Last after Pentecost, Next before Advent, Christ the King

Matthew 25: 31-46

So this is a Sunday of transition in the Church Year, a day with something of an “identity crisis,” with several titles, as you see on the cover of the leaflet.  First, and this is the official name of the day on our Episcopal Church calendar, simply the “last Sunday” of the Church Year, this long season of Ordinary Time after Pentecost and Trinity Sunday.  Next Sunday, December 3, is Advent, a new year, and our annual retelling of the Holy Story will begin again with the ancient Prophets.   So the last page of the book, the final scene of the play.  Winding things up.

On the other hand, in the Church Calendar of the Anglican world, ours also in the Episcopal Church until the 1979 Calendar revision,  this Sunday is and was set aside not as an ending, but as a prelude.  Not the last page of the old book, but the preface of new, not the final scene, but the overture—that moment when we lean forward with anticipation, as the curtain is about to come up for the story to begin.

The Book of Common Prayer Collect for this Sunday next before Advent, was “Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing fort the fruit of good works, may by thee be plenteously rewarded.”   The Collect to remind us in prayer that we are capable of no good work, until God stirs up the capacity for, the desire for good within us, and that we deserve nothing, that we have earned ourselves no reward, except for the reward that he gives to those who call upon his Name.  What the theologians call “prevenient grace.”  That we love him only because first he loves us.    That we desire the good only because he first plants that desire in our hearts and minds and imaginations.  “Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people.”    So the day is “Stir up Sunday”—though I didn’t have Michelle put that title on the leaflet also.   As a footnote, in Victorian times the custom began to have this “Stir up Sunday” mark the beginnings of preparation of the Christmas Pudding.   Which needed to be stirred in a big bowl.   I guess we might think of it as something like the Christmas fruitcake.

We also have in the deeper texture of this Sunday—and actually also for the last two Sundays--the earlier practice in the Church of the Middle Ages that was called St. Martin’s Lent.   November 11 is the feast day for St. Martin of Tours, and the three Sundays then before what we now call Advent and the four Advent Sundays were a season of penitential prayer and fasting parallel to the 40 days of Lent from Ash Wednesday through Easter.  If we’ve been listening to the epistle and especially the gospel readings for the past couple of Sundays we have been alerted to this with the increasing focus on “getting ready for the end, for the final accounting”—all of that to set the table for us as we prepare to encounter the four great themes traditionally associated with Advent, the “Four Last Things:” Death and Judgment, Heaven and Hell.  

The wide world outside the Church of course prefers a somewhat different focus for the Holiday Season.  But in the church along with the gentler customs of Advent and our preparation for the annual celebration of the Birth in Bethlehem, we pause perhaps not with the fasting of St. Martin’s Lent, but even so on the Sunday next before Advent, to remind ourselves that the reason Jesus was born for us is that we who are lost, we who are condemned, we who are without any grounds for appeal or to request mitigation of sentence—we really do need a savior.   That’s the foundation of Christianity, the theological convergence of theology and anthropology.  That’s what Advent is supposed to remind us, and in a way that would simultaneously wake us up and flood our hearts with gratitude.  Christmas and Good Friday and Easter are essentially meaningless unless we begin here.  So the Pre-Advent Little Lent of St. Martin.  We really do need a savior.

In any event, finally, the third title for this morning, the Feast of Christ the King, is not actually on the Episcopal Church calendar, although it obviously informs the Collect of the Day.  The feast was first put on the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar at the last Sunday of October in 1925, particularly as a counterpoint to the rising tide of state-sponsored atheism in the new Soviet Union--and later when the new post-Vatican II calendar was published in 1970 it was moved to the Last Sunday in Ordinary Time.  The pre-Advent focus on Last Things is of course still very strong in our readings, and especially in this Parable of the Last Judgment in Matthew 25 this morning, but it is framed for us at the same time in the Collect and the hymns and anthems of the day by the acknowledgment and acclamation of the eternal Lordship of Christ, the One above all others, King of kings and Lord of lords.

Just briefly: the Parable of the Last Judgment, the Sheep and the Goats, is the third and last in the sequence of the Parables of the Kingdom in Matthew 25.  Two weeks ago we heard the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Maidens.  The contrast between those who kept their lamps full and at the ready for the Bridegroom’s return and those who slept thoughtlessly and were caught unprepared.  Then last week the gospel reading was the Parable of the Five Talents.  The contrast between the three Stewards, the two who took the resources the Master had left for them to manage and fearlessly invested them for the Master’s benefit, and the one who was more concerned about his own skin than about the Master’s welfare, who fearfully hid in the ground what the Master had put in his care.   And this morning the Sheep and the Goats.  Those who were so deeply attuned in their faith that even when they didn’t see Jesus directly with their eyes, still served him day by day, in every encounter and opportunity, and those  who were so caught up in themselves that they didn’t notice Jesus as he made himself known to them in the lives of the hungry, the naked, those in prison. 

In this context I love the Thursday Collect in the 1979 Prayer Book service of Evening Prayer.  There’s an evocation of the Easter Evening story of the Disciples and Jesus on the Road to Emmaus, which seems just right for us as a prayer at the end of the year, as we gather ourselves to prepare to kneel once again in just a few weeks at his manger throne:  “Lord Jesus, stay with us, for evening is at hand and the day is past; be our companion in the way, kindle our hearts, and awaken hope, that we may know thee as thou art revealed in Scripture and the breaking of bread.”  A prayer to see Jesus, to know him.  At the end of the old year, leaning forward to welcome the new year,  to honor Christ our King.   In the Word and the Breaking of Bread.  In the face of the poor, the suffering, the lost.  That we might see you, Jesus, where you choose to be, even when those places may not be the ones where we expected to find you.  Kindle our hearts, and awaken hope.

Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God.

St. Andrew's Day 2017

Matthew 4: 18-22

Good morning fellow St. Andreans-- family, neighbors, and friends.  Our festival day!   Always so much fun—family from near and far, old friends, new friends.  A special welcome and word of thanks, as for so many years, to our friends of the Syria Highlanders.  We are reminded by your presence to include in our prayers the important ministry and work of the Shriners’ Hospitals for Children, which you all continue to serve as your fundraising mission.  It’s a great pleasure for us to have the opportunity in this small way to share in that with you.  Thank you for that opportunity.

This year again St. Andrew’s Day, was circled on the calendar by our Vestry as the official conclusion of our stewardship campaign for 2018--and the idea is that St. Andrew’s Day would be a good and really fitting occasion to share a prayer of dedication of our offerings of time, talent, and treasure.  (In reality we continue to receive pledges of financial commitment for 2018 through the end of the year and sometimes with a last few to be received at the beginning of the new year, so if you haven’t gotten your cards in yet, there’s still time!)

 But today we dedicate all that in our prayers, expressing our gratitude to God for his grace and mercy in all ways, and above all for the gift of his Son and his work at the Cross, for forgiveness and restoration, for our new life in him, and in a very particular way for the privilege of sharing that life together, with one another, here at St. Andrew’s.   And in that context I want to pause once again this year over a phrase in our gospel  for St. Andrew’s Day that is at the thematic and theological heart of what Matthew wants us to understand about Christian life, Christian discipleship, Christian stewardship.  Jesus calls to Andrew and Peter: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men,” the beginning of a new chapter of the holy story, the first evangelistic invitation to join in the life and work of the Church of God, the Body of Christ.  And then, Matthew tells us, “immediately they left their nets and followed him.”  And to shine a light on those four key words:  “they left their nets.”

I’ve shared with you before the experience of I guess—insight--that I had many years ago, one afternoon back in the 1970’s, when I was pretty new in my adult Christian walk and was looking for something in the parish library of St. Mark’s Church in Berkeley.  I happened upon a newsletter with the title, “Acts 29.”  You’ll remember that later that evening when I was back in my apartment I had this moment of curiosity and opened my Bible to see what Acts 29 was all about. 

The book begins with Jesus and the Disciples at the Mount of the Ascension and then traces the work of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and then flowing through the life of the rapidly expanding Christian community and expansion of the Gospel from Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.  So: Acts 29.  And I opened the Bible only to find that the Book of Acts comes to an end at chapter 28, with Paul preaching and teaching under a kind of house arrest in Rome.  There is no Acts, chapter 29.  A pause, and then the lightbulb over my head.  Acts 29: what comes after Acts 28.  As Paul Harvey used to say on the radio, “the rest of the story.”  The part of the story that comes next.  The part with us in it.  The work of the Holy Spirit, the expansive reach of the Gospel message to every tribe, people, and nation, and in every generation. 

The point here may seem fairly obvious.  But I’ll try to draw it out anyway.  Andrew and Peter were fishermen, a role and a way of life passed down from father to son generation after generation.  Their nets were their livelihood, the tools of their trade.  Those nets were what made it possible for them to be fishermen, and so to take care of themselves and their families.   The sign of their place in the community, their station of life, the source of their paycheck and their pension. 

And so, what this gesture represents-- this putting down of their nets:  from this point on, say Andrew and Peter, we’re not going to be relying on our skills and resources, we’re not going to be trusting in our knowledge and experience and professional expertise.  We’re not going to be known mainly as “fishermen” any more.  That’s behind us now.  It doesn’t mean we’ll never fish again.  But when we do, that will be just what we do, not who we are.  A new identification, if you will.  We’re putting our lives, our future into your hands, Jesus.  Who we are going to be, what we are going to be about, from now on.   We’re going to take what you have to give, and be o.k. with that-- even if what you have to give turns out to be different from what we thought before that we wanted.  From this point on, we’re going to be all about this one thing:  following you, Jesus.  Not fishermen anymore, but disciples.  

This is exactly the difference in the gospels between those who are in the crowds, who come to see and hear Jesus, and then go home, back to their ordinary lives, and those who become disciples.  The disciples are the ones who put down their nets.  Who stopped being what they were, and became something new.   It’s one of those resonating metaphors.  They put down their nets--which had given them their identity, security, self-sufficiency-- in order to say that from that moment on, Christ would be sufficient for them.

 Following Jesus wasn’t going to be a hobby, a special interest, something to attend to in their spare time, after work, on weekends, on the side.  What Matthew is communicating in this small narrative detail, that they put down their nets, is that now and from now on, everything is different for them.

They don’t seem really to think this over strategically.  They just set the nets down and go with him.

It probably doesn’t take any of us very much time in reflection to figure out what our nets are--and how this story of the calling of our patron Andrew and the beginning of his Christian life can speak into our lives and have something meaningful to say to us on St. Andrew’s Day and Stewardship Sunday.  About how entangled we get sometimes in the nets of our lives.  About how our work and study and family roles and community activities somehow become not what we do, but who we are.  We can each of us preach that sermon for ourselves and to ourselves.  Thinking about that old hymn, singing it softly to ourselves in the course of our day, “take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to thee.”  It’s all Acts chapter 29 from this point forward.  The challenge and invitation every year, as St. Andrew joins us in our festival day.    It’s usually not about dropping out, quitting our jobs and heading off to distant lands. 

But it is always, whether we travel around the globe or never get more than a few miles from the place where we were born,  about how we think about ourselves, about why we do what we do, simply and centrally—and just deep down, about who we’re following.

If we would know that, if we know him, we would know everything we need to know.  And he comes to us this morning as he came to Andrew.  Present in his Word, and as we break bread together and share the cup.  And the truth of the matter is that if in our hearts and minds we’re singing “take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to thee,” then our 2018 Stewardship Campaign will have been a rousing success, no matter how much money is raised and how many ministries happened to be supported with new participation.  That’s what Peter and our patron Andrew and James and John are singing this morning.  And we are invited in our hearts and minds, in our imaginations, in our souls and bodies, in all our lives, to sing along with them all in the next chapter and chapters of the holy story.  Acts 29. Whatever he may have in mind for us.   And of course for us this morning, all with soaring bagpipes and rolling drums!

Blessings, friends of St. Andrew’s, on this St. Andrew’s Day, here in our church, and in our homes and families, our circles of friends, our neighborhoods, the places we work and study and play.  Here we are, in our section of Acts 29.   The part where we, you and I, go fishing with Jesus.

Twenty-Third after Pentecost

Sermon by Pastoral Associate the Rev. Dean Byrom on Sunday, November 12 (Proper 27A2).  The audio is posted to the St. Andrew's website, click here for sermon audio.

I Thessalonians 4: 13-18

                                                “We Grieve, But with Hope”                

“We do not grieve as those who have no hope,”

writes Paul to the Thessalonians.  Yet we still grieve.  Elsewhere, Paul calls death “the final enemy.”  And when that enemy touches your life - snatching from your loving grasp those whom you love - you grieve.  Grief is normal.  Grief is natural.

Randy Jones, my Clinical Pastoral Education supervisor, used to teach us often about “Grief work”.  And having myself engaged in over an hour of grief work with a member of another church just recently, I affirm that for griever and pastor, that is just how it feels.  It is hard, tough work.

“The hour of lead” is how Emily Dickinson named grief.

PAUSE

And it isn’t just in the few days afterward.  Grief goes on.  The way I figure it, in our congregation, on any given Sunday, over 80% of us are in grief over someone.  That’s why we weep at the funerals of near strangers.  That’s why we avoid funeral homes.  Grief keeps coming back at odd times, grabbing us from behind, and throwing us into deep sadness.

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Loss has so many tentacles that hold us in their grip.  Personally, any time that I read in the paper, see a television show or movies that includes the suffering or death of a young child I am frequently moved to tears which harkens back to the death from cancer of my three year old daughter, Melanie.

PAUSE

Paul says that we grieve.  Yet, we do not grieve “as those who have no hope.”  Hope for what”

Here’s what Christians hope.  We hope that the same God who raised Jesus from the dead, shall raise us as well.  We hope that just as Christ ventured forth from the realm of death into life, so shall He take us along with Him.

Our hope is not unfounded, not wishful thinking.  Our hope for the future is based upon what we know of Christ Jesus in the present.  In “Romans” 8, Paul says that nothing will separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.  If our experience with Christ Jesus has taught us one thing, it is that our God longs to be with us, will do almost anything to be near us, will go to any lengths to have us.

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That is the story that we recite and celebrate every Sunday here at St. Andrew’s.  In the ancient Hebrew Scriptures, the prophets, the Law, the Commandments, the psalms; in Jesus’ birth, life, teaching, death and resurrection, God sought us.

When Jesus was resurrected, what did He do, first thing after He was raised?  He came back to us, to His disciples who had betrayed Him.  

That is the basis of our hope.  We are confident that the God who has gone to such extraordinary lengths to be close to us in life, shall not cease those efforts in death.  Therefore, we do not grieve as those who have no hope.

We believe that the same God who so pursued us, and reached out to us, and sought us all the days of our lives shall not cease to pursue us, reach out to us and seek us even in death.  

Our hope is not in some vague and wishful immortality of the soul, or the expectation of some eternal spark that just goes on and on, or in reincarnation, or any other assumption that we possess within ourselves immortality.

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Our hope is that the love of God is stronger than the devastation of death; that ultimately, nothing shall separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.  God, having gone to such great lengths to save us and have us in life, will continue to demand us even in death.  That is why we do not grieve as those who have no hope.

This is the hope that we experience on Sunday here in worship at St. Andrew’s.  Having experienced, on so many Sundays, Jesus’ coming to us, being really present to us in Word and Sacrament, we hope for and count on His presence with us forever.

Our hope is not that we are immortal, not that some eternal spark lives on in us, surviving death.  Our hope is that we will, by the work and will of God, be with Jesus forever.  Death, the final enemy has been defeated.

So think of Sundays as dress rehearsals for eternal life.  Think of our experiences of Sunday worship as our way of loving Jesus now, so that we might love Him forever, and praise God for all eternity.

PAUSE

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“Because I live, you shall live,” Christ Jesus tells His followers in the Gospel according to John.  That’s why we have hope.  Encourage one another with these words.

                                    

                                          PAUSE

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

All Saints

Matthew 5: 1-12; Revelation 7: 9-17

The  unending hymn of that multitude beyond number, from every nation, all tribes and people and tongues, before the Throne and before the Lamb, and the hymn of our hearts and voices.   Amen!  Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God for ever and ever!  Amen.

Good morning and always such a beautiful day and a meaningful day here at St. Andrew’s.  With special thanks to our Choir and Orchestra, Pete Luley, Tom Octave—and Tom, so very nice to have you with us this year to lead our Music Memorial.  The music welling up in our hearts and overflowing.  And a word of thanks as well to all who have contributed to our congregational offering of memorial flowers this morning.  Remembering the saints and heroes of ages past, and in our memories and our hearts as well the names and faces of those we have loved but see no longer in this life.  On the calendar of the Episcopal Church this “Sunday after All Saints Day” brings together the two traditional observances, All Saints Day on November 1^st, and All Faithful Departed, All Souls, on November 2^nd.    A high moment of worship.  For remembrance and reflection, for inspiration, and we might also say of motivation.  To hear in the remembrance of all the saints and holy people of God an invitation to a closer walk with Christ, lifting our sights higher, encouraging us to renewed joyful commitment, the common life of the whole company of faithful people. 

We speak of the “two states” of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.  The Church Militant, and the Church Triumphant.  The two sides of the stream, yet continuing one Body, a Cloud of Witness, All who in the gracious mercy of God are redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, who are justified and brought into relationship to God the Father through faith, who are sanctified by the Holy Spirit, to walk in newness of life, ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven.  Apostles and evangelists, martyrs, faithful witnesses in every generation.  And remembering in our own day the heartbreaking faithful witness of martyrs in places from Egypt to Iraq and Syria, Kenya and Nigeria—it seems almost daily stories of oppression, persecution, and execution for those who will identify themselves as Christian.  Figuring out how to live faithful lives is a challenge in any context, for sure.  But when I hear these stories it does just lead me to a time of reflection and to wondering about how I, how we, live, about witness, courage, all those big questions.  Peter and Andrew, James and John, and their line continues.  Those who stood near Jesus on the Mountain as a preached to the crowd, who heard him with their own ears, and all of us since.  “Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.  Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

Saints and heroes.  In the 1979 Prayer Book lectionary, before the Episcopal Church adopted the Revised Common Lectionary a few  years ago, we had for All Saints  the reading from Ecclesiasticus, which perhaps you’ll remember.  “Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers in their generations.”  The introduction first of the celebrities of the sanctoral calendar, those with calendar days and stained glass windows, bishops and kings, martyrs and miracle workers--but then also this, that “there are some who have no memorial, who have perished as though they had not lived; they have become as though they had not been born, and so have their children after them.  But these were men of mercy, whose righteous deeds have not been forgotten; their prosperity will remain with their descendants, and their inheritance to their children’s children.”   Moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas, neighbors, friends, teachers, maybe even a preacher or two.   A reflection in the memorials in our prayers this morning.  Whose faith and character and love in Christ—tenderness, kindness, generosity, will shape our lives in so many meaningful ways.   The images in the stained glass windows of our hearts.  I can’t help but think this morning of our dear friend Dorothy Graham, who died last Sunday and was buried from St. Andrew’s Thursday morning.  In her 91^st year—she and her husband Albert lived and raised their family in a little house down on the 700 block of North St. Clair, just a few blocks from here.  Dorothy and Bert’s kids came to St. Andrew’s Sunday School,  went to Fulton School and all the rest, Peabody High, off to college, grew up, married, moved away, had families of their own.  Six great-grandchildren. 

Dorothy for many decades a bright and delightful member of the Altar Guild, best known probably as the one who would every year on the Saturday before Palm Sunday show all the rest of the Guild how to fold the most beautiful and elaborate Palm Crosses.  She always made a dozen or so especially fancy ones for me, asking me to carry them to our shut-in or hospitalized parishioners.   The best ones, really special, so that they would know we were thinking of them.   She was shut in herself pretty much for most of the last 20 years, first in her little apartment over in Aspinwall, then when even that was too difficult to manage, in a nursing home out in Wexford near her daughter’s house.  But always with this great warmth and smile.  No matter what her health was at any particular moment, just a sense of being delighted to be there with you.  She loved to brag on her kids and grandkids.  And there was a lot about them to brag about.   She loved hearing the news of the church, what special events were happening, what was going on in the neighborhood-- receiving communion, praying together, and she always prayed for St. Andrew’s and especially for the children of the parish.   Such a pleasure and such a privilege.  Anyway, just one story.  A bit of memory, reflection.   I could go on all day.  The Church Triumphant, and the Church Militant too, as we would look around old St. Andrew’s this morning.  Just look around.  Who are these like stars appearing?  For all thy saints.  As the children’s hymn goes, “you can meet them in school or in lanes or at sea, in church or in trains, or in shops, or at tea, for the saints of God are just folk like me . . . and I mean to be one too.”  And so we sing on.

Amen!  Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God for ever and ever!  Amen