.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ps 23:1–2.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ps 23:3.

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ps 23:4.

[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ps 23:5.

[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ps 23:6.

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Rowan LeCompte (American, 1925–2014) and Irene Matz LeCompte (American, 1926-1970), “Third Station of the Resurrection: The Walk to Emmaus” (detail), 1970. Mosaic, Resurrection Chapel, National Cathedral, Washington, DC. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.Easter 3 2023
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
Luke 24:13–35

One of the interesting things about moving back to this region after all these years away, I’ve now spent more of my life outside of East Tennessee than I did here, even though I grew up here. And one of the particularly interesting things about moving to this side of town is I have occasion two or three times a week to go down State Highway 162, which I grew up knowing as Pellissippi Parkway. In fact, I’m old enough to remember as a little child when there was no Pellissippi Parkway and you took a windy circuitous route to get to Knoxville. But as I drive up and down that road, I’ve been here long enough know that I’m kind of over all the changes. It doesn’t look like it did when I grew up. There’s so much more buildings.

I’m over that. What I’m struck by is the number of times I’ve ridden up and down that road and how that road has been for me. I remember driving down that road after my senior prom full of that youthful exuberance and joy and hope for the future, that it was definitely going to be the case that Stephanie McGinnis and I would get married and spend the rest of our life together. That didn’t happen. But the joy was real. I also remember riding down that road with the news that my grandmother had died. Remember riding down that road some years later from seminary as my grandfather laid in intensive care. I remember riding down that road to hike with friends in the Smokies. So many memories for one little patch of asphalt.

And what’s interesting of course is as you hear sometimes Pellissippi Parkway was the road to disappointment and sorrow. Sometimes it was the road to joy and possibility. And what’s fascinating is it was always the same road because the road didn’t change. Even with all the new buildings the road fundamentally hasn’t changed. What changed was the context, and that’s kind of our story today. These disciples, well, they had hoped that Jesus would be king. They probably wore Jesus for president buttons and it had not gone well. And when you lose the campaign there’s nothing to do but dust yourself off, pick yourself up and go home. And so they are treading the short road from Jerusalem to Emmaus. It’s not long. And for them it is a road of disappointment. Life, hopes, dreams, they’ve all let them down in some way, gotten the better of them, and there’s nothing to do, but put one foot in front of the other toward an uncertain future, trying to make the best of the way things are and how they are not what we had hoped.

Now, it’s no surprise to you that by the end of the story they are running back from Emmaus to Jerusalem full of excitement and happiness and possibility. You don’t travel at night in the developing world. We know that even today. So the excitement was so great that after dinner they threw their safety to the wind and went back to Jerusalem, a nighttime journey. So much had their experience changed. But again, the key is it was their experience, or so they thought. And here’s the thing about experience, it’s notoriously fickle, isn’t it? It’s not a good ground to base our lives on. I adore my wife. I’m acutely aware of that after the potential tragedies of this week. But it’s funny, she’s the same woman and at times I can’t imagine how I ever lived without her and other times, I can’t imagine why I married her.

And she knew I was going to say that. The reason is it’s not about Kate any more than it’s about the road. It’s about content, which really is about me and how I feel about a certain situation and it’s a terribly dangerous thing to build our lives on. But Jesus gives us something more in this story. Although it was their experience, he gives them what the church has described as the rule of life. It becomes what is the basis for how to live your life as a Christian that continued into the early church, continued into later centuries and is probably the best antidote for being slaves to experience today. Our first reading refers to it as the apostles teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers. So let’s look what happened on that road because perhaps what you need in the road of your life is some liberation from experience and something to ground your life on that’s a little more enduring.

So Cleopas and his companions are mopey and they’re wandering along and Jesus says, “Hey, what happened?” I can’t imagine whether he was grinning or whether he was trying to play the part, but they proceed to tell him how terrible it was that they had wanted Jesus to be king and instead he was crucified. And okay, some of the women said some weird stuff, but we don’t know because the people who went to follow it up, all they found was an empty tomb. It’s strange, but it’s not proof of anything and we’re going home. And Jesus says something fascinating. He says, “You’re foolish. You’re foolish in your disappointment because you haven’t understood.” And there as they walk he begins a Bible study with them, but not just any kind of Bible study. You see, we don’t really know how to read the Bible. The Bible is studied in this world as literature and poetry. The Bible is studied as a code book for conspiracies or a fortune-telling manual. It is studied as a recipe book for a prosperous life.

We get 10 rules for a successful marriage and 15 ways to change your oil in a Christian fashion. We hear that Bible stands for basic instructions before leaving Earth, and all of it makes me a little queasy. What is the Bible? The Bible is the testimony to the word of God. Now, some of you have come from other traditions. You’ll notice I just pulled a slide of hand on you. I said it’s the testimony to the word of God. We can also call it God’s word written, but what we can’t call it is the word of God. That would be Jesus, and that’s what he’s getting at today. He says something interesting to them, doesn’t he? In his Bible study, oh, I wish we had the notes. And then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted the scriptures. Remember, they only had the Old Testament at this point. He interpreted the scriptures that concerned himself. He’s like, give up on the steps to a happy marriage guys. Give up on the ritual purity, give up on this and that, the Bible is about me.

Let me be clear when I do this I’m being demonstrative. I’m not saying the Bible is about less. It is Jesus saying the Bible is about me. This isn’t the first time he has said this. In John 5 he is fussing at the Pharisees. He says to them in verse 39, “You search the scriptures because you think they give you eternal life but the scriptures point to me.” The Jews were weighed down in rule keeping, code interpretation. Do this, don’t do that. What’s the proper way? And he is like, guys, you’ve made a mistake. You’ve turned the scriptures into what you think is the source of life. The scriptures point to me. The Pharisees didn’t like this. Few verses later he says to them, “You believe in Moses,” but in verse 46 he says, “If you really believed in Moses, you would believe me because Moses wrote about me.”

What we see on the road to Emmaus, what we see in Jesus earlier teaching is a radical departure from everything that’s gone before. If you do not understand Jesus as the son of God, he is a crazy heretic because he is saying that from Genesis all the way through Malachi, the primary subject of the scriptures is himself. And he teaches later in this chapter, he will also teach to the gathered disciples before his ascension the same thing, how scripture is about him. How in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God and that there was nothing made except through him, how he appeared with Abram at the oaks of Mamre and promised a child, how we wrestled at the fort of the Jabbok with Jacob, me, me, me.

Again, it makes beautiful and life-changing sense if we believe Jesus is the son of God. But to the Jews it was a little troubling. All scripture points to me. Jesus is telling us that the Bible is fundamentally the testimony and teaching that points to the father’s son Jesus. Now, why is this helpful for us to remember as we are trapped in our own experience? Tim Keller puts it this way. He says, “There are two ways to read the Bible. The one way to read the Bible is that it’s basically about you, what you have to do in order to be right with God, in which case you’ll never have assurance certain hope because you’ll always know that you’re not quite living up, you’ll never be sure about that future.

Or you can read the Bible as all about Jesus. And then every single thing is not about what you must do in order to make yourself right with God, but what he has done to make you absolutely right with God.” And Jesus Christ is saying, unless you can read the Bible right, unless you can understand salvation by grace, you’ll never have a sure and certain hope. But once you understand it’s all about me, Jesus Christ, then you can know that you have peace. You can know that you have your future guaranteed and you can face anything. That is what Jesus is giving to Cleopas and his companions as they walk along. It’s what he offers us today. It is something that can provide us an anchor in the midst of our changing moods and experiences because the truth is as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 2:10, “All of God’s promises have been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding yes and through Christ our amen ascends to God in his glory.” We need to discover how to read the Bible with christological eyes.

That 5 cent word is just meant to say that what Jesus says is true. The scriptures point to him. Well, they’re getting somewhere but they’re not there yet obviously because they keep walking along and when Jesus decides to move on, they say, well, this guy’s interesting. Don’t go any further, come in and eat with us. And he does. And it is in the breaking of the bread that he is recognized, the breaking of the bread. If the way we are to go forward free from our experience is free with strength in the midst of difficulty has to do with how we read the Bible. It also has to do with how we break the bread. From the earliest days from holy Thursday on as we see today in the Acts 2 reading, it is the sacrament of the Lord’s supper that reveals Jesus to us. The early Christian apologist St. Justin writes this way in 155 AD. “We do not receive these things as common bread or common drink, but as Jesus Christ our savior, being incarnate by God’s word took flesh and blood for our salvation.”

So also we have been taught that the food consecrated by the word of prayer which comes to him, comes from him, is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus. Well now it gets really confusing. I mean, Jesus has kind of messed up the way we read the Bible. Now he’s messing up our common sense. Bread and wine that are the body and blood of Jesus. I was teaching first communion class to some young people in one of my parishes, and part of how I did that is I took unconsecrated elements (the things that had not been blessed) and let them literally play with them so that they could have a little bit of familiarity with what was going to happen for them.

And it was tied with the teaching about what we believe about the sacrament. And one little kid’s looking at that classic wafer said, “It’s easier for me to believe that this is Jesus than to believe it’s really bread.” But that’s contrary to us, isn’t it? One of the great mysteries of the faith it’s been fought about for 2000 years. Is this nature? Is this really Jesus? And what this is me in this case? Is it symbolic? Is it literal? Is it physical? Is it spiritual? Well, those are wonderful arguments to have. I used to teach them in my seminary, but they’re utterly irrelevant for the proclamation of the words, so we’re going to set those all aside. What’s relevant here is simple enough, simply enough said in our Anglican catechism to be a Christian. It says simply without elaboration, terribly unsatisfying in that regard. It just says, “The body and blood of Christ, which are truly taken and received in the Lord’s Supper by faith.”

The body and blood of Christ truly received. Now, again, I’m welcome… I was an academic. I’ll be happy to sit down with you for hours over coffee and we can debate what truly received means or what is means. That’s fine. But what we get is this. It’s not just a memorial. It’s not just something we do out of obedience, with all due respect to our Christian brothers and sisters who understand the sacrament that way. Now what we understand is that we do not only recognize Jesus in the broken body and in the poured out blood, but that in some mystical way we receive him, we become in Christ and he becomes in us, and again it is a liberation from our experience and our moods. Firm anchor. The firm anchor of the word read about Jesus, the firm anchor of bread and wine poured out faithfully, received faithfully as the body and blood of Jesus. Well, this and perhaps the fact that he disappears, that’s pretty impressive.

This is what finally wakes them up and causes them to turn their road of disappointment into a road of joy and they rush back home with news, news, news of how to read the Bible, news of what the breaking of the bread can do for us only to find that when they arrive the news isn’t news. Because they already know. See, he’s been doing the same thing there too, but that drives home the third point of the early rule of life and that is that Christianity cannot be successfully lived as an individual endeavor. You see, when their eyes were open, when they had the best news, oh, they also had somewhere to go. One of the great tragedies of modern life, one of the great tragedies post COVID is that so many Christians have either by their own choice or by the circumstances of the world right now, nowhere to go with the good news, nowhere to go for the good news. We understand it at a human level. When I asked Kate to marry me and she said yes, what was the first thing I wanted to do? Tell somebody.

When Isaiah was born on Thursday, what was the first thing I wanted to do? Show somebody. News, good news is only powerful if it’s grounded in the community. Otherwise, it’s just some abstract fact, some bit of tribute and one of the hardest things in our modern life as Christians is this and I’m not talking about people who aren’t Christians. I’m talking about you and me who are practicing Christians. One of the hardest things is it’s all too easy to say, well, I’ll just watch a video. I can get a book online and let me be clear, those things aren’t bad. I’m not saying that, but what I am saying is they’re not a substitute for community, and yet it’s precisely what we do, isn’t it? I know I’m guilty of it. The news, the good news, the gospel finds its fruition here. Look what we have. We have the word, we have the sacrament, and we have the place in which to celebrate the news and to support each other. One of my friends from high school on finding out that I became a pastor said, “Oh, you must really like church.”

Now I’ve been a priest for 28 years, so I answered honestly. I said, no, I don’t like church much at all, but I need it. May I humbly say to you, humbly, because I’m not meaning any judgment, this world’s hard now. COVID got us out of the habit. You need to be here, not because God will love you less if you don’t. If you hear that, just forget what I said because that’s not true. You need to be here because you need to be here. It was not a question for the men on the road to Emmaus. Wow, this great things happened, what should we do? We’ll make a podcast? No. Well, maybe we’ll sleep here. Maybe we’ll go on to a Emmaus. No good news brings you together with your sisters and brothers born not of blood, but of baptism because this is the third anchor that protects us from context and the whims of our emotions.

I had a kind of rough week and when it was unclear to me on the late hours of Sunday night and the early hours of Monday morning what Kate’s future would be, what the nature of my new family would be. What helped me was not a book from a top-selling Christian author or a 10 session video course on how to be a more effective Christian dad. What helped me was that there were people, real flesh and blood people, some in here, some in other churches I’ve landed in, some in Africa, but people with whom I have gathered around the good news of the Bible, gathered around the good news of the table, gathered who could carry me when I couldn’t carry myself? Our Christian discipleship is falling apart, isn’t it, in this world? It’s true. We don’t need to hide it. We’re at least trying, but something’s not working, right. The apostles teaching and fellowship, the breaking of the bread and the prayers, we can disagree on a lot of points of doctrine.

We can have different opinions about how much water goes on a baby versus an adult, but the fact of the matter is we need some things. We need to read the Bible, rightly. Rightly, not as a code book that we use to batter ourselves or other people with, but as the book that points to him who is the answer. And we need to feed on that him because as he desires to be our food and above all we need to be together. I joke, but you get the joke. The reason it’s funny is it’s true. After 28 years in the church, it’s hard, man. I carry a lot of hurt that has been done to me by the church and there are enough of us here that I know I’m not the only one. The church full of hypocrisy. The church full of misconduct, the church full of things that aren’t hypocrisy or misconduct, but just hurt feelings and people who want to be a little too bossy or people who don’t agree with me or people like this, please don’t fight the church.

Let me tell you something else, it’s also only that’s full of Jesus. We have to be together and so that’s the great message today. It’s no great message. It’s reminding you of what you already knew, that the context that will keep the roads to our life, whether the road to Emmaus, the road to Pellissippi Parkway, any road, the context that will keep us on an even keel is not what they’re saying on the television news. It’s not what they’re saying in the newspapers. It’s not what I ate for breakfast or whether my wife and I had a good morning or a fight. It’s not how I feel about the weather or about the state of the war in Ukraine. It’s not any of that, it’s the good news, it doesn’t change. And in my intentional practice of orienting my life back to that, every time I get off, back to the Bible who reveals Jesus, back to Jesus himself, feeding me.

Back to you guys. That’s the rule of life. It’s not rocket science, it’s just that we don’t really do it. It was enough to transform the people who were in on the road to Emmaus and they ran back at night. If you go further in the story, Jesus appears in the room and he does the same thing. He teaches them about scripture, but then he says what? Peace be with you. I don’t know about you, but whether it was a good day going down Pellissippi Parkway or a bad one, I always need peace of Jesus and I still do. To go even a little further, you’ll see that this is the last thing he does before he goes out to Bethany in ascendance. He’s saying, “Live this way.” Scripture, sacrament, community, you’ll be okay. Well, the Bible likes to say, “And lo, I am with you always.”. I prefer to say you’ll be okay because to Jesus, paradoxically no matter how we feel about it, we are, we are okay.

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Easter 2
Rev. Doug Floyd
John 20

Our story begins in the dark. The characters, Mary Magdalene, Peter, John, Thomas, are in the dark. They understand what is happening. They struggle with fear and doubt and sadness. The light that overcomes the darkness has already begun to rise.

Mary arrives at the tomb of Jesus in the dark. She sees the stone rolled away from the tomb and misunderstands what is happening. Running to the disciples, she exclaims, “They’ve taken the Lord out of the tomb!” “We don’t know where they laid him!” You can imagine her crying out in fear and grief. The night of Jesus’ death feels endless.

Peter and John take off. Our story of resurrection unfolds bit by bit. Mary saw the stone rolled away. John sees the linen burial cloths. Peter sees the face cloth that had been over Jesus folded and to the side. This time the response is not fear but the beginning of belief. They don’t understand what has happened and yet there is some initial sign of faith. The story says “for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”[1] They return home.

Back to Mary. She is weeping outside the tomb. Bit by bit the stories of resurrection continues to unfold. This time two angels appear in the tomb. “Woman, why are you weeping?” “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”[2] She turns around and suddenly faces Jesus. She doesn’t recognize him. Jesus speaks to her, “Woman why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” She misunderstands. Thinking Jesus to be the gardener, she supposes that he has moved the body.

Into the middle of her confusion, Jesus calls her name, “Mary.” Suddenly she beholds him. “Rabboni!” My master! Jesus replies, Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ”[3] Now Mary runs a second time to the disciples. “I have seen the Lord.”

The disciples are hiding behind locked doors. Jesus steps into their midst. “Peace be with you!” He shows them his hands and side. Their fear slips away and joy overtakes them. The Lord is here. Jesus repeats the word of peace and then commissions them. “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”[4] Just as God breathed on the clay in forming Adam, Jesus breathes on His disciples, imparting the Holy Spirit. “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” [5]

Thomas hears about this appearing of Jesus. It is too much. He cannot grasp it. He must see for himself before he can believe. “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”[6]

Eight days later, Jesus stands in their midst. “Peace be with you.” “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.”[7] Thomas answers, “My Lord and my God.” Jesus responds, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”[8]

Immediately after this story, John turns to us the reader and says that he has written these specific stories so that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God and by believing we might have life. He is telling these stories to help awaken faith in us.

Our story of resurrection in John 20 has a pattern. Our story begins in the dark. The dark of unbelief and misunderstanding. Just as the light of day begins with a glimmer on the horizon and moves to the full of light of day, our story moves from fear to faith, from confusion to the confession of Jesus as Lord and God.

We have three sets of stories. The story of Mary Magdalene. The story of the disciples, specifically Peter and John, and the story of Thomas. There are two stories for each character, and each time the story moves from limited faith and misunderstanding to a fuller understanding and greater faith.

Chapter 20 begins while it is dark. John often conveys lack of believe through darkness. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” [9] Nicodemus comes by night by he doesn’t come to faith yet. The woman at the well encounters Jesus in the full light of day and she ends up evangelizing her town for Jesus.

Jesus walks on water to disciples in the dark and they fear, thinking he is a ghost. In the Gospel of John, darkness consistently represents lack of faith and lack of knowledge. Our story in John 20 begins in the dark but it is moving into the light. This is the pattern of our faith from darkness to light.

Paul writes in Colossians 1, “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”[10] This is the pattern of John 20: they are moving from the darkness of unbelief and misunderstanding to the light of truth in the face of Christ.

Mary begins in the dark and thinks Jesus’ body has been stolen. There are times in the walk of faith where we do walk through the dark. In season, understanding comes from the Lord. Peter and John come to the tomb, and we see a little knowledge opening. They enter the tomb; they behold the empty graveclothes. John believes but he doesn’t yet understand that Jesus will rise from the dead. Our passage reads, “for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”[11]

We the readers understand. We already know the resurrection has happened. But they are in the story, and they cannot see the whole picture. At least not yet. When Richard Wurmbrand was in a Romanian prison for his faith, he spent three years in total darkness in an underground cell. In that place, he could not see what was to come. But now his experiences could be read as a story. Eventually, he would be released and come to America and tell his story. Then in a great twist of irony, he bought the prison and turned it into a school.

We are in a story that God is telling. We don’t know what lies ahead. There are times when it may feel like we believe but as yet we do not understand the Scripture or the story. We simply trust and keep walking, knowing that God has not forsaken us.

In the second Mary story, she comes into the light of faith. First, she encounters two angels. Then when she turns around, she encounters Jesus. She doesn’t recognize Him until He calls her name and then her eyes are opened. Jesus tells her, “Don’t cling to me.” What does he mean?

I’ve heard many different theories over the years, but I think in light of the story it makes the most sense to say that Jesus is telling Mary that she cannot return to following him the way things were before. After the resurrection, she will know him and follow him differently. Think of how a child climbs up in his mother’s lap for comfort. There comes a time when the relationship is different. The teenager or young man can no longer climb up in his mother’s lap. He still is close to her but the nature of the relation has changed.

Jesus is calling Mary forward. Go and tell the disciples. Mary is sent on mission with a word to the disciples. In our walk of faith, we are going forward where Jesus sends us. I had some wonderfully experiences of faith in college, but that life is over. I cannot go back. I go forward to where Jesus is leading.

In the second encounter with Peter and John, Jesus stands before all the disciples. “Peace be with you.” He is present and His peace is sufficient. Each Sunday we are reminded of this truth. Jesus is present and His peace is sufficient. Jesus commissions His disciples, breathes the power of the Spirit upon them, and gives them the ministry of reconciliation.

Finally, we come to the story of Thomas. In light of how the rest of the chapter moves from darkness to light, from unbelief and misunderstanding to faith, we can see that Thomas’s story is part of a greater movement. He also must pass from darkness to light, from unbelief to faith. He must see and feel to know. When Thomas finally faces Jesus he exclaims the great confession of faith, “My Lord and my God!” This is the confession that John wants us to have.

Our life of faith is not static. We are moving from faith to faith, from glory to glory. As we remember the resurrection, we also remember the Resurrected One who is leading us into the fullness of His love.

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 20:9.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 20:13.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 20:17.

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 20:21.

[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 20:22–23.

[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 20:25.

[7] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 20:27.

[8] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 20:29.

[9] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 1:5.

[10] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Col 1:13–14.

[11] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 20:9.

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Easter 2023
Rev. Doug Floyd
Matthew 28:1-10

I read an Epiphany poem this week that spoke to me deeply about our Easter celebration. This is Epiphany poem by George Mackay Brown.

Epiphany Poem

The red king
Came to a great water. He said,
Here the journey ends.
No keel or skipper on this shore.

The yellow king
Halted under a hill. He said,
Turn the camels round.
Beyond, ice summits only.

The black king
Knocked on a city gate. He said,
All roads stop here.
These are gravestones, no inn.

The three kings
Met under a dry star.
There, at midnight,
The star began its singing.

The three kings
Suffered salt, snow, skulls.
They suffered the silence
Before the first word.[1]

Three kings. They had gone as far as they could go. They suffered salt, snow, skulls. Each faced an obstacle they could not pass. Then a surprise: the star began its singing. They’re eyes were opened, and in the silence, they heard. They behold. The first word. The word made flesh.

This week we rehearsed the final days and hours of Jesus Christ. Even as we follow Jesus to the end, we realize the world itself was weary and at an end. Humanity had gone as far as it could go.

Peter was at an end. The fisherman turned disciple denied his Lord. Peter curses anyone who would associate him with Jesus. He hears a rooster and realizes that he has come to the end of himself. He went out and wept bitterly.

The Temple was at an end. The Temple was the dwelling place of God with man. It was built to be a house of prayer but it had become a den of robbers.

Israel was at an end. It has no eyes and no ears for the very God who redeemed it, created it, sustained it. “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.”[2]

Rome was at an end. Though it claimed Pax Romana (Peace of Rome), it was built on blood and violence. Though Pilate claimed to enact justice, he washed his hands of justice and crucified the Lord of Glory to appease the shouting mobs.

The world was at an end. “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.”[3]

At the end of all things, the Son of God lays in a tomb. All hope is gone, love grown cold, the light gone out.

This morning we read, “Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week.”[4] A new day. The day after the Sabbath, the seventh day. On the eighth day, all things become new.

Time and space are changed. Now we live in the light of this eighth day, this new day, this day of salvation. Peter is “recalled to life.” Our risen Savior feeds Peter and the disciples, and then commands Peter, “Feed my sheep.”

The Jewish Scriptures are transformed. Jesus walks with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus and reveals how all of Scripture is telling His story.

Rome is transformed. It was said that all roads led to Rome. The disciples would walk those roads, bringing the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the far reaches of the empire.

All creation has been changed in light of the Risen Christ. We live and move and walk in light of Christ. And yet, we grow weary. We lose heart. Our love grows cold. Our light flickers.

In our weakness, His strength is revealed. The Risen Savior calls into the new day. The wonder of our faith is that each day is the day of salvation. Each day we wake to the day of salvation, the hope hidden behind the veil, the yes and amen of God in Jesus Christ.

Each day we wake to the star that sings and points us to the first Word, the living Word, Word made flesh. Each day we turn and face the Risen Lord. Though we draw from the riches of tradition, our faith is not in tradition but in a person.

Though we give voice to our faith in a series of doctrinal statements, our faith is not in a statement or an idea but in a person.

Though we study and reflect on the Bible, our faith is not in a book but in a person.

Whether we realize it or not, Jesus is the one who created us and sustains us. There is no independent existence outside of Christ. We are resurrected In Christ, through Christ and for Christ.

Today, we rejoice. We sing out the Alleluia. We feast on His love and His life. For He is Risen and all things have become new.

[1] Williams, Rowan. A Century of Poetry (p. 61-62). SPCK. Kindle Edition.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 1:11.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 3:19.

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mt 28:1.

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Crucifixion by Theophanes the Cretan (Mid-16th Century)Good Friday 2023
Rev. Ash Bramblett
John 19:1-37

Let me first say that it’s an honor to be here and to look out and see so many faces from different congregations, people who I’m friends with and love, and it’s an honor to be here with you today.

Doug asked me to preach, and we’ve been friends for a number of years, and I’m sure there’s a certain level of oddity of having a Baptist come and preach in an Anglican service. I would like to think it’s because I’ve got a little bit of Anglican in me, but I must warn you that the sermon length is very Baptist.

Let me start with a piece of trivia for you. Do you know what the oldest depiction of The Crucifixion is in terms of art, sculpture, or any other medium? It’s hard to date, obviously, what the exact oldest one is, but one of the best contenders is a picture called The Alexamenos graffito, also known as the graffito blasfemo, or the blasphemous graffiti. It was founded in an excavation of the Palatine Hill in Rome in 1857, and the image is a graffiti scratched in plaster depicting a man worshiping a crucified figure who has the head of a donkey. The inscription below it reads, “Alexamenos worships his god.”

I think it’s somehow fitting that the oldest image that we have of Christ crucified is a mocking caricature, the bullying of a believer about the foolishness of the cross. It’s appropriate because mockery is key to the scene we see on the day of the cross. As Jesus hangs on the cross, the mocking accusations come from the crowd, particularly from two groups, the Jewish religious leaders and the Roman Centurions.

For the religious leaders, the Sanhedrin, the Council, they call into question the messianic identity of Jesus, and specifically the idea of Him being Savior. He has saved others. Let Him save himself if He’s the Christ, the chosen one of God.

Jesus has obviously proven himself to be a savior many times. He has saved others from countless diseases, disasters, demonic possessions, even from death. But now, He is unable to save Himself.

Luke goes on to tell us about the soldiers, how they also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine and saying, “If you are the king of the Jews, then save yourself.” Again, the pagan idea of a king was somebody who had divine favor, someone who was sometimes even deified. The king had become something like a demigod, Caesar, Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, all god kings. Even in Israel, while the king wasn’t in any way God, a faithful king was blessed with victory and prosperity.

Certainly, we see kings undergoing suffering and defeat in the Old Testament, but it’s a function of judgment on them and, usually, obviously so, directly connected to their disobedience. When kings do go into battle with their soldiers, it’s usually the case that they’re armored and guarded in such a way where their life is in no mortal danger. And moreover, even in defeat, a king is usually much more valuable alive than he is dead. So kings and nobles go into battle and are captured and then ransomed. That’s the norm.

All that is to say kings survive. The king is the one who lives, the one who everybody else risks their lives to save and protect. And that’s the problem with Jesus. As this priestly class, this group of experts, these intermediaries between God and man, all of them on the Sanhedrin should know what a Messiah looks like. And when they look to Jesus, they say, “He doesn’t look much like a Messiah.

Again, of all people, the Centurions ought to know what a king looks like. After all, generals have a habit of becoming emperors in Rome. If anyone knows what a king looks like, it’s the Roman army. And this Jesus doesn’t look much like a king.

Perhaps we could reword their mocking accusations, “If you are a king, conquer. If you are a savior, save. If you are a Messiah, do some Messiah stuff.” If we’re honest, our hearts echo fairly similar blasphemies at times, particularly in the midst of suffering and tragedy. The rejection, the mocking of Jesus is something we share in, although perhaps not so boldly as we see it in this story.

“Jesus, do some Messiah stuff. How can you allow something like this to happen? How can you not act in this situation? How can you not do something that would make me not doubt you or even embarrassed of you?” Maybe it’s the tragic death of some loved one, a dire prognosis, a profligate child. Maybe when the world looks on and says things like, “Thoughts and prayers won’t help dead children,” maybe we hear our mocking voices calling out among the scoffers, “Jesus, get off the cross and do something. Come with fire. Come with power. Protect the innocent. Judge the wicked. We want Mount Carmel, not Mount Calvary.”

And yet as urgent as those times seem in our own lives, the stakes, of course, are infinitely higher here at the cross. And the reality is that the issue is not that Jesus is unable, but that he’s unwilling. He is unwilling to save Himself.

As is usually the case, mockers are also myopic, because in the case of suffering, and infinitely more in the case of Jesus’ suffering, it is accomplishing something that is beyond our comprehension. Christ is not suffering as an example of failure, but of faithfulness. Christ’s suffering is not a contradiction, but a necessary confirmation of who He is. In Christ suffering, He is accomplishing our salvation and confirming His messianic and kingly identity.

Hebrews 2:10 says something incredible, “It was fitting that He, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.” Bringing many sons to glory, becoming the founder of their salvation, how does he do that? Jesus was made perfect through suffering.

Now, again, that phrase sounds strange to our ears. How is Jesus made perfect? Is he not already perfect? But Jesus is not being purified by suffering for His own purification, because He is already perfect. But He is becoming perfect in the sense that He’s being qualified by His suffering.

Maybe we could say it this way. He may be the perfect, sinless son of God. But in a sense, He still has to prove it.

So if you’ll suffer me nerding out for just a minute, it’s really hard to make a good Superman movie. Some people think it’s because Superman is this archaic boy scout with values from another generation, and he needs to be updated to match our modern sensibilities. But that’s not the reason why it’s hard to make a good Superman movie. The reason is because Superman can do anything. His power set and his abilities are basically limitless, and that makes him boring.

Did you know that Superman couldn’t originally fly? When the character was created, all he could do was jump really high, which is a lame power. In early Superman stories, he’s fighting gangsters and drug dealers and abusive husbands. He’s not fighting giant robots and aliens from outer space.

But the problem was is every time Superman got into a new problem, the writers just gave him a new power. Now he can fly or he has X-ray vision or ice breath or laser eyes, super hearing, super speed. He doesn’t need to breathe anymore or rest or eat, because he gets all of his power from the earth’s yellow sun.

I sometimes think that we see Jesus in the same way, almost as if when we think about Jesus, we think to ourselves, “Well, of course Jesus can do that. He’s Jesus.”

But Jesus doesn’t sit on the cross, yawning, “Is this all you guys have got? I don’t know if you know this, but I’m the eternal son of God.” Jesus’ suffering is real, and He wants free of it. We see that in Gethsemane. We see that in the cry of dereliction. But Jesus must be put through the ultimate suffering as the wrath of God is poured out on Him for sin, and He must completely obey where you and I never did and never could and never would for salvation to be accomplished.

Jesus must suffer in every way, and yet without sin, to be an adequate savior. If Jesus curses God during the process, he isn’t worthy or capable of being our sacrifice. If he uses his power and authority to come down from the cross, to sidestep the suffering, He has demonstrated that He is not the Messiah, that He is not perfectly obeyed under opposition, and that proves Him unworthy.

Again, the scoffers will say, “If Jesus is savior, if He is the chosen one, if He is the Messiah, He should save Himself.” But the irony is if He saves Himself, He can save no one else. If He wants to save others, He must not save Himself.

Again, it seems like foolishness, a savior who dies. A man who dies can’t save anybody. He hasn’t even saved himself. He’s failed at saving. And yet that is the foolishness of the cross. And it’s not just His identity as savior that we see in those mocking yells, but His identity is king. That is connected to His obedience as well.

Philippians 2, probably a very familiar passage to many of us, “That being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God,” and watch, “Therefore, God has highly exalted Him and bestowed upon Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”

Again, Jesus isn’t just king because He’s the son of God and the second person of the Trinity. In his incarnation, Jesus is king because He is worthy to be king. It is because of His obedience. He was obedient to the utmost. He was humbled. He died, in fact, on a cross. The Father says, “Son, I need you to take on flesh to go down there, to be misunderstood, to be rejected, to be tortured, to be killed, to bear my wrath for sin.” And Jesus says, “Not my will, but your will be done. I will obey come what may. No matter what the case is, I will fulfill the mission that you have called me to.”

Again, there have been some incredible moments in obedience in the Bible. Even the stories we read earlier in the service, Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac, huge, Daniel’s refusal to worship Nebuchadnezzar, bold. But never has anyone obeyed like Jesus. Never has obedience cost anyone like it cost Jesus.

But Jesus is faithful to the end, a king who dies for His people according to His father’s plan. Jesus the Christ has accomplished our salvation, and He is worthy to be king. And so that message was mocked by Alexmenos’ classmates, and it is mocked today. But I hope that Alex knew, and I hope you know that while the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

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Rev. Dr. Les Martin

Maundy Thursday 2023
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
John 13:1-5

In the name of the living God, Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, amen. During the years that Kate and I lived in Nigeria, there was a story that often repeated itself. Sometimes at the market, sometimes at the bank, sometimes in a government queue. We’d be waiting patiently and a man, it was almost always a man, a larger man, he was almost always heavyset. And he would have gray hair and fine clothing, but he would be [inaudible 00:00:48], sometimes subtle with his shoulder. But more often than not, he would just walk past everyone. And whoever he was, this man came in so many forms and yet strangely identical.

Whenever he was challenged, he would say something to the effect of, “Do you know who I am?” He felt that his identity made him important. That happened a lot in Nigeria, but it happens here too. One of the great stories about John Kerry is that he is notorious with bypassing lines, because after all he’s John Kerry. His identity makes him important. What’s funny about these Nigerian big men, however, is however much they may push when they’re in Nigeria, if he dipped into the customs line in the UK or in the US, they suddenly become meek, they become compliant. These large men who bellow out, “Do you not know who I am?” suddenly are silent and obedient and patient.

These men who thought that their identity made them important, in a whole different context, we see that their identity was actually just an illusion. So much of our sin, our pain, our alienation and confusion in life comes from not really knowing who we are. We go along in our life developing an identity, and for most of us, we are fairly certain of who we are in the end, in the end, in the end. A day will come, or an illness or a tragedy, or just getting older, and we find that identity we were so certain of is little more than an illusion. A whole culture, a whole self-help movement has made quite a bit of feeding selfish illusions.

By now, you’re asking, what does this have to do with Maundy Thursday? Well, let’s consider Jesus. Jesus the man… for some time, but since the raising of Lazarus, it was clear that the tomb was going to be filled again, only this time Jesus. To add insult to injury, to see what he’s doing this week, cleansing the temple, cursing moneychangers. His teaching is pointed and unusually direct about the shortcomings of all temple priesthood and Pharisee. He could read the room. He had to know it was coming. And no doubt, as we will see in the night between Thursday and Friday, Jesus the man was afraid.

But that’s not the whole story, because Jesus is man and god. And this is where identity comes in. Listen to these words again from the Gospel of John. Jesus knew that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going back to God. Jesus knew who he was. He knew where he came from. This is the word. The word that was in the beginning with God and was God and was with God. God’s plan and order. God’s created purpose in the universe, without whom anything could be made. All because of him. This is God’s love, God’s first, best word to those who believe in him.

So identified with the Father, that Jesus will say, “If you wonder about him, just look at me. If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” Jesus knew where he came from. Jesus knew where he was going. He was going to the father’s right hand, and to an everlasting kingdom, and to a position where all authority would be given to him. Jesus knew who he was and where he was going. And so unlike us who are mired in illusion, unlike us who are weighed down by false sense of self or confusion, Jesus, knowing who he is, is free. He’s completely free. He can read the room, but the threats don’t stop him, just like death won’t stop him. He is free.

And unlike so many people who proclaim themselves free, he is free but he does not give in to self-indulgence, he is free but he does not give into abuse of power. He is free to sacrifice, he is free to stay and to love. He knows who he is, and so continuing, he got up from the supper and lay beside his robe and began to wash the disciples. It’s not incidental that those two sentences follow one another. He knows who he is, and so he gets up and serves. And remember, that might be impressive if self-important. But this is God. Knowing who he is, he serves. He serves in two ways.

He serves the table and self. In a mystery that we confess as faith, but I at least refrain from trying to explain, he serves himself. This is my body, broken for you. This is my blood shed for you, for the forgiveness of your sins. What will be enacted in a physical way come Friday afternoon is already enacted in a mystical way Thursday night. He is free to die, forever. He is free to sit himself down and wash. Now, we need to understand that he would’ve already been washed at the beginning of the meal, so the cleansing that he gets the stuff of the streets off your feet, that cleansing would’ve already happened.

And he washes again. We’re not certain, but we can surmise many of the disciples would’ve been baptized by John. For they would’ve already been washed. And he washes again, because Jesus, the server, the god who is willing to sit himself down and kneel, is in the washing business, again and again and again. Sometimes we call it absolution. Jesus knows who he is, and who he is is free.

There’s not enough emphasis that I can put on those words. No matter how I say them, they sound flat. I want to bang on the pulpit, I want to set off fireworks. I want to scream, “Jesus is God, for you.” In his freedom, able to do anything he wants, he washes and feeds you. The whole purpose of the great mystery that continues for three long days is summed up in that. For you, for you, for you. He knows who he is, and he is for you.

Now the implications to this, of course, it’s foot washing, there’s people going in and out, and there’s an argument. In the Gospel of Luke, there’s an argument about who will be greatest. Those people out there who think they know who they are, who go around busting through lines and saying, “Do you know who I am?” They like to lord it over people. Don’t be like that. I am among you as one who serves.

And as if to make the point clear, he washes their feet. Peter objects. If we truly understood, we’d object too. And then he says, “You know what I’ve done to you. Blessed are you if you do likewise.” Now again, there are implications here about us. I mentioned that so much of what we’re suffering from is because our identity is confusion. We see it in our schools, we see it in our culture. If we’re honest, we see it in our lives. We go around saying, “Do you know who I am?” while at the same time, we have no idea who we are.

Here’s the answer. For Jesus, the free man, the free god, who knows who he is, is showing us that it doesn’t so much matter who we are, as whose we are. Our identity is not found on Les’s CV or what Les does for a living, or how much money Les makes, or whether Les seems good about herself, or whether Les needs to lose weight or gain weight. Her identity is found in Christ, who has washed us, fed us, and who sends us out to do the same. Again, that’s a deep subject, with years of meditation.

But if you’re unsure of why you’re here, maybe things have taken a weird turn in your life, maybe after years on the mission fields you find yourself weary, maybe retirement has been harder than you thought, or unemployment is a reality… if you’re unsure who you are, suffering, instead ask yourself whose you are. And everyone do likewise. But tonight, on the beginning of the great Triduum, it’s enough to participate fully in the Sacraments of absolution and communion tonight. The Sacraments of freedom given to us by the God who is free and whose ultimate identity is salvation for you.

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The Annunciation by Henry Ossowa Tanner (1898)Annunciation
Rev. Doug Floyd
Isaiah 7:10-14, Luke 1:46-55, Hebrews 10:5-10, Luke 1:26-38

Gabriel suddenly appears to Mary with the word, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” [1] This moment is charged with glory and holy terror, and the angel immediately calms Mary with the words, “Do not fear for you have found favor with God.” Before Mary can say a word, he continues with the unthinkable. “And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”[2]

In a moment, a blink of an eye, Mary’s world is forever changed. Our world is forever changed. God has come to dwell with man. Mary, the young virgin, will bear in her womb the Creator of the Universe. Theotokos: the woman who will bear God or the Mother of God.

How can this be? Our question and Mary’s question.

And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.[3] Here we have the beginning of our faith confession: in her virgin womb grows a baby that we will come to confess as fully God and fully man. He doesn’t become God at some point. From the moment of conception, he is both man and God. This is a mystery to be worshipped.

Mary responds to this word of God, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”[4]

We pause over this mystery today. We draw near with hushed awe. For the glory of God is revealed in our midst. In this singular event, time and space are changed. The promise of God is revealed. The hope of all humanity made known. This is Gospel. This is Good News. This is the grace of God.

The angel Gabriel speaks the word of grace to Mary. “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” The word Greetings literally means rejoice! For the good news of Jesus Christ is good news of great joy. This word “rejoice” is a variation of the word “charis,” which means grace and gift and even love. The angel speaks another variation of “charis” in the very next word, “favored one.” The angel comes with the word of love from the Father in heaven. This word of love is a gift that will turn the hearts of humanity to the Father.

The word of love, the gift of God, the grace of God echoes in the promise to Mary, “The Lord is with you.” In this one glory-filled greeting, we hear the Gospel; we hear the unshakeable blessing of God. “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!”

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”[5] “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”[6]

This Gospel, this Good News is not a message of fear. It is a message of great joy for Mary and for all humanity. God has come as the last king of Israel. “And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”[7]

The coming of King Jesus is good news of great joy.

Mary responds to the word of God, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”[8] And the church is born. Her word is the word of the saints across the ages. It is the word of the disciples. John Paul II used this phrase to describe Mary, “Totus Tuus” that is “Totally Yours.” In her absolute submission to God’s Word, Mary becomes the model for all future disciples of the Lord.

This word of absolute submission can only be said in and through the grace of God. Gabriel has come to Mary and to all humanity in a sense bearing the word of grace. In this gift of God’s love, Mary is strengthened to speak the word of faith, the word of submission, the word of doxology, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”

We rehearse this glorious story seven days before we will rehearse the cross of Christ. As King and Redeemer, Jesus will bear the sin and death of humanity in the cross, in His suffering, in His death. Mary will follow Jesus to the cross, and a sword will pierce her heart. She will suffer as her Son hangs upon the cross. In His death and resurrection, Jesus will redeem her.

Mary, the young virgin, who heard the word of grace from Gabriel, the Theotokos, will become in some sense the mother of the church. We follow in her footsteps, opening our hearts and lives to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Even as we hear the good news today, let us keep this confession on our lips and in our hearts, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Lk 1:28.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Lk 1:31–33.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Lk 1:35.

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Lk 1:38.

[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 1:14.

[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 3:16.

[7] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Lk 1:32–33.

[8] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Lk 1:38.

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Lent 4 – Sloth
Rev. Doug Floyd

My father was an industrious person. He came home from work and started on a project: mowing the lawn, planting trees, cultivating a garden. He enjoyed doing things. Whereas I enjoyed reading, watching movies, having a good conversation. As I began the study of sloth, I thought, “Well I am the perfect example. Unlike my dad, I seemed to enjoy not doing things.”

Actually, the ancient idea of sloth is a bit more complicated. In fact, the more I read, the more it seemed to unfold in varying directions. Sloth has been known as acedia or akkedie. At it’s root, acedia means “lack of care.” Evagrius called it the noonday demon.

Why? Because other demons attacked at night, but acedia was not afraid to attack in the full light of day. In her excellent book, Acedia and Me, Kathleen Norris points out that the early fathers did not use the language of seven deadly sins, but seven deadly thoughts. These thoughts weary us and can even entrap us. In one way or another, they lead us away from love.

Now back to the deadly thought of sloth or acedia. Listen to Evagrius’s description.

“The demon of acedia—also called the noonday demon—is the one that causes the most serious trouble of all. He presses his attack upon the monk about the fourth hour and besieges the soul until the eighth hour. First of all he makes it seem that the sun barely moves, if at all, and that the day is fifty hours long. Then he constrains the monk to look constantly out the windows, to walk outside the cell, to gaze carefully at the sun to determine how far it stands from the ninth hour, to look now this way and now that to see if perhaps [one of the brethren appears from his cell]. Then too he instills in the heart of the monk a hatred for the place, a hatred for his very life itself, a hatred for manual labor. He leads him to reflect that charity has departed from among the brethren, that there is no one to give encouragement. Should there be someone at this period who happens to offend him in some way or other, this too the demon uses to contribute further to his hatred. This demon drives him along to desire other sites where he can more easily procure life’s necessities, more readily find work and make a real success of himself. He goes on to suggest that, after all, it is not the place that is the basis of pleasing the Lord. God is to be adored everywhere. He joins to these reflections the memory of his dear ones and of his former way of life. He depicts life stretching out for a long period of time, and brings before the mind’s eye the toil of the ascetic struggle and, as the saying has it, leaves no leaf unturned to induce the monk to forsake his cell and drop out of the fight.”[1]

Acedia refers to thoughts that tempt the monk to leave behind his commitments: that is to abandon his prayers, to leave his cell. It begins with a weariness in the life he has chosen. We are not monks and we don’t live in cells, so how do these thoughts tempt us? They dampen our love for God and one another. They distract us from our commitments. They lead us away from love.

Considers the distractions of our present age. On Facebook or some other social media platform. In just a few minutes, we may read a post about someone celebrating a birthday, followed by a post that makes us laugh followed by the news of a death followed by the latest update on some celebrity. These posts can desensitize us to real human suffering and real human joy. It’s not just Facebook. In 30 minutes, our news is packed with stories of tragedy, stories about politics, and stories of human achievement. Back in the 1940s, Eugen Rosenstock Huessy wrote that the bombardments by bits of news slowly dehumanizes us.

This looks a bit like acedia, which literally means lack of care. We can hear about a tragedy, costing the lives of thousands of people on the other side of the globe and them immediately hear about the effects of a medication for diabetes. Additionally, we are distracted from the difficult commitment of real relationships by work that bleeds over into our family time, by binge-watching television shows or even by video games. I’ve known two different relationships to fail because the man was so addicted to playing video games that the woman felt abandoned.

Rebecca DeYoung offers a modern example of acedia from the film Groundhog Day. In the film, Phil Connors (played by Bill Murray) is stuck in a time loop, waking up every day on February 2. At some point, he decides to try and get his producer Rita to go to bed with him. Day after day, he learns her likes, then he casually acts like he likes the same things. It is all a false front. He is unwilling to commit to a real relationship, so his little scheme is simply a way to win her over by appearing to care for the same things she does. She actually starts to feel drawn in, but then sees through the emptiness in his actions.

Phil’s first response to her rejection is a series of failed suicide attempts. Then something odd happens. Phil changes. He takes piano lessons, learns French poetry, and tries to help people. He is no longer bored. “[Phil] no longer pretends to be but really becomes—through consistent habit and daily discipline—not just a poet, pianist, and philanthropist, but a person capable of unselfish love. Phil finds himself no longer solely motivated by the desire to produce sexual results in his relationship with Rita. Instead, he has learned to care about others and to genuinely care about what is right and good—for its own sake. In the end, his transformed character attracts not only the affection of all the townspeople but also the love of Rita herself.”[2]

Like Phil in Groundhog Day, acedia includes escapism, restlessness, self-indulgence, boredom, apathy, and despair.[3] These careless thoughts lead us away from our lives from reality to some fantasy life.

DeYoung says that, “People with acedia… dream of being unconditionally loved without having to condition their own selfish desires in return. They prefer a perpetual honeymoon to fifty years of married faithfulness.”[4] In our distracted age, we all face the temptation of sloth or acedia.

We may find it difficult to live into the challenges of our lives and wish for some other life. We may allow the constant distractions of television and social media to lead us away from focusing on what is most important. We may struggle in our daily commitments to God in prayer and meditation.

We may at times feel the pull of despair and discouragement. Dennis Okholm says that “ultimately, sloth is the vice opposed to the joy of love. It is, simply, running from God and all goodness. And that means it entails a degree of volition. We have a choice on the field of battle against the passions. At one end is a fundamental longing for God that unites us to him if we meditate on him and live as human creatures with feelings and yearnings that arise from this longing. But at the other end of the battlefield is forgetfulness of God and the accompanying personal disintegration—the origin of our sorrow and the thoughts that are directed toward anti-God objects and goals. “Every time we are overcome by these passionate wishes and desires, they overshadow the thoughts of God. We forget him and our inner life disintegrates. Our fundamental longing for God is weakened.”[5]

We experience this temptation that pull us away from love in our relation to God, to our spouses, and even to family and friends. Rowan Williams write that facing acedia involves living into our own desert calling. We may not be desert monks life in a cell, but we can learn rest in the very place where we are. He writes, “Grace returns us to the particular and local.”[6]

It is simply in the daily faithfulness of our lives where we learn to combat sloth. We learn the beauty of daily routines or daily rituals. Only instead of living as robots, we pay attention. We are learning what it means to be a Christian in our own skin. Rowan Williams says that while I learn from the Christians around me and who have preceded me, I must live my own life. He says, “I have to take my own steps and create a life that has never been lived before.”[7]

Every day you face the ordinariness of life. Wake up. Take a shower. Brush your teeth. Get dressed. Sometimes the monotony of daily repetition can seem meaningless. This is the temptation of acedia to make our life seem empty and hollow.

We also face daily stresses and struggles. It could be job related, it could be physical and health related, it could be emotional. The challenges you face are different than the challenges I face. In fact, these challenges change as our lives pass through different seasons. Acedia can look like the feeling of meaninglessness in our lives. It can come as the temptation to long for another life maybe an earlier time in life or maybe another life altogether.

For Kelly and I, it can come as the sadness or longing to return to our old house that burned down. Acedia is always drawing us away from living into our current life. It can even look like busyness or a workaholic. Some people so busy their lives with activity that they fail to care for their soul. Each of us must learn to meet God’s goodness and grace in the here and now. Some people are tempted to be somewhere else. Some people are tempted to be someone else. Trust that God is present in who you are and where you are.

In this season, I am learning to live into the difficulty of dialysis. It is physically tiring and yet it keeps me alive. This is the place where I must learn to turn and face the grace of God, discovering His faithfulness. For you, the daily challenge, the difficulty is something else. The ancient desert monks saw their cell as the place of testing. They compared it to “the furnace in Babylon where the three young men found the Son of God. And it is like the pillar of cloud where God spoke to Moses.”[8]

As we think about our own lives: the places where we live and the persons that we are, we might ask, what is our monk’s cell. Where is the place you are being called to live faithfully even though it is uncomfortable, and you can think of a thousand other places you’d rather be. Even though it may seem difficult at times, turn toward the challenge. It is in your life, your home, your job where you learn to life into a faithfulness toward the Lord and others. It is where you learn to rest in God’s goodness.

Rowan says, “Where we are and who we are is the furnace where the Son of God walks.”[9] The very place where you live and walk is the place where you meet God’s grace. Commit yourself to God in prayer, to your family, to your church. In these relations, you learn the ancient monastic weapon against acedia, “stability of place.” Pay attention to where you are, to who you are, and the those you are called to love. Trust that the Lord is strengthening you.

Our life of faith is not divided from our life of work. As the Benedictine monks, we rehearse the way of “work and prayer.” Your job, your family, your community, your church are all part of the walk of faith.

We are learning the faithfulness of love. We trust that God in His mercy and grace is meeting us and caring for us. And some days we catch a glimpse of His glory and rejoice.

[1] Evagrius Ponticus. The Praktikos & Chapters On Prayer (Cistercian Studies Series) (pp. 130-131). Liturgical Press. Kindle Edition.

[2] Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2020), 100.

[3] Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2020), 100.

[4] Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2020), 102.

[5] Dennis Okholm, Dangerous Passions, Deadly Sins: Learning from the Psychology of Ancient Monks (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2014), 152.

[6] Williams, Rowan. Where God Happens (p. 115). Shambhala. Kindle Edition.

[7]

[8] Williams, Rowan. Where God Happens (p. 122). Shambhala. Kindle Edition.

[9] Williams, Rowan. Where God Happens (p. 122). Shambhala. Kindle Edition.

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Lent 3 – Lust
Rev. Les Martin
Romans 1:16-32

In the name of the living God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. I’ve had to wear glasses since eighth grade. And as you can imagine, over the years my vision has only gotten worse. And so, I have this funny habit at night, I take my glasses off to sleep, of course, and particularly as I’ve gotten older at night, certain things wake one up. But I don’t particularly want to go to the trouble of putting on my glasses and now that I’m married, I don’t particularly want to turn on the light. So, I get up already blind and in the dark thinking that I can somehow make it to the restroom. And I do, but I make it to the restroom kind of like a pinball. I’m bouncing off things, bruising my knees, bruising my elbows. And of course, if you’re pressed, you have a certain amount of urgency. And so you’re going fast and tripping over things.

And my going to the restroom at night looks a little more like a pro football match than what it should. Because even though I think I know what I’m doing, even though I think I know the familiar way, I can’t see and I’m walking in the dark. Now why am I sharing this? Well, you see, when we think about Lent and the Seven Deadly Sins, we are drawing from two traditions. There’s the Greco-Roman tradition, primarily the Aristotelian and Platonist tradition, the Greeks. And then there’s the biblical tradition, the Pauline and Augustinian tradition. And indeed, our Christian faith is built on the combination and creative tension between these two worldviews. And that’s fine. That’s what the Lord has given us.

But there is a problem. The problem is these two different worldviews have two radically different ideas about the solution to our problem. The Greco-Roman philosophers generally tell us, when faced with something we don’t want to be doing, just stop, try harder. We see it in the self-help culture today. The biblical tradition is, we hear throughout Lent, as those of you who are here no doubt considered in the, great litany has a different emphasis, same problems, but the answer is, Lord have mercy. Not just stop, but Lord have mercy.

If the Greco-Roman is the self-help culture, we might call the biblical, the God-help culture. Listen to the colic for today again. We’re going to visit it several times today. “Heavenly Father, you have made us for Yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” There’s that Augustinian tradition, that’s actually Saint Augustine. “Look with compassion on the heartfelt desires of your servants.” Why? Why would he need to look with compassion on our heartfelt desires? Because we’re blind and in the dark. We think we know where we’re going, but we don’t. And so then we ask, “Purify our disordered affections.”

The romantic tradition, a third tradition in Western culture tells us, “Oh, the heart wants what it wants.” And that’s true. The problem is, the heart is disordered. We’re blind, we’re in the dark and we don’t know where we’re going. See my opinion, and this is my opinion, other theologians would disagree with me, is the problem with this tension, is that the Greco-Roman strain of our thinking produces, ultimately failure. Just stop. What, you didn’t stop? And with failure comes shame and guilt and self defeat and ultimately self-hatred.

Whereas I believe the biblical worldview produces a right understanding of the relationship between God and man. It opens the way to forgiveness. Forgiveness opens the way to hope. And hope opens the way to transformation. And why am I saying this today? I’m saying this today because I want to talk about the deadly sin of lust. And both the theologian in the pastor in me are worried, because few deadly sins produce more of a sense of judgment and condemnation of self and others. Few of the deadly sins produce more of a sense of guilt and shame than lust. So, I think it’s important as we go forward to stay grounded in that biblical worldview. It’s really important to recognize, that because our hearts are restless until they rest in God, that we need to understand that he looks with compassion on our heartfelt desires, our heartfelt lustful desires. And that it is his work and his will to purify our disordered affections, not something that Les can do on his own.

So, let’s look a minute at that biblical worldview. We’ll look at it specifically at the Pauline worldview today, because it’s really interesting. I’m returning to our epistle reading, specifically versus 21 through 26. Paul is saying this, he says, “For although they knew God…”, these people, we can include us in that, “… they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” Just like Les in the bedroom on his way to the bathroom, they thought they knew where they were going, but they were blind and in the dark. They know God, but they don’t honor Him as God. God is an opinion. God is a thought. God is an option. And as a result, their hearts are darkened.

Now, here’s the really interesting part. Let’s go down to verse 24. He says, “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity and to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.” Therefore. You know what the word therefore means. Whenever there’s, therefore, you have to look at what’s before. And what we see is an inversion of what we think. What’s common sense wisdom? I mess up, I do something sinful and so I’m spoiled, right? I’m ruined. Paul says, no, no, no, no, no. Your mind and heart go dark, because you don’t understand God, and then you do something sinful. In other words, the emphasis is exactly opposite. It’s not, I do something wrong and I’m ruined. It’s no, I’m blind and in the dark and therefore I do something wrong. It’s a huge reversal and it will change our thinking. He’s saying, because we can’t see the truth about God, because we’re in the dark about God and God’s truth, that’s where the sin comes from.

The pastor in me, when we’re talking about lust wants to tell you how important this is. I don’t know if you think about this, but whether it’s a loved one who’s disappointed you, a stranger who’s hurt you or you yourself. Most people when they sin, hear me well, most people when they sin think they’re doing the right thing. They think they’re doing something to alleviate their suffering, their situation. They may even think it’s bad. “Oh, I know I shouldn’t drink this much, but I got to take the edge off.” In other words, they think, they think, they think they’re making things better for themselves, even though they’re making them worse. Why? Because they can’t see and they’re walking in the dark.

So what seems good to a man actually leads to death. But it can help us approach our own sin and the sin of others with a little more grace and compassion when we understand that, yes, they’re dark, yes, they’re trapped in wickedness, but not because they’re trying to do something evil. They think they’re making things better, when in fact they’re making things worse. Because of course, they’re blind and in the dark. The heart’s affections are disordered. This is true of all the sins will consider, but it’s particularly true of lust.

I want to talk about lust, because we don’t really know what it is or perhaps we know half of what it is. And I’m aware we’re in a multi-generational gathering, so in some places, I’m going to be vague and you have to fill in the blanks, okay? Lust, the best definition I’ve ever found is that, “It’s an intense desire, an intense desire that is disordered.” Those disordered affections we talk about. And we get one part of lust really well and we completely ignore the other. If you go back to those Greco-Roman guys, they’re two kinds of lust. By the 4th Century, in fact, the original word for lust stops being used by Evagrius and others, and a new word comes in its place. Porneia. Again, I’m going to be vague, but it’s not hard to guess what that word’s about, porneia. That’s where we get the term for all those disordered things that we do that Paul’s talking about later in Romans. All those things that consume our cultural fights and our church fights right now, porneia. The disordered affection becomes attracted to bodily pleasure, specifically sexual pleasure.

And again, we think we’re doing something that will relieve our tension, that will relieve our suffering, but the fact of the matter is, because we’re blind and we can’t see and because it’s dark, we choose the very thing that makes it worse, not better.

But that’s only half of lust. Before the word porneia became the big word for lust, there was a wider definition. The original word that the Greco-Romans used to describe lust was actually, luxuria. Luxuria, that’s where we get our word luxury. For almost 2000 years, this was also considered part of lust, an intense longing that is disordered. So there was the bodily and the sexual, but there was also this luxuria that was considered part of lust, a disordered life of excess or a disordered desire for excess. Now this is important, because one, we need to be able to broaden our conversation, particularly at this cultural moment in our lives. When we make lust simply porneia, just porneia. Well, it can lead to letting… Well, we can let ourselves off the hook, right? I got a little gray growing. I see a little gray out there, and of course, the freedom that the gray brings as we start going, “Eh, porneia. No problem.” The passion’s cool and we say, “I don’t have that problem.” But that’s only half of lust. Luxuria on the other hand, I don’t think we age out of that.

Together, certainly, whatever our individual struggles, when we put porneia and luxuria together, it affects us all. Just look around at our society. Let’s think about porneia for a second. On the internet, which is primarily, we thought it was going to change the world and open up knowledge and make things accessible. It’s primarily a blue place, a place that we didn’t think it would become. On the internet 28,258 users are watching porn every second. 20% of mobile device searches are for porn. We live in a world where the American Psychiatric Association, no conservative group, nonetheless tells us that 40 to 50% of first marriages end in divorce. And that would be tragic enough, but 56% of those involve porn addiction, 22% involve infidelity. And brings me no joy to say this.

We live in a hypersexualized culture. The media is helping us and encouraging us as we stumble around in our blindness and in the dark, to redefine things like male and female, right and wrong. And again, please don’t hear me flogging people about that, we’re blind and we’re in the dark. We don’t know what we’re doing, and we do what seems right to us and it brings us our own destruction. What’s clear, is our disordered fleshly desires, porneia, is tearing apart people, marriages, family and even culture. And I suspect, gray hair or no, if we’re honest, and please no judgment, if we’re honest, that struggle is even in this room. If not deeds, at least in thoughts.

Luxuria. Chasing after more, bigger, better. Again, it’s media fueled. You know that magazine, Conde Nast Traveler, has anyone looked at that besides me? You look at the big, shiny pictures of resorts that it probably costs more than I earn in a year to stay there a minute. The social media ads even, I’ll be on Facebook and I’ll go, “Oh, that looks like a nice bed. Kate and I need a bed.” And I finally get to the price, they hide it very well, and the price of the bed is the price of a small car. It’s like the old TV show, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. If porneia is deep within our culture and our media, so is luxuria. Look a certain way, dress a certain way. And even if you can’t attain to it, desire it. That’s really the root of all lust, it’s not the action, it’s the desire.

I’ll give you an example. I brought a prop today. I’m cheap, so I only bought a $1 lottery ticket because it’s just for a prop. Because here’s the thing about this lottery ticket. You notice I haven’t scratched it off. Do you know why? Anyone know why? Because the minute you scratch it off, the lust is gone. As long as it’s not scratched off, Kate and I can dream about that new house built the way we want. As long as it’s not scratched off, I can dream about leaving all of you and living a life of travel. As long as it’s not scratched off, I am the king of my castle. That’s fun as far as it goes, but you see the danger in it, right? And don’t tell me you haven’t done it. What would you do if you won that? “Oh, well, you know what I’d do?” Friends, that’s lust. Probably a more harmless form, but that’s lust.

And see, what I like about this, is right now my lust is intact. I haven’t been faced with the truth, because I haven’t scratched off anything. This is luxuria, right here. Now, if I gave this to you and you won the $10,000, what would you do with it? It’s lust, what you’re thinking right now. None of this is new. The poor Samaritan woman today is a woman who, whether it was her fault or those of her husbands, I don’t want to judge right now, scholars don’t know. She’s been caught in the lust of serial relationships. Someone on the side has decided that, “A better future is out there and I just need to change up things.” And so, she’s gone through five husbands and the man she’s living with now is not her husband. Porneia. And she likes the idea of Jesus’s living water, but it’s not so much that she wants to be saved, she wants a labor saving device. Did you hear her? “Oh, give me this living water, that way I won’t have to come down to the well and draw water.” She doesn’t want salvation, she wants plumbing.

The Israelites today, having been delivered from slavery and walking through the Red Sea with their feet. What a miracle, right? Well, now they’re thirsty and they’re whiny. Later they’ll be hungry. They’ll be being fed from heaven and they’ll be saying, “You know they had some good leeks in Egypt.” Now, I like leeks, but is anyone so excited about leeks that they want to go back to slavery? Yes, those of us captivated by lust. We make the same bad decisions over and over again thinking they’ll satisfy us and they never do. And we wind up in a deeper prison every time. Why? Because we’re blind and walking in the dark.

So, how do we get out of this mess? Well, there’s a corresponding virtue to lust, it’s called continence. And if you who work in healthcare, think of continence in terms of the ability to retain control of your elimination functions. And that’s true, but there was a deeper meaning to the word continence, and that was… Well we see it best in the cognate word, being content. Being able to hold oneself together. I’m content with what I have. So, if lust is more, better, now, both in the flesh and in the things of luxury. Continence is saying, “I’m good. I’m good. I’m okay.”

And how do we get the virtue of continence? The Greco-Romans say, “Try harder.” Doesn’t work. If it works for you, please tell me, because I’m still trying to learn how to do it. But try harder. Now, the biblical worldview says, if Paul is right today, that we get to continence, not by trying harder, but by beginning to see clearly. Turn the lights on, put my glasses back on, so maybe I’m not bumping into things all the time.

Romans 12:2 puts it this way, “Do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” In other words, I’ve got to change up here how I see and think if I’m going to be able to fight the things of this world, the Seven Deadly Sins. In this case, porneia, luxuria. It’s not a battle so much with my members, although it involves those. It’s not a so much a battle with what I do or with lottery tickets or even with the internet, although God knows that’s where the problem works itself out. It’s a battle in here. I need to begin to see clearly. I need to have my mind transformed. Well, if I said that the Greco-Romans say, “Try harder.”, and it doesn’t work. Well, who does this then?

Let’s go back to the colict. “Look with compassion upon the heartfelt desires of Your servants.” Who are we asking to look with compassion? God. “And purify our disorder affections.” Who are we asking? God. You get the point? The Greco-Romans say, “Pick yourself up by your bootstraps. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again.” The Augustinians, the Paulines, our colic says, “You God, look with compassion on my heartfelt affections because they’re a mess. They’re full of cornea and luxuria. And You purify my disordered affections, that one day I might behold Your eternal glory in the face of Jesus Christ.” It’s not an inside job. Inside, I’m blind and walking around in the dark. It’s an outside job. Someone comes to me and does for me what I cannot do for myself.

The movement’s this, I can’t. It’s called repentance. I can’t what? Well, I can’t get over the idolatry. Because that’s what it is that Paul’s talking about, right? They knew God, but they didn’t recognize Him, and then they turned to carved images, or in our case, online images to satisfy their desires. I can’t, Lord. I can’t, but You can’t. You can set me a free from the sin of idolatry. I can’t, You can. Save me.

You’re transformed by the means of grace, by one another, by the Word, the sacrament, by the Holy Spirit, by being together. It’s not so much that we work really hard at it and fail. It’s that we keep coming and the rough edges are worn off by the continued presence of God, and we begin to change and the fruit of the spirit begins to grow in us. That sounds really good, but I could be imprecise, so let me be very clear. The fruit of the spirit begins to grow in us. We don’t grow the fruit of the spirit, it begins to grow in us, through repetitive practice of being together, of word and table. We root ourselves in the good soil of the gospel and something grows in us.

Porneia, the world says that sexual pleasure is the answer. Boy, we live in that world, don’t we? Coming back from Africa, I’m struck by it. I haven’t seen the media for 10 years. It’s changed. The world says that sexual pleasure is the answer. Faith says, that rightly ordered relationships, first with God, second with ourselves, thirdly, with one another. Rightly ordered relationships are the key. The good news is that Jesus can restore us through the living water He talks about today, the waters of baptism. That old man stumbling around blind and in the dark. The good news is Jesus is willing to drown him dead, so that a new man can rise up who sees a little better.

Luxuria. Well, what does the world value? What does the world value? I did a little research. Do you know the most expensive bread in the world? It’s called Gold Leaf Bread, it’s from the Pan Piña bakery in Andalusia, Spain. It’s $120 a loaf. What does the world value? In 2018, a bottle of 1945 Romanee-Conti Burgundy sold for $558,000. What does the world value? The world looks at bread and wine that I’ll never afford and says, “This is living.” But the problem with it is, I’ll eat it and I’ll drink it and around about midnight, I’ll get up and try and make my way to the bathroom, because I can’t see, I’ll be bumping around. But the main thing is, no matter how expensive the bread and wine was, it’s going away.

Now this bread and wine on the other hand, it’s cheap. I don’t know what Father Doug pays for it, but I guarantee you it’s less than $558,000 a bottle. And those little wafers, well, I’m not so sure they’re bread at all, they look more like plastic. It’s nothing special in the world’s eyes, right? And yeah, it is God Himself for us. John 66:55, “My flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.” To be in him is real living, not a half a million dollar bottle of wine.

So let’s work backwards. The solution to our problems, to the Seven Deadly Sins is right here. Specifically, it’s in that book and in that cup and in us together. That’s the solution. Our problems, well, we’re blind and in the dark, our affections are disordered, so we go after things that do not satisfy, whether of the flesh or of the world. I wonder where I’ll be next week if this pays off. If I’m smart, I’ll be here. Because when God works in us and we can see where we’re going, like Paul says in Philippians, we learn to be content with what we have. Sometimes we’re really rich, sometimes we’re not, but we’re always loved.

The antidote to lust in our lives, I believe friends, particularly if you’ve been struggling with some of this, and I know some of you have statistically. Let me say it just as a pastor straight to you. I know you can’t do it and I know you’re beating yourself up and I know the shame gets worse and worse and worse. Right here today, God is here for you. And He will do for you what you cannot do for yourself. He looks with compassion on your heartfelt but broken desires and He is the one who will purify your disordered affections. Because lust ultimately isn’t the problem if Paul is right, idolatry is. Knowing the truth about God, they exchanged it for a lie. And so He gave them over to lust. The great thing about being here on a rainy Sunday morning when we had to set our clocks back and half of us forgot, is that here is where the transformation begins. It’s not, just do it. Rather it’s, He’s done it. Amen.

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Lent 2 2023 – Envy
Rev. Doug Floyd
1 Peter 5:6-7

The Warner Brothers cartoon “Show Biz Bugs” opens with Daffy Duck arriving at the theatre in a taxi. He tells the driver that he is the star of the show, but as we look up at the marquee the name “Bugs Bunny” dominates the billing with Daffy Duck in small letters underneath. Then Daffy goes to his dressing room. As it turns out, his dressing room is simply the Men’s Room, but across the hall, Bug Bunny has his own star dressing room. Daffy is getting frustrated, but he is convinced the audience will like him more than Bugs. They hit the stage with a song-and-dance routine. The crowd goes wild. Daffy thinks their cheering for him, but they are cheering for Bugs. When Daffy takes a bow…crickets. After several attempts to beat out Bugs, Daffy decides to rig a xylophone so that it will blow up when Bug strikes a certain note. Bugs fail to hit the note and Daffy runs out to show him how it’s done. Of course, the xylophone blows up on Daffy. By the end of the routine, Daffy exclaims that he hates Bugs and is going to bring out an act he has kept back for a special occasion. Daffy drinks gasoline, nitroglycerin, gunpowder, Uranium, and a match. Daffy blows up and his spirit floats away even as the crowd cheers.

This is a perfect picture of envy. In fact, the cartoon was created to poke fun at the envy that saturates show business. Simply stated, “Envy craves what another possesses or desires to deny them what they have.”[1] Envy is not specifically focused on stuff like covetousness. It is focused on skills, on acclaim, on success. Envy views the world as a competition that is a zero-sum game. If Bugs Bunny wins then Daffy Duck loses. If my friend is asked to speak before a group, then I have not been asked to speak before a group.

Envy goes even further. In the words of Gore Vidal, “It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.”[2] Envy can easily resent its peers and wish them ill. One of the most explicit images of envy onscreen is the film Amadeus. The story revolves around the all-consuming envy of Antonio Salieri. As a young man, he commits his life to God, asking that the Lord will make him a great composer. When a much younger Mozart appears, his skill and popularity so outshine Salieri that he is consumed with envy. Long after Mozart is dead, Salieri is still comparing himself to Mozart, and it is driving him mad with envy.

In the opening scene, Salieri is an old man committed to an asylum for his attempted suicide after claiming he killed Mozart. A priest comes to relieve his suffering and hear his confession. He plays one of his compositions and asks if the priest recognizes the song. No recognition. Salieri declares he wrote over 40 operas and his music was popular all over Europe. Then he plays a tune the priest recognizes. The priest is relieved when he recognizes the tune and exclaims, “You wrote that?” No. It was by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Salieri’s entire life is consumed with envy of Mozart’s skill and popularity. His self-worth is determined by Mozart’s success. This highlights one of the traits of envy. DeYoung writes that “envy depends on a sense of inferiority and a lack of self love.”[3] The person who envies feels inferior and may strike at the object through sarcasm or gossip or some other form of passive-aggressive attacks. Envy descends into what might be called “schadenfreude,” a German term that means “deriving pleasure from someone else’s misfortune.”

In truth, envy does not even derive pleasure from another’s misfortune. It desires misfortune but that does not satisfy. As Joseph Epstein writes, “Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.”[4] Envy does not bring joy. Simple bitterness to the soul.

Have you ever heard the term “evil eye?” It is speaking about envy. The evil eye looks out at the world, resents that it has been overlooked, and desires destruction on the one whom it resent. Envy resents the person who has what it wants but it also resents God. “Why did you make me this way?”

“According to one confessional manual, envy betrays itself with a variety of symptoms: feeling offended at the talents, successes, or good fortune of others; selfish or unnecessary rivalry and competition; pleasure at others’ difficulties or distress; ill will; reading false motives into others’ behavior; belittling others; false accusations; backbiting (saying something bad, even if true, behind another’s back); slander (saying something bad, even if true, in the open about another); the initiation, collection, or retelling of gossip; arousing, fostering, or organizing antagonism against others; scorn of another’s abilities or failures; teasing or bullying; ridicule of persons, institutions, or ideals; and prejudice against those we consider inferior, who consider us inferior, or who seem to threaten our security or position.”[5]

Lord have mercy.

Years ago, I was worshipping the Lord at home and expressing my love for God. Instantly, pictures of several people came to mind. Do you love these people? I knew that I was deeply envious of their success in ministry. I felt like it reinforced my own sense of failure. Then the Lord pierced my heart. He helped me to see that I was not only jealous of their success, but I wanted them to fail or worse. I was terrified by the darkness of my own heart. The Lord convicted me and told me to pray for these people and bless in their success. In a few moments, I glimpsed the dark poison of envy.

We only experience envy with peers. If a coworker gets a promotion, envy might rear its head. If a good-looking girl walks in the room, some women may feel envy. If someone compliments a friend, envy may be stirred.

When we feel the need to speak evil of another person, we should be on our guard: envy may already have a grip. The challenge is that it can so easily become an ingrained habit, that we are not even aware it is envy. Be aware of feelings of resentment, the tendency to speak ill of another, or the secret delight in another’s failure. Envy opposes love toward God and our neighbor.

How do we change? I think of 1 Peter 5:6-7. “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”[6] Or Romans 12:3, “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.”[7]

This attitude of humility is not self-denigration. Rather, it is a form of trust. You must come to the place of trusting that the Lord created you and the Lord delights in you. Scripture is filled with reminders that the Lord has made you. Consider the creation story, after God creates male and female in His image, God blesses them and then declares creation is very good. We miss the deep sense of this word good. It can mean beautiful, just, pleasant, and more. The Lord designed you according to His perfect plan. In Philippians 1:6, Paul declares, “I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”[8]

Your life has value and purpose and meaning in God’s perfect plan. Unhealthy comparison with other people will only blind you to gift that you already are. There is nothing wrong with seeing traits in other people that excel our own traits. We may learn from them and even ask them to mentor in certain areas. But we must not envy them.

When someone succeeds, gets the promotion, wins the prize, we should bless them and celebrate them and even give thanks to God. W. H. Auden puts it this way, “since all self-knowledge tempts man into envy,” you must “love without desiring all that you are not.”[9]

When we can freely rejoice in a peer’s success, we are free. Life becomes so much easier. We know that God is good and faithful, and He is the giver of all good gifts. Soon we discover He showers us with more gifts that we deserve and more gifts that we can imagine. Mother Teresa famously said, “If we could only remember that God loves [us], and [we] have an opportunity to love others as he loves [us], not in big things, but in small things with great love.”[10]

Today let us lay our envy on the altar and ask God to heal us and open our eyes to His great and faithful love. God delights in you and wants you to become fully you. By His grace, you are becoming the very gift of glory that He created you to be. Start rehearsing by pouring your life into the people around. May your words speak life over people and may your hands serve in love and kindness.

[1] Lindvall, Terry. Animated Parables (Theology, Religion, and Pop Culture) (p. 185). Fortress Academic. Kindle Edition.

[2] Lindvall, Terry. Animated Parables (Theology, Religion, and Pop Culture) (p. 190). Fortress Academic. Kindle Edition.

[3] DeYoung, Rebecca Konyndyk. Glittering Vices (p. 71). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[4] Epstein, Joseph. Envy (New York Public Library Lectures in Humanities) (p. 1). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

[5] DeYoung, Rebecca Konyndyk. Glittering Vices (p. 72). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Pe 5:6–7.

[7] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ro 12:3.

[8] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Php 1:6.

[9] DeYoung, Rebecca Konyndyk. Glittering Vices (p. 81). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[10] DeYoung, p. 83.

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Lent 1 2023
Vainglory
Rev. Doug Floyd
Matthew 4:1-11

Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. All the tempter’s seductions fell to the ground. Each temptation focused on a distorted desire of the human heart. No hint of distortion was found in the heart of Jesus. The devil could not get a foothold. His words passed through with no power.

Humans rarely recognize the devil’s temptations because some thoughts and actions are so second nature. During Lent, we are praying to bring these behaviors into the light, so that we can repent and be changed.

Each Sunday we pray a general confession of sin. During Lent, we are invited to a deeper work of repentance. For some of us, a list can help. For example, we could reflect on the 10 Commandments and ways we have offended God’s call to a holy life. We could use Paul’s list of disobedience in Romans 1 or his works of the flesh list in Galatians 5:19. I’ve been thinking that we might pause over the seven deadly sins this year.

The church has almost two thousand years of reflection on these sins and how they get a grip in our lives. Talking about the vices is not a thing about works vs the law. In and through Christ, we are forgiven and welcomed into the communion of faith. How do we grow up into the way of love for which we were created? As it turns out, the vices are distortions of God’s design. They reveal disordered love. By God’s grace, we seek to reorder our loves so that we can properly love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love our neighbor as ourselves.

One of the primary books I’ve consulted for this study is Glittering Vices by Rebecca Young. I will barely be able to cover her rich details during Lent, and I would recommend her book to everyone. I’ve also consulted a book by one of my old professors; Animated Parables by Terry Lindvall explores the vices through animated films.

Pride is usually considered the root of all the other vices. Many Church Fathers believed pride played a role in the other seven vices. It was like the trunk of a tree with the seven vices beings limbs on the tree. The traditional deadly sins include vainglory, envy, sloth, avarice, wrath, gluttony, and lust. The Desert Fathers, John Cassian, Augustine, and Aquinas saw how these become strongholds in our lives and often fuel other sins.

Studying the vices was a part of a larger movement of studying the virtues as well. All these were rooted in a desire to grow more Christ-like in word, thought, and deed.

I will try to briefly discuss vainglory this week.

Vainglory is not mentioned often but as I discuss it will become obvious. Rebecca DeYoung offer this definition, “Vainglory is the excessive and disordered desire for recognition and approval from others.”[1]

In a 2003 interview in Christian Century magazine, Garrison Keillor talked about his insufferable ego. He says, “I lust after recognition, I am desperate to win all the little merit badges and trinkets of my profession, and I am of less real use in this world than any good cleaning lady.”[2] This is a pretty good description of vainglory. We desire to be affirmed in what we do and who we are, and that is not wrong. But this desire can exert great power over us in all areas of life.

We live in a culture fixated on vainglory. Consider the celebrities who vamp for the camera, and the fans who gobble it up. It is a selfie world. Our social media can easily become a place to offer a picture perfect image of our lives. Deyoung writes, “Our life’s adventures are more satisfying when filmed and shared, just as our child’s spot on an elite sports team or our own completion of a road race warrants a sticker on the back window of our SUV. More mundanely, we often feel a bit flat if we have a really productive day at work but no one to tell about it.”[3]

We’re good at finding places to take glory. Most books. Most books read. Best lawn. Best mom. Cleanest kitchen. Best recipe. Nicest car. And on and on and on.

What about our entire fashion industry? Consider a younger woman and an older woman. The younger woman with a thin figure delights in the latest fashions, the high heeled shoes, and more. Now I’m not suggesting these are wrong but they can feed vainglory. Consider an older woman whose figure has changed and she is self-conscious. If the younger woman and older woman work together both may have to deal with the subtle draw of vainglory.

Or what about when you’re at an event and question time arrives. This is a perfect opportunity for vainglory to rear its head, and someone ask a question that has more to do with what they know than what they want to know. John Cassian used this same example over 1400 years ago. Humans have been seeking glory for a long time.

The Church Fathers warned that vainglory can easily be connected to our growing life of faith. Thomas Aquinas quotes John Chrysostom, “While other vices find their abode even in the servants of the devil, vainglory finds a place even in the servants of Christ.”

As we make progress in our spiritual growth, we face the temptation to want recognition. “Look at me everyone, I’m laying my life down on the cross!” I know that because I’ve been that. I’ve been the guy who imagined preaching to thousands as people fall down and cry out to God.

Vainglory can easily show up in our daydreams. I’ve always been good at dreaming about me being cheered on by the admiring crowds. Vainglory can look like boastfulness, talking too much, and dominating conversations. Vainglory may cause us to wear a mask and hide our weaknesses. This makes me think of a song Mark Heard sang many years ago.

These plastic halos
They seem so out of place
Behind the mask
lurks a scarred and fragile face
We lie so spiritually
Familiar smiles displayed
Misleading masquerade

We hide our pain
We try to laugh
Fools to think our tears
Would provoke holy wrath

In stone-gray silence
We do not face our fears
We bite our lips
And we press on
with feeble cheer
With hearts of sadness
We say our thankful prayers
Refusing comfort unawares

Vainglory is a need that is out of order. We need to be loved, to be affirmed, and to be glorified, but our glory is rooted the glory of God. Thus Johann Sebastian Bach wrote “Soli Dei Gloria” (to God alone be the Glory) on all his compositions. Our glory is to bring glory to God. The birds bring glory to God by being birds. And birds are glorious to behold. The flowers bring glory to God in blooming. We delight in their vast shapes and colors even as we give glory to God. All creation echoes His praise. Once we understand our calling as images of God to bring Him glory in all things, we can enter the dance of love without worrying about our reputation, our appearance, and our successes.

Here are some patterns that may help us as we seek to turn away from vainglory. The ancient Celts would look at cultivating these habits as medicines for our soul to help cure our tendency toward vainglory.

Cultivate the habit of celebrating other people.

Cultivate deeper relationships. This one habit will show up again and again to help us combat the deadly sins. We need to know one another profoundly and love deeply.

Spend more time listening to people instead of talking so much. We might try asking people more questions about their lives.

It’s okay to be awkward. It’s okay not to know the answer. It’s okay to ask for directions.

One way to unlearn vainglory is to love and serve in hidden ways. Consider this quote from Middlemarch by George Eliot, “For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

“Aquinas opposes vainglory to the virtue he calls “magnanimity”—a virtue that, like vainglory, is unfamiliar to most contemporary people.”[4] We want to become magnanimous people: people who acts of love and virtue inspire others to follow suit. Consider the Bishop in Les Miserables. He responds to the theft of his silver by giving Jean Valjean even more silver and sending him out with his blessing. Jean Valjean is so deeply impacted; he pours out the rest of his life in kindness and love.

Now I’ll be honest with you, as I’ve read about these vices, I see myself. I hope and pray that you also will see yourself. I would pray that we might truly make this a holy lent, pursuing Christ, and asking Him to free us from patterns of selfishness and leads us into patterns of His life-giving love.

[1] DeYoung, Rebecca Konyndyk. Glittering Vices (p. 42). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[2] The Christian Century, March 22, 2003, pp. 20-21.

[3] DeYoung, Rebecca Konyndyk. Glittering Vices (p. 45). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[4] DeYoung, Rebecca Konyndyk. Glittering Vices (p. 49). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Last Sunday of Epiphany
Rev. Doug Floyd
Matthew 17:1-9

Jesus leads Peter, James, and John up a high mountain. The light of God’s glory shines out from his face and clothes. Epiphany begins in light and ends in light. It begins with a star leading the Magi to the child Jesus. This signals the revealing of Christ to the nations. Epiphany ends on the mount of transfiguration. The light of God’s glory is unveiled in Christ with a promise of all creation transfigured in Christ.

The disciples fall down as though dead. The glory of the Lord is overwhelming. For a moment the eyes of the disciples are opened to the unapproachable light of God. This glory-filled encounter is eschatological. It is an unveiling of the hidden glory of God shining through creation. In the great consummation of our age, the fullness of God’s glory in Christ will be unveiled for all eyes to see. As we behold His glory, we will be changed to His likeness.

Paul Evdokimov writes, “The Transfiguration of the Lord was in fact the transfiguration of the apostles; for a moment their eyes were opened, and they could see the Glory of the Lord beyond his kenosis, that is, his form of a servant.” On that mountain, they encounter the glory of the New Jerusalem. “And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.”[1] We were made to live in the light of the Lord. We were made to dwell in the fullness of the glory of God. Thus St. Augustine can exclaim, “You stir us so that praising you may bring us joy, because you have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is [restless] until it rests in you.”[2]

To help set up this dramatic unveiling of glory let us back up a few verses in today’s text. In chapter 16:21, we read, “From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” [3] Peter cannot grasp that the Messiah must suffer and be killed.

If that’s not bad enough, Jesus goes on to say that “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”[4] The way of Jesus is the way of the cross. It is the way of pouring out His life as a drink offering to the Father. Following in the way of Jesus is embracing the cross.

After calling His disciples to the way of the cross, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up the high mountain, and they behold Him in His transfigured glory. Evdokimov writes, “Like a bolt of lightning, the image of the world to come reaches us like a veritable Feast of Beauty.”[5] A connection is made between the cross and the unveiled glory of God. This connection is made even clearer in John 17 as Jesus prepares to go to the cross. He prays, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.”[6]

In his death, burial, and resurrection, we behold the self-offering of Jesus to the Father. We behold the fullness of God’s glory. We behold a glimpse of God’s glory that shines out in all things. All creation has been transformed by the cross of Christ.

When we gather in worship on Sunday mornings, we catch of glimpse of this transfigured glory. Our eyes may not grasp this light, and we may not fall to the ground in fear, but we do taste the light of God’s eternal glory. In the reading of Scripture, Christ Himself addresses the community. As we hear the words read, we keep our hearts open for the word of the Lord delivered to us as a community and us as individuals.

When we pray the prayers of the people, we as the community of God stand before the throne of God and intercede on behalf of the world. When we partake of the Lord’s meal, we participate in the great communion that encompasses all creation. John Zizioulas writes, “In the Eucharist we can find all the dimensions of communion: God communicates himself to us, we enter into communion with him, the participants of the sacrament enter into communion with one another, and creation as a whole enters through man into communion with God. All this takes place in Christ and the Spirit, who brings the last days into history and offers to the world a foretaste of the Kingdom.”[7]

Let me read that one more time. “In the Eucharist we can find all the dimensions of communion: God communicates himself to us, we enter into communion with him, the participants of the sacrament enter into communion with one another, and creation as a whole enters through man into communion with God. All this takes place in Christ and the Spirit, who brings the last days into history and offers to the world a foretaste of the Kingdom.”[8]

We receive the Body and Blood of Christ as God’s gift to us. The Lord welcomes us to His table, and we are changed. Even as He welcomes us, He forms as a people, a community. Now we as a community of God in Christ are sent out from here for the life of the world. Our lives becoming a living witness of the hope of God for all people and all creation.

We have tended to think of eschatology as a series of predicted events at the end of time. It might be more helpful to think of eschatology as the promise of God’s kingdom breaking into this world even now. It is the hope of a world transfigured in the light of God’s glory. When we gather, we are the eschatological community. That is we are a glimpse of the hope of God’s glory to be fully revealed. As the Celts would say, “We are an outpost of heaven.”

We are a people of the cross. It is the self-offering of Jesus Christ that redeems us, forms us, raises us up. Paul exhorts us to follow in the way of the cross by becoming a self-offering to one another and to the world. He writes, “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”[9]

This leads us into the resurrection life of Christ. In our second lesson today, we heard the Lord address us in the writing of Paul. Paul writes, “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.[10]

May we as a congregation be an offering to God in life, death and resurrection.

O God the Holy Spirit, Sanctifier of the faithful: Sanctify
this Congregation by your abiding presence. Bless those who minister in holy things. Enlighten the minds of your people more and more with the light of the everlasting Gospel. Bring erring souls to the knowledge of our Savior Jesus Christ; and those who are walking in the way of life, keep steadfast to the end. Give patience to the sick and afflicted, and renew them
in body and soul. Guard those who are strong and prosperous from forgetting you. Increase in us your many gifts of grace, and make us all fruitful in good works. This we ask, O blessed Spirit, whom with the Father and the Son we worship and glorify, one God, world without end. Amen.

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Re 21:23.

[2] Saint Augustine, The Confessions, Part I, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Maria Boulding, Second Edition, vol. 1, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2012), 39.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mt 16:21–23.

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mt 16:24–25.

[5] Evdokimov, Paul. The Art of the Icon: A Theology of Beauty, illustrated . Oakwood Publications. Kindle Edition.

[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 17:1–2.

[7] John D. Zizioulas (Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church)

[8] John D. Zizioulas (Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church)

[9] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Php 2:5–8.

[10] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Php 3:7–11.

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Jesus Teacher Icon by Kondzelevych Bohorodchany (1698 – 1705)Epiphany 6 2023
Rev. Doug Floyd
Matthew 5:21-37

We return to the Sermon on the Mount this week. Jesus has welcomed his hearers into the kingdom of God. He has addressed them as salt and light. By God’s grace they’re very presence will change the world around them. Now He clarifies what the kingdom of God’s love looks like and lives like. He connects the inner drives of a person with the outer actions. These inner drives flow out from the heart.

Here we see Jesus fulfilling the call of Torah: both Moses and the Prophets address the state of the heart. In Deuteronomy 10:16, Moses tells the children of Israel to “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn.”[1] Later, Paul will use this language of circumcising the heart, but we already see the pattern in Moses. The prophet Joel will tell the people to “rend your hearts and not your garments.” [2] Repentance not simply an outward act but required the corresponding inward turning.

When He looks out at the crowds, Jesus speaks directly into the hearts of His listeners. His Word continue to penetrate our hearts with a call to repent and enter the kingdom. As we move into Lent in a couple weeks, repentance becomes a key theme. This sermon is a great tool for asking the Holy Spirit to search our hearts and draw us to Him.

Today Jesus is speaking to human relations. What are those things that divide us and turn us against one another? Jesus is calling for a love that leads to reconciliation with our friends and family, our spouses, our neighbors, and even our enemies. He begins with the command, “Thou shall not murder,” and shows how divisions between brothers begin in the heart. This is from Leviticus 19:17, “You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him.[3]

Anger and contempt are destructive and must be addressed if we are to worship God. The anger refers less to a flash of sudden anger and more to a state of anger. It is that condition of holding anger against a person or a group of people. The Jews were angry at the Roman occupation and in one sense He is addressing this larger societal anger. But even as He speaks, the hearts of those who hear His voice burn. As they face the wrong thoughts they hold toward others. Many times, I have been in prayer when the faces of certain people to mind, and I would realize that I was harboring animosity or jealousy or unforgiveness toward these people. I could not continue to pray until I face my own heart and repented.

The term “You fool” refers to contempt for another. There is a sense that one wishes the other did not even exist. This derision is even worse than anger. Jesus says that those engage in such destructive responses to others should be thrown into Gehenna or the place where corpses lay. He is highlighting ow dehumanizing such responses are.

Jesus goes even further. If your brother holds something against you. If I know I have offended another, I am to seek peace with them. Reconciliation is one of the great themes of the Gospel. Reconciliation with God and one another. Even when I feel I’ve been wronged, I can seek reconciliation as I look to Jesus and trust that He will uphold my cause. The call to peace is found throughout the New Testament.

Romans 14:19 – So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.

2 Corinthians 13:11–12 – Finally, brothers, rejoice. Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. 12 Greet one another with a holy kiss.

Ephesians 2:14–18 – For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace,and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.

Hebrews 12:13–14 – Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.

This call to peace has been incorporated into our worship. After the confession and absolution, we speak peace to one another. This is both the reaffirming of the peace Christ gives us and the peace we offer one another. The cross of Christ even alters the ways we perceive those beyond the community of faith. Jesus addresses our neighbor and even our enemy. We are bearers of peace to the world.

Jesus addresses marriage and makes it clear that divorce is not God’s intent. He speaks of lust and adultery, which can lead to a break down between husband and wife. The challenge in marriage is that we are broken people and can easily wound those closest to us. Sometime relations are broken beyond repair. Our hope and desire is to learn the way of Christ, to how to become a lover walking in the way of the cross. The beautiful thing is that marriage can become a place of solace, a place of joy, a school for learning to love the world.

Jesus is calling us to His created pattern of human life. We were made for love but our thoughts and actions turn away from the way of love. Patterns of anger, contempt and lust are dehumanizing. They damage us, entrap us, and lead us away from the abundant life that God created us to live.

Recognizing how our patterns of thought and action lead us away from the beauty of God’s good creation, we repent. That is we turn from our selfishness and toward the Lord. It is even His grace that allows us to turn. What does it look like to turn toward the Lord? It most often looks like thanksgiving.

Richard Wurmbrand tells the story of being in a Romanian prison for his faith. The guards gave him aphrodisiacs to cause him to stumble and compromise his faith. He said that these drugs cause him to visualize a lady from his congregation totally naked. He began to give thanks for her and her testimony of faith. As he gave thanks to the Lord, the power of the image faded. What if we gave thanks for the very people who offend us? We might begin to see the grace of God in those who offend us.

By God’s grace, let us always be ready to turn from thoughts of anger, derision, lust, jealousy, and more toward the goodness of God and the gift of God even in those people who provoke and challenge us.

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Dt 10:16.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Joe 2:13.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Le 19:17.

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Rev. Doug Floyd

Epiphany 5 – Salt & Light
Rev. Doug Floyd
Matthew 5:13-20

Jesus has gathered His disciples. He has welcomed those who feel far from the kingdom of God. He has welcomed those who are poor in spirit, who mourn, who are meek, who are crying out for justice. He has spoken to the hearts of the people and called them to turn and enter the kingdom of God. He has called each of us into His kingdom of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Now He gives us all a sense of what life in the kingdom looks like.

He describes this way of love as integrating our inner selves with our outer selves. In other words, there is no duplicity in the life of the kingdom. We don’t say one thing but think another. Our hearts and minds unite with our words and actions. We are becoming a people who are genuine lovers both inside and out.

Jesus models this kingdom of love and makes a way for us to follow Him in this way. As N. T. Wright says, “He would turn the other cheek; he would go the second mile; he would take up the cross. He would be the light of the world, the salt of the earth. He would be Israel for the sake of the world. He would be the means of the kingdom’s coming, both in that he would embody in himself the renewed Israel and in that he would defeat evil once and for all. But the way in which he would defeat evil would be the way consistent with the deeply subversive nature of his own kingdom-announcement. He would defeat evil by letting it do its worst to him.”[1]

Even as Jesus fulfills the Sermon on the Mount, He also calls His disciples to follow Him in this way. In our Gospel reading today, Jesus speaks of His followers as salt and light. He calls them to an obedience to the Law and the Prophets that exceeds that of the Pharisees.

Let us begin with the Law and the Prophets. Jesus is calling His followers to an obedience that goes to the heart of the law: the redemption of the world. The Pharisees were preserving an external observance of the law but failing to see its true implication. The Law was pointing beyond itself to God’s healing grace. Jesus says that He himself has come to fulfill the Law and the Prophets. From now on all God’s disciples fulfill the law by following Jesus, by obeying Jesus.

Only Jesus by His Spirit can form us into a people who embody the calling to live as God’s righteousness in the world. In that sense, our calling is to follow Jesus, to become apprentices of Jesus. In and through Him, the church lives as His body. Different members of the body reveal different facets of His righteousness.

Jesus tells His followers, “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.”[2] Israel was the salt of the earth, but sadly she had lost her savor.

When Jesus tells His followers, “You are the salt of the earth” and “You are the light of the world,” He is describing a condition: a state of living. So how to do we become salt and light? We already are salt and light in Christ. We simply abide in Christ. We follow Christ. We obey Christ.

Let’s think about the nature of salt and light. We salt our food and the tiny crystals disappear into the food. The flavor of the food is enhanced. My friend who went to culinary school once told us that his instructors would regularly say, “More salt.” It can make food taste better. It seems to enhance the flavors that already exist by heightening their intensity. Margaret Visser writes about salt in her book, Since Eve Ate Apples Much Depends on Dinner. She says that “In religious symbolism it is always linked with “strong,” powerful substances like iron or blood. We feel that a little of it is all we need, that this little has made all the difference, and that we ought not to abuse the privilege of having it.”[3]

Salt is potent. A little has great power and impact both in taste and in symbol. Visser explains that “Bread and salt are customarily offered in Russia (where the word for “hospitality” means literally “bread-salt”) and in other countries, as a sign of welcome to a guest: bread and salt symbolize the precious stores of the house, the fruits of the host’s labour, his patience, his ingenuity, his civilized foresight and preparedness.”[4]

Salt plays an essential role in Old Testament sacrifices. In Leviticus 2:13, we are told, “You shall season all your grain offerings with salt. You shall not let the salt of the covenant with your God be missing from your grain offering; with all your offerings you shall offer salt.” [5] Why was salt an essential role in sacrifices? Salt prevents putrefaction. It preserves. Thus salt becomes an image of the covenant. As Gordon Wenham writes, “Salt was something that could not be destroyed by fire or time or any other means in antiquity. To add salt to the offering was a reminder that the worshipper was in an eternal covenant relationship with his God.” [6]

When Jesus calls His followers “the salt of the earth,” He is calling us images of the covenant. The covenant is no longer dependent on human frailty because He has born the covenant is His own body. He is the guarantee of the covenant. He has gathered us into this covenant. He promises that the work He has begun in us, He will carry to completion. He preserves our hope in His resurrected life. We become images of His faithfulness.

Paul writes of this work saying, “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation;that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.”[7] As God’s salt, we are sent out with a preserving grace for a world that is rotting in sin. Christ restores and renews through us.

Salt – stability

He also works through us to enhance and beautify individuals and cultures. If you think of the world as created in and through Christ, then we can only reach our true potential, true glory in and through Christ. The true beauty of a person unfolds are she grows up into Christ. In the same way, it is only in and through Christ that countries reach their glorious potential.

Jesus also calls us “the light of the world.” This image is so rich it is difficult to fully unpack this morning. I would recommend taking time to reflect both the images of “salt of the earth” and “light of the world.”

Think of the creation of the world. God said, “Let there be light and there was light. And God saw that the light was good.” Light reveals. Without it, we cannot see anything. As Paul Evdokimov says, “An object is only visible if light makes it luminous. We see the light which unites itself to the object, marries the object, so to speak, taking its form, giving it shape and revealing it.”[8]

Light reveals the beauty of the world around us. Light also speaks of revealing God in His goodness and grace. In the darkness of sin, humans misperceive the Creator. They fail to see the Creator and end up worship creation, which leads to destructive thoughts and behaviors.

We see this idolatry played out in our culture and our world by simply observing human brokenness, human wars, and all manner of human destructiveness. The light of Christ exposes the sin while also opening eyes to the only hope for healing in Jesus Christ. So light reveals both earthly beauty and heavenly glory. At the same time, all creation is moving toward light.

In Revelation 22:5, we read, “And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.”[9] All creation is moving toward consummation in God’s eternal light. The darkness of fear and death and pain and loneliness will be consumed in the light of God’s unending love.

Now back to Jesus designation, we are called “the light of the world.” In this world, we reveal. By His Spirit, we reveal the wonder of the world and the glory of God. In this sense, our lives play a role in calling people to worship the Lord of glory in all things. As Paul writes, “[W]hether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”[10] And again, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.” [11] We are the lights of God shining out in this world. We are highlighting this glory of creation, giving thanks and praise to God for the sun above, the trees, the rain, and all the goodness of God.

Demos Shakarian called us the “happiest people in the world.” We don’t walk around with an artificial smile, but we do know true joy in Jesus Christ. We are becoming a people who worship in all ways and at all times. We gather together in worship, but we also worship as we come to church and as we go out, giving thanks to God in all things. Oddly enough, as we give thanks, we discover more reasons to rejoice.

Kelly and I have both learned God is good and faithful even when we experience great loss. He will not forsake us, but is present in the midst of our pain and struggles. His love is unshaken and unfailing. As He pours out His love in us, we are being changed from glory to glory.

We are going forth as His salt and His light to a world in need of hope.

[1] N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1996), 564–565.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mt 5:13.

[3] Visser, Margaret. Since Eve Ate Apples Much Depends on Dinner: The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos of an Ordinary Mea (p. 66). Grove Atlantic. Kindle Edition.

[4] Visser, Margaret. Since Eve Ate Apples Much Depends on Dinner: The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos of an Ordinary Mea (p. 67). Grove Atlantic. Kindle Edition.

[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Le 2:13.

[6] Gordon J. Wenham, The Book of Leviticus, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1979), 71.

[7] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 2 Co 5:18–19.

[8] Evdokimov, Paul. The Art of the Icon: A Theology of Beauty, illustrated . Oakwood Publications. Kindle Edition.

[9] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Re 22:5.

[10] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Co 10:31.

[11] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Php 4:4.

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The Sermon of the Beatitudes by James Tissot (1886-1896)The Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand
Epiphany 4
Rev. Doug Floyd
Matthew 5:1-12

Jesus goes up the mountain, sits down, and begins to teach. He fulfills the pattern we see in Moses who goes up a mountain and brings down teaching from YHWH. When Moses goes up the mountain, there are “thunders and lightnings, a thick cloud on the mountain, and a loud trumpet sound.” The people trembled in fear. Jesus goes up the mountain, sits down, and begins to teach.

When Jesus opens His mouth, the disciples hear the Word made Flesh: true God from true God. No thunder. No lightning. No thick cloud. No loud trumpet sound. Yet the Word of God speaks. The Word through whom and in whom all things were created, speaks. God draws near to man in Jesus Christ. The kingdom of God has draw near.

As we listen to the Sermon on the Mount, we hear what it is like to live in the kingdom of God. We hear what the kingdom of God’s love sounds like and looks like. When I saw we would be hearing the Beatitudes today, I returned to Dallas Willard. He wrote much on the Kingdom of God, the Beatitudes, and living holy lives.

First, let us hear Willard’s description of the life of God. It has echoes of G. K. Chesterton and Eastern Orthodoxy. Willard writes, “We should, to begin with, think that God leads a very interesting life, and that he is full of joy. Undoubtedly he is the most joyous being in the universe. The abundance of his love and generosity is inseparable from his infinite joy. All of the good and beautiful things from which we occasionally drink tiny droplets of soul-exhilarating joy, God continuously experiences in all their breadth and depth and richness.”[1]

When you think of God the Father do not think of an aging ogre ready to strike you down when you fail. He is the Creator. He knows and lives within a love and joy that is greater than we can fathom. When Jesus comes, the very kingdom of God draws near to man. This holy life of God is an abundant life. To live holy is not to deny life but to enter a greater fullness of life. It is to live the very life of joy and love and peace that we were created to live.

G. K. Chesterton puts it this way, “for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”[2] Jesus comes with the word of hope, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” He is calling us to become child-like, to become the glorious people we were created to become. He is leading us into the kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

I like how Fr. Les put it last week, “It is not so much that I repent as it is the case that I am repented.” The grace of God takes hold and draws us near to this abundant life of the Father.

As Jesus opens the “Sermon on the Mount,” He begins with nine beatitudes. These sound nothing like the “Ten Commandments.” These do not sound like any list of spiritual traits. They don’t sound like the call to kingdom living that Jesus will focus upon through much of the sermon.

Let’s start by thinking about the word “Blessed.” This is the word English translators use because there is not a good English word that goes here. For the ancient Greeks, the word “Makarios” spoke of the state of the gods. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis writes, “these were immortal and hence free from the sadness of our mortal life, which always ends in death, the worst of evils for most people of pagan antiquity.”[3] The Greek gods lived above the condition of humanity, so “makarios” came to mean “’the privileged’ who enjoy riches, a good education, and so on, things denied the great majority of mankind.”[4]

Jesus uses this very word and applies it to people who hunger, who mourn, who suffer. In other words, the Beatitudes elevates those who look nothing like the privileged. We’ll consider this group of people more in a moment. First, let me return to the word “Blessed.” Andre Chouraqui offers a Hebrew equivalent of the word Blessed: ashre. He offers this explanation of ashre: “the thrill of the wayfarer who is about to reach his goal, in other words, the joy of the pilgrim who never halts in his movement toward the sanctuary of the heavenly homeland where God his Father awaits him.”[5]

Think about that. “The thrill of a wayfarer about to reach his goal.” This makes me think of driving to my grandma’s house when I was little. We drove down here from New Jersey. Initially, this was before I-40, so we drove Highway 11W, which was a long drive. As we began to see familiar yards with gourds hanging up as birdhouses, we knew we were getting close to grandmas. A certain giddiness filled the air after the long journey. All of us should know that feeling of excitement and joy as we come close to the end of the long trip. This is the bigger sense of what Jesus means by blessed.

Jesus speaks of a particular kind of joy and excitement that has to do with moving toward a goal, a desire, toward the kingdom of God. He doesn’t say, “Blessed are those who fast and pray.” In fact, he doesn’t speak about things we do. He speaks about something like states of mind, attitudes, or conditions of life.

Let’s consider our first Beatitude, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” [6] Eugene Peterson offers this translation in the Message, “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.”[7] Dallas Willard offers this translation, “Blessed are the spiritual zeros—the spiritually bankrupt, deprived and deficient, the spiritual beggars, those without a wisp of ‘religion’—when the kingdom of the heavens comes upon them.”[8]

The kingdom of Heaven has come near in Jesus Christ. He tells his listeners; it is near even you. Are you weak and feel far from the kingdom? Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand. It is near to you. God has not forsaken you. Turn to Jesus and let Him lead you in the very life of God.

Let your poverty of soul and spirit become the very source of hunger and thirst for the kingdom of God. This is the condition of coming to realize our desperate need for mercy. Lord have mercy upon me a sinner.

Jesus turns to those in mourning. Even mourning can be a journey to God. Pain and death and loss can drive the broken heart to the throne of God. Jesus promises to console the one who mourns. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis writes, “God does not console us by abolishing our solitude but by entering it and sharing it. A promise of this kind of consolation is the pledge of a summons to a Presence that can radically transform mourning from within. The consolation meant by Christ is that of the Father who throws open his arms to his children, who have long labored in the hope of coming into their full inheritance, and he exclaims: ‘Waiting is over! Enter into the joy of my presence, which will henceforth never leave you!”[9]

Do you know the great pain of loss? Repent. That is, turn to Jesus and rest in His consolation. Since the fire, Kelly and I have found ourselves turning to Jesus again and again as we continue to feel the gravity of loss. He is near the weight of your loss. Turn to Him and rest in His faithful consolation.

As Jesus continues the Beatitudes, He addresses the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.

He speaks of those who long for justice. I know many young people who speak out for justice and some who have marched for justice. Sometimes they have turned away from the church, and yet their longing for justice is ultimately rooted in God’s justice. As I read the Beatitudes, I realize the kingdom of God is near to those young people, and I pray that even as they cry out for justice, they might behold the Just One who will set the world to rights.

I see how the Beatitudes can speak to each of us wherever we are at, reminding us that the kingdom of God is at hand. We are being called to turn and look to Jesus amid our longing, our mourning, our mercy, our suffering, and so on. I also see how the Beatitudes speak to those far from the kingdom. The kingdom is at hand.

I also see how we can look at the sinner, the protestor, the spiritual zero, and others as being right at the edge of the kingdom, not through their righteousness, but through their neediness. We can pray that God in His grace will open their eyes and hearts to His love and that they might turn and behold Jesus, who will lead them in the very life of God.

Lord have mercy.

Christ have mercy.

Lord have mercy.

[1] Willard, Dallas. The Divine Conspiracy (p. 72). HarperOne. Kindle Edition.

[2] Chesterton, G.. Orthodoxy (Illustrated) (St. Dismas Catholic Classics Book 4) (p. 43). Publisher. Kindle Edition.

[3] Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, Chapters 1–25, vol. 1 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996–2012), 184.

[4] Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, Chapters 1–25, vol. 1 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996–2012), 184.

[5] Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, Chapters 1–25, vol. 1 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996–2012), 185.

[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mt 5:3.

[7] Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2005), Mt 5:3.

[8] Willard, Dallas. The Divine Conspiracy (pp. 114-115). HarperOne. Kindle Edition.

[9] Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, Chapters 1–25, vol. 1 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996–2012), 191.

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Jesus Calls the Disciples by He QiEpiphany 3 – Follow Me
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
Amos 1:1-11, Psalm 139:1-13, 1 Corinthians 1:10-17, Matthew 4:12-22

I grew up here over in Oak Ridge and was ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal church in Morristown, Tennessee in 1994. For the last 10 years I’ve been living in Nigeria and that’s one reason it’s nice to say I’m just less because protocol indicates, at least in that culture, that I should tell you that I am the venerable doctor, Leslie Martin, the canon theologian of the Diocese of Pankshin and bring you greetings on behalf of my bishop, the Rt Revd Dr Olumuyiwa O. Ajayi. He really does greet you.

I’ve lived there a long time. While I was there, I found my wife Kate, and when we found ourselves back here five months ago, we found you and you’ve been a home to us during a very challenging time. The two of us are now three. And at 54, I kind of feel like Zechariah when he heard about John. I’m full of wonder and speechless, but here we are and it’s good to be here. Now the only thing I’ll warn you is I have for 10 years been preaching in Nigeria, so I’m going to watch the clock. I hope it’ll do some good and if I’m a little too loud, I’m not used to small buildings anymore, I’m used to shouting. Bear with me. Let us pray. Brethren, I have resolved to know among you nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified. Lord, make that true now in the name of the living God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In the gospel this morning we hear that Jesus has moved. It’s not just like me and it’s not just like he’s moved from one place to another. The scripture tells us that he has now made his home in a new place. He’s left Nazareth. He will begin his ministry in the town of Capernaum, in the region of Zebulon and Naphtali.

Scripture doesn’t waste words, so this is not trivia. It’s important context for us to be able to understand the work of Jesus Christ and the power of the gospel. Because like all of us, Zebulon and Naphtali have a history. They are two tribes with lands in the northern kingdom, who, by the time of Jesus, have suffered long and hard all the way back to the time of the judges. They have been tempted by idolatry and pagan worship again and again and again. They’ve suffered invasion by foreign armies to the point that after the war with Assyria, the deportations and exile have gone on for so long that the area was almost depopulated. Barren. And what was left was not good.

So by Jesus’ time the region is repopulated, but it’s largely full of mixed race people, which is not too acceptable to the Jews. They have a synchronistic religion, a mix of religious beliefs that they picked up abroad that they picked up from their pagan neighbors with a little bit Judaism mixed in still. Now, again, I want to say this is not just trivia. The situation of Zebulon and Napthali isn’t just some sad, tragic history, poor guys. No, it’s judgment.

Because it was not always so. The state of Zebulon and Napthali in Jesus’ time is best understood by returning to the guy who wrote our first reading, the prophet Amos. Amos is the earliest prophet we think whose writings we have written down and ominously his name, Amos comes from the root word, Amar, which means to lift up, to carry, to take away. Look what’s coming. He came along during the reign of King Jeroboam II. It was a long and prosperous reign, the good times. He came to a people in the northern kingdoms who had no anxieties particularly, but rather dreams of greatness and a thirst for pleasure.

A very different land than the one that is to come. What happened? Well, through Amos, God said, no to them. “No.” He said no to their pagan worship. He said no to the corruption of their government. He said no to their greed and indifference towards the poor, all of it. Their glory and shame would be carried away and not because they were strangers. He says, “No, you’re my people and so I’m going to judge you. You can’t rest on who you were. You can’t rest on your laurels. Something’s going to change and it’s not going to be good for you.”

Today’s portion, Amos 3:1-11 is his poetic reminder. It’s in poetry and it’s really, really well written, but if you look at it closely, it’s a poetic reminder that effects have causes. Effects have causes. Why does a lion roar? Because he found prey. In our modern parlance, we might say that what Amos is telling us is that actions have consequences. When you do what you do, you get what you get. So by the time of Jesus, Zebulon and Naphtali, having indulged in pagan worship, having indulged in corruption, having indulged in injustice, are a people sitting in great darkness. It is to this people that Jesus moves, he sets up his home and he begins to say, “Repent.” Now one sermon could end right there and I could not worry about preaching long like a Nigerian. One sermon could end right there. I could say it’s a sermon about a judged people and a God of second chances, a do better next time sermon. I’ve heard it, I’ve probably preached it. Problem is I don’t believe it’s a gospel sermon anymore.

It’s something else, something that keeps us far too weighed down. Which is why I think we need our second piece of context today. And we don’t have to look in the Bible necessarily for that when that context is right here. It’s the context of human existence. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but life is hard. External circumstances can crush our successful lives. Kate and I have seen it. War terrorism, refugee crisis. May look a little different here, but you’ve seen it too. The cancer diagnosis, the job loss, life is hard, and if life is hard, our internal circumstances are far worse.

We sin. In the words of the Nigerian book of common prayer, we sin through negligence, through weakness, through our own deliberate fault. We sin through negligence, we’re careless. We don’t mean to, but we just do. We sin through weakness. We lack willpower to live the lives that we want to live, that we know we want to live and we sin through our own deliberate fault. Words like utterly corrupted and totally depraved are not so popular today, but the older I get, the more I see the truth. When I’m trying to get a night’s sleep and my unborn son kicks me, I see the truth.

So here’s the problem with that sermon about a second chance. See, I don’t know about you, but I don’t need a second chance or a third chance to get things right if I’m honest, because I’ll just mess it up a second time, a third time, a fourth time, I simply won’t get it right. In the words of AA’s first step, I am powerless. Now, it may not be alcohol, but it’s certainly life and sin. I’m powerless. The truth is I don’t need a fresh start. I don’t need to dust myself off and start all over again. I need rescuing.

Amen.

God, I need rescuing. And I bet I’m not alone. Now, even if you’re not resonating with me, there’s someone who is. This is what Paul is getting at in Romans7:14-24. I’ll give you the Martin paraphrase. Paul says, “I don’t really understand myself.”

We can stop right there, but he goes on. He says, “There are these good things that I know are good and they, they’re what I want to do and I set out to do them and suddenly I find I’m doing the things that I know are bad and that I don’t want to do. And the things that are bad that I don’t want to do, well, those are the very things I do.” And you can hear his anguish if you look through the stilted words of the Bible. He says, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” He doesn’t need a second chance. “Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

We’ll come back to that. Because the deliverance isn’t found in the second chance. The deliverance isn’t found in more willpower. The deliverance isn’t found in anything within this body. It’s a deliverance from outside. Paul cries out, “Thanks be to God that for those who are in Christ Jesus, there is no condemnation act.” That’s good news and you may be tracking with me so far, but we got to talk about human existence a little more because this sounds real good to our ears except that we resist it.

I mean, this is about the call of the disciples. Shouldn’t we be talking about discipleship? See, we live in a self-help pull yourself up by your bootstraps, life coach, productivity planner kind of culture, especially in America. I can do it. Just give me the space, I can do it. This time will be different. And there is that word, repent. You’re messing up Dr. Les. What about that word repent? What are we to make of that? Well, let’s have some more context. Repent comes from the Greek word metanoia, and for 1200 years the Vulgate Bible that Jerome translated into the Latin told us that that word repent right there today in Matthew 4:17, Jerome did the best he could. He translated it and he told us that that word meant, do penance. Repent, do penance.

In other words, do something. Don’t just sit there, do something better yourselves. Get busy. Well, that sounds a lot like that second chance. And again, according to the context of human existence, we have a problem. Now, the scholar Erasmus, by the 16th century studying the original languages found that that really wasn’t the best translation of the Greek or the Hebrew. Repent wasn’t so much do penance, do something as it was return. Be restored. Dr. Luther ever the guy who wanted to make sure that God got the verbs and that we were the recipient wanted to push it even further. He said that to repent is to be returned, to be turned around, to be restored. See, God gets the verb.

That’s good.

It’s not something I do, but something that is done unto me. It is not so much that I repent as it is the case that I am repented. Now we’re getting somewhere because this understanding of repentance fits much better with the wider biblical context as to the work of Jesus in Zebulon and Naphtali, what he’s doing there. We can look at two examples real quickly. Matthew today quotes Isaiah 8:23-9:2, you see it there in the reading. The land of Zebulon and Naphtali who walked in darkness have seen a great light. But I wish they’d gone a little further.

I wish they’d gone a little further because listen to, listen to verse 9:4. Matthew leaves off around 9:2. This is Isaiah 9:4, you can check me. Going on, he says, talking about God, “You have broken the bar on their shoulders and the rod of their oppressor as you did in the day of Midian.” He goes to Zebulon and Naphtali not to say to try harder but to break the yoke, to break the bond, to shatter the rod. It is Jesus who does it, not us. We also ought to consider what other evangelists tell us about what Jesus is doing in Capernaum.

Matthew gives us the large statement, the kind of mission statement. Jesus is up there saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” But that’s the cliff notes version. What does he say? Well, in Capernaum, he gives his first sermon. It’s found in Luke 4:17-21. And lo and behold, he’s quoting Isaiah again. He says, “The spirit of the Lord is on me because he anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He sent me to proclaim freedom to the captives in recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

And if to put a bullet point at the end of it, his whole sermon is one sentence. “Today, these words have been fulfilled in your hearing.” And he sits down. “Here I am freedom for the captives, recovery to the sight to the blind, freedom for oppressors the year of the Lord’s favor.” It is Jesus who does it, not us. He is the repenter. We’re in epiphany tide, that extension of Christmas where we continue to reflect on the continuing revelation of Jesus. Who is he for Zebulon, Naphtali, for us?

Who is he for the fisherman he calls today? He is the repenter, the restorer, the one who does for us what we cannot ever do for ourselves no matter how hard we try. To be a fisherman in Palestine was difficult, undignified work. Fisherman were considered rude and uncultured. Even Cicero the Roman orator says that to be a fisherman is one of the most shameful occupations. These are the people in Zebulon and Naphtali who attract Jesus’ attention. And he walks up to the fisherman and says, what? Work harder, better yourself, try again, maybe do some night classes.

No. He repents them. Restores them to their original design and dignity with two simple words, “Follow me.” Let’s expand that a little. I see you tangled up in your nets. I see you who the society would overlook. I see you in this rough and challenging occupation. I see you. Follow me. So too, it is he who disentangles us from the nets of our lives. You heard it in the song. I’m sorry Lord for the thing I made it. We’ve gotten all tangled up. He disentangles us. He is, what did we learn last liturgical season? He is Emmanuel, Jesus, God with us, to be the God who saves us.

Now, don’t worry, I know my context. I’m in east Tennessee where Christianity is still strong and I’m in a church of people who actually decided to get up this morning and come to church. I know you know this. But the problem is that’s not the whole context is it? As I said, we’re those self-help, life coach, productivity people. We think we can get things right. More than that, we can’t believe that salvation can be that easy. I mean, there has to be something that we better do.

Now, we do things in our Christian life, of course, these fishermen who are called are going to become fishers of men, but until we get the priority straight, until we get the fact that God is the actor and we are the recipient deep in us, until we soak that in, all our work is going to be striving. It’s going to be anxiety filled. It’s going to be counterproductive. It’s not going to come out of the fruit of the Spirit. It’s not going to be the unique unforced rhythms of grace that are appropriate to each one of us.

Rather, it’s going to be something we learned in the sermon on 10 tips for being a more productive Christian and it’s going to break us again and again and again. That’s why being here is so important, you know, gathering together. Before I was a Christian, I thought it was just kind of another shame thing, right? Go to church. But here, here is where we receive the antidote to that culture out there that says, try harder, work harder. Haven’t you solved that yet? I mean, look at you. Here, in the liturgy, the truth of who Jesus is goes from something we know, and again, I know you know it, but to something we embody.

The word read and preached goes in our ears. Even thick stuffed up ears like mine. The sacrament of the altar, the bread and the wine, they go in me in a visceral way and they do an inside job. The gathered community can hold us accountable to the truth when they see us struggling with the fact that we’re not perfect. They can remind us that we never had to be. Week after week we see, we hear, we taste, we are repented, we are restored. Jesus reveals himself as Isaiah told us today, to be the yoke breaker. He breaks the yoke that burdens us, our sin. He breaks the bar on our shoulders that weighs our life down, fear of death. And he snaps the rod of our oppression, that in this day and age seems to be the belief that we have to fix it all on our own. God is doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves. That’s the revelation we receive in word and sacrament today because Amos is right as far as he goes. Actions do have consequences, but if God is the actor, what are the consequences then?

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Jesus Christ at Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in RavennaEpiphany 2 2023
Rev. Doug Floyd
Exodus 12:21–28, Psalm 40, 1 Corinthians 1:1–9, John 1:29–4

Corinth is a town on the rise. People from all across the empire have come to work, trade, make money, and climb to a higher status. Corinth is a city on the move. When Paul proclaims the gospel there, people readily respond and soon, a burgeoning church is also on the move. The church in some ways reflects the city and all the challenges in Corinth are in the church. People are competing for spiritual status. There are tensions between the poor and the rich, between various small groups, plus the community as a whole is turning a blind eye to some extreme impropriety. This same group of people has begun to think that they have passed up Paul spiritually.

Paul hears a bit of what is going on, and he decides to write them a pastoral letter. Though he will directly confront some of the issues at the church, Paul opens with mercy and grace. His opening words give us some insight into how Paul views the transformation of the person.

What does he say?

Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes, 2 To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: 3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 4 I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, 5 that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge— 6 even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you— 7 so that you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 8 who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. (1 Corinthians 1:1–9)

He opens with Jesus Christ, ends with Jesus Christ and speaks of Jesus Christ all throughout. As St. John Chrysostom says, “Nowhere in any other epistle does the name of Christ occur so continuously in a few verses; by means of it he [Paul] weaves together the whole … not by chance or unwittingly.…” The transformation of the person is rooted in Jesus Christ. He begins the work and he will carry it to completion on the day of the Lord.

I want to highlight a few words in these verses. One of the first words that stands out is to be “called.”

“Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes, 2 To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ…” (1 Corinthians 1:1–2).

Paul is called to be an apostle and the Christians at Corinth are “called to be saints.” Our faith is rooted in the gracious call of God. He has called us into life and called us to grow up into Christ, to become living witnesses of Christ. In spite of our flaws and failures, His call remains. As Isaiah sings,

Thank God that His Word never fails. In one sense, our whole life is a response to His call. Every morning we awake to His call. When He calls us, He gives us the power to respond to His call. Thus we hear Paul’s next two key words “grace and peace.”

Even as He is writing to bring correction, Paul is overwhelming His hearers with blessing. This is a trinitarian blessing. “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Corinthians 1:3) This blessing from the Father and the Son is realized in God’s people through the Holy Spirit. This word of grace captures the spirit of this whole letter. It’s all grace. It’s call the gracious gift of God’s love being poured in and upon the Corinthians and upon us as well. As a people who have known the goodness and grace of God, we rejoice in the subsequent blessing of peace, of shalom. Every Sunday we rehearse the promise of peace with God but also peace with one another. In a world so often given to strife, we are a people of peace rooted in the grace of God.

Now Paul gives thanks for these people who are currently opposing Him, who are divided and who are not living into their calling. Paul’s first and foremost response to them is thanksgiving. “I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus… (1 Corinthians 1:4). When Paul shared the Gospel in Corinth, these people responded in and through the grace of God. The whole of our Christian life is grace, grace, grace. I would hope that this opening might help remind us that God has loved us and opened our hearts and heads to His grace.

Even as the Lord pours out mercy and grace, He is giving gifts that serve to build up the body. In verses five and six, Paul gives thanks “that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge— even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you” (1 Corinthians 1:5–6). These gifts of speech and knowledge are some of the very areas where the people are creating division. They are speaking against Paul and one another. They are competing with one another as to who has the most knowledge of the Spirit. Paul believes that the Spirit can bring change to the congregation even as he calls the people to repent.

This is an interesting dilemma. The people are already exercising their God-given gifts and yet they are using them in a competitive way with one another. The gifts should function like the outgrowing of God’s love and life. Creation, redemption, grace and peace all flow out of the deep love of God. As He showers His people in gifts, the people are called to pour out those gifts in love to one another and to the world.

Now Paul points us to the revealing of Jesus Christ. I am going to read verses four through nine again so we can hear how these point to that moment when Jesus Chris is fully unveiled in all His glory.

I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge— even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you— so that you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. (1Corinthians 1:4–9).

Paul’s great hope for the Corinthians is the unveiling of Jesus Christ. He trusts that the Holy Spirit will sustain them until that day and present them guiltless on that day. Now I want to pause over this promised revealing of Jesus Christ in the great Day of the Lord. This is a singular event that will mark the end of this age. At the same time, Paul speaks of this revealing in a slightly different way in 2 Corinthians 3.

He writes,

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:17–4:1).

Here Paul sees a gradual transformation: from glory to glory. We are being transformed into the glory the Lord as we behold the glory of our Lord. Where are we seeing Him? In mystical experiences? It is possible, but I don’t believe that’s the primary experience he is referencing. I would suggest that Paul is suggesting that as we live and serve within the body, we begin seeing glimpses of the goodness and grace of our Lord in one another. These glimpses are changing us. As we pour out our lives in kindness toward one another, we are ministering His grace. Within this competitive, selfish community, Paul is calling these people to live in the reality of love that has already been poured upon them. He sees how this community might be changed, might grow from love to love, from glory to glory. Over time, this little community begins to bear more and more of the image of Jesus to one another and to those beyond the community.

As I think about Paul’s words this morning, I think about how easy it can be for us to focus on the faults of others or even our own faults. When this temptation arises let us remember our calling in Christ – We are called by the Lord. Let us focus on His goodness and grace. He has called us to become saints. Let us trust his faithful word, and give thanks for one another even for those with whom we struggle, who weary us, or are even unkind.

In fact, what a great habit to look for Christ specifically in those Christians who may not be exhibiting His love. We give thanks and pray for their transformation evening as we look with hope for the revealing of Jesus Christ. Then something wondrous happens: we begin to see glimpses of His revealing in them. I have seen this happen in my own walk.

Sometimes when I would be praying, the faces of people who frustrated me would come to mind. I felt compelled by the Spirit to pray for them and to begin giving thanks for all the way His was at work in them. Soon I would begin to see gifts they had that I lacked, and I could genuinely give thanks for who He made and was making them to be.

As I look back over Paul’s introduction to this Corinthian letter, I am struck afresh by Chrysostom’s observation that Jesus Christ appears again and again in this letter. Even as Paul is writing to a troubled church, his eyes are on Jesus Christ.

We need this habit in church and in culture. Even as we see and hear problems around us, may we keep our heart and minds on Jesus Christ, walking in His way and having hope for His great unveiling.

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The Lord Will Deliver His People Across the Jordan by Howard Finster (1976)Sunday After Epiphany 2023
Baptism of Our Lord
Rev. Doug Floyd
Isaiah 42:1-9, Psalm 89, Acts 10:34-38, Matthew 3:13-17

In the book, “How to Read Literature Like a Professor,” Thomas C. Foster teaches readers clues to look for when reading a novel. I often assign this to High School students first learning to interpret literature. He says that great literature often alludes to other great literature and the primary sources for Western Literature are the Bible, Ancient Greco-Roman mythology, and Shakespeare. Baptism is one common Biblical image in literature.

Foster suggests that if a character goes under water and comes back out, it could be a baptism. He says that water, rain, and even snow can be an image of baptism in literature. We look to see if something changes in the character’s life after the symbolic baptism.

One of the things I like about this book is that Foster explores how certain actions in literature allude to one or more other stories that precede it. This way of thinking can help us consider the Baptism of Jesus.

In our Gospel today, Jesus asks John to baptize him. This unexpected request catches John off guard and he almost refuses. Jesus persists; John obeys; and the heavens open.

This baptism alludes to several Old Testament stories more than we can cover today. First, there is the crossing of the Jordan. When the children of Israel come to the end of their wilderness wandering, they must cross the Jordan river to enter the wilderness. The Levites carry the Ark of the Covenant into the Jordan, and the river halts. The children of Israel cross the Jordan on dry ground. This crossing marks the end of their wilderness wandering and the beginning of their life on the land of future promise.

In the gospel today, John goes outside of Judea and Jerusalem, invites people to confess their sins and be baptized in the river Jordan. He is inviting them into a symbolic act. In some sense to suggest that they have not been living in the promised land, they are renouncing their sin, which has caused them to wander away from the things of God. As they are baptized in the Jordan, they are being purified to walk in the way of righteousness.

When Jesus requests to be baptized, John is shocked. For John this implies that Jesus needs to repent of His sin, and that Jesus is seeking a new life through John. But Jesus responds to John, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.”[1] Jesus is pointing John toward another story. He is helping John to see another meaning in this act.

To understand the allusion, we look at Isaiah 42. “Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.” [2] Isaiah is drawing from Moses’s call to Israel. In Deuteronomy 16:20, Moses tells the children of Israel, “Justice, and only justice, you shall follow, that you may live and inherit the land that the Lord your God is giving you.” [3]

He says that the servant of the Lord will bring justice to the nations. This justice will be so gentle that it won’t crush the very weakest such as a bruised reed or a faintly burning wick. This servant will be faithful. This servant will not grow faint or discouraged until His justice has extended to all the earth.

Who is the servant that Isaiah references? It could be an individual, but it simultaneously could also be the nation of Israel because the nation of Israel is the servant of the Lord. There’s an interesting pattern in the Old Testament where some individuals represent Israel, they stand in on behalf of the whole nation.

Moses stands in place of Israel. He’s the individual that stands as the covenant bearer on behalf of the people. From the Psalms we can see that the King stands in place of the people.

When Isaiah speaks of a servant, it could be an individual or could be an entire community. This servant “will bring forth justice to the nations.” This line is actually an illusion to Moses’ sermon in Deuteronomy 16:20 when he tells the children of Israel, “Justice and only justice you shall follow that you may live and inherit the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”

The children of Israel are called as the servant of the Lord. The entire people, the servant of the Lord. They are a nation called to reveal God’s glory. They are to reveal the goodness and a love of God in everyday life as well as in worship. The Torah or the commandments are teaching them how to be that covenant people, how to be a people that bear witness to the faithfulness of God.

We know the story doesn’t work out quite that way. The people are unfaithful, so they end up revealing something else. They reveal the sinfulness of humanity. Israel has two roles of revealing. They’re revealing the glory of God and the sinfulness of humans. If we read the story of the people across the Old Testament, we find the people chosen by God are idolaters, they follow the gods of other nations. And there’s all sorts of perversions that go with that behavior.

They become oppressors and take advantage of the weak and poor. Israel’s sins are so egregious that the prophets suggest that they are worse than Sodom and Gomorrah. Israel has failed to reveal God’s justice to the world. Yet Isaiah continues to speak of Israel as the servant of the Lord.

Instead of abandoning Israel, the Lord promises that His work of justice will be revealed. In verses 6-8 we read,

6 “I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness; I will take you by the hand and keep you; I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, 7 to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness. 8 I am the Lord; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols”. [4]**

God’s commitment to reveal His glory through Israel remains. And yet, Israel continues to rebel. In Isaiah 59, we read,

14 Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands far away; for truth has stumbled in the public squares, and uprightness cannot enter. 15 Truth is lacking, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. The Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice. 16 He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no one to intercede; then his own arm brought him salvation, and his righteousness upheld him. [5]**

Isaiah prophesies that God now will be the one who fulfills the covenant. He’s the one who will bring justice to the nations. Now that gets us ready for today’s gospel.

When baptizing the repentant Jews, John sees Jesus coming toward him. John acknowledges His greatness, proclaiming, “He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”[6]

Jesus shocks John when He asks John to baptize Him. This does not make sense to John. It is almost blasphemous for John to consider baptizing the Holy One who has come. John says, “I need to be baptized by you.” Jesus insists. He says, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.”[7] God’s own arm is working righteousness.

Now John obeys. John’s submission is a sign of his ever willingness to turn and follow that is to repent. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis writes, [John the Baptist] shows himself to be in a permanent attitude of metanoia, which is precisely what he demanded of others. Even though it is John himself who performs Jesus’ baptism, John is conscious of the fact that, by a mysterious reversal, the power of sanctification is coming to his hand from Jesus rather than going out of it to an ordinary penitent.”[8]

Throughout the whole event, Christ is blessing. He blesses John the Baptist; He blesses the River Jordan; He blesses all who behold this event including us. Jesus connects the baptism to prophecies about His coming. He is fulfilling the covenant with Israel. In fact, Jesus now is the Israel of God, and through the gospels He is the Israel of God and He’s fulfilling every aspect of the story of Israel. God has entered the story of Israel through his son Jesus Christ, who’s fully man and fully God. He’s the covenant promise.

As the servant of the Lord, He will reveal the call of Israel to reveal the justice of God to the nations. He will faithfully bring justice even to the frailest weakest ones who might be likened to a bruised reed or a flickering wick. He will face rejection, hatred, betrayal, and eventual crucifixion, but His commitment to justice will prevail to all the earth.

Jesus descends to the Jordan and descends in a sense to death. Then he ascends from the water. The sky opens and the Father and Spirit embrace the Son, affirming His descent and ascent. The True Israel of God has reaffirmed the covenant between God and His people. As Jesus stands in the Jordan, He is also the Ark of Covenant standing in the Jordan and making a people for God’s people enter the land of God’s Promise.

The Ark of the Covenant makes a way. It bears the covenant between God and Israel. Jesus is standing in the river Jordan as the one bearing the covenant between God and His people. And now through Christ we can cross the Jordan into the land of promise, which is what Hebrews 4 tells us, that Joshua could not lead them into the land of promise. He couldn’t lead them into the land of rest, but Jesus could.

We see Jesus standing right there in the middle of the river Jordan. He is our way. As we meditate upon this baptism this morning, we’re reminded that the Lord comes to us just the way He came to John to Baptist. He calls us to follow him, which sometimes means when we feel called in certain actions or certain things to say or do, we may resist it at first. We may not even recognize it because that’s the way of the Spirit.

As we meditate upon this baptism this morning, we are reminded that the Lord comes to us even as He came to John the Baptist. He calls us to follow Him.

We are also reminded of our own baptism. Our baptism is a baptism into Christ. We enter the covenant of God and the land of future promise through Jesus Christ. In Him, we cross the Jordan.

Our baptism is also our obedience to His call. We want that readiness to turn sometimes unexpectedly in the way He calls us. In an age when faith seems foolish and is often misunderstood, we follow Christ by descending into the place of humility.

In a time of shouting factions, we model the way of Christ by serving others in love. We speak as He leads us. Darrell Johnson once said that “Evangelism is entering a conversation God is having with someone…when invited.” Let us open our hearts and lives to the wind of the Spirit. That we might be instruments of God’s goodness, God’s justice in the world. May we not lost hope or grow discouraged but continue to live of witnesses of His righteousness and healing grace to the ends of all the earth.

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mt 3:15.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Is 42:1.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Dt 16:20.

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Is 42:6–8.

[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Is 59:14–16.

[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mt 3:11.

[7] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mt 3:15.

[8] Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, Chapters 1–25, vol. 1 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996–2012), 132.

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The Angel Speaks to Joseph in a Dream by F. MorelThe Messiah’s Who and How
Advent 4A
Rev. Dr. Clint Burnett
Matthew 1:18-25

Good morning, grace, peace, and greetings in the Lord to you from your brothers and sisters from your sister parish, Old North Abbey. Today is the fourth and last Sunday of Advent, the last week for us to wait in anticipation not only for God the Son’s first coming to earth in the form of the Christ-child but also for us to ponder and consider his second coming as righteous Judge, which, according to the witness of Sacred Scripture, will occur soon. Our readings from Holy Scripture and in particular our Gospel text for today center on the theme of Christ’s coming into the world as a testimony to God’s faithfulness to his people and to his world in unexpected ways. Our Gospel reading accomplishes this by underscoring two aspects of the birth annunciation of the Christ-child: the “How” of his Birth and the “Who” of his identity.

The Text’s Original Meaning

As our text begins, St. Matthew provides a heading for us. He informs us that he is going to tell us about the “How” of Jesus the Messiah’s birth, for it occurred “in this way.” Unfortunately, our English translations of Matt 1:18 obscure this verse’s connection with what has occurred earlier in the Gospel and with God’s story of worldwide redemption, which begins in Genesis. The term that St. Matthew uses and which the ESV renders “birth” is the Greek word that we transliterate into English as “genesis.” It is the same term that appears one more time in St. Matthew’s Gospel, at its very beginning, in Matt 1:1: “A book of the genesis of Jesus the Messiah, son of David, Son of Abraham.”

This word, genesis, is found in the story of creation in the Greek version of Gen 2:4 that St. Matthew read. There, we find “This is the book of the genesis of heaven and earth when it was created.” By adopting this exact phrase, “book of the genesis,” to begin his Gospel, St. Matthew is telling us that Jesus’s story is a new beginning. It is the beginning of God’s promise of New Creation; a time when the Triune God rules uncontested over every square inch of the universe and sin, death, and decay no longer exist. After the Evangelist introduces his book as a new Genesis, like the book of Genesis, he provides a genealogy of the new Adam with an emphasis on Jesus’s Jewish and Davidic ancestry from Abraham to his earthly father Joseph who is a descendant of David.

The next time that St. Matthew uses the word “genesis” is found in our passage as he begins to describe how this new Adam, this true son of Abraham, and rightful heir to David’s and thus Israel’s throne was born. Consequently, in parallel to the genealogy of Jesus’s human ancestors, St. Matthew now stresses the Messiah’s divine ancestry, his Incarnation from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary.

Therefore, this beginning of God’s New Creation comes in the most unexpected ways.

Instead of Jesus being born to the Jewish king and queen in their royal palace, God chose to commence his rescue operation of Israel and the world through a young virgin who was betrothed to a man who although a descendant of King David was not the reigning monarch. In ancient Palestine, the marriage custom among Jews was that a man would contract a marriage with a young lady, probably about 12 years of age, at which point Jewish custom considered them to lawfully be husband and wife. However, the wife would remain in her father’s house for about a year whilst the husband made all the necessary preparations. When the husband had everything ready, he would go and bring his wife into his house with much celebration and the two of them would “come together” in the Biblical sense, if you catch my meaning.

St. Matthew informs us that as Joseph is busy readying everything ready for his bride, Mary is found pregnant from the Holy Spirit. St. Matthew does not tell us how Joseph is informed that his wife is with child because his main point is to stress that Jesus is God from God and thus Joseph is not his father. In the story, Joseph thinks, as any person rightly would, that Mary has been unfaithful to him. For we who acknowledge Jesus’s virgin birth daily and weekly as we recite the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds respectively, it is difficult for us to grasp how Joseph, not to mention Mary, must have felt at that time. The reason is that there is no precedent in the Old Testament, Jewish culture of the day, or in the larger pagan Greco-Roman world for the Incarnation: for God becoming human.

Granted as we read in today’s Old Testament reading, there was a prophecy about the virgin birth. However, as St. Matthew explains this prophecy was only fulfilled in Jesus. In the pagan culture of Jesus’s day, we find a plethora of stories of the pagan gods taking on the guise of a human from time to time and even gods fathering and mothering children with humans. However, in each of these cases, the child in question was formed in a union between a male and female, which is not the case with the virgin birth, for it is the product of the Holy Spirit’s creative work in Mary’s womb.

Given that Mary and Joseph are married in the eyes of Jewish custom of the day, he is torn about what he should do. St. Matthew tells us that Joseph was a righteous man, which means that he attempted to live his life according to the precepts of God’s Law. In this Law, in Deut 22:13–21 in particular, there is legislation about what a husband is supposed to do if he suspects that his wife has been unfaithful, which is a public trial. This was a viable option for Joseph. However, it is not one that he chose. In an echo of Jesus’s teaching in Matt 23:23 that God desires mercy not judgment, St. Matthew says that he did not wish to publicly disgrace Mary. Instead, he was leaning toward writing her a certificate of divorce and putting her away secretly to spare her shame.

While Joseph was still pondering these things, an angel appeared to him in a dream to explain to Joseph the “How” of Jesus’s virgin birth by focusing on the second point that St. Matthew stresses: the “Who” of this child. Mary is “with child” from the Holy Spirit. Thus, she has not been unfaithful to him. Rather, Mary has been faithful to God and allowed him to begin his work of New Creation through her. In the language of the Nicene Creed, the angel tells Joseph that Mary is pregnant with “the only Begotten Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God.”

At this point, the angel gives several directives to Joseph, which underscore the “Who” of Jesus’s identity. Joseph is to name the child, an act that would have acknowledged him as the child’s earthly father and thus cemented the baby’s ancestral link to King David, and Joseph is to call his name Jesus. This name is carefully chosen and reflects Jesus’s identity. The reason for the name, according to the angel, is that Jesus will save Israel from its sins. In the Bible and for most of western history, names meant something. The name Jesus is the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew name Joshua, which means “The LORD saves.” Thus, the name chosen for the Christ-child reflected his divine mission and in particular his task of rescuing Israel and the world from sin. The major way that Jesus accomplishes this task is through his death, burial, and resurrection, which we, like St. Matthew before us, celebrate in the Eucharist. This is evident in that when St. Matthew records the institution of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, he does so in the following language, which is unique to him. Jesus says: “this is my blood of the new covenant poured out for the many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt 26:28). Thus, Jesus’s self-sacrifice serves to fulfill the prophecy that the angel spoke to Joseph: he will save his people from their sin.

Finally, St. Matthew provides an editorial comment on the events that he has just related, stressing the connection between the “How” and the “Who” of the Christ-child’s forthcoming birth. The virgin birth, the naming of the child as Jesus, and his mission of saving his people and the world from sin is happening to fulfill Holy Scripture, Isa 7:14 in particular. Thus, St. Matthew notes that the Incarnation of Jesus is none other than how God intended to be Emmanuel or “God with us,” the people who participate in God’s New Creation. Upon hearing that Mary was pregnant with God the Son, Joseph awoke from his sleep and obeyed the angel’s commands, He took his wife, although they did not consummate their marriage until the Christ-child’s birth, and when the Christ-child was born he named him Jesus.

The Text’s Application

Our Gospel reading for this week and other Scriptures provide us with four points to consider. First, the Christ event, including Jesus’s birth, is the beginning of God’s New Creation of the world. One of the things that we are meant to focus on during this Advent season is the fulfillment of God’s New Creation at Jesus’s second coming. In the process, we are meant to realize that the world we see and live in now is not as it should be. God does not reign uncontested over every square inch of it, especially in the hearts and minds of humans. We live in a fallen, broken, and evil age, which is evident as we consider the many evils occurring all around us: the ongoing war in Ukraine, the oppression of minority groups in China, the persecution of Christians in Asia and Africa, and the list goes on and on. For this reason, we are to feel out of place. Our Advent text today reminds us that God has already started to remedy this problem with the Christ Event and when Jesus returns he will deal with the problem in its entirety by recreating the world to rid it of death, disease, and sin. Thus, in a way the Church lives in a perpetual state of Advent, the time between the two comings of Jesus and one of the ways that we must gain encouragement in our present situation is by looking backward to how God has begun to fulfill his promises to his people and the world so that we can be assured that God will soon finish the job.

Second, St. Matthew wants us to know that in the midst of our waiting for the fulfillment of God’s New Creation, he has not left us alone. The first coming of Jesus was as Emmanuel, God with us, and even though Jesus has ascended to God’s right hand, he still remains Emmanuel. Before Jesus ascended to that location at the end of St. Matthew’s Gospel, he promised his followers that he will be “with you all the days until the end of this age” (Matt 28:20). Therefore, Jesus is always present with us as our comforter and fountain of peace. He is present with us as we pray the Daily Office, as we ask the Triune God to bless our meals, as we go to work and interact with co-workers and clients, as we prepare supper for our families, as we love on our children, as we have conversations with family members and friends, and as we visit those who are sick in hospitals and their homes. In all these circumstances, Jesus is present with us. In a special way, however, Jesus is our Emmanuel in Word and Sacrament. As we gather as a parish, he speaks through the Deacon as he or she comes into our midst and reads the very words of Jesus and as we partake in the Eucharist he is present in the bread and the wine imparting grace to those who participate.

Third, our Gospel reading stresses that God operates in the midst of our broken and fallen world in the most unexpected ways. God’s cosmic rescue operation is launched into another gear by the Incarnation of God the Son, the person of the Godhead through whom all things were made who became fully human. Thus, to save the world, God the Son humbled himself by moving from his heavenly throne to live in our world as a human. As noted, there is no precedent for the Incarnation in human history at this point. There are no comparative examples of the Incarnation in the Old Testament, in Judaism of Jesus’s day, nor in the pagan culture of the Roman Empire.

Pagan gods may take on the appearance of a human, but not full frail humanity with all its weaknesses. According to the ancient poet Homer, the pagan gods live in everlasting bliss. What is more, God the Son became incarnate in the womb of a virgin who appears to have been of the poor or lower middle-class society of Judaism of the day. If I were the God of the Universe and I was going to become human, I would have chosen the womb of a woman who was at the apex of the ancient Greco-Roman world so that I might have lived a life of luxury. But thanks be to God this is not the God to whom our lives are devoted. In short, everything about the Incarnation is counter-cultural to first century Jewish and Greco-Roman values. This should be a reminder to us of how God operates. Consequently, we must be open to God’s powerful, unexpected work all around us, in the voice and words of a child, in a handshake, smile, or hug, in a random act of kindness, in a phone call, in the sending of a card or note, and the list goes on and on.

Finally, this morning our Gospel reading reminds us of our place in the beginning of God’s New Creation, obedient, self-less, trust-filled service. Throughout this story, Joseph trusts God that his wife has not been unfaithful to him and that the baby in her womb is born of the Holy Spirit. He obeys the angel’s command to name the Christ-child Jesus. And, he does not know her biblically, if you catch my drift, for the entirety of her pregnancy. Notice that Joseph does not think about himself and he appears not to be concerned with what others might think of him and if they will gossip and talk about him behind his back. His devotion is to God first and foremost. On the fourth Sunday of Advent next year, we will see St. Luke emphasizing the same obedient, self-less, trust-filled service of the Virgin Mary. When she hears from the angel Gabriel that she shall conceive the Christ-child see says, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” Like her husband Joseph, Mary is only concerned about the affairs of the kingdom and rendering faithful, obedient service to the King of the Universe. May God help us in the rest of this Advent season to gain encouragement from God’s beginning of New Creation, from the fact that Jesus is our Emmanuel and thus always with us, to remember that God works in the most unexpected ways, and to be like Joseph and Mary and serve God with total and true devotion. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

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The Peaceable Kingdom by Edward Hicks (1833-1834) Advent 2
Rev. Doug Floyd
Isaiah 11:1-11, Romans 15:1-13, Matthew 3:1-12

In the story of Robin Hood, King Richard the Lionheart is away. In his absence, Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham are usurping his kingdom. Robin Hood and his Merry Men rob the rich to give to the poor. They are seeking justice for the weakest in the land due to the corrupt leaders. If only King Richard would return, he could set the kingdom in order.

During Advent, we take up this longing for the king to set things in order. We are acutely aware that our world is out of order. From broken bodies to broken hearts, we know the pain that reverberates throughout our communities and our homes. Ben Ferguson, a relatively young priest, died this week of colon cancer. He leaves behind his wife and two daughters. This ought not be. He was a beautiful soul who has left this world far too soon.

We see the ravages of Russian’s invasion of Ukraine on the nightly news. There is an approaching famine in Somalia that threatens to take many lives. There are regular reports of slavery in China, Africa, and all throughout the world. There is so much pain and suffering in the world, we cannot bear it. It’s too much. It leads to despair.

After covering war zones for many years, the photojournalist Sebastião Salgado put down his camera. The corruption of humanity so grieved him, he felt like humans no longer deserved to live on this planet. If we ever needed a savior, we need him now. We need him to put our world to rights.

Our Psalm today extols the virtues of the coming king, the Prince of Peace. This psalm appears to celebrate King Solomon. He is the wise king who establishes peace and justice in Israel. 1 Kings 11 tells us that in his old age, Solomon’s heart turns to the idols of his many wives. The Lord appears to him twice and warns him about foreign gods, but he does not heed the Lord. The wisest king turns out to be unfaithful and sets a pattern of idolatry that will corrupt the nation for centuries to come.

The kingdom falls to civil war under Solomon’s son Rehoboam, and they split it between the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. Both kingdoms will eventually collapse under the weight of their own sins and corruption. Isaiah sees the destruction of Israel by Assyria and anticipates the destruction of Judah by Babylon.

In the midst of this oracle of doom, Isaiah looks to the coming king for hope. Unlike the kings of Israel and Judah, there is coming a true prince of peace. Isaiah sings,

There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.[1]

Though the house of David has fallen to Babylon, the Lord will raise up a true king. He will establish a kingdom where the most vulnerable will be welcome and made safe. This king will bear the fullness of God’s Spirit. His rule will embody the very wisdom of God.

Unlike all the kings of Israel or all the kings of other nations, this king will establish justice at the very heart of all things. By His Word alone the wicked and oppressors will fall. Isaiah offers a series of images that give us a picture of the peaceable kingdom this king establishes.

6 The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,
and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;
and a little child shall lead them.
7 The cow and the bear shall graze;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,
and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den. [2]

In each of these images, natural enemies live together without harming one another. Here we have a picture not simply of animals, but of humans. When this king puts the world to rights, humans are finely at peace. Those who have ancient hostilities share a meal in love.

The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord. The curse of sin and death has blinded all humanity and we stumble as one walking in the dark. In our Gospel today John the Baptist goes before the coming king, preparing the way. He calls us to “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

We turn and behold the king. He comes and opens our eyes and ears and hearts to His love, His wisdom, His life. This king will restore his lost and wandering people into a communion of love.

We were created for this love. We were created to live in love with God and one another. Our will power alone cannot restore this love. The king who comes with healing in his wings will transform us into holy lovers.

We long for this king. We long to see the world put to rights. We long for His coming, His unveiling, His kingdom to be revealed in fullness. As we around at the sin and suffering in world, we often do not know how to pray. We cry out for God’s mercy and we pray “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.”

As we watch and wait for the coming of the Lord, we live toward His coming. Paul exhorts us in Romans,

“We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. 2 Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up.” (Romans 15:1-2)

Instead of images of a wolf and a lamb, Paul offers us images of the strong and the weak, of the Jew and the Gentile, of the poor and the rich. Christ our King rules our hearts and through us, He establishes His kingdom in our midst.

“May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 15:5-6)

One way we long for the coming of the Lord is through hospitality. Paul writes, “welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” (Romans 15:7) In and through His grace, we open our hearts and our lives to those around us as well as those beyond us. Those in the community who may be different than us, who may even oppose us. At the same time, we open our hearts and our lives to those far from us. We reach out to those in need by offering our financial gifts and prayers.

We watch and wait for the coming of the Lord. As we watch and wait, we love, we serve, we give, we bless, we embrace.

Come Lord Jesus.

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Is 11:1.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Is 11:6–8.

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The Miraculous Draught of Fishes by Konrad Witz (1444) The Call of the Disciples
Epiphany 5
Rev. Doug Floyd
Judges 6:11-24, Psalm 85, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, Luke 5:1-11

In our Gospel reading last week, Jesus announced that the year of Jubilee has begun. Luke treats that event as the official beginning of His ministry, which sets a tone for the whole Gospel. As Jesus calls people to the kingdom of God, He is welcoming them into the Year of Jubilee. It is the year of the Favor of the Lord. Jesus proclaims good news to the poor, liberty to the captive, recovery of sight to the blind, and liberty for the oppressed. When we hear His Word, we come to realize Jesus is speaking to us. We are the poor, the captives, the blind, and the oppressed. He has come to free us, heal us, and make a way for us to enter the fullness of the Kingdom of God. May we never fail to realize that our freedom, faith, and hope are given to us in Christ Jesus. As we follow Him, we become the Year of the Lord’s Favor to the world around us.

Today we meditate upon the call of Christ to become bears of the Good News of the Kingdom of God. Our Gospel passage opens with the crowds pressing in to hear the Word of God. When Jesus speaks, He speaks the true and living Word. It is living water. The crowds press in to hear. We are pressing in to hear. The Word of God brings life.

Hans Urs Von Balthasar says, “The essential thing for us is to hear God’s Word and discover from it how to respond to him. His Word is truth opened up for us. For there is no ultimate, unquestionable truth in man; he knows this, as, full of questionings, he looks up to God and sets toward Him. God’s Word is His invitation to us to be with Him in the truth.”

What if the Word seems dry? Balthasar continues, “We fail to see that it is we ourselves who are used up and alienated, whereas the Words resounds with the same vitality and freshness as ever; it is as near to us as it always was.” The Word of God renews our ears, our eyes, our hearts. Like the crowds pressing in to hear Jesus speak, may we have the same longing, the same desire to hear the Word of God, and in hearing may we see God’s goodness, may we taste God’s sweetness, may we be filled with His life.

As the crowds pressed, Jesus climbed into Simon’s boat, asking Simon to push off from the shore. Jesus sat down and continued teaching. This image of Jesus teaching from the boat speaks to us today. For the place where we gather is called the Nave as in a boat. We are in the ark of salvation, listening to the Word of God, and the Word of our Risen Savior call us forth from death to life.

This is not about us generating some hype through antics. It is truth. We hear and respond each week to the Word of God. The Word calls into worship, calls us into the true and holy festival before our Creator. The Word calls us to turn, repent, and behold the Lord. The Word calls us to hear with ear touched and healed by Christ, the see with eyes touched and healed by Christ. The Word calls us to trust in the faithfulness of our God. The Word calls us to lay all our burdens upon the Lord. The Word calls us to come and eat of the goodness of the Lord. The Word calls us to go forth into this world bearing the image of Christ in our hands, our feet, our mouths.

Like the crowds near Jesus, we are pressing in listening to our Savior address us from Simon’s boat. As the people rest and reflect upon the wonder of His Words, Christ addresses Peter.

“Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”[1] Christ shifts from speaking into the life of the crowds and speaks into the work world of Simon. Let down your nets. Simon has been fishing all night. Now he is being instructed by Jesus how to fish. The Word of God is not bound to a service, a church. Christ continues to address His people in their workplace, their homes, and the places where we may least expect it.

When I first started in ministry, Kelly and I lived on a ranch in Walland. My role was to spend time with the men who came to us, praying for them, teaching them, and even working with them. I remember one morning as I started my day with prayer and meditation. I listened but had no sense of the Lord addressing me. Then I went outside to work. I climbed through a barbed wire as I headed out to the field. The moment I stepped through the wire, I sensed the Lord addressing me as clear as day. The years have blurred the address, yet I’ve never forgotten the sense that God addressed me while my foot was sticking through a barbed wire. He is free to address us anywhere, anytime, and He is free to be silent.

Years later, I was working at Philips Magnavox. I had a co-worker who was laid off. I never really interacted with him, but when I found out he was laid off, I sensed the Lord speaking to me on behalf of this co-worker. I was hesitant to address him directly, so I wrote him a short note. Essentially, I told him that he was a bitter man, but the Lord wanted to heal him of this bitterness and that the Lord could make a new way for him. I was very nervous about his response, but he ended up telling me this was a word of the Lord for him.

The Lord can speak to us amid our daily life and call us to bear witness to Him. In today’s text, He tells Simon to let down the net. When we read the book of Acts, we hear the Lord speak to Simon Peter again by calling him to take the Gospel to Cornelius, a Gentile. This results in a miraculous outpouring of the Spirit upon the entire household of Cornelius. In today’s story, Simon is told to let down the net.

Simon’s response sounds like Mary, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your Word I will let down the nets.”[2] Simon is uncertain about this command, but he will obey at the Word of Jesus. He obeys and immediately catches a large number of fish. The fish are breaking the nets. The fish are sinking the boats. And Simon Peter is falling on his knees crying out, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” Much like the response of Isaiah to the glory of the Lord, Simon responds to this miracle by acknowledging his desperate estate. The goodness of God leads us to repentance (Romans 2:4b).

We want the conviction of God. For this is God drawing us near to Himself. The Gospel is not the Good News of guilt. It is the Good News of God Himself redeeming us and drawing near to the fullness of His life. Peter experiences the refreshing of this love and will later proclaim,

19 Repent, therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, 20 that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, 21 whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago. [3]

Simon Peter, along with James and John, became fishers of men. Just as his obedience to let down the net resulted in a multitude of fish, Peter’s obedience on the day of Pentecost results in a multitude of humans as 3000 come to repent. Peter becomes a fisher of men. But unlike fish who are captured and later sold and eaten. The people Peter catches are freed from the captivity of the evil one and led into the freedom of God.

In light of this joyous promise of Jubilee in Jesus Christ, what is our response? Our Gospel reading ends with this Word, And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him. [4]

We are also called into this gentle evangelism rooted in the power of the Spirit. He didn’t use manipulative techniques to draw people to Christ. He simply told his story, the Good News of Christ’s love. It is as simple as inviting people into the community. I was talking with Fr. Aaron this week at Old North. They were a handful of people for several years, and then they grew dramatically. He said that they never tried any outreach. All their growth was from people simply inviting their friends. We might consider inviting friends into our community and then trusting Jesus to draw those who He will.

Let us open our hands and hearts as we leave everything and follow Christ.

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Lk 5:4.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Lk 5:5.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ac 3:19–21.

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Lk 5:11.

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Jesus Unrolls the Book in the Synagogue, James Tissot (1886-1894) Epiphany 4C 2022
Open Hands Before God’s Call
Rev. Doug Floyd
Jeremiah 1:4-10, Psalm 71, 1 Corinthians 14:12-25, Luke 4:21-32

The Good News comes as a surprise and as a promise we could not have imagined. It is bigger than anything we can conceive. This is a good thing because we also think too small. Our natural tendency is to limit the Gospel to our limited understanding. This has been the trend throughout history. The ancient Israelites could not grasp the implications of God’s call on their lives. Neither can we.

We see through a glass dimly. We think through a glass dimply. We imagine through a glass dimply. From the earliest days of the church until today, various groups try to “box in” the Creator and Redeemer according to their expectations. They have wanted to domesticate God. But He always exceeds our expectations. This has happened in the Roman Catholic churches, the Protestant churches, and the Eastern church.

For instance, some Reformers rejected the miracle stories and saint stories of the Roman church. They advocated the doctrine of secessionism, meaning all the miracle stories stopped with the closing of the New Testament. Unfortunately for them, members of their own traditions began having miraculous experiences over the centuries. While the forms change, the encounters have continued.

We cannot limit God by saying what He cannot do. Or by saying who He must bless and who He must not bless. People can easily limit God by assuming He has exclusively blessed their church or country. Yet we know that His rain falls on the just and the unjust.

In our second lesson today, the Lord is distributing grace gifts to various groups in the Corinthian church. Each group is claiming a special status for their gifts and competing with other groups. They’re trying to limit God’s blessing to themselves. These grace gifts are given by the Spirit for us to serve and care for one another. They are poured out to bind us together as one body before the Lord. They are given to comfort, to strengthen, to exhort, to warn, and more.

As we begin to serve and care and help one another, we begin to live in such a way that opens the door to the surprise of God. When He moves in our midst, He is always breaking out the limitations we had set and revealing His love as ever new.

In the Gospel reading, Jesus enters a synagogue in Nazareth. Following the pattern of a synagogue service, he picks up the scroll and reads from the Prophet Isaiah.

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Then he sits down, for it is the pattern to sit and teach. Jesus delivers His Word, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” We don’t know what all the congregation thought. We do know that they marveled at these gracious words. For better or worse.

Jesus has announced the year of Jubilee, but then extends the promise of Jubilee to the Gentiles by talking about the ministry of Elijah and Elisha bringing the blessing of God to people outside of Israel. The people in the synagogue who hear Jesus read Isaiah’s prophecy and then connect it to Elijah and Elisha serving the Gentiles would have made this connection.

This infuriates the crowd who have been anticipating God coming in judgment on the Gentiles who are oppressing them. They rise up and drive him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff.”

Of course, Jesus slips away.

God does not perform to human expectation. They wanted to limit the Jubilee promise of Isaiah to Israel and Jesus points out toward the nations. They cannot contain the promises of God. Neither can we.

The Lord breaks out of all the limitations we create for him.

We come before the Lord with open hands, yielding our dreams, our ideas, ourselves before the Lord. As we read this Gospel of Luke this year, may we be open to the surprise of God. I want God to burst out of the limitations we’ve set. May God open our hearts more deeply to His love. I would pray that we might all be open to the unexpected, revealing of God in Christ Jesus.

Our Corinthians lessons offer us practical ways we might open ourselves to God. Paul’s begins our passage with the exhortation: “So with yourselves, since you are eager for manifestations of the Spirit, strive to excel in building up the church.” The gifts of the Spirit are all rooted in love. Here are four implications of Paul’s instruction on the building up the church.

First, when the Lord calls us, He calls us into community. We live in a country that focuses on our individualism, which is not inherently bad, but we must remember that when Christ calls us, He calls us into the communion of saints. We live out the reality of our calling with a group of people. While we meet in a building and name our churches, we are actually joining to people. Membership in the church is a formal way that say we are committed to this particular group of people. The name of the church is sort of a banner under which we as a community gather. Unfortunately, our modern church world is rooted in an individual experience that reinforce the loneliness of our culture.

Next we are called to love those around us in the community. Each of Paul’s letter spend time focusing on the importance of maintaining relationships within the worshipping community. Cultivating love requires time: spending time together, praying together, serving one another, eating together. It even requires conflict. Conflict strips away our artificial friendliness. If we learn to work through conflict, we become bound more deeply in love. Practically speaking this requires a time and place for relationships to develop such as small groups. Groups like the Monday night reading group, the men’s group, catechism, the women’s group, the children’s ministry, the musicians, and others. It is in these times where we might share more of our own lives. We might learn to pray for one another, encourage one another, listen to one another, begin to cultivate our God-gifts, and build friendships that extend beyond any meeting.

Thirdly, we as a community are called to love the larger community around us. Consider the church at Antioch. Their love for God and one another poured over with love Israel and for the Gentile world. They prayed and sent Paul and Barnabas out with a commission to raise money for the church in Jerusalem who was facing persecution. As these men went out to raise funds, they also brought the good news of the Gospel to the Gentile empire. Tithes and offerings are one way we practically express our love for the greater community. We are investing in the future of this community as well as affording our church community to serve the greater community.

Lastly, this community of Christ becomes a witness, a prophetic voice to the world. We do this in weekly worship. Consider the churches in the opening pages of Revelation. Each of these churches face distinct challenges in the cities where they live. As John mentions, temptations in their specific contexts. He reminds each community that Jesus is present to them and can strengthen and can faithfully face the local challenges by His Spirit. In this way, each community becomes a witness to their surrounding culture.

I pray that we all might consider our call to community in Christ, toward loving one another in Christ, toward loving this community around us in and through Christ, and to becoming a witness the resurrected Savior in our worship and live together.

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Adoration of the Magi, Domenico Ghirlandaio (1488)

Christmas 2
Rev. Doug Floyd
Psalm 84, Jeremiah 31:7-14, Ephesians 1:3-14, Matthew 2:1-12

There’s a tradition regarding Nativities that I remember from my childhood. The Wise Men figures would move around during the month of December, getting closer to the manger in the Nativity on Epiphany. Did anybody else grow up with that kind of tradition, where the Wise Men moved through the house?

I was in a “live nativity” when I was in graduate school because I’d lost my job, and that was the only job I could get. I was big and had a beard, so that worked. We had a little path we followed and ended up at the manger. I like nativities. I think a lot of people do. The nativity is a great visual item to help us think about some of our readings today. Most of our nativities include the wise men, shepherds, animals, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus and sometimes angels.

Some Italian nativities include an entire village. The whole town is astir with all kinds of activity. In fact, sometimes, you can’t even see where the baby Jesus actually is. You have to look. We can see the same pattern in art from the middle ages. Pieter Bruegel and in some of the other artists in the Middle Ages, put the nativity in the middle of a busy city, and you don’t exactly know right off where the baby Jesus even is. You have to look.

Then if we think about the way we celebrate Christmas here in America, we might have other characters of the nativity. We might have Frosty or Rudolph. The idea of inserting Rudolph with Frosty or Santa is not actually unusual because it’s very consistent with the medieval tradition. This is one of the medieval pictures I like, and I’ll see if I can say his name. I looked it up, Domenico Ghirlandaio. He painted this picture in 1488. This painting was for a children’s hospital. He painted people that were present. Some of the people in the painting are famous people from the era. He paints an adult John the Baptist. You can see him in the lower left-hand corner. But John the Baptist was a baby when Jesus was a baby. Ghirlandaio paints him as an adult prophet to the Baby, pointing to Jesus, because that’s his role.

Then you see these two little infants in the bottom of the page, and that’s kind of a nod to the Slaughter of the Innocents, the story where Herod kills the babies. So these are babies that have come to worship Jesus. It is telling us a theological point, that these babies are some of the first saints. It’s also a reminder because it’s at a children’s hospital. So Jesus has come to heal and redeem the infants.

There’s an ox and a donkey, which I have talked about in the past. It’s the two most common motifs of ancient Christian art on the nativity. The very first nativity that shows up does not have humans in it, with exception to the baby Jesus, but it does have the ox and the donkey. That’s a sign of the Jews and the Gentiles. They’ve come together. And so this has all sorts of images. There’s also John the Evangelist. So you have John the Baptist, John the Evangelist. Then you have a lot of local people probably from that era, and there’s all sorts of stories going on in the background of the nativity.

The nativity provided a way for the church imagine the birth if Christ for centuries. Nativites have often included multiple people, not just the Wise, bowing before the child. If we think about this image in relation to our readings today, we have four readings and four different journeys, and we’ll consider these four journeys and how they are all moving toward the nativity.

The first reading I’ll think about is Psalm 84. Psalm 84 is an odd Psalm because it seems almost out of place. It’s a Psalm of pilgrimage, and it fits more consistently with Psalm 120 through Psalm 134, which are what we call the Song of Ascents. They’re all pilgrimage Psalms. They’re all Psalms used for traveling to Jerusalem to worship the Lord. Well, that’s what Psalm 84 is, but it’s not part of the Song of Ascents. It’s separate. And so you have a Psalm where the psalmist is crying out for the presence of the Lord. And just briefly, I’ll look at it… It’s a prayer to be in the presence of the Lord, a prayer of longing. So let me find the Book of Psalms.

Here we go. The psalmist opens, “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of Hosts. My soul longs, yes it faints, For the courts of the Lord. My heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.” And so the psalmist is thinking about the journey, moving toward the journey, and it’s a difficult journey, as you read some elements in here. He talks about, “Blessed are those whose strength is in You, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.” These are those who are going to take the journey to Jerusalem. Some are going to face danger, some are going to face hardship, which makes us wonder, is he talking about a yearly pilgrimage, or is he talking about those who are coming home from Babylon? We don’t know, because those who are coming home will face a tremendously dangerous journey.

He says, “As they pass through the Valley of Baca,” a place of mourning, “they make it a place of springs. The early rain also covers it with pools.” So there’s that image of those facing difficulties to try to get to the tabernacle or the temple to worship, and they’re transforming their hardships into places of joy. So we can read Psalm 84 in this spiritual way. Even if he’s talking about physical journey, they travel from strength to strength, and so it could be the Pilgrim himself is getting stronger, but it also has the image of a company growing. So they travel from company to company. Some translations say from company to company. They’re getting larger. More and more people are joining. Then it says, “Each one will appear before God and Zion.” So this whole Psalm is a journey to Jerusalem, to the temple, to the place of God’s dwell, okay? This first Psalm is an image of the people of God, the ancient Israelites returning to worship the Lord at the temple.

Now the next reading, Jeremiah is, in one sense, the most unusual and the one that we’re probably least familiar with, because Jeremiah, it’s not obvious if you just read it, but he is doing something very odd here. Okay. Jeremiah 31. If you know the Book of Jeremiah, this is one of the bleakest books in the Bible. So much of it is about judgment and pain. It’s about the end of Jerusalem, Jerusalem being destroyed. So much of what Jeremiah talks about is destruction for the sin of God’s people, for God’s people turning against Him. Then every so often, Jeremiah gives us a word of hope, a word of encouragement.

So in Jeremiah 31, we hear the voice of the Lord speaking encouragement. This is a pilgrimage, but it’s a different kind of pilgrimage, because this is not the people embarking on a sort of a regular pilgrimage, a yearly pilgrimage. This is the Lord gathering His people, so He’s actually the one acting in this. He’s gathering His people who are in exile.

What is unusual is he says, “Thus says the Lord, the people who survived the sword,” the people who have survived this judgment of going to Babylon or being killed in the wilderness, they “found grace in the wilderness. When Israel sought for rest, the Lord appeared to him from far away. ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore, I have continued my faithfulness to you. I will build you, and you will be built, O virgin Israel. You shall adorn yourself with tambourines and shall go forth in the dance of the merrymakers. You shall plant vineyards on the mountains of Samaria, the planters shall plant and shall enjoy the fruit, and there shall be a day when the watchmen will call the hill country of Ephraim, ‘Arise and go up to Zion, to the house of the Lord.'”

That’s leading up to today’s reading. As we read today’s reading, we find the Lord is addressing two different groups of people. They’re not the same group. He’s addressing the Ephraimites and the Judahites: these are two different groups of Jews who go to civil war. They split no two kingdoms: the Southern kingdom and the Northern kingdom.

The Southern Kingdom is the kingdom of the House of David. All the Great Kings of Judah, okay? But in the Northern Kingdom, Jeroboam sets up a competitive worship system, okay? So this is the Ephraimites. So they have turned away from the Lord. They’ve become idolaters. There are still faithful Jews in the Northern Kingdom. In fact, this is where we meet Elijah and Elisha. So there’s plenty of those who follow the way of the Lord. But the nation as a whole is turned over to Babylon.

So now you have two nations that once were one kingdom of David split. The Northern Kingdom falls about a hundred years before the Southern Kingdom, and when it falls, there’s the sense that it’s completely destroyed. If you hear the term, the Lost Tribes of Israel, that’s the Northern Kingdom. So this is the people groups who have been dispersed into the empire. The Assyrians have taken them, and they seem to be forgotten in history. Then, a hundred years later, the Judahites, or Jerusalem falls to Babylon, which is the story we’re most familiar with, the exile to Babylon.

Now the North and South are both exiled. Jeremiah, on behalf of the Lord, addresses both groups, saying, “I’m gathering both kingdoms. They’re both coming back to Jerusalem to worship. I’m restoring them both.” That’s sort of the power and the beauty of this passage. It’s a group of pilgrims that are being restored. It’s all about restoration. It’s the restoration of the people of God who’s been dispersed, especially the Ten Lost Tribes who, supposedly, would never be restored. But God promises restoration. They’re coming back to worship in Jerusalem.

Now, we go our third reading, and I’m going to reverse the order. I’m going to go to the gospel reading. So now we have the story of the Magi, which is our nativity story. Most properly, we call them Magi or Wise Men. Some people call them Kings. There’s no indication they’re really Kings. They’re most likely astrologers, okay? They studied the heavens. The amazing story is, this is not people who are seeking to do palm reading or some kind of fortune-telling. This is sort of a wisdom in their culture, but they’re seeking truth in the heavens, and because they’re seeking truth, God leads them to truth. He leads them to the Baby, to the story of Jesus.

These are pagans who are coming on the basis of their own pagan ways of knowing truth. They are seeking truth, and God leads them to truth. So in one sense, the story of the Magi is a story of pilgrims coming to the manger and having to let go of their own truths, their partial truths. If you’ve ever read T. S. Eliot’s Journey of the Magi, he captures this image of these men who have to abandon their partial truths. They return to kingdoms that they know are false. And so it’s a powerful image of coming to the nativity to let go. It’s the image of Santa kneeling at the manger saying, “I’m not the truth.” It is actually bringing all our partial truths before Christ, recognizing Him as the fullness of the truth.

And then we have one last pilgrimage, which is very different than all the other pilgrimages. It’s the saints in Ephesus. You almost have to think of Ephesians as a whole, but the whole Book of Ephesians has a motion of moving upward, because it’s about raising up the people into a temple, becoming living stones. The reason it’s so significant in relation to these others is it’s about the people of God becoming the tabernacle of God. We are becoming the temple, as a community. We’re becoming the dwelling place. And in one way of reading the Bible is the whole Bible is moving toward the tabernacle. It’s moving toward the dwelling place of God on earth, which is what we see in the end of Revelation. It’s the dwelling place of God on earth. It is the people of God in perfect communion with God.

We see hints of it in our nativity stories. When the shepherds see the angels, it’s the only place in the Bible where a host of angels comes on earth. There are occasional appearances, but in one spot, the angels actually break into earth, heaven actually appears on earth. That’s pretty significant because this is God beginning to heal the communion between heaven and earth, which is what all these pilgrimages are leading to, is the people of God being gathered by Christ.

And what’s interesting, worth meditating on, and I’ll just mention it, is that what God’s doing is gathering people that don’t think, that they may think they shouldn’t be drawn to Him. But when they see the other people, when the Judahites see their ancient enemies, the Northern Kingdom, the Ephraimites coming, how could that be? He’s gathering people that are at odds with each other, that have fault. He’s gathering Jews and Gentiles, people that can’t really be gathered, but He’s doing it in Christ. So Christ is healing the nations. He’s healing those who are natural enemies. He’s bringing us all the peace. Come to the Prince of Peace, worship Him, and be changed by Him so that we can love our enemies and those who don’t think have a right to come to the manager, to come to worship the Lord.

As we meditate on this text, I would pray He would provoke us to pray for those who we don’t think deserve to come to the table of the Lord, that we would pray that He would draw them and there would be a union and healing between the peoples of the earth in Christ. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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Adoration of the Shepherds by Matthias Stomer (1632) Christmas 2021
Rev. Doug Floyd

Merry Christmas. This is day two of Christmas. Many of the celebrations throughout Christmas time are Martyrs’ Days. We’re celebrating God’s faithfulness to his people; in Christ, Martyr’s Days become feast days. Today is St. Stephen’s day. There’s much to be said about St. Stephen, but this morning, I’m going to talk about our gospel, on the incarnation.

John 1 tells the mystery of the incarnation. So this is a theology of incarnation, but hopefully, we’ll put theology in a better term for most people. When many people hear the word theology, they expect something that’s going to be abstract. And often if you read some of the great theologians, they are in fact abstract. And so they can take, as a matter of fact, this passage from John this morning and spin out multiple books, trying to grapple with the mystery that John just talked about. John uses images of the creation, of life, light, dark, sacred, and common. All these communicate the mystery of God among us, entering the human story. The word became flesh and dwelled among us. What are the implications of such a large sentence in relation to humanity, and exactly what does it mean?

Some of the Church Fathers literally wrestled with the texts for years trying to understand what are the gospels saying specifically about Jesus Christ. Now, we read the gospel stories. We have a different approach to theology. It’s not filled with abstractions. The the gospels are stories about Christ. And so that raises a different set of questions. How do you read the stories? So that’s going to set the background for what we’re going to just think about here this morning. In John’s gospel, Jesus is often misunderstood. In fact, in every story He’s misunderstood. And yet, John is communicating something. Jesus shows up and this is key. He shows up in both sacred places and common places. He shows up. He talks, He does things. He enters into the story of the people. So many of you’re familiar with John’s gospel. He shows up at a wedding initially, one of the very first miracles in John’s gospel.

He shows up at a wedding, at a party, a common event, an event of the people. The even is common as in common as in the community. He shows up, and He turns the water into wine because they’re in need of wine. He shows up in the story of Nicodemus. And in this story, He rethinks the nature of human birth, that there is a different kind of birth, and that birth is only completed in Him. He shows up to a woman outside of Israel, the woman at the well, a Samaritan. In the dialogue with Him and her, we find that He makes claim that he is living water. Jesus calls Himself living water. He shows up at the temple and He makes claim to having fulfilled the temple. So we follow all of John’s gospel, He shows up at all the sacred places and all the sacred events. So all the festivals, He shows up. And He suggests that all the festivals point to Him, so everything in Israel’s story is pointing to Him.

So this is a theological act on His part, but it’s not rooted in abstract terms. It’s rooted in actual events that the people are familiar with, and it will take time in their lives to unpack what Jesus is saying about the meaning of these events. And it can only really be unpacked by the gift of the spirit. And so this is a different way to begin to think about theology. The way the east would speak of theology. It is teaching us how to pray. So it’s teaching us to rethink everything in life. Paul says, “Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, you do it all to worship the Lord.” So every act in life becomes an act of worship. So in that sense, every act in life becomes a theological act, that Christ is revealing himself. He’s teaching us how to worship, how to pray, how to transform our desires and our longings in every aspect of life. So with that in mind, we’re going to think about the incarnation in light of our Christmas celebration.

We are at Christmas. We come to Christmas, there’s a theological way of reading Christmas that could be overly abstract, or we can just look at what we actually do, how we actually celebrate Christmas. Peter Leithart had a nice little quote recently where he says “To grasp for the Christmas gospel, to celebrate it well, we must become little children. After all, when God calls each of us to become like a child, He is not asking us to do anything more than he himself did.” So we come to Christmas like children, and this might begin to help us think about Christmas and how Christmas is opening up the way we celebrate it in our own 21st-century festivals and family events, what we might learn from that. Over a hundred years ago GK CHesterton had a wonderful quote about Christmas. He says, “The great majority of people will go on observing forms that cannot be explained; they will keep Christmas Day with Christmas gifts and Christmas benedictions; they will continue to do it, and some day suddenly wake up and discover why.”

Chesterton helped open my eyes. In fact, reading Chesterton in one sense was like going from blindness to sight. He helped me to see. In fact, reading Chesterton help me understand more about what Jesus says when he speaks of having eyes to see and ears to hear. We often go through the world and through our daily experiences, meals, family events like Christmas in a haze, blindness. Chesterton said, “The world does not lack for wonders, but for wonder.” We’ve lost the ability to see. And so we have no wonder in the world. So the child has to open our eyes back up. The child has to teach us how to see.

So we think about Christmas, and he had another quote, which I had to remember this one, because I didn’t write it down, but Chesterton says, “In one sense, every person enters Christmas with the hope of rediscovering the first sense of wonder when they entered into Christmas. Every child is trying to recapture a moment that happened in the very beginning when they first begin to understand the wonder of Christmas.” And so there is a certain wonder attached to it. And in that sense, and this seems odd maybe for some adults, but for children, Christmas is one of the first experiences of the sacred. It’s something totally other. When we think of the sacred or we think of the holy, we might attach any number of ideas to what holy means. Holy, obviously, the word itself has to do with being set apart. But holy has to do with that which is totally other. So for a child, Christmas is something totally other. The house has been transformed. And if we look in ancient celebrations or earlier celebrations of Christmas, it was often transformed by the children at church.

And so they come home and everything is transformed. And so it’s another place, suddenly. The place that was commonplace every day has now become something other. So Christmas is pushing close to this something holy other, something sacred. They don’t have those terms to use about Christmas, but it is something that is beyond their grasp. And so all of our festivals actually are rooted that way. We usually have food. We might have clothing. We might have rituals, services that only happen during those festivals, whether it be Easter, Christmas, even Halloween. These are all times when everything is changed and they’re pointing to something else. And so the child is experiencing this sense of wonder. They don’t exactly know what it is they’re experiencing, but it is beyond what they can understand. Chesterton tells us a story to help us understand this. He talks about the man who lives on the gray farm. He says there’s a man who lives on the gray farm.

One day, he gets up and he tells the lady, he says, thank you so much for hosting me this time, but I must go home. The lady and the children are saying, what are you doing? Where are you going? He says, I must leave. It’s time for me to go home. He puts on his hat and his scarf and heads out the door. He walks across the farm to the edge of the property, crosses through a forest, walks through the forest. Eventually ends up in another town, travels across the town. Eventually makes it to the seaside. And he gets on a boat. Rides the boat all around the world. Someday he comes back. He arrives back in the town. The seaside, crosses through the town, comes to the forest, walks through the forest and he steps on to the gray farm. And he walks up to the house. He says, I’m finally home. And you think, why is Jessica telling such an odd little story? He says, because we’ve lost the eyes to see where we actually live, the wonder of it. It’s commonplace to us.

So in this story, he has a character that has to leave in order to understand the treasures, where he lives. And Chesterton takes this very simple story, makes a pretty profound argument about the nature of the west and how the west has failed to understand the inheritance of the faith. And so it has to get outside itself so it can rediscover the treasures that have been given to us. So in that sense, Jesus is doing the same thing. He’s opening the eyes of the people to the goodness of God, and the people cannot see how this world points to God’s grace. So what does John tell us in our reading today? That all things were made through Him. So there is nothing that was made that was not made in it through Christ. So when we speak of this creation, we are speaking of a world that is all gift. Everything is all gift. It’s all gift given to us in and through Christ. We understand it in and through Christ. We raise it up to Him.

We invoke His name when we eat a meal because it is a gift in and through Christ. We invoke His name. The idea would be we would invoke His name in all things we do because life is a gift in and through Christ. And so we think about this in relation to back to Christmas. Let’s think of the idea of presents. So a present, of course, children wait excitedly to receive presents and sometimes even want to peek in the presents and see what they are or try to shake them and guess them. So what are these presences speaking to us? In one sense, they’re physical objects that communicate relationships. So they communicate relationship. I have heard people say, “It’s the thought that counts,” but actually that’s not the shape of the gospel. It’s not the thought that counts. This is Jesus came and he laid down his life. So that’s not just a thought. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “It’s costly. It’s a costly grace because it costs the son of God’s life.” So this is a gift that costs everything. So actually gifts do mean something and they communicate something.

In medieval times, Christmas gifts often had a meaning. They gave gifts that were discipline gifts, and they also gave gifts that had to do with a person’s vocation, that would form their vocation. And then there was also the gift of more play or something that had to do with just fun. So all the gifts meant something. So we think of gifts and you might think there’s much to meditate on it and the gifts you’ve received in your life if you just spent time. What has stood out? Not necessarily Christmas, but at other times. I wrote down two or three gifts that I had received. And as I was meditating on these gifts, I thought as we grow up, become adults, and also as we grow up in Christ, we reinterpret our own life. So the same event, gift, dream, whatever it is, can take on new meaning as we grow up in Christ. So I was at a little children’s choir, Christmas party, where there’s an exchange. And this is one of the earliest gifts I remember. Everybody’s opening their gifts.

People are getting all sorts of… Girls are getting dolls and different various things. I open the gift I get and it’s a truck that’s broken. The wheels are broken on it and it’s all scarred up. I was rather an overly sensitive child, I was known to cry at my own birthday parties if I didn’t get great things. So I immediately began to cry about this broken truck. I thought, this is what I get? Something that somebody’s getting ready to throw away? And of course, my sister, who often came to my rescue somehow raised some money and went and bought me another present. But the broken truck became an image in my mind of, as I grew older, I tried to think back to the person who gave it, who I had no idea, but maybe that’s all they had. So it was precious to them. I don’t know. So I could count it that way. But I could also think of it this way; that it can become an image of what maybe sometimes we think God has given us is less than sufficient. It’s easy to find complaint in our lives.

Maybe because of the struggles we’ve suffered or maybe because we didn’t get the job we wanted. We lost the person we were in love with. I don’t know, any number of things. And it might seem as though God gave us something less than sufficient. So in the Christmas story, we’re going to come think about this more deeply in a moment. But the gifts He gives sometimes don’t seem like the gifts we want. We want something else, something that satisfies us in the moment. We want something for a desire that maybe is not the desire that will ultimately fulfill us. It’s the desire that will maybe lead us a different way. So the idea that God actually meets our needs sufficiently. So He comes into our own brokenness, because we’re the broken truck in one sense, our own brokenness, our own need, and He is raising us up. He is making us full. And sometimes that looks like it’s wrapped in a package that is not the package we want, but it is the package that will transform us. So He is transforming us, entering fully into this human story.

So we read off of the Bible all these different stories, that God is present. He’s there. He’s actually doing something in the midst of the people. So I think of another gift I’ve received is my priestly stoles. I never bought one. I was given most of them, and this particular one I was given by my sister. But I’ve getting most of them from my friend who was a retired priest himself, a retired Lutheran priest. So there are certain gifts that carry a weight to them because they carry the weight of the relationship. And because he gave me those stoles, I decided I wouldn’t buy any. I would carry his covering.. And so there are gifts we give to one another that are transformative gifts, that have to do with the very heart of who people are. And that’s exactly what, of course, Christ does to us. He is distributing gifts, we are told in Philippians. Or in the Ephesians, we’re told He’s given us all good gifts and these gifts are transformative gifts that are who we are.

We certainly see it in the gospel as he gives the gift of naming people. And He gives provision, but the provision always points to something even bigger than the moment. And so our lives are constantly being showered with gifts. And this is where the idea of our eyes being open to wonder is that we are receiving gifts continuously every day, but most of the time we’re blind to them. And this is where Chesterton is trying to get us back to seeing things again, because things that we don’t think about, Chesterton says, that Santa fills our stockings with two strong legs. Can we give thanks for them? The very things that in our body are gifts, the hands, the eyes, the mind. These are all, if you think about it, the incarnation. Christ is blessing each aspect of who we are. So when we think of the gift of the legs, our gift of hands, eyes, we’re getting close to something that happens in the incarnation. And that is the notion of the sacredness of the human body. He has given us a human body and He’s blessed it.

And by entering into that body and living as a human, He has raised up the human body. So if we go back to ancient Rome at the time of Christ, when a person died, they’re taken outside the city. That body was considered unclean. It was considered, it could be the inhabitant of sickness or even demons of the body, was unclean. But once Christ comes, the church recognizes the body is sacred. So the body is brought back into the city. And they begin to that’s where we have the catacombs and the bodies are buried underground. The church is recognizing the sacredness of the human body. And still to this day, we recognize the sacredness of the human body, which was distinctive from Christianity because Christ himself has raised up the human form. So another aspect of the mystery of the incarnation. So we get to all these different kinds of gifts and different ways of thinking about what Christ has brought.

And each of these gifts, as I said, a gift represents an image of a relationship, even for a child. The gift may be very inexpensive, but it still can become a symbol of, their mind is not thinking in terms of symbol, but a symbol of the sacred love between them and their parents. And this gets us to an aspect of incarnation. That in one sense, is what is leading toward, is we could use a term that the Eastern Church uses called sobornost. It is the communion at the heart of all things that Christ has come to restore, that we live in a world of communion. A world of love. In Christ, we are being called to love one another, to love his creation, to worship God properly. So in Christ now, every act is whether we eat, whether we play games, tell stories, play; these are all ways that we are participating in the goodness of God, because he has poured out life into us. So our desire to tell stories, our desire to play, our desire to work. These are all gifts from God, the way He made us.

So I read a quote from Gregory of Nazianzus. He was thinking about, what does it mean that Christ has come? And he says, “Christ is born. Let us glorify Him. Christ comes down from heaven. Let us go out to meet Him. Christ descends to earth. Let us be raised on high. Let all the world sing to the Lord. Let the heavens rejoice. Let the earth be glad for his sake, who was first in heaven and then on earth. Christ is here in the flesh. Let us exalt with fear and joy. With fear because of our sins, with joy, because of the hope that He brings us.” So if we think about the mystery of incarnation, we don’t always have to understand every detail, but we are called to worship. We are called to rejoice. So in this little meditation from Gregory of Nazianzus, he is talking about Christ descending to us and Christ raising us up to the Father. And so if we just take those two thoughts, Christ is descending to us in the incarnation, simultaneously He’s raising us up to the Father.

He experiences every aspect of what it means to be human. So there’s nothing we experience that is outside his experience. So God descends into our midst. That is sacred that sends into the common. Comes into the common, into family, into feasting. And when he descends, something happens. Things happen. People are transformed. He comes into our weakness, into our creativity, into our study and every aspect of what needs to be alive. And so we rejoice that we are not alone. We have not been forsaken. Simultaneously, he raises us up so that our prayer is not simply a prayer that is sounding out into the world. Our prayers are raised up before the Father. He’s taking all of our needs, all of our wants, all of our up before the Father. And so then our spiritual life and our common life are the same things. We are always living in the presence of God. He’s raising us up.

He’s transforming us into His image and He’s transforming our relationships so that we become people who learn what it means to live in the communion, who learns what true friendship means, who learns to abide in the way of Christ and so that would become instruments of His love and always. So I’ll stop there. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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Christmas Eve December 24 2021
Living in the Upside Down
Rev. Isaac Bradshaw
Luke 2:1–20

Many years ago, a priest of my acquaintance – not of this parish – used to give the exact same Christmas Eve sermon every year.

I still remember the very opening line: “It was anything but a silent night.” She went on to describe in some detail the fact that human birth is anything but silent. Nor would it be silent with animals standing around and happening in a barn. It was kind of a push back to the over-sentimentalized views of the Nativity as kind of thing that happened outside of history, outside of the physical world.

In fact, one of the earliest heretical gospels, the Gospel of St. James, describes Jesus’ birth as taking place in a cave, where Joseph and a midwife named Salome see a cloud envelop Mary… Then there’s a flash of light, the cloud clears, and suddenly, the Baby Jesus is at Mary’s breast.

A silent night, indeed.

It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes, or bags. And 2000 years later, we’re as puzzled as we could be. And we puzzle and puzzle ’till our puzzlers are sore.

So we hold these two things in tension: a silent night, holy night. Cattle lowing, shepherds silently keeping watch over their flocks by night. We like that, that’s manageable. And it sells. There’s any number of churches and Christians who simply view the Nativity and the Gospel as a kind of wispy nostalgia and sanctified sentimentalism. But we simultaneously want a warrior to charge in, rescue us or fight alongside us as a sidekick. This is also manageable. And it also sells. And there’s any number of churches and Christians who believe the Gospel is about recreating men… and it’s always men… into an army for God, complete with fighters and spiritualized weapons and spiritualized enemies.

But what isn’t manageable and what doesn’t sell is the warrior who is a baby. The king who rules through love rather than law. The God who exists and comes into his own creation with flesh, sinew, bones, blood and water.

One of the key cornerstones of the Christian faith is that Jesus Christ was both human and divine, two natures miraculously joined. I think this was the important point that the priest was making so many years ago, driving it into the minds of listeners driven towards the saccharine, tame Jesus of Currier and Ives Christmas. That without the crying, without the blood, without the terror of giving birth in an animal stall, Jesus could not truly be the Lord. He couldn’t heal the sick unless he was sick with us; couldn’t take on death and hell unless he went there with us, he couldn’t be born unless he was born like us. No anti-physical Gnosticism for us, no ascent into a spiritual and pure plane, no ma’am… We worship a God that became flesh and blood, a God who dwelt among us, a God who is Emmanuel.

Right now we stand in a culture that is not dissimilar from the one in which Jesus was born into. The expectation is that saviors and kings and warriors come in the guise of saviors, kings and warriors.. We define those things culturally: Men with guns. Women with swords. Take back what belongs to us. Protect our stuff. Master Chiefs. Jedi.

Advertising Executives. But for Christians:

The Gospel of the Nativity isn’t merely that God becomes incarnate, but by becoming Incarnate, God upends all human expectation not just for how the whole world works, what should be valued by God’s creation, how we should treat individuals, and how we find union with God, but upending the very notion of who God is.

That cannot be a silent night. That cannot be kept quiet. That cannot be tamed or bought or sold, turned into tinsel or electric lights, or domesticated into a postcard or TV special. It’s a God who raises up a young virgin to give birth. A God who becomes a refugee. A God who becomes a boy and teaches the sages. A God who is baptized. A God who heals women and men on the outside of power and the outside of society’s material blessings, and condemns those who enrich themselves at others’ expense. A God who suffers. A god who dies. A man who resurrects. A savior whose first companion in paradise isn’t a king, isn’t a priest, isn’t an apostle, isn’t a saint… but a thief. crucified alongside him. A God who comes to us first.

At night.

In a manger.

Amen

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The Sermon of St. John the Baptist by Pieter Bruegal the Elder (1566) Advent 2C 21
Waiting in the Wilderness
December 5, 2021
Rev. Doug Floyd
Malachi 3:1–5, Psalm 126, 1 Corinthians 4:8–21, Luke 3:1–6

In these days of Advent, we join the longing of the ages for the coming of the Lord. We listen for the call that comes from beyond the easy comforts of our lifestyles. We hear a voice calling from the wilderness. Calling from outside the systems and structures of power and calling from beyond the never-ending -drive to satisfy selfish lusts and self glory. We are called to let go of human distractions and behold the promise of God.

The opening words of our Gospel reading today proclaims, “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. (Luke 3:1–2)

Luke announces the coming of the Word of the Lord during the reigns of the great ruling powers in government and Temple. The Word of God comes not to these mighty men who lord over their people, but to one lone prophet in the wilderness of Judea. Drawing upon the song of Isaiah 40, Luke describes the wilderness calling of John the Baptist in contrast to the powers of the nation.

Adam partakes of the fruit so that he might be like god. Instead, he and Eve are driven into the life crushing struggle of the wilderness. In the place of death, they must learn to survive by trusting in the Word of God. In the wilderness, the niceties of society burn away. Humans face their weakness. Abraham follows the Word of God past the comforts of civilization into the wilderness of naked faith, trusting that God will fulfill His promise and raise Abraham as a father of nations. Moses leads the enslaved Hebrews into the wilderness and the promise of a world made new. Isaiah prophecies to the Jews in exile that God remembers them and will lead them through the wilderness home.

After the people languished as exiles in Babylon for over a generation, the Word of God through Isaiah 40 comes to the people,

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that her warfare is ended,
that her iniquity is pardoned,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins. (Is 40:1–2)

The Lord speaks tenderly to His people, Comfort upon comfort upon comfort. He pardons her iniquity and will lead her back through the wilderness. He promises that the people will behold Hs glory in the wilderness.

In the wilderness, the false images of power and glory are exposed as passing illusions, as grass that withers and flowers that fade. The Word of the Lord stands forever even as kings and kingdoms collapse under the relentless heat of sun that burns from hour to hour and generation to generation.

Empty human idols and corrupted human desires cannot survive the desert heat. We come to realize that our only hope is the coming of the Lord. He comes to set His people free and lead us into the glory of His perfect love.

In the wilderness, He instructs His people as a Father instructs His children. In the wilderness, God calls His people to repent. He exposes our idols, our thoughts, our actions that enslave us, lead us into exile, and break apart the community of God. Moses teaches the rescued Hebrews the Ten Commandments, Ezra teaches the returning exiles the law of God, and John the Baptist calls the people to bear fruits in keeping with repentance: share your extra resources with those in need, don’t steal, don’t extort from those you rule. Jesus fulfills the law of love by fully embodying God’s instruction from day to day and in life and death and resurrection.

The stark world of wilderness is not our final destination. If we continue reading through Isaiah 40, we see the Lord comes as a shepherd to His exiles wandering through the wilderness on their way home. The Gospel also reveals our Lord coming to His lost sheep, leading us home. He promises that His people will not be abandoned in the wilderness. Isaiah alludes to the ancient Hebrews when he sings,

27 Why do you say, O Jacob,
and speak, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord,
and my right is disregarded by my God”?
28 Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
29 He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.
30 Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
31 but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:27–31)

Just as the Lord rescued the ancient Hebrews, He led the Jewish exiles home. He is also leading all His people through the purifying wilderness into the safety of His love. Even as John the Baptist points to the salvation of God, he prepares us to behold the Word of God in flesh in Jesus Christ.

Advent calls us to wait for the Lord in the wilderness while reminding us that most of life feels like walking through a wilderness. We struggle, we question, we fall, we fail. Jesus calls us our name. Jesus calls us to follow. He prepares to walk forward into glory. Let us watch, let us wait, let us walk forward in His love and light.

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Last Judgment, Russian Icon (18th century) Advent 1 2021
November 28
Rev. Isaac Bradshaw
Luke 21:25-33

Love is Gathering

Some of you may never have done the math, and I don’t encourage you to do this, but I’m the same age as MTV. 40. We’re nearing middle age. Or in it, if I am honest with myself.

We started out with Reagan and Thatcher and now we have Joe and Boris. These 40 years that have seen Challenger Disaster, fall of the Berlin Wall, the Persian Gulf War, peace in Northern Ireland, Impeachment, 9/11, another Persian Gulf War, and another Impeachment, and… another Impeachment. And through it all, I had my MTV. That little Kabel typeface in the lower-left corner, a visual radio.

It was and is, the soundtrack of the Millennials. We’ve never been without it. And it carries with it the imprints of my generation. We wanted to change the world and Rocked the Vote. We ran headlong into reality and our inability to change the world with Gideon Yago’s reporting on the Iraq War in 2004. And there was the music. The Cranberries. Sean Combs. U2. Metallica. Blind Melon. We got to see our artists in 3 and half minute miniconcerts, with all the whizz-bang effects they could muster. An acoustic set from Nirvana. Or quietly. Unplugged.

But perhaps no artist captured the Zeitgeist of MTV better than that band of Athens, Georgia, REM and their mastery of the music video. Ironically, they hated music videos. They thought they were cheesy. People obviously lip-syncing to pre-recorded music? Bah. Not for them.

So they did something different. Tell a story, they said. Capture the mood of the song. Show, don’t tell, the band said. And so REM’s video for “Losing My Religion” has vignettes, snapshots of a story. An angel falls to earth from heaven. Old men declare this a miracle; a man with wings! Younger men, pound industrial hammers on anvils as a red flag fabric flaps both ominous and courageous in the background, constructing a set of metal wings and harness as if to say… This miracle isn’t really a miracle. God came to earth… And we built a better one.

We like to think that Advent is primarily about waiting on Christmas. In our common mind, it sits as a kind of a prequel. We fight the urge to start singing Christmas songs, and when we do wreaths and purple, it all feels preemptively Christmasy.

And that’s true, to a certain extent. Our readings point us to an expectation that something is coming. A king. Hence all the purple. Or a judge, set to find in our favor and release us from bondage.

But we make a serious error if we think that this points exclusively and directly to Christmas. Because what Advent is preparing us for is the end of the world.

I want to pause here because there’s far too much speculation about what Scripture says about the end times, and we all know the vulgar expressions of this. “88 Reasons why Jesus Will come back in 1988,” which, as the title may suggest, has not aged particularly well. “The Late Great Planet Earth.” “Left Behind”. My personal favorite is the nearly 50-foot-long chart of terrible events to come I once saw on a preaching show, in minute detail describing everything terrible that was going to happen when the end of the world happens. Forgive me for being uncharitable but it reminded me of a deranged TV weatherman. And just so I can’t be accused of picking on the Baptists… Plenty of Roman Catholic, Orthodox and other Christians have fallen into the long grass on thinking about the end of the world. And all of it has the feeling of… You guessed it, a deranged TV weatherman.

Anglicanism has resisted these kinds of speculation, but even then we have to resist the temptation to start reading Advent through the veil of the news media of our choice. But to do so is, frankly a bit like the vignettes and tableaux of “Losing My Religion.” We’ve been given a clear warning, we’ve been given a judge that has already come to earth… But we’d rather be building those angel wings out iron and steel, constructing a god of our own design. No amount of speculation and fundamentalist occultism, no deranged weathermen telecasting about the future should detract us.

We should read this in both directions, as warning and as an encouragement. When the waves crash, and the sea roils… When there are signs in the sun and stars, when the nations feel foreboding… When everything says “CHAOS!” What does Jesus say? “Straighten up. Look up. Your redemption draws near!”

There was another music video on MTV that, while not quite as groundbreaking at REM’s, that sticks in my mind. The song “The World I Know” by another Georgia band, Collective Soul, gives us a video of a businessman in the city. The colors are dark, black, blue and purple. He rides a bus. He reads a newspaper. He walks past a mad prophet preaching on a soapbox. He starts crying. He climbs a fire escape to the top of a building. He takes off his shoes and jacket and steps to the roof’s edge, and opens his arms out and begins to lean forward. The singer, with long hair and a beard, just a touch of ‘90s grunge Jesus about him, looks on, singing “I walk upon high, and a step to the edge, to see my world below…” A fade to white…

It’s easy to see our lives and the interactions with others as nothing more than a 50-foot long chart of terrible events. And for some of you, that’s exactly what life has given you. I look at my students and I know, with the dark certainty that only being in public education can give you… That some of my kiddos will die before I do. Some of them already have. I know some of them will go to jail. I know some of them will have divorces. Some of them will be deported away from family and friends and the only place they’ve ever lived. Some of them will go through drug addiction or experience it in the family. Some of them will have the yoke of poverty placed on their necks by a system that values only what can be given a price. And my heart breaks. It’s a world where God has come to earth, only to be rejected and sent packing, preferring our own god and spirit fashioned from our own hands, hammered into existence with blood, iron, and steel, forged from the destruction of God’s creation.

But that fade to white isn’t the end of the video. A dove lands on his arm. He catches himself, and the world snaps back into full color. He pulls bread out of his jacket and shares it with the dove. And the ants. He takes a wad of cash out of his pocket and throws it to street below. And as the song says…

“And I laugh at myself while the tears roll down
‘Cause it’s the world I know…”

Remarkable imagery for a secular music station. A remarkable distillation of this Gospel. You pick the world you know. You pick the world you get to live in. The world where death has no meaning, where people are simply wiped from existence because of war or illness or poverty… Or the world where the Holy Spirit gives you the fullness of life. Where you share bread with the Spirit and throw resources to those in need. Which world do you put you faith in? Which world do you know?

Here is Gospel. Our King is coming to do justice. To live among us without temple or veil. To restore all of Creation, and take every tear and take every heartbreak, the false industrialized wings of steel and iron, and toss them to the bottom of that pit with death and satan all those who follow them. That’s the Advent. That’s the appearing that is foretold here. And it starts with a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manager.

Amen

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The Widow’s Mites by João Zeferino da Costa (1876) Mark 12:38-44 – The Ministry of Widows
Rev. Chase Whitmire
I King 17:8-16, Psalm 146, Hebrews 9:24-28, Mark 12:38-44

I will never forget as a young teenager having the honor and privilege to have Elisabeth Elliot come to my church and tell the story of her family’s journey to Ecuador to share Christ with the Waorani Tribe. She shared with us the story of how she and Jim met at Wheaton college and then moved individually to Ecuador specifically to share Christ with the Quechua Indians. It was there they fell in love and got married. Most of you probably know the story of Jim Elliot and four other missionaries that made contact from their airplane with the tribe from a loudspeaker and a basket to pass down gifts. After several months, the men decided to build a base a short distance from the Indian village, along the River. There they were approached one time by a small group of Waorani and even gave an airplane ride to one of them whom they called “George”. Encouraged by these friendly encounters, they began plans to visit the Waorani. Before they were able to visit they were all killed by a group of the tribes warriors. What I remember most was the unbelievable story of how over the next two years after his death by the Waorani Elisabeth continued to make contact with them, learned their language and in 1958 she moved with her 3 year old daughter to live with them for the next two years. I had never been so riveted by any sermon before in my life! She told about eating monkey limbs and the day to day adventures they had living in the rainforest. I remember tears streaming down my face as she told her story of redemption and forgiveness. Listen to what Elisabeth said about the men who killed her husband: “The Auca was trying to preserve his own way of life, his own liberty,” “He believed the foreigners were a threat to that liberty, so he felt he had every right to kill them. In America, we decorate a man for defending his country.” Unbelievable!

However, there was one thing that I still have not gotten over to this day…

It was so obvious to me from going to church every week that when the time for the sermon came, the pastor would climb the stairs to the pulpit where he peered down on the congregation and where we would all be able to see him without having to look around the person’s head in front of us… However, when Elisabeth Elliot spoke, she was on the floor level on the other side of the room from the pulpit. Afterwards I asked my youth pastor why she chose to stand at floor level where we all had a hard time seeing her. It was then I learned that our denomination did not allow women to have a leadership role in the church, therefore she was not allowed to be in the pulpit–the place reserved for the preaching of God’s word.

I remember feeling the blood race to my ears, my heart raced and I said something in response like, if Elisabeth Elliot has not earned the right to stand in the pulpit in front of our church then no one I know has!

Now my homily this morning is not about women in leadership roles within the church and the debate that is out there on this…although that might be a lot of fun! Our sermon today is on the widow–both the figurative and literal representation of what the bible calls “the least of these”. God not only calls us as the body of Christ to care for them, but goes a step further and shows us how he uses those the world might consider useless to reveal himself to the rest of us.

In this morning’s readings we are introduced to two more widows; the first we find in 1 Kings 17:8-16 where God tells Elijah that he has commanded a widow to feed him. I find it hilarious that it does not appear the widow got the message from God about that because instead of being totally willing to hook Elijah up, she actually puts up a little bit of a fuss, and rightly so by the way, when she tells him that, “I have only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die”.

Folks, it doesn’t get much more desperate than that! Literally preparing for her last meal with her son. Obviously, no one else to go to. No one to take care of her.

Now we could spend a lot of time in this passage and even go beyond our reading from 1 Kings with the widow and talk about her son dying and Elijah praying for God to raise him from the dead–which he does! But, I also want to move to our Gospel reading for the day and see how Jesus–God in flesh–once again uses the faith and obedience of a widow to show all of us what true life and love look like.

To set the stage in our passage in Mark, we are finishing up chapter 12 and winding down Jesus’ encounters, debates and dialogues with the religious leaders in the temple. He is once again calling them out on their quest for power, prestige and honor at the cost of abusing those without.. In fact he directly accuses them in verse 40 of devouring widows houses conjuring up no doubt passages all throughout the OT that denounce the abuse of the helpless which the widow symbolized. Isaiah 10 is a good example of passages that might have been running through their minds as Jesus was talking. It says this:

Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless…

After Jesus calls out the religious leaders, he withdraws to a spot across from the treasury which is probably a reference to one of the thirteen boxes shaped like a trumpet in the court of women outside the temple. It is there he sits and observes people putting money into the offering box. Mark points out the rich people throwing in large amounts into the coffers and then the widow contributing her two tiny coins. I can imagine her coins must have sounded like a distant clink hitting the sides of the trumpets compared to that of the larger gifts.

David Garland in his commentary on Mark notes that, “The small amount of the widow’s contribution suggests that her gift could only go into the free-will offering, which went to the building on the temple”. Don’t miss the tragedy here of where her gift would be designated–to the upkeep of the temple, the very place where Jesus has just turned over the money changers tables and called it a den of robbers. He calls the disciples over and says, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth, but she, out her poverty, put in everything–all she had to live on”. I love Peterson’s translation here that reads, ““The truth is that this poor widow gave more to the collection than all the others put together. All the others gave what they’ll never miss; she gave extravagantly what she couldn’t afford—she gave her all.”

Here we have a glorious example of someone giving all of themselves to God, her possessions for sure, but also obviously her whole heart and soul as well. Garland again points out what might not be as obvious for us living so far removed from the context of the temple politics. He says this, “Now that she has given all she has, what will happen to her? Who in the temple hierarchy will help her” what will happen to all the money? She throws away her living for the sake of the temple. We also have here a foreshadowing of what will come of Jesus where the religious rulers will soon throw away the life of Jesus in order to hold on to their own power.

Doug sent out an email to the church recently about me being ordained as a deacon this coming Thursday. Now, if you are anything like me, before coming into the Anglican Tradition, I thought deacons were just like elected leaders in the church. I was not aware of them being ordained clergy in some denominations. The history of the deacon goes back to Acts 6 when there was a complaint that the converted widows were not being treated as well as the jewish ones and the early church needed help in making sure the community was being cared for. The deacon’s role in the local church then and today is to remind the congregation of our call to care for the poor and the oppressed, both in our congregation and out, both believers and nonbelievers alike! Well, in our readings this morning and Year B in the lectionary, the job has been made easy and almost impossible to ignore if we are paying attention as we have been reminded time and time again over the past several months of God’s call to care for the orphan, the widow and his anger when it does not happen.

Here is the beauty though… In our passages this morning, and even in my own personal experience in the story I shared to start us off, God, as he often does, flips the paradigm of us serving and giving to those without power, and uses what the world considers weak and insignificant to teach the rest of us the true meaning of life, love and service to our God and King.

We see it with Elisabeth Elliot in her forgiveness of and service to those who she could have considered her enemies., we see it with the widow giving her final meal to Elijah trusting that God will provide, and we see it in the temple as the widow gives everything she has, again, trusting God to provide for all of her needs even when the church has failed. And finally, we see in the life of Jesus himself as Philippians tells us:

Who, being in very nature[a] God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage.
7
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature[b] of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!

I want to leave us this morning with a warning and a challenge.

One of the things I really love and appreciate about the Anglican tradition is the emphasis on laity within the church and the fact that all of us are a part of the royal priesthood as outlined in 1 Peter 2:9 that says that you and I are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light!

Here is the cold hard truth… every one of us in this room have been given power, prestige, and honor by way of the grace of God and the family, country and even race that we were born into. Again, each of us in our own and specific ways. And as followers of Jesus, and therefore his priests, I don’t want us to walk away this morning thinking we are off the hook and that we are not like the religious leaders who love to parade around and take advantage of our position over others. I think if we are honest, we are all guilty daily of abusing creation around us by leveraging our own power and privilege for our own gain and at the detriment of others. I am not saying we are going around and overtly and consciously doing this. However, I do think some of this is so ingrained within us and our culture that we do not even know we are doing it.

Here is my challenge and prayer for myself and all of us this morning. I pray that God, in His mercy and by the power of His Holy Spirit that lives inside of us, would give us eyes to see the least among us and that He would give us the courage once He shows us, to love, serve and provide for those he is leading us to intervene on behalf of. I imagine, if we are bold enough to open ourselves up to it, He might even surprise us with the wisdom and truth that is revealed through the very ones He is calling us to serve. Isn’t that just how God works?

I am going to close this morning with a prayer from The Common Book of Prayer and would love for all of us to join in this prayer of self-dedication that is found in the bulletin:

Please join me:

A Prayer of Self-Dedication
Almighty and eternal God, so draw our hearts to you,
so guide our minds,
so fill our imaginations,
so control our wills,
that we may be wholly yours,
utterly dedicated unto you;
and then use us, we pray you, as you will,
and always to your glory and the welfare of your people;
through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

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• Prayer by Ninac26 (Used by Creative Commons Permission)

Pentecost+25 2021
Rev. Jeff Lane
Psalm 16 – Finding Confidence in the Lord

Isaac told me, and I’m a Baptist preacher. Okay. So Isaac told me I have 15 to 20 minutes. So what I’ve decided to do is leave out all the fishing stories and all the rants about sin that have nothing to do with anyone in this room, okay? That’s fine. So we’re going to look together at Psalm 16 this morning. Isaac told me there are four passages I can choose from. I chose not to preach on the abomination of desolation. I’ll let you do that next time. But we’re going to look at Psalm 16 together. And I hope that this will be encouraging for you this morning. Have you ever wondered why are some people so confident? Some people are so confident. I can’t be with Isaac and not think about high school and those days and-

You said you weren’t going to talk about sin.

Right. So thinking back about high school, there were some folks that were so confident, so self-confident. And there were several people that were incredibly good at athletics. Incredibly intelligent. Isaac is much smarter than I am. He was always much smarter than me. He still is smarter than me. There are people who are more attractive than me. And there were the funniest kids in the hall and if that was you, then you got to exist at the elite upper level of our school. The best currency that we dealt in high school was self-confidence. And whoever had the most confidence ruled the school in our awkward pimple-filled culture.

It seemed like if you could be good at something and you could project the most self-confidence, then you had everything you ever would’ve wanted. I don’t know about you, but I never could look inside myself and find that. I always knew that there was somebody more athletic than me. I always knew that there was somebody smarter than me. I always knew that there was somebody more attractive than me. There was another guy that was always funnier and more humorous and more socially savvy than me. And here’s what I’ve learned. The world today will teach you that you need self-confidence. The world today will teach you that you need a healthy self image. The world today will teach you that you need a healthy sense of self worth.

Now some of that’s true. Some of that’s true. We are creatures who have been created in the image of God and because you have been created in the image of God, you are valuable, because you were created by a good creator. We need to understand that so we can understand ourselves clearly and we need to understand that so that we can treat other people with dignity and worth. And furthermore, as a Christian, you are a child of God, you belong to him. You’re an adopted child in Christ. But in our culture, we are taught to look within ourselves to find confidence. And this is just something you and I were not designed to do. We were designed to look somewhere else for our confidence. If you had been at my 10-year high school reunion, you would have seen some of those folks who were so confident 10 years before and they weren’t doing so well.

Self-confidence is a foundation of sin. And you were made to look outside yourself as your ultimate source of lasting confidence. In Psalm 16, David teaches us to do that. He teaches us to look to the source of confidence as we see him do that. He teaches us how to live a life of lasting confidence. So this Psalm was written by David. We don’t know the exact circumstances of this writing. There were many difficult seasons in David’s life. David talks about the Lord delivering him from Sheol, the place of dead. There were many situations where David’s life was threatened. And this is probably one of those situations. But here he makes the Lord his source of confidence and contentment and he teaches us to do the same thing.

So in order to live a life of lasting confidence, here’s the first thing you need to do. You need to make the Lord your refuge. Make the Lord your refuge. So in verse one, David asks the Lord to preserve him. The Hebrew word for preserve in the ESV can also be translated, protect. And he needs preservation because his life is in danger and he needs protection from those who are seeking to take his life. And so he acknowledges the Lord as his refuge. Now notice how he sets aside all other sources of refuge and he acknowledges the Lord as his highest good. We just said this. I have no good apart from you. He has no good apart from the Lord. He understands… Excuse me, he understands every good thing like a sunbeam coming down from the sun and he traces all of those good things back to the sun, to the source of light, to God himself. He acknowledges the Lord as his highest good as his ultimate refuge and his ultimate source of satisfaction.

And so as you walk through your days and you may have faced a trial this week, you may have a trial coming this week. I don’t know what you’ve been through, what you’re going through. Then know that you can make the Lord your refuge. Know that you can make the Lord your source of confidence. There is no good apart from him, but he is the only source of lasting confidence. And he shows himself to be a faithful refuge to everyone who seeks him. David teaches us that. In Psalm 46, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear. Though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though it’s waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling, make the Lord your refuge. Make the Lord your refuge.

Second, make the Lord your counselor and God. Your counselor and God. So David says that the Lord gives him counsel at night and his heart instructs him. So imagine David sleeping on his bed, being restless because of these enemies, these evil people from Saul or whoever, whatever situation he’s in, who want to take his life and he can’t sleep. But as he’s lying on his bed, he’s reminded of the instructions of the Lord. He’s reminded of the goodness of God. He’s reminded of the promises of God. And he does this because he always sets the Lord before him. You see David has learned to look at life through a God-centered lens. There’s nothing in his life without a reference to God and he understands the world that way.

David also says that the Lord is at his right hand. So this is an image that was used in legal terminology. An attorney would stand at the right of the person that they were defending in those days, or it was also used in battle. So your greatest comrade, your greatest ally, I think Jonathan, stood at his right hand in battle. You also kept your sword on the right side of your belt. In other words, David understands that the Lord himself is his right hand man. The Lord stands on his right side. Make the Lord your counsel, make the Lord your God. Draw near to him like a friend.

Don’t walk through this coming week without setting the Lord before you. Now, how do you do this? Well, I can’t give you better instructions than what the Lord gives to Joshua as he was getting ready to go into the promised land. He says this, “This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. And then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have good success.” So learn to set the Lord always before you. Make the Lord your counselor. Make the Lord your God.

Finally, in order to live a life of lasting confidence, you need to make the Lord your satisfaction and your joy. David says that the Lord is his chosen portion, his cup and his lot and that the lines have fallen to him in pleasant places. Those are all images of inheritance. Now David was a member of the tribe of Judah. So David had a place. A place on earth that God had allotted to him and to his people but it’s interesting for an Israelite to say, other than one of the Levites who didn’t have one of those places, but for an Israelite of the tribe of Judah to say, “Lord, you are my inheritance. You are my cup. You are my portion. You are my place, oh God.”

You see, David ultimately does not find his satisfaction in the things here on earth. He ultimately finds his satisfaction in the Lord himself. He sees the Lord as his ultimate inheritance. He says that the Lord makes known to him the path that he should walk in. In the Lord’s presence is fullness of joy, at the Lord’s right hand are pleasures forevermore. This is a Psalm about confidence, but it’s also a Psalm about contentment. David finds his confidence. David finds his contentment in the Lord himself, in this God who knows him, in this God who he knows.

If the Lord is your satisfaction and joy, then there’s simply a whole lot of things you can do without, can’t you? Make the Lord your source of satisfaction, make the Lord your source of joy. He’s worth it. There’s nothing more beautiful, there’s nothing more precious, there’s no greater treasure than the Lord himself. We see a good example of that in Psalm 16. This Psalm is also about Christ. I wouldn’t have seen this if I had just read it without reading the New Testament, but the New Testament writers actually point this out. So Peter and Paul both point out in the book of Acts in two different speeches, that this is about Christ. So Peter quotes verses 8 through 11 and Paul quotes verse 10. This part about the Lord will not abandon David’s soul to Sheol or let his holy one see corruption. So Sheol was the place of the dead. It was just a general term referring to all dead people in the Old Testament.

God delivered David’s life from death multiple times in his life, but eventually, David did die. So in verse 10, there’s some ambiguity. Okay, who is this one who’s not abandoned to death? Who’s this one who never dies? This holy one who does not see corruption? Well, Paul and Peter look back and rightly see it’s Christ. There’s some tension, some ambiguity here, but it’s fulfilled in Christ himself. So if you’re here this morning and I know a lot of you all are new to Anglicanism, I’m very new to Anglicanism. But some of this might be new to the Christian faith altogether and if that’s you, here’s what we want you to know. We want you to know that Jesus came and he lived a perfect life and he lived a life that you couldn’t live. He lived a life that I couldn’t live. And then he died the death that you and I deserve. And then he rose again from the dead.

Jesus is our resurrection hope. And everyone who has faith in Jesus has this resurrection hope. And I can’t think of a better source of confidence. How confident is someone who’s never going to die? Who has someone who has already gone before them. Who’s already paid for all of their sins. Who’s already taken all of their guilt upon themselves on the cross and who has risen from the dead and who’s going to take you with him on the last day. How much confidence can we have if we have confidence in Christ? Here’s something I read this week. The blessed alternative to self-trust is to be set on a solid foundation that not even death can unsettle. Friend Christ is that foundation and he is your lasting confidence.

You can be a confident Christian. And you can live a life of confidence. Here’s something we need to know. We need to know that the Lord will give us security. And so don’t rest your confidence on lesser sources of security. So I have a friend, he’s a good friend. I love him. I don’t think this is wrong, but he has a shotgun that he keeps under his bed, okay? So that if someone were to break into his house, he’s ready. He’s ready to go. He’s ready to rumble, whatever, ready to take care of the bad guys, right? I know a lot of people that have money in their 401(k)s and they rest their confidence in that. One thing I’ve noticed where I live, we live kind of in North East Knoxville. Anytime they build something in North East Knoxville, it’s either a bank or a storage unit place, right?

Now that tells you something about our culture, doesn’t it? That tells you something about where we place our confidence. Don’t place your hope in misplaced sources of confidence. Only the Lord can preserve your life. Only the Lord can rescue you from death and we can have complete confidence if we’re in his hands and that we are in his hands. This is what Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice, and I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one, and no one there means no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of my Father’s hand. If you trust in the Lord, he will give you security today and he will give you security forever.

Also, know that the Lord will satisfy you. There’s a lot of things that will compete for your attention, but only the Lord will satisfy you. And he will satisfy you in a way that other things never could so make him your treasure. Make him your joy. In his presence, there is fullness of joy, at his right hand are pleasures forevermore. Know that the Lord will satisfy you and finally learn to daily remind yourself. And this is where we get into it, right? It’s easy to be here gathered with God’s people and remember our source of confidence on a beautiful fall day like this, but when you get into it this week, right? When your boss doesn’t treat you so well, or there’s just some unrest in your family, or it’s really hard to get the kids to school in the morning or whatever, fill in the blank, right? It’s really hard for us to remember our source of confidence.

You and I are going to be tempted to look within ourselves for confidence and just bulldoze and run over other people, or we’re going to seek somewhere else for our sense of self-confidence, to one of those lesser sources of confidence. You need to be reminded daily that the Lord is your source of confidence and contentment. You need to learn to preach the Gospel to yourself every day. Now I understand that as Anglicans you all have a great resource to do this called the Daily Office. And I would encourage you to use that. Daily remind yourselves that the Lord is our refuge, that he is at our right hand, that he will never leave you. He will never forsake you. Learn to daily remind yourself that the Lord is your confidence.

So if you and I were out at sea and we were on a ship and we wanted our ship to stay in one place, then we would use this great ancient tool called an anchor. Now, what if you took that anchor and you put it up on the deck of the ship? You’d say, well, I used the anchor. Well, I put the anchor of the ship to itself. But that wouldn’t work out so well, would it?

The ship would drift around, the ship would be blown around, the ship would be tossed by the waves. That anchor was meant to anchor the ship to something else. And so you would drop that anchor down into the deep waters to the bottom of the ocean. That’s how it is meant to be with you and God. You see, you are like a ship. You can’t be anchored to yourself. And if you anchor yourself to the wrong thing, then it won’t leave you on a good foundation either. Anchor yourself to the rock, anchor yourself to the right foundation. Make the Lord your refuge, make the Lord your counselor and your guide. Make the Lord your satisfaction and joy. And then you can live a life of lasting confidence today and forever.

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Christ Enthroned, Book of Kells Rev. Doug Floyd
Daniel 7:9-14, Psalm 93, Revelation 1:1-8, John 18:33-37

This is Christ the King Sunday. I’m just going to meditate on our text, right out of Revelation. And it’s quite a delightful book. And just this passage verses 1:8 is more than we could talk about right now. But John writes this, it’s not exactly a letter, but it’s kind of like a letter. And the tradition was that this would’ve probably been read aloud each year in the church. Takes about an hour and a half to read. Some churches still do it today. You may have been in a service where somebody’s recited the Book of Revelation. I don’t know if anybody has. Because you’re supposed to hear it. The whole book is about sound, about a booming sound. It’s got all kinds of sounds in it. If you think of Psalm 150, there are clanging sounds, loud noises. The same with Revelation, all sorts of noises.

It’s a book that we have to hear. And it is part of our tradition, the Anglican pattern of worship to hear the Word. And it’s considered as important as preaching because the preacher may not be that good, but the scripture never fails. The Lord will address us in his word. And so here, John is addressing us. And he says, “The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to show his servants.” That word “servant” refers to slaves, but it has a nicer effect to call us the servants of God. But as we read the passage, it actually makes more sense to see that we’re slaves of God. We’ve been set free from slavery to the evil one. We are slaves of God. And we gather each Sunday to hear what the Lord says to us, and we gather to speak to the Lord.

So in one sense, it’s more important that we hear what he says and then to speak and to respond to him, than to talk about him. So even what I say now is an attempt to focus us on what’s central, and that is hearing the Lord. So John calls the slaves and Joseph Mangina, who I have referenced in the past when we did Revelation, because I happen to like what he writes about Revelation, here is a wonderful little thing he says about the slaves of God, “To be a slave of God is to be a member of the ekklēsia, in the front lines of a resistance movement called to hold out until the ages fully turn. Happily the church does not have to engage in this service on its own. Positioned at the beachhead, it is in constant communication with headquarters, where its Messiah-general prepares for his advent at the front lines.”[1]

So that’s what we’re doing each Sunday. In one sense, it’s a covenant renewal service, but we’re listening to our Commander-in-Chief. We’re coming to hear what he has to say to us. He’s addressing us. And so John says, “Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, blessed are those who hear and those who are keep what is written for the time is near.” Now John goes into a greeting, which if we were reading a Pauline letter, Paul would offer a greeting and he would say, “Grace to you.” And it would be from Paul. Paul is writing. But in this address, John is making the claim that the Triune God is addressing the congregation, which is a pretty bold claim.

He says, “John to the seven churches that are in Asia, grace to you and peace, from him who is and who was and who is to come.” That’s the description of the Father. I’ll read this verse and then we’re going to meditate briefly on that. “And from the seven spirits who are before his throne,” it’s the Holy Spirit, “and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from among the dead, the ruler of the kings of the earth.” This address is from the Triune God to people of God. We hear the Father who “is, and was, and is to come.” And there’s a variety of aspects to the meaning of this, but we might focus just on, it is in one sense, it has a similar ring to God’s address to Abraham. “I am that I am,” or “I am and remain present.” It is the God you cannot summon. This is the God who was present before we existed and is present after we die.

He is present whether we call upon him or not, He’s present and He is addressing us. He is the Creator that is beyond all space and time. It is an awesome address. He is present and it opens by saying, “who is,” so first he’s addressing himself as the Father who is always present. And he always was and he is to come and that he is unchanging. But he is the God who is, as Jesus says, “I am. Before Abraham was, I am.” It is the God who is present. And then he says, “From the seven spirits who are before the throne.” Years ago, I was in college reading William Blake, he was talking about the seven eyes of God and I was kind of freaked out that I was reading some heresy. But actually, William Blake, who was rather strange and might have been a heretic, he was actually referencing John as referencing Zechariah.

Zechariah is prophesying about sort of the end and he’s in the temple. So here’s a picture of the temple. “The angel who talked with me, came again and woke me, like a man who’s woke out of his sleep, and he said, “What do you see?” And I said, “I see and behold a lampstand, all of gold.”“ So there’s a lampstand, that’s a clue he’s inside the temple, okay? ““A lampstand all of gold with a bowl on top of it. And the seven lamps are lit. And the seven lips on each of the lamps are on top of that. There are two olive trees followed by one on the right bowl, one on my left.” And I said to the angel, “What are these, my lord?” And the angel said, “Do you not know what these are?” “No, my lord.” He said, “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel, not by might, not by power, but by My Spirits says the Lord of Hosts.” (Zechariah 4:1-6)

These seven lampstands are images of the Holy Spirit. And it’s not by might, not by power, but by the Spirit of God. Seven has the idea of being perfection or completion. The Spirit sees all, knows all. In this letter, the Father’s addressing us, simultaneously, the Holy Spirit’s addressing us, and simultaneously the Son is addressing us.

We hear, “From Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from among the dead, the ruler of the kings of the earth.” Now the gospel writers, as they summarized the gospel, the focal point of the gospel is Jesus Christ and him alone. Focal point of the gospel is not on us. Jesus has come to redeem us and John will even mention that, but the focus of the Gospel is Jesus Christ, his life, death, and resurrection. He is the one. He is the faithful witness. If not for him, we would have no idea who the Father is. Jesus images the Father perfectly. To see Jesus is to see the Father. John is using the word martyr. The faithful witness fully reveals the image of the Father on the cross. If we want to know what the Father looks like, we look at the cross and what we see is God’s life poured out on our behalf. His whole life is poured out for us.

The Book of Romans centers the gospel on Jesus. In the the opening verses, Paul writes, “Paul, the servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures.” He’s going to tell us the whole witness to Jesus has already been promised by the prophets. In this sense, the whole Old Testament becomes prophecy. It’s all looking toward, anticipating the coming of the Son, okay? “Through the prophets in the holy scriptures, concerning the Son, who is descended from David, according to the flesh and declared to be the Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all nations.”[2]

So Jesus has come. He has fulfilled the prophecies. He has come, and Paul is not totally explaining, but he is giving us an allusion of Christ as fully God and fully man, because he is in the line of David, he’s descended of David as a man. Simultaneously, he is declared to be the Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by his resurrection from the dead. Here we have the image of the Triune God resurrecting the Son, the Spirit that has raised the Son. The Son is the exact image of the Father. And this is the gospel, it’s to behold the Son. If we behold anything else, we are distracted. What happens in the Bible? When we read the Old Testament, we’re reading ancient stories, song, prophecies and proverbs.

There are so many different streams going on in the Old Testament, we would never be able to connect them. But once Christ comes, suddenly we see they’re all moving in the same direction.[3] It’s clear when we get to the New Testament, the gospel writers are clearly trying to show that Jesus is the fulfillment. Each gospel writer writes a slightly different way. They’re trying to show that Jesus has fulfilled. Jesus is the true king. Matthew, “He’s the true king.” Mark, “He’s the true prophet. He’s come to prophesy.” Luke, “Jesus is not only gone to Jerusalem. His disciples are gone to Rome to win the world for Christ.” So that’s awesome. And then of course, John, “Jesus is inherent in the creation, all things are created through him.”

John takes us through the feast of Israel and says, “Jesus is the fulfillment of every feast. Everything that Israel does, Jesus is the fulfillment.” Now this helps us remember and reminds us that every ritual we do is pointing us to Jesus and nothing else. It’s not about our own inherent righteousness. It’s not about doing some form that makes us seem more right than others. It’s always looking towards Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Why I originally fell in love with liturgical world was the calendar. The calendar is telling us that everything we celebrate through the year is pointing to Christ. Our identity is bound up in this God who has revealed himself to us.

Now, if we followed the calendar of our culture, we would define ourselves primarily as consumers. Every calendar event is about buying. Christmas is about buying things for people. Valentine’s Day is buying for people, Easter, buying things, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day. These aren’t bad days, but they are consumer-based. 4th of July sale. Everything is about our identity being in our ability to be a purchaser and keep the consumer engine running. And so the church calendar says, “No, that’s not primarily what we are. We are children of God. He has created us and he’s poured out his life for us. He’s given us his life.” Christ the King reminds us that all through the year we are looking to Christ. We are coming to behold him in his glory. And then the next phrase John uses is, he says, “the faithful witness, the firstborn from among the dead.”

Here we have the promise of resurrection. Christ is the firstborn, and we are following him in this path of resurrection. No matter how weak we feel, and John is writing to people who feel very weak, feel very defeated. He’s saying you have the promise of resurrection in front of you. He is the firstborn, and he has taken hold of you, and he will not forsake you. And then he says, “And the ruler of the kings of the earth,” which is pretty awesome.

It sometimes seems like our political systems, our governmental systems, our cultures run in a completely opposite direction. But at the end of the day, every ruler, every human will acknowledge that Christ is the Lord. He is the true Lord. It’s not all about the end of the world. Sometimes it happens in less than satisfactory ways, when people suddenly are brought to justice, either in culture or their lives brought to an end, all of us stand before the King who is over all kings. No king is absent from his rule. And so we recognize that as the church, so that makes this a prophetic day, a day to acknowledge that we serve a King. And it is his path that we follow, not the path of expedience or whatever the particular god of the age is, because we have all sorts of gods in America, practical gods, financial gods. Every gift God’s given us, the gods of the age pervert.

So Eros becomes some kind of sexual perversion when actually it’s about our ability to desire and create and love.We live in a world that corrupts all gifts of God. We look to him as our King, who restores all things. And we ourselves, as John will continue, are slaves made priests. That’s why it’s important we know this. He’s addressing slaves, he says, “To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, he has made us a kingdom, priest to his God and Father—to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever!” We have been made priests to God. And then we have this stunning ending, this opening passage.

First he says, “Behold, he’s coming. Behold, he’s coming with the clouds. Every eye will see him, even those who pierced him. All the tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so, Amen.” This is awesome and should be almost terrifying. John is giving us what appears to be the resounding voice of God. ““I am the Alpha and Omega,” says the Lord God.” The Father is putting his stamp on this whole world. “I am the Alpha and Omega who is, and who was, and who is to come.” The Almighty, he is coming.” And this is how our year ends. He is coming. God’s resounding voice is echoing over us. He is coming. Next Sunday, our year begins with the first Sunday of Advent, and we begin by watching for his coming. He is coming. Advent comes like an alarm clock, tells us to wake up and watch, because he is coming.

[1] Joseph L. Mangina, Revelation, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2010), 39.

[2] See Graeme Goldsworthy, According to the Plan: The Unfolding Revelation of God in the Bible, “The Gospel of Jesus Christ,” IVPress, 1991.

[3] See Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Truth is Symphonic, Ignatius Press, 1987.