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Sixth after Epiphany: Sexagesima

2012-02-12T07:08:00.009-05:00

II Kings 5: 1-14; Mark 1: 40-45

Good morning and grace and peace, on this Sunday, on some calendars known as the Sunday before the Feast of St. Valentine. Of Valentinus of Rome really nothing is known except his name and that he was called in some ancient martyrologies a presbyter , a priest, and that he was martyred with 14 other Christians on February 14 and buried on the Via Flaminia, North of Rome, probably in the year 269.

I’m sure there is a beautiful and inspiring story there of faith and witness, though all lost in the mists of time. Patron Saint these days of florists, jewelers, and chocolateers, mostly due to some very nice romantic tales imagined and passed along by writers and artists in the later Middle Ages and early Renaissance, but of course without any foundation in the life of the historical Valentine. Still, his name does rhyme with “be mine.”

And chocolate and flowers. Jewelry. You can’t go wrong.

In the more official calendar of the Church the banners of the season still announce: Epiphany! In these weeks between Christmastide and Ash Wednesday. First the Wise Men from the East, then in wider and wider circles. The Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles. What was in darkness is now flooded in light. What was hidden is made known. How the One born in the obscurity of the Bethlehem stable is revealed to all nations and peoples as Lord and Savior.

On the traditional Church Calendar as well, Sexagesima. The great Sixty Days. The good people of St. Andrew’s may be the last in all the Episcopal Church to find that title on their Sunday service leaflets, and I apologize for continuing year after year to inflict this eccentricity upon you. It’s not your fault. Seventy Days last week, Septuagesima, and next Sunday will be Quinquagesima, fifty Days, and leaning forward to the Great 40 Days of Lent. I also like old American cars and Audrey Hepburn and Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw.

In any event, the Christmas Trees finally made their post-Candlemas exit from the Robison house this past week, and again a reminder that these Sundays are “Sundays Before Lent.” The great themes of Incarnation and Revelation continue, but we would, Six Sundays after the Epiphany, a week and a half before Ash Wednesday, find ourselves in this time of “pre-lent” turning from Manger to Cross, to consider the work of Christ. We celebrate his birth. And then, why he was born. For what. For whom. Doctrine of the Atonement, in the formal vocabulary of the Church. We have the story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and the Doctrine of the Atonement is the effort to give an account of what was accomplished in all that. For what purpose it happened. Why it all needed to take place. Reconciliation, forgiveness of sin, healing, renewal. And to remind ourselves in our usual state of denial that those are things we need. Not just nice additions to an otherwise comfortable life. Things we need.

“In his death he has destroyed death, and in his rising again has raised us to life.” --“That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” All the way back to that gospel reading we heard as we gathered in the flickering midnight candle light of Christmas Eve. “That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the children of God, even to them that believe on his name.”

As Dean pointed out for us in his sermon last Sunday, this gets us into uncomfortable territory. I was astonished when someone commented the other day that I might occasionally have some control issues. But that’s what we’re all running up against here. Outside our comfort zone. The exorcism in the synagogue at Capernaum. The healing of Simon Peter’s Mother-in-Law. And this morning the cleansing of the leper.

He speaks, and listening to his voice, new life the dead receive, the mournful broken hearts rejoice, the humble poor believe. Hear him, ye deaf; ye voiceless ones, your loosened tongues employ; ye blind behold, your Savior comes; and leap ye lame for joy!

What they said at Capernaum. We’ve known brilliant teachers before, great teachers, charismatic leaders, inspired prophets. But never anyone like this. Never anyone like this. This is something new.

The Syrian officer Naaman had a foretaste, as he finally got past his stubbornness and followed Elisha’s instructions and had his cleansing bath in the Jordan. And we have a foretaste as well, a hint, an anticipation, as we read that story. An anticipation of Jesus. Leaning forward.

What happens in this broken and diseased world of ours when God steps into the picture. Emmanuel. God with us.

A foretaste of the Atonement, as Naaman steps into the holy river, as the waters of the Jordan flow on down through every century, into every land. Into every baptismal font. Something very good. Better than we could have asked for. Better than the best we could ever have imagined. Healing. Mercy and forgiveness. Reconciliation. New Life. God with us.

It is very simply our testimony that this is true. All of it, the whole package. The message of Christmas in Bethlehem that is also the message of Good Friday and the Cross. That as we get past our stubbornness, and come into his presence, in Word and Sacrament, we can know what it is that he has done for us. It’s not in our hymnal, but I’ve found myself singing the old hymn. “I love to tell the story. ‘Twill be my theme in glory. To tell the old, old story, of Jesus and his love.”

Healing and renewal that is sometimes physical and sometimes emotional and of the mind and will; that however possessed by demons we and this world of ours may be, however unpresentable; that as broken as we are—there is healing and renewal in the fresh springs of his love. Ask Naaman. Ask the leper in Mark. Ask around. This is a true saying and worthy of all men to be received, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

It is, we might say, the opportunity of a lifetime. Naaman came down from Damascus with all his treasures—gold and silver and precious cloth. We bring what we have, we come as we are. The leper came to Jesus trusting, believing, and poured out his heart. For years and years he had been told and had known a reality that he was a hopeless case. And then somebody told him a story about Jesus.

It’s something I’m pretty sure St. Valentine the Presbyter of Rome must have known too, in that February all those years ago. A knowledge that cost him everything, but that was in the end victory and healing, grace and peace.

What was in darkness is now flooded in light. What was hidden is made known. How the One born in the obscurity of the Bethlehem stable is revealed to all nations and peoples as Lord and Savior.

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

Morning Brunch Talk

2012-02-05T07:24:00.002-05:00

The Rev. Dean Byrom, our Pastoral Assistant, will be preaching this morning. I, though, have the opportunity to address those who gather at the invitation of our Vestry for a "between the services" brunch and introduction to a time of reflection and discussion about future directions of our life and ministry at St. Andrew's.

The year was 1837. Andrew Jackson had just completed his second term, and in March of that year his Vice President Martin Van Buren would succeed him. “Old Kinderhook,” as some of you will remember. (Al Mann?)

Here in Pittsburgh things were going like gangbusters. What had been a relatively small agricultural and commercial center was expanding rapidly with mining, coal, lumber, glass, new industry, a center for factories, and for transportation, shipping, and the beginnings of a regional railroad system. The jumping off point for the westward movement from the Eastern seaboard, and a center for new immigration from western Europe, and especially Ireland and Germany. The population of Pittsburgh tripled between 1810 and 1830, and it would triple again between 1830 and 1850. (Thank you Wikipedia.)

It was I’m sure, it must have been, an incredibly exciting time and place to live, and perhaps we can catch a glimpse of that in the memory of that small group of families who in 1837 made the decision to move out of their Church home at old Trinity Church and to found a second Episcopal Church in the City of Pittsburgh. 1837.

It was a new season of expansion for the Episcopal Church as well. For a generation or so after the Revolution the Church had been in a convalescent mode. Weakened by the loss of many clergy, who had gone to Canada or back to England, not helped by a lingering association with England in the popular feelings of the day. But by the 1830’s a new generation of missionary leaders, bishops, clergy, lay people in a time of renewal, expansion, rebuilding the Church in the east and moving west into new territory.

In 1837 that was all here, for the new congregation of St. Andrew’s Church. Meeting at first in an auditorium on Penn Avenue. They were building something new, something really exciting. Inspired by the opportunity of mission, building up the Church and making new disciples and sharing Christian witness in this wild and energetic city. Of course they were helping to build a Church for themselves and for their families. But they were investing themselves, their lives and their resources, to be a part of a future that was just beginning to unfold.

There was of course, a great deal that they couldn’t possibly know. Generations of growth for this community as an industrial powerhouse, waves of immigration, new patterns of life. Wars. Booms and depressions.

Certainly they wouldn’t have pictured in 1837 the move that would take place just 65 years later, St. Andrew’s Church, from the center of the City to the rapidly growing East End. Pretty much just farms and orchards out here in 1837.

But for all that, I don’t think they would have been surprised, either. Because they knew that God had great plans for their lives. And I think that in the far distance, all the way back in 1837, they had a glimpse of us here this morning, 175 years later. I think they’d be excited to see who we are, what great things God is doing here in our day, and I think they’d be proud to know that their efforts and investments all those years ago, their hopes and dreams and risk-taking and hard work, had built the foundation for what we are able to do here at St. Andrew’s today.

What is really exciting to me about this moment in our congregational life, for me as your Rector, friend, and as a member of this St. Andrew’s family, is to see how the “spirit of 1837” is still a part of who we are. In the spirit of mission, building up, reaching out in new ways as we grow ourselves in Christian faith and life, and in numbers and resources.

And in our ability not simply to focus on ourselves, but to be looking down the road, to see what new things God has in mind for us next.

And as we think this year about our 175th anniversary, it’s wonderful for me to be with our Vestry over this past year, and so many others in the wider parish, as we celebrate our past, also to be looking to the future, to be thinking about the foundation we are building now for those who will be a part of St. Andrew’s in years to come, and even long after we have gone. Literally and spiritually, for our children and grandchildren. Foundation and infrastructure. Resources for Christian life and ministry. Addressing the challenges and the opportunities that we have in our own day. To restore, to renew, to expand.

Those who will gather here in Brooks Hall in 2037 to celebrate the bicentennial of St. Andrew’s, and who will remember with thanksgiving not only the founders, in 1837, but every generation, including ours, who will have prepared the way for the exciting mission that God will have in mind for them.

That’s broad brush-strokes. Thinking about the future. During the past year Dr. George Knight, Junior Warden emeritus and Chair of our Property Committee, has also at the request of our Vestry been chairing what we've called an "exploratory committee." And I’d like to pass this along to him now for a few words about why were here this morning and what will be coming up for us in the next few weeks and months.

February 2, 2012

2012-02-02T07:53:00.002-05:00

Candlemas

Prayer for the Blessing of Candles

God our Father,
Source of all light,
today you revealed to Simeon
Your light of revelation to the nations.
Bless + these candles and make them holy.
May we who carry them to praise your glory
walk in the path of goodness
and come to the light that shines forever
Grant this through Christ our Lord.

Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple

Almighty and everliving God, we humbly beseech thee that, as thy only-begotten Son was this day presented in the temple, so we may be presented unto thee with pure and clean hearts by the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Mary of the Grapes, Pierre Mignard, 1640

Thanksgiving and Prayer to Mary
by St. Augustine of Hippo

O Blessed Virgin Mary, who can worthily give you the just dues of praise and thanksgiving, you who by the wondrous assent of your will rescued a fallen world? What songs of praise can our weak human nature recite in your honor, since it is by your intervention alone that it has found the way to restoration?

Accept, then, such poor thanks as we have to offer here, though they be unequal to your merit; and, receiving our vows, obtain by your prayers the remission of our offenses. Carry our prayers within the sanctuary of the heavenly audience and bring forth the gift of our reconciliation.

Take our offering, grant us our requests, obtain pardon for what we fear, for you are the sole hope of sinners. Holy Mary, help the miserable, strengthen the fainthearted, comfort the sorrowful, pray for your people, plead for the clergy, intercede for all women consecrated to God.

Be ever ready to assist us when we pray and bring back to us the answers to our prayers. Make it your continual care to pray for the people of God, you who, blessed by God, merited to bear the Redeemer of the world who lives and reigns, world without end. Amen.

Groundhog Day

Fourth after Epiphany

2012-01-29T07:05:00.006-05:00

(B) Mark 1: 21-28

Good morning, and grace and peace as we move along through this odd winter. One day it seems like an ordinary January day, and then the next day, or maybe even later on in the same day, it’s 60 degrees and spring, and then back again to cold, snow, and ice. A little disorienting, anyway.

By my count it’s now today the Thirty-Sixth Day of Christmas. The traditional end of the season approaching this Thursday, February 2nd, the 40th Day of Christmas, the Feast of the Purification of St. Mary the Virgin, the Presentation of our Lord in the Temple. Candlemas, if you’re familiar with that older English holiday on the calendar. Always easy to remember because here in Pennsylvania we have Groundhog Day. Be sure to come for Evensong at 8 p.m. Thursday evening.

Next Sunday the first Sunday of the second part of this season after Epiphany. What the old Anglican Prayer Book calendars called the three Sundays before Lent, “Pre-Lent.” And as a kid I always loved to hear the Greek names: Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima. Part of the countdown: to mark seventy, sixty, and fifty days before Easter Sunday. The new Prayer Book calendar doesn’t give any formal notice to these Sundays, or to the two parts of the season between Christmas and Ash Wednesday, but beginning next week we will begin to hear a shift in tone and direction in the collects and readings from scripture. Moving from the Manger to the Cross.

But for where we are today in all of that, this reading from St. Mark’s gospel seems right on target, following path that began with the Wise Men, as they were led from the East by the star to find the home of the Holy Child, and as we stood with the crowds as Jesus approached John the Baptist in the shallow waters of the Jordan River, and as the Voice of the Father echoed across the heavens. This is my beloved Son. As the disciples began to come to him. Nathaniel. Promising, come with me, and you will see greater things than these. As he finds Andrew and Peter, James and John, at work by the Sea of Galilee. It’s all getting started now. Put down what you have been doing, and come, follow me. Fish for people.

We recall the meaning and theme of Epiphany. What was in darkness is now flooded in light. What was hidden is revealed. How the One born in the obscurity of the Bethlehem stable is revealed to all nations and peoples as Lord and Savior. How such poetic and grand words and images can settle into our hearts and our lives as real things, as life itself.

This morning we come to Capernaum in St. Mark’s gospel. And he begins to teach. Mark doesn’t tell us what the text from scripture was, or what Jesus said about it. We’ll hear more of his sermons and teachings later on. What Mark shares with us here is not what the words were themselves, but instead, what happened when Jesus spoke.

I was wondering about this last Sunday, as we saw Jesus speak to those fishermen. Come with me. Fish for people. What was it about that moment? About what he said, about how he said it? About his presence? What they heard. What they saw when they looked at him? What they experienced when he looked at them. What would it take, what would I have to see, hear, feel, experience, to repond so immediately, so wholeheartedly. Moving forward without looking back. An existential moment. Just this word, his word, and the whole direction of their lives turned around . . . .

Jesus spoke in the synagogue at Capernaum. And Mark tells us that they are “astounded.” They’ve been coming to church every Sunday all their lives, but they’ve never heard preaching like this before. Not so much because of what he was saying, but because of what happened to them, what happened in them, when they heard it.

This is new. This is real. This is a word that takes hold of us and won’t let go. Not like the sermons our rabbis preach, not like the teaching of the scribes. What they have to say is all good, certainly. But this is something different altogether. And I love the word Mark reports here for us. This is a preaching “With authority.” With authority. A power here, and we’ve never heard or experienced anything quite like this before.

And-- how dramatic is that?--even the Ancient Enemy is a witness. Wrenched out of his human hiding place. The Spirit of the unholy, the unclean, the cursed, the one who breaks and destroys. Compelled by the speaking of this word, and in the very presence of the Word made Flesh, to submit and surrender. To depart. The ancient Vesper hymn of Advent, Conditor alme siderum, Creator of the stars of night. “Thou, grieving that the ancient curse, should doom to death a universe, hast found the medicine, full of grace, to save and heal a ruined race.” And all were amazed. All were amazed. What is this? Who is this? A new authority.

Epiphany. What was in darkness is now flooded in light. What was hidden is revealed. How the One born in the obscurity of the Bethlehem stable is revealed to all nations and peoples as Lord and Savior. To all nations and peoples. Across the miles and generations. Continent by continent. And perhaps this just the beginning: all the wide universe of creation. Galaxy by galaxy. Earth and all stars, the planets in their courses. And to you and to me. Each of us. One by one. To know him as Lord and Savior.

The village of Capernaum is a nothing of a place. Flyover country. Somewhere between East McKeesport and Turtle Creek. The synagogue probably a room about the size of our Chapel, maybe smaller. The congregation at that Sabbath Day service probably not larger than the ten man minimum required in the Law. But he speaks, and they all at once know, all of them, all at once, that this is new, this is big, this is something we’ve never heard before. And yet, there is something about it also, that we know in this moment that we’ve known forever. All our lives. From the beginning of the world.

Paul echoing, Eighth Chapter of Romans: “For I am persuaded that neither death, or life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

This is new, this is big. This is everything. Born in that Bethlehem stable. Revealed to all nations and peoples as Lord and Savior.

The testimony of the Christian. Each and every one of us, from those in that synagogue whose hearts were touched and whose lives were transformed, and until today. Each of us with our own words and experiences. Our own life stories. Up and down, back and forth. High moments and low moments. Insights, doubts--confessions and confusions.

But what is revealed that what we couldn’t see, we would now see. Eyes opened for the first time in the light of a new morning. To see him in every word of scripture written for us, to see him also in every mountaintop and sunrise, every smile, every tear. Every gain, every loss. In the Bread and Wine at the Holy Table. In the face of friend and stranger. Casting out the Evil One, healing the broken, creating in his word and in his presence forgiveness, love, mercy and blessing. A new authority. A new power. And his name shall be Emmanuel. God with us.

The 36th Day of Christmas, but no matter how many there are, there will never be enough days to tell the whole story. No canvas large enough for this painting. No matter how much we sing, how much we pray, how much we love. To complete the vision of the Prophet: For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea. And he is here for us. For all in the wide world and for the whole of creation. Epiphany.

Third after the Epiphany

2012-01-22T07:21:00.003-05:00

(Year B) Jonah 3: 1-5, 10; Mark 1: 14-20

Good morning on this winter weekend, and grace and peace. The story from St. Mark’s gospel is I think a familiar one to all Christians, and perhaps especially so for those of us members of parishes under the patronage of St. Andrew. Since this is the reading we hear, appointed for St. Andrew’s Day, with all the echoing of bagpipes, at the end of every November. This vocational moment. The calling of the first disciples there by the Sea of Galilee. Andrew, Peter, James, and John. We know the Christmas stories of course and the Baptism at the Jordan River. But somehow this story has the feeling of the beginning of things. “Come with me.” Jesus says. “Let’s get going.” And we hear the evocative marching orders that have echoed through all the centuries. “Follow me, and I will made you fishers of men.” Fish for people.

We see and experience this moment of course as a familiar and recurring theme and pattern of the whole Biblical story. God calls Abraham to leave the land of his Father and to come to a new land, where he will establish a new nation loyal to God alone. God calls Moses at the burning bush to leave his father-in-law’s homestead in the Sinai and to return to Egypt and to lead his people from slavery to freedom again, renewing their covenant with him and to be restored in their loyalties and to return again to the Promised Land. God calls Samuel as he goes to sleep in the shrine at Shiloh. David from the sheepfolds of his father Jesse. The great prophets. Elijah and Elisha. Jeremiah. Again and again through the Old Testament. And of course as we think through the New Testament we would remember as well the dramatic vocational experience of Paul as he is thrown from his horse on the Road to Damascus. God calls.

The compilers of our lectionary give us the contrast this morning as we remember what happened with the Prophet Jonah. We remember how he is called at first by God and commanded to carry the message of repentance into foreign territory, the capital city of the ancient enemy. Fearful of what might happen to him if he were to attempt that mission, Jonah hightails it out of town in exactly the opposite direction, finally getting on a ship and sailing away. And of course we remember that story. The storm, the great fish. And then we see the second part of the story this morning. Amazingly, improbably, Jonah’s mission is successful. He gets there. He calls the enemy to repentance. And they hear the message and immediately turn away from their corrupt and evil ways to experience God’s mercy and forgiveness. But then this odd twist: Jonah isn’t satisfied. He apparently has his own agenda. It’s almost like he’s embarrassed. It would have made him feel better if the enemy hadn’t repented, and if his words of warning had all come true, and the fire of God had fallen from the heavens to consume and destroy the people of Ninevah.

From first to last, in this story, Jonah wants to have his own way. It’s all about his concerns, his agenda.

I remember a poster I saw once back in the 1970’s, maybe. During that long stretch of time when the thought of the atom bomb, nuclear war, was so much more on the front burner of our consciousness. The poster shows a city outline in the background, and over it the terrifying image of a mushroom cloud. In the foreground we see people fleeing in terror. And one young woman, with her hand to her forehead, is saying “but what about my career?”

It was a funny image. The contrast. This huge and unimaginable catastrophe—and all she can think about is her own personal situation.

Self-centered. Turned in on ourselves.

Jesus addresses Peter and Andrew, “and immediately they left their nets and followed him.” Jesus then spots James and John sitting in their boat not far away, and “immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.”

Immediately. The Greek, euthus, an adverb St. Mark uses frequently in his gospel. One thing happens, and then “immediately” something else happens. And so here. Hardly time to catch your breath between the thought and the action. Jesus calls, and Peter and Andrew follow. Immediately. Right then.

It is startling, to see how ready they are to hear. How quickly they respond. How they don’t run away.

I love the hymn we sang here. So haunting, deep. “Young John who trimmed the flapping sail, homeless,in Patmos died. Peter, who hauled the teeming net, head-down was crucified.” And so for all of them. The journey ahead. Did they catch a glimpse of all that, of any of that, in that moment? Conflict, opposition. The road to the Cross. What did they see when they looked at him? What did they hear in his voice?

These vocational moments. Sometimes the big “burning bush” life changing moments of our lives. And sometimes he comes more quietly, in the ordinary routines and decisions of our day to day lives. “Put that down, and come with me.”

Lord Jesus, what a mess I am, caught up in the nets of my own occupations and preoccupations. So often with my eyes closed, turned away. Not paying attention. Missing what I shouldn’t miss.

So wonderful this morning to see them again this moment by the Sea. Peter and Andrew, James and John. “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.”

Simply to pray this morning Lord that you would come in by the window when I have the front door closed and locked. Lift up my head, open my eyes, unstop my ears. Prepare my heart. To know you when you come, to hear and know your voice. To experience your presence and to have the courage to follow you. To be ready when you call.

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

Second Epiphany

2012-01-15T20:53:00.001-05:00

Year B: Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17; John 1:43-51

The Rev. Dr. Philip Wainwright
Priest Associate

As we all know, Scripture has lots of passages in which there are things that are difficult to understand. That’s one reason why some people don’t read it as much as they would like to. One of the basic principles I learned when I became a Christian was that Scripture explains Scripture: when you come across one of those passages that has something in it that raises questions, you often find it explained or at least simplified a bit by some other passage of Scripture. And I think that two of our readings this morning illustrate that pretty well.

What struck me first was what the gospel reading says about Nathanael. Philip is convinced that Jesus is the Messiah, the one promised in the Law and the Prophets, and he says to his friend Nathanael, you have to come and meet this Jesus of Nazareth. Nathanael says ‘Nazareth? You must be kidding. The Messiah couldn’t be from Nazareth.’ Nathanael wasn’t from Nazareth, apparently; Philip’s words had the effect of telling a Pittsburgh native that the Messiah was from Cleveland, or Wheeling. But Philip insists, and Nathanael goes with him. And after just one look, Nathanael is hooked: he practically yells it at Jesus—exclamation marks and everything—You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel! Just one look. But here’s the part that needs explaining: it wasn’t Nathanael’s look, it was Jesus’s. Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, and Jesus said, Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no guile. I know the leaflet says ‘deceit’, but I still hear ‘guile’, so forgive me. And when Nathanael bursts out his recognition of Jesus, Jesus makes a joke of it: you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these. Of all the great things about this passage, the one that struck me most this time was that it was because Jesus saw Nathanael that Nathanael became a believer. When Jesus makes his comment about Nathanael, Nathanel says ‘how do you know me? have we met before?’, and Jesus says I saw you. Jesus only needed to see him to know him fully. And everything that might be puzzling about that is explained in the psalm for today, Psalm 139. Look at the opening verses:

1 LORD, you have searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up; you discern my thoughts from afar.
2 You trace my journeys and my resting-places and are acquainted with all my ways.
3 Indeed, there is not a word on my lips, but you, O LORD, know it altogether.
4 You press upon me behind and before and lay your hand upon me.
5 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain to it.

The first characteristic of God that the psalm describes is God’s knowledge of us. He knows all that we do, all that we think, He knows what we are going to say even before we do. He knows where we have been and where we are going. He knows what we want and what we need, and knows what a great gulf there is between the two. If we don’t believe in Him, He knows that too. We have no privacy from God. There is nothing we can hide from Him. And Who is Jesus? We will say it in the creed in just a few minutes: God from God, light from light, very God of very God. When Jesus looked at Nathanael, Nathanael had exactly the experience that the psalm describes, the experience of being known through and through, known to the very bottom of his heart. Jesus wasn’t even there when Nathanael made his flip comment to Philip, but Jesus knew: this guy won’t try to be anything but what he is, if he thinks it he’ll say it. He won’t make a good diplomat, but he’ll be the kind of friend you can count on.

Now it is true that God knows each one of us that well, but sometimes it makes us a little uncomfortable. Most of us suspect that what Jesus might say about us might not be so complimentary. But this is one of the great things about God in Christ, that He begins with what is good about us. I think that’s what hooked Nathanael: He saw me through and through, but what did He say? Here’s a chap who speaks his mind! He knows the good and the bad, but he still likes me!

That’s why the psalmist says that God’s intimate knowledge of us is a glorious thing. It’s so glorious, he says that he is trying hard to comprehend the glory of it, but he cannot, he says, because it is simply too wonderful for the human mind to grasp. God is so wonderful, that we don’t even have to worry that He knows all those things about us—it’s wonderful that He does know those things, for reasons that become clear at the end of the psalm.

In the next few verses, he reminds us that even if we don’t want God to know all about us, there’s no way we can stop Him. The printed leaflet skipped them, but you can read them in the Prayer Book on p 794:

6 Where can I go then from your Spirit? where can I flee from your presence?
7 If I climb up to heaven, you are there; if I make the grave my bed, you are there also.
8 If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
9 Even there your hand will lead me and your right hand hold me fast.
10 If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will cover me, and the light around me turn to night’,
11 Darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to you are both alike.

The truth about God is that He is closer to us than we would ever suspect. We talk about coming into His presence when we come into church to worship together, but God was with us before we came in here, and He will go with us when we leave. He was with us when our head first stirred off the pillow this morning, He will still be with us when we lay our heads down again tonight, and will stay with us while we sleep or while we toss and turn. We may follow the wrong path sometimes, but we have not wandered away from God. If we feel that we have, it’s because we’ve stopped thinking about Him, that’s all. But He never stopped thinking about us. He never stopped trying to guide us and keep us safe, hold us fast.

In the next verses, the psalm reminds us why it is that God is so interested in us, why He won’t ignore us even when we ignore Him: it is because we are His own creation—not just as human beings, but as the specific individuals that each of us is:

12 For you yourself created my inmost parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
13 I will thank you because I am marvelously made; your works are wonderful, and I know it well.
14 My body was not hidden from you, while I was being made in secret and woven in the depths of the earth.
15 Your eyes beheld my limbs, yet unfinished in the womb; all of them were written in your book; they were fashioned day by day, when as yet there was none of them.
16 How deep I find your thoughts, O God! how great is the sum of them!

God knew we were there in the womb even before our mothers suspected anything; He was forming us and shaping us even then, knowing the lives we were to lead and the people we would become. He knew even then that we would love chocolate, or be afraid of snakes, that we would be a teacher or a businessman or a full-time mother. And the psalmist praises God for this, he finds these thoughts infinitely precious. The fact that God is always thinking about us is precious because it means that God never lets us face the difficulties of this world alone: He’s there when we’re in trouble, and we can turn to Him. He loves us and will never leave us. Perhaps that’s what gives the psalmist confidence enough to pour out some pretty bitter feelings at that point; 20 Do I not hate those, O LORD, who hate you? and do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I’m not going to dwell on that—the psalmist speaking his mind as easily as Nathanael does—because whatever weakness it springs from is brought under God’s authority by the closing verses:

22 Search me out, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my restless thoughts.
23 Look well whether there be any wickedness in me and lead me in the way that is everlasting.

The psalmist rejoices that God knows him as well as He does, because He knows that God can make his life better. He will not try to hide from God, but wants God to see even the things he thinks and says and does does that don’t please God, because then God can help him do better. As God corrects his mistakes, He finds the psalmist co-operating. ‘When you find wickedness in me, dear Lord, lead me away from it, root it out and put me back in the way that leads to everlasting life.’

God knows already that we are not perfect, that we have turned our thoughts away from Him. He knew it before we did. He does not call us to confess our sins because He needs to know what we are like, but because we need to admit the truth about ourselves. For when we do, God can lead us in the way that leads to eternal life. That’s what God wants for us. That’s why we encourage people to seek Him. And the psalm assures us that there’s no better thing that any of us can do.

And Jesus assures us that this wonderful knowledge of us, even to the bottom of our hearts, that He has, is only the beginning—You will see greater things than these!

First Epiphany: Baptism of Our Lord

2012-01-08T07:12:00.006-05:00

Mark 1: 4-11

Good morning and welcome, the 15th Day of Christmas, as I like to mark that season all the way to Candlemas, which is the 40th Day of the season, the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple, on February 2. So the seasonal calendar will roll on for a while--though perhaps with all the Lords a-leaping and drummers drumming and swans a-swimming the Christmas season feels about as full as it can be, and we’re back at work and school and ready to move on to the next thing.

On the 15th Day of Christmas my true love gave to me one large American Express bill, two pretty much dry Douglas Firs shedding needles on the living room floor, three boxes of family Christmas Cards not yet mailed--and a partridge in a pear tree! In any event, just five weeks until pitchers and catchers report to Bradenton for the beginning of spring training, and even with these frosty mornings and the football playoffs starting, some of us are already thinking about summer evenings at the ballpark . . . .

In the old Prayer Book and going back through the Anglican tradition to the 17th century the First Sunday after the Epiphany had in its one-year cycle of readings the familiar story about Jesus coming to Jerusalem during the Festival of the Passover.

Not the Holy Week story, but as a kind of anticipation and foreshadowing of the Passion, as Jesus at the age of 12 wanders away from his family and comes to the Temple and for the first time but not the last time stymies and astonishes and perhaps even challenges the Temple authorities, the learned scribes and Pharisees.

You remember this story. And when Joseph and Mary find Jesus they ask him what he is doing. And he replies, almost sharply, “Didn’t you know that I must be about my Father’s business.” And of course for Mary and Joseph there is the memory here of Angels and Shepherds and Magi--and then of Candlemas and Simeon right there in the Temple twelve years earlier, when Mary came with Joseph and the child for her ceremonial purification after childbirth, and another foreshadowing of the Passion. Lord now lettest though thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation. A light to lighten the Gentiles, the Glory of thy people Israel.” Mary takes all this in, Luke tells us, as she watches her young almost teenaged son, and ponders it all in her heart. A wonderful word. She “ponders” it.

In this context, to remember the traditional theme of the Epiphany and these Sundays after the Epiphany, how the One born in the obscurity of the Bethlehem stable is revealed to all nations and peoples as Lord and Savior.

The one who will be ever blessing, ever blessed--at whose name “every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess” as “Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

The new calendar and propers for these Sundays after the Feast of the Epiphany is more complicated, with a three-year lectionary pattern, and in the Episcopal Church now the in the calendar of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer we observe the Sunday after the Epiphany as the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord. This is a new observance at least on Anglican calendars, and relatively new on Roman Catholic calendars as well, but certainly one that makes sense within the framework of the season, and very dramatically as we see that unfold in the reading from St. Mark, as we hear John the Baptist in his sermon to the crowds by the Jordan anticipate Jesus. “The one who is more powerful than I is coming . . . . I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

And then of course we see this ourselves at the baptism of Jesus in the following verses, as the skies open and the Spirit descends and the heavenly voice proclaims “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” A word that would be repeated again on the Mount of Transfiguration. In case we missed it the first time, there with Peter, James, and John. “This is the one, this is my Son. Listen to him.”

Epiphany. The word itself has to do with seeing, “seeing through,” or perhaps with "shining" and "shining through"--and we use it all the time to talk about that sudden moment of insight, or of revelation. I puzzled and puzzled over that problem, and then while I was waiting for the bus suddenly I had an epiphany. I saw the answer. Here, “the” Epiphany. The One born in the obscurity of the Bethlehem stable is revealed to all nations and peoples as Lord and Savior.

It seems to me to be just right that we come to this season after the Epiphany and to this great theme in the first days of our secular calendar. We’ve turned a new page, started fresh at least as best we can. We have our New Year Resolutions, perhaps a new set of goals. Health, family and relationships, financial well-being, work, study. Accomplishments in the areas that are most important to us in our lives. And it’s an election year, and the life of our community and the nation and the world.

In that of course we reflect on substance and character and direction of our lives as Christian people. The beginning of a new year as good a time as any to step back, to give thanks to God for the blessings of our lives, to ask his care and protection, to seek healing and forgiveness and renewal. True for each of us individually, and meaningful for us as members of the Body of the Church as well, members of Christ’s Body.

Here in this parish, with the situations of our lives here, challenges and opportunities. In our diocese, and with all our challenges, and as we are looking to some important times of discernment and decision that we will have in the election of a new bishop this April, and all that will unfold around that. And in the context of our life in the wider Church and family of Christian people.

That it might be a year ahead for us that is all about Epiphany.

That we would pray that God would fill us with the grace and power, gentleness and strength, the insight, the faith, the love and generosity, the spirit kindness, of worship and service and thanksgiving, so that in us and through us, messed up as we are, the world might catch a glimpse. In great big ways at center stage, and in small ways at the margins, off to the side. It’s his work in us, of course. Not something we can pull off all by ourselves. As we conduct ourselves in our personal integrity, in our relationships to one another and to others, and most especially in our relationships to those with whom we have the most trouble. On the easy days and on the challenging days. In our stewardship of vast resources of time, talent, and treasure, and as we care for the widow’s mite. Each of us in our own way, and all of us working at it together as best we can.

Epiphany. In us, through us, all around us. A resolution for the fresh page of the calendar and the new year of our lives. The one born in the obscurity of the Bethlehem stable is revealed to all nations and peoples as Lord and Savior.

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

First Epiphany: Baptism of Our Lord

2012-01-08T07:12:00.002-05:00

Mark 1: 4-11

Good morning and welcome, the 15th Day of Christmas, as I like to mark that season all the way to Candlemas, which is the 40th Day of the season, the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple, on February 2. So the seasonal calendar will roll on for a while--though perhaps with all the Lords a-leaping and drummers drumming and swans a-swimming the Christmas season feels about as full as it can be, and we’re back at work and school and ready to move on to the next thing.

On the 15th Day of Christmas my true love gave to me one large American Express bill, two pretty much dry Douglas Firs shedding needles on the living room floor, three boxes of family Christmas Cards not yet mailed--and a partridge in a pear tree! In any event, just five weeks until pitchers and catchers report to Bradenton for the beginning of spring training, and even with these frosty mornings and the football playoffs starting, some of us are already thinking about summer evenings at the ballpark . . . .

In the old Prayer Book and going back through the Anglican tradition to the 17th century the First Sunday after the Epiphany had in its one-year cycle of readings the familiar story about Jesus coming to Jerusalem during the Festival of the Passover.

Not the Holy Week story, but as a kind of anticipation and foreshadowing of the Passion, as Jesus at the age of 12 wanders away from his family and comes to the Temple and for the first time but not the last time stymies and astonishes and perhaps even challenges the Temple authorities, the learned scribes and Pharisees.

You remember this story. And when Joseph and Mary find Jesus they ask him what he is doing. And he replies, almost sharply, “Didn’t you know that I must be about my Father’s business.” And of course for Mary and Joseph there is the memory here of Angels and Shepherds and Magi--and then of Candlemas and Simeon right there in the Temple twelve years earlier, when Mary came with Joseph and the child for her ceremonial purification after childbirth, and another foreshadowing of the Passion. Lord now lettest though thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation. A light to lighten the Gentiles, the Glory of thy people Israel.” Mary takes all this in, Luke tells us, as she watches her young almost teenaged son, and ponders it all in her heart. A wonderful word. She “ponders” it.

In this context, to remember the traditional theme of the Epiphany and these Sundays after the Epiphany, how the One born in the obscurity of the Bethlehem stable is revealed to all nations and peoples as Lord and Savior.

The one who will be ever blessing, ever blessed--at whose name “every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess” as “Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

The new calendar and propers for these Sundays after the Feast of the Epiphany is more complicated, with a three-year lectionary pattern, and in the Episcopal Church now the in the calendar of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer we observe the Sunday after the Epiphany as the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord. This is a new observance at least on Anglican calendars, and relatively new on Roman Catholic calendars as well, but certainly one that makes sense within the framework of the season, and very dramatically as we see that unfold in the reading from St. Mark, as we hear John the Baptist in his sermon to the crowds by the Jordan anticipate Jesus. “The one who is more powerful than I is coming . . . . I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

And then of course we see this ourselves at the baptism of Jesus in the following verses, as the skies open and the Spirit descends and the heavenly voice proclaims “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” A word that would be repeated again on the Mount of Transfiguration. In case we missed it the first time, there with Peter, James, and John. “This is the one, this is my Son. Listen to him.”

Epiphany. The word itself has to do with seeing, “seeing through,” or perhaps with "shining" and "shining through"--and we use it all the time to talk about that sudden moment of insight. I puzzled and puzzled over that problem, and then while I was waiting for the bus suddenly I had an epiphany. I saw the answer. Here, “the” Epiphany. The One born in the obscurity of the Bethlehem stable is revealed to all nations and peoples as Lord and Savior.

It seems to me to be just right that we come to this season after the Epiphany and to this great theme in the first days of our secular calendar. We’ve turned a new page, started fresh at least as best we can. We have our New Year Resolutions, perhaps a new set of goals. Health, family and relationships, financial well-being, work, study. Accomplishments in the areas that are most important to us in our lives. And it’s an election year, and the life of our community and the nation and the world.

In that of course we reflect on substance and character and direction of our lives as Christian people. The beginning of a new year as good a time as any to step back, to give thanks to God for the blessings of our lives, to ask his care and protection, to seek healing and forgiveness and renewal. True for each of us individually, and meaningful for us as members of the Body of the Church as well, members of Christ’s Body.

Here in this parish, with the situations of our lives here, challenges and opportunities. In our diocese, and with all our challenges, and as we are looking to some important times of discernment and decision that we will have in the election of a new bishop this April, and all that will unfold around that. And in the context of our life in the wider Church and family of Christian people.

That it might be a year ahead for us that is all about Epiphany.

That we would pray that God would fill us with the grace and power, gentleness and strength, the insight, the faith, the love and generosity, the spirit kindness, of worship and service and thanksgiving, so that in us and through us, messed up as we are, the world might catch a glimpse. In great big ways at center stage, and in small ways at the margins, off to the side. It’s his work in us, of course. Not something we can pull of all by ourselves. As we conduct ourselves in our personal integrity, in our relationships to one another and to others, and most especially in our relationships to those with whom we have the most trouble. On the easy days and on the challenging days. In our stewardship of vast resources of time, talent, and treasure, and as we care for the widow’s mite. Each of us in our own way, and all of us working at it together as best we can.

Epiphany. In us, through us, all around us. A resolution for the fresh page of the calendar and the new year of our lives. The one born in the obscurity of the Bethlehem stable is revealed to all nations and peoples as Lord and Savior.

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

Epiphany

2012-01-06T07:37:00.004-05:00

The Journey of the Magi
~ T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Holy Name

2012-01-01T06:58:00.007-05:00

Luke 2: 15-21

On the Eighth Day of Christmas my true love gave to me: eight maids a-milking, seven swans a-swimming, six geese a-laying, five golden rings, four calling birds, three French hens, two turtledoves, and a partridge in a pear tree.

Blessings to all on this Eighth Day, continuing wishes for a Merry Christmas and now a Happy New Year as well, as today we remember by way of our Church Calendar the FIRST Eighth Day of Christmas, as in the 21st verse of the second chapter of St. Luke. The Circumcision of our Lord. The Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus.

When I was in college I was invited to a bris. The traditional gathering in a Jewish home for the ceremony of the circumcision, which is performed by a trained religious leader called a Mohel, and the event as I experienced it mostly something like a baby shower. A gathering of family and friends, with gifts for the newborn and his or her family, cocktails and hors d’ouvres. But at the center, this ancient prayer and ceremony and memory.

From the seventeenth chapter of Genesis: God says to Abraham, “I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly . . . . Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations . . . . I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come forth from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you. And I will give to you and to your descendants after you, the land of your sojourning, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God. As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you throughout their generations. Every male among you shall be circumcised . . . . He that is eight days old among you shall be circumcised; every male throughout your generations . . . . So shall my covenant be in your flesh, an everlasting covenant.”

And so, Joseph and Mary, on the Eighth Day of Christmas. St. Luke reminding us again that the story of Jesus isn’t some new story but is instead the continuation of and more importantly the fulfillment and perfection of the ancient sacred story of God’s covenant with Israel. Something we see again on the Holy Mountain as Jesus is revealed in his Transfiguration in the company of Moses and Elijah. The fulfillment, the embodiment of Torah and the Prophets.

On the Eighth Day of Christmas. The name Jesus, Yeshua, as given by the Angel Gabriel to Mary back in the first chapter: “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 for ever; and of his kingdom there will be no end.” (As God said to Abraham, “I will make nations of you, and kings shall come forth from you.”)

I know when our kids were born Susy and I gave a lot of thought about the question of a name. I think most parents do. Thinking about connections in family, or historic or ethnic traditions, about saints and heroes, ancient and contemporary, sometimes just about the music of the words. Daniel after my great-grandfather, and remembering the brave and visionary prophet of the Bible, and Daniel in the Lion’s Den. Linnea after Susy’s aunt, a beautiful Swedish name, the lovely wildflower the Swedish Botanist Linnaeus named after himself.)

Yeshua wasn’t a rare or unusual name, but one rich in meaning. The same name in the Old Testament story with a slightly different spelling, Joshua, the successor of Moses, who was the one finally to lead the Chosen People from their wanderings in the wildnerness into the Promised Land. The name itself coming from the Hebrew words meaning something like “The LORD saves.” Sometimes given, “The LORD will be my deliverer.” This echoing what the Angel told Joseph in his dream in the first chapter of Matthew: “she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

Something about his name. Matthew hears with us in this the fulfillment of the Word of God to the Prophet Isaiah, in the seventh chapter, as the Prophet speaks to Ahaz the King, “Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” Which means “God with us.”

“But there will be no gloom for her that was in anguish. In former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he will make glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined. Thou hast mulitiplied the nation”—there, is again the promise to Abraham—“thou hast increased its joy.”

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder, and his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David, and over his kingdom, to establish it, and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will do this”

The Eighth Day of Christmas—and, perfectly, on our calendar as well, New Year’s Day. And as the old college dorm poster from the early ‘70’s reminded us, “Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life.” And before us the story all about a promise fulfilled and made true and real for us. Which is a call to worship and an invitation to a new way of life, in him. As we would hear that call and accept that invitation now, and in the New Year and all the years of our lives to come.

Unto us a child is born. Unto us a son is given.

So Paul in the second chapter of the Letter to the Philippians: “Have his mind among yourselves, which you have 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, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” The Eighth Day of Christmas. “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, 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.”

Blessings, then, as we gather for worship in this season of Christmas, and on the first day and the first Sunday of the New Year. May his name be on our lips and in our hearts and over our lives today and always.

December 30, 2011

2011-12-30T13:54:00.001-05:00

Holy Matrimony
Rebecca Ann Filipek and Anthony David Marinov

Tony and Becky, what a wonderful day, a beautiful evening. Your wedding day and always now your wedding anniversary in years ahead, the 30th of December, and on the calendar of the song of this season the Sixth Day of Christmas. And “on the Sixth Day of Christmas my True Love gave to me six geese a-laying, five golden rings, four calling birds, three French hens, two turtledoves, and a partridge in a pear tree.” And gifts and blessings in abundance, in this season of Christmas and as we are all ready this weekend to turn the page on the calendar and to celebrate the fresh beginning of a New Year, your first New Year together as husband and wife—and not just the beginning of a New Year but of this new chapter of your lives. I would say for myself and I know for all of us here this evening that it is a privilege and an honor and a gift and a blessing to share this evening with you, to be present as you exchange your vows and mark the formal beginning of this new adventure. Thank you for including us, and thank you most of all for all that you are together, and all that you share with us.

Of course I’ve known you, Becky, for many years, you and your family, and it has been really very enjoyable for me to spend this time over these last months with you both in preparation for this celebration and for your marriage. And Tony, it really has been great to get to know you during this time as well, and to begin to get a sense of you both together as a couple. A hint of who you will be together as husband and wife and family in the years to come. You are two thoughtful people. Both of you mature, sensitive, insightful. With a warm sense of humor. And I very much have appreciated the tenderness that you share with one another, and the sense of your friendship. Those are all such important parts of the foundation of the life you will be building now in a new way. And I know they are gifts that you will share with each other, and also with your families and friends in all the years ahead. I know when we first began to meet I thought, “this is a guy that seems just right for Becky, and she seems just right for him.”

Underneath and surrounding all of this of course the Christian family, the Church, has two words to describe what this is all about this evening as we celebrate your marriage: sacrament and vocation. In our Prayer Book service we have just heard the words, “the Covenant of Marriage was established by God in creation.” And that is a reminder for us that as we share this evening with you we are invited to see not only two people in love who are agreeing to share their lives together, but that we might see you as well sacramentally as outward and visible signs of something deeper. Echoing the reading you selected from the First Letter of St. John. “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God.” This is a moment when you in your marriage and we with you come closer to God and are drawn deeper into a knowledge and understanding and experience of who he is, and what the real meaning of life and of all creation really is.

And we’ve said as well that God has established marriage with a purpose in mind. A purpose for all the human family, but also with a specific purpose for both of you. In the Old Testament Book of Exodus there is one of my favorite stories, about a moment of life-changing experience, a “vocational” moment, in a way kind of like a wedding. Young Moses is working for his Father in Law, tending his sheep out in the wilderness, and one day he sees something off in the distance that looks strange to him. He moves closer and finally comes to this great big tree or bush that is on fire, fully engulfed in flames, burning and burning—but no matter how long it burns, it doesn’t burn out. He watches for a while, amazed at the sight, and then all at once a great, deep voice comes from the flame. (I like to think it was the voice of James Earl Jones.) “Take off your shoes, Moses, for the ground on which you are standing is holy ground.” Holy Ground

We don’t actually have to take off our shoes here this evening. But I want to say that we might do so at least in our imaginations for a moment. Because the great reality here is that just as Moses at the Burning Bush came into the presence of God and discovered what the call on his life was that God had in mind for him, so here, for you. It was the beginning of a new chapter for Moses. A chapter in which he would play a key role in fulfilling the great plan that God had for his people. And so here, for you. “Take off your shoes. For the ground on which you are standing is holy ground.” God calls you into this relationship of marriage this evening, Becky and Tony, because he has work for you to do. We only see hints of what that will be in these beginning moments, but we do know that he has a great plan for your life together from this day forward. May you know and experience that reality this evening, in this place, on this holy ground--and in all the days you will share together in the years to come.

Now as Tony and Becky come forward to exchange the vows that will make them husband and wife, I would invite all of us to bow our heads in a moment of silent prayer for them, that God will care for them, bless them, and protect them as they enter this new chapter of their lives together.

The Rev. Dr. Bruce M. Robison

At Midnight, Christmas Eve

2011-12-25T07:52:00.003-05:00

Propers for Christmas (III):
Isaiah 52: 7-10; Hebrews 1: 1-12; John 1: 1-14

Come to Bethlehem and see him whose birth the angels sing; come, adore on bended knee Christ the Lord, the newborn King.

Grant, O heavenly Father, that what we have sung with our lips we may believe in our hearts, and may always steadfastly fulfill. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Grace and peace to you this night, and we would all pray together that in the music that we hear and sing and in the words of Holy Scripture, in our prayers and in our silence and in the living presence that our Lord shares with us at the Holy Table we may know and experience blessing, peace and joy. That in a world and in lives that can be broken and full of anxiety and hurt there would be for us his gentle and tender embrace. For this midnight hour, and then in all the hours and days to come. In this place, and in all the corners of our lives. Home, work, neighborhood. The wide world. Grace and peace.

The text for my sermon this evening from the first verse of the Letter to the Hebrews, as we have just heard Ed read it: “In these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.”

The articulation of Christian faith can seem challenging at times. Theologians can fill libraries and artists and poets and preachers can do their part. Preachers and pastors and evangelists, Sunday by Sunday, in cathedrals and parish churches, in quiet conversations and in debate in the public square. Doctrines and dogma, Creeds and Confessions. All important, even essential to the life and work of the Church, to communicate the gospel far and wide and from one generation to another.

But all beginning here. “In these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.”

The sun sets over the village. And something happens in the stable. Emmanuel. God with us. Another way of expressing what we have heard also tonight in the first chapter of St. John: “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.”

It is, to use a word that we’ve heard a lot lately in other contexts, an occupation. St. John’s Greek is a word that means “to pitch a tent.” “To set up camp.” The Word became flesh. And pitched his tent. He doesn’t phone it in. No conference call. No virtual meeting. He comes himself. The banner in the sky: Occupy Bethlehem! And tonight all the world is Bethlehem.

Not by force, not with coercion. But in weakness. In emptiness. At the farthest edge, in the back, out of the way. Simply a child crying in the distance, in the night. And the quiet invitation. Come and see.

Everything is here, in him. All the news we’re going to need to hear.

And as we see him born this night we also walk with him and watch with him and travel all the way to the Cross with him. Following at a distance in heart and mind. Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing. In his weakness our strength. In his brokenness our healing. You shall call his name Jesus, because he shall save his people from their sins. A transformational occupation. In his life, our life and our hope for this life, and for the life of the world to come. All beginning here.

In these last days he has spoken to us by his Son. The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us. The brightness of his glory, the glory of the Father, the express image of his person, upholding all things by the word of his power.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, had a great line in his Christmas message this year, about how “in the complete mess of the first Christmas , God says, ‘Don’t worry-I’m not going to wait until you’ve got everything sorted out perfectly before I get involved with you.’”

In the complete mess. The mess of our world. War and rumors of war. Economic and social and political turmoil. The mess of our lives. Our relationships. Our mixed feelings. Doubts. Hesitations. Things done and left undone. Miserable offenders. No health in us. We have only a glimpse into the turmoil of the lives of Mary and Joseph. The conflicts and struggles of their minds and hearts. We have no idea at all who those shepherds were. The challenges of their lives. Their hopes and fears, their questions.

And then--the sky is filled with angels.

Nobody in this story is ever really ready. I sometimes say, “I wish Christmas didn’t always happen at such a busy time of year. If only there weren’t so many things going on. If only we had more time.” And you should see the adventure of the St. Andrew’s Church Office in the week before Christmas. Not pretty.

Those of us who are poets or philosophers, thinkers, skeptics, inquirers, might find ourselves asking questions about what the meaning of Christmas might be. What’s the message? But of course the whole point is that there is no “what” to talk about, really. Just a knocking at the front door.

The question is and can only be about “who is the meaning of Christmas.” Who is the message?

In the first hour of creation God spoke the universe into being by a word. And in this hour he speaks by his living presence.

It’s all Jesus here tonight. Manger and Cross. The crowded stable. The Empty Tomb. The Scriptures. The sacred music. The Bread and Wine on the Table. All Jesus. As he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed forever. Though not perhaps in the way we might have expected. While we are still weak, while we are still broken, while we are still wandering. More lost than we would care to admit.

Before we’ve got everything "sorted out perfectly." Because that’s never going to happen if we’re left to ourselves. Before we’re ready. Born for us. In Bethlehem. Behind that Traveler’s Inn. Lying there on the straw.

Sometimes it seems that we were so unready, that it’s not even that we didn’t know who we were waiting for, so much as that we didn’t even know that we were waiting, at all.

And then when there is this knocking at the door, when the invitation comes, it seems out of the blue. Unexpected, undeserved, unearned. Unto you is born this day in the city of David a savior. In these last days. This night. Any night. Every day and night. Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing. And here he is, for us.

Welcome, Lord Jesus.

May this night be a blessing for you. May his Word find a place to be received, to be welcomed, in our lives, our homes, our minds, our hearts. To be born in us.

And may it be for you, and for those you love, grace, peace, forgiveness, mercy, hope, and a Merry Christmas.

A Reading for December 24

2011-12-24T08:07:00.009-05:00

Take a good heart, O Jerusalem: for he that gave thee that name will comfort thee.

Miserable are they that afflicted thee, and rejoiced at thy fall.

Miserable are the cities which thy children served: miserable is she that received thy sons.

For as she rejoiced at thy ruin, and was glad of thy fall: so shall she be grieved for her own desolation.

For I will take away the rejoicing of her great multitude, and her pride shall be turned into mourning.
For fire shall come upon her from the Everlasting, long to endure; and she shall be inhabited of devils for a great time.
O Jerusalem, look about thee toward the east, and behold the joy that cometh unto thee from God.

Lo, thy sons come, whom thou sentest away, they come gathered together from the east to the west by the word of the Holy One, rejoicing in the glory of God.

Put off, O Jerusalem, the garment of mourning and affliction, and put on the comeliness of the glory that cometh from God for ever.

Cast about thee a double garment of the righteousness which cometh from God; and set a diadem on thine head of the glory of the Everlasting.

For God will shew thy brightness unto every country under heaven.

For thy name shall be called of God for ever The peace of righteousness, and The glory of Gods worship.

Arise, O Jerusalem, and stand on high, and look about toward the east, and behold thy children gathered from the west unto the east by the word of the Holy One, rejoicing in the remembrance of God.

For they departed from thee on foot, and were led away of their enemies: but God bringeth them unto thee exalted with glory, as children of the kingdom.

For God hath appointed that every high hill, and banks of long continuance, should be cast down, and valleys filled up, to make even the ground, that Israel may go safely in the glory of God,

Moreover even the woods and every sweetsmelling tree shall overshadow Israel by the commandment of God.

For God shall lead Israel with joy in the light of his glory with the mercy and righteousness that cometh from him.

Baruch 4:30 - 5:9

Christmas Eve, 2011

2011-12-24T07:33:00.001-05:00

Out of the Ash

Solstice of the dark, the absolute
Zero of the year. Praise God
Who comes for us again, our lives
Pulled to their fisted knot,
Cinched tight with cold, drawn
To the heart’s constriction; our faces
Seamed like clinkers in the grate,
Hands like tongs—Praise God
That Christ, phoenix immortal,
Springs up again from solstice ash,
Drives his equatorial ray
Into our cloud, emblazons
Our stiff brow, fries
Our chill tears. Come Christ,
Most gentle and throat-pulsing Bird!
O come, sweet Child! Be gladness
In our church. Waken with anthems
Our bare rafters! O phoenix
Forever! Virgin-wombed
and burning in the dark,
Be born! Be Born!
William Everson (Brother Antoninus, O.P.), 1912-1994

Fourth Advent, 2011

2011-12-18T06:26:00.005-05:00

II Samuel 7: 1-11, 16; Luke 1: 26-38

It is a simple but also poetically and symbolically suggestive observation that the word Bethlehem, the little town of our Savior’s birth, is drawn from two Hebrew words, for “house” and “bread.” I’m not sure if that’s because in some deep background of prehistoric antiquity this was a village of bakers. Names and titles don’t always come about in such obvious and literal ways. But the echoing is nonetheless interesting and meaningful in a devotional way. We never have one thing at a time, and the journey through these midwinter days and nights from Nazareth to Joseph’s hometown connects us even now on the Fourth Sunday of Advent to that gathering as he took the bread in his hands and said “this is my Body, given for you.” The manger itself the Holy Table, where in our hearts and minds the hard wood of the Cross becomes real for us, where he has given himself for us and for many for the forgiveness of sins. His Mercy Seat. The home of his abundant generosity and healing and blessing.

The reading from Second Samuel builds a long line of connection from the story of King David to the story of his son King Solomon. As we hear this passage this morning we of course know already that Solomon built a great Temple on the holy hill of Zion. But we know as well that the true home of the Lord of heaven and earth is in the hearts of his people, where he is and will be enthroned forever.

And in the womb of Mary is the Word made flesh. As we noticed last week with the beautiful Clara Miller Burd Annunciation window just outside this Chapel. Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with you.

Many streams, flowing together, contributing to a deeper river of meaning. At 11 o’clock this morning, as you can see in your leaflets, the whole story will unfold right up the center aisle of St. Andrew’s Church. The Angel Gabriel. Mary and Joseph, angels and shepherds, the Baby in the Manger. The Star. The Wise Men from the East, at the end of their long journey.

It’s hard to think of a story that we’ve heard more often. A child is born in Bethlehem. The town that is called “House of Bread.” Long ago and far away. And yet it is certainly true as well that every time we hear it, when we tell it to our kids and when they tell it back to us, it is fresh and new. And it is like hearing it all again for the first time.

As we turn from this Fourth Sunday of Advent, and begin the last part of our journey toward Christmas again this year, may he indeed be born again into our lives, may he find his home in our hearts, and may we be fed and nourished and sustained by him.

Third Advent, Gaudete, 2011

2011-12-11T06:37:00.002-05:00

Isaiah 61: 1-4, 8-11; John 1: 6-8, 19-28

Gaudete in Domino semper: iterum dico, gaudete.

St. Paul, in the fourth chapter of Philippians, in St. Jerome’s great Vulgate Latin translation of the Bible, and for so many centuries in the great Churches of the West the choral Introit for this Third Advent Sunday. Gaudete. Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I say, rejoice!

That’s where this Sunday gets its name, “Gaudete Sunday,” and the pink or, more precisely, “rose colored” candle on the wreath a sign for us of the tender blessing and joy we experience as we turn in our hearts and minds toward Bethlehem and begin to anticipate the birth of our Savior, whose name, the Prophet told us, would be Immanuel, “God with us.” In some churches it’s not only the candle, but also the paraments and hangings and vestments as well, “rose colored.” Which can be quite beautiful. As Dean reminded us last Sunday, we do a lot of “frolicking” in the observance of this season, but in this Advent what we are invited to is something less ephemeral, deeper. Joy.

Third Advent is a Sunday as well where on the stage of our imaginations Mary steps forward. The traditional antiphon for the day is from the Magnificat, and when I was reviewing the music for this morning I was very glad to see that Peter had chosen as our choral introit that lovely 16th century setting of the Angelus, the prayer of the words of the Angel Gabriel at the Annunciation: “Hail, Mary, full of grace. Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.” We would pause as I’m sure many of us do often by the Nativity Window in the Transept and to see in the left panel the beautiful art-nouveaux style representation of the Annunciation by the stained glass artist Clara Miller Burd. One of the artistic and I think spiritual treasures of St. Andrew’s, and this the perfect Sunday of the year to notice and appreciate it again. Gaudete in Domino semper. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I say, rejoice.

In the reading from Isaiah the Prophet reaches back into the deep past and memory of the Biblical tradition to speak of the present and the future. In the Book of Leviticus and the Law and Torah revealed at Sinai there is a description of what was called the Year of Jubiliee. It’s a part of what is sometimes called the “Holiness Code.” The elaboration of ceremonies and practices that are intended to set apart Israel and give evidence of their identity as God’s Chosen People.

Central to the Holiness Code was the observance of the Sabbath. When God’s people would share with God in God’s perfect rest and Shalom. And if the Sabbath day was the seventh day, then the Sabbath year was the seventh year, and the Sabbath of Sabbath, seven times seven, 49 was set apart as a commandment of God as the Year of the Lord’s Favor. A festival year, a long sacred holiday, in which the fields were to lie fallow, in which debts were to be forgiven, indentured servants released from their bondage, prisoners set free, lands and other property given as collateral on loans returned to the original owner. A time of restoration and healing and renewal. Joy and peace, rest and celebration. The Sabbath Vision. And as this was a commandment of God for his people in the ordering of their economic and social lives, their family and political lives, so the Jubilee was a reflection of God’s deepest care for his people, a foretaste and anticipation of his intention and his blessing, at the heart of his Covenant relationship with them.

It’s not known whether a Year of Jubilee was ever in fact practiced among the ancient people of Israel, but its description in scripture was a sign for them of what God’s peace and God’s righteousness was all about. If it was aspirational in terms of how we should live with one another, it was also word of promise about what God will do. A promise Isaiah saw beginning to be fulfilled in his present moment, in the return home, after long years of refugee life in exile, in the reading this morning. A Jubilee moment. And a promise that the people would hold in their thoughts and prayers and imagination. God’s intention and promise, to be brought about in a complete way in the future, in the coming of the Messiah, God’s anointed one. The word “rejoice” here too, for Gaudete Sunday:

I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.

This is what is swirling in the background in the reading from John’s gospel this morning. God’s Sabbath, God’s Shalom. As Dean also reminded us in his sermon last Sunday, the Baptist here is at the center of these middle weeks of Advent. Last week we heard the sermon preached on the banks of the Jordan, “Repent.” A great word. I don’t know the nuances in Hebrew or Aramaic, but in Greek a wonderful word. “Metanoeite.” Translated “repent,” which is I guess a correct translation. But to unpack it. It’s not just about saying we’re sorry for something we’ve done. “Meta” means “another.” You have “physics” and then you have another kind of physics, “metaphysics.” And noeia, from the word meaning “thought” or “idea” or even “mind.” We have words like “paranoid,” which would be a thought or idea or state of mind that is disordered or separate from the right way of thinking. John the Baptist tells the people in this great imperative, “Metanoeite! It means a lot more than an expression of regret over some failure or omission or bad act, though it may include some of that. Change your mind, get a different idea, even a different state of being. Repent of the old way of being who you are, and begin to think and be something new.”

A few chapters ahead in John’s gospel Jesus gets at this idea himself when he tells Nicodemus, “you must be born again.” That’s what this word “repentance” means. To say, as we approach the Feast of the Nativity, that for him to be born, so we also must experience a new birth.

And I suppose that John’s ministry of baptism in the Jordan had a lot of associations. A reminder of the ritual washings for purification in Jewish ceremonies of the day, and of the symbolic baths that converts to Judaism would take in preparation for their reception into the community. Wash away the impurities and corruption and prepare to be made presentable, to be admitted to the holy place, where God abides. But in the Jordan also a reminder of how the Chosen People entered the promised land by crossing through that river, to become Israel, God’s people, and even a reminder of their passage through the waters of the Red Sea. To come through the water a symbolic fresh start, an amniotic journey.

What’s going on here? The question the priests and scholars ask John the Baptist this morning. What in the world do you think you are doing? Are you the one God is going to use to bring in his new kingdom, the Sabbath of Sabbaths, the Year of His Favor? Are you the one? And here on this Third Advent Sunday, of course, John steps back, and points to another, the one who is about to appear.

What it takes is a new mind, a new heart, a new birth. Metanoia. Repentance. Because what God has done in Christ and what God is about to do in our lives and in our world is a new thing. He has come to the help of his servant Israel, for he has remembered his promise of mercy. The promise he made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children forever.

The exiles return home. What was taken from them is returned. What was broken is repaired. Better than new. Where there was sickness, strength and well-being. Injustice and oppression are overturned, righteousness and kindness reign over all. Wars cease, and there is a fullness of peace and prosperity.

Third Advent Sunday, and we can see it all unfolding in the days ahead. Shepherds and angels. The Manger and the Cross. The Church School was rehearsing the Children’s Pageant yesterday, getting ready for next Sunday. About the most familiar story in the world. But every year, and every day of our lives, always fresh and new. A child is born in Bethlehem. For us. God with us. Gaudete. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice!

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

St. Andrew the Apostle

2011-11-30T08:15:00.000-05:00

Patron of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Highland Park, Pittsburgh

(Greek: Ανδρέας, Andreas), called in the Orthodox tradition Protocletos, or the First-called, is a Christian Apostle and the elder brother of Saint Peter. The name "Andrew" (from Greek : ανδρεία, manhood, or valour), like other Greek names, appears to have been common among the Jews from the second or third century B.C. No Hebrew or Aramaic name is recorded for him.

The Bible records that St Andrew was a son of Jonah, or John, (Matthew 16:17; John 1:42). He was born in Bethsaida on the Sea of Galilee (John 1:44). Both he and his brother Peter were fishermen by trade, hence the tradition that Jesus called them to be his disciples by saying that He will make them "fishers of men" (Greek: ἁλιείς ἀνθρώπων, halieis anthropon). At the beginning of Jesus' public life they occupied the same house at Capernaum (Mark 1:21, 29).

From the Gospel of John we learn that Andrew was a disciple of John the Baptist, whose testimony first led him and John the Evangelist to follow Jesus (John 1:35-40). Andrew at once recognized Jesus as the Messiah, and hastened to introduce Him to his brother(John 1:41). Thenceforth the two brothers were disciples of Christ. On a subsequent occasion, prior to the final call to the apostolate, they were called to a closer companionship, and then they left all things to follow Jesus (Luke 5:11; Matthew 4:19-20; Mark 1:17-18).

Click here to read more.

ALMIGHTY God, who didst give such grace unto thy holy Apostle Saint Andrew, that he readily obeyed the calling of thy Son Jesus Christ, and followed him without delay; Grant unto us all, that we, being called by thy holy Word, may forthwith give up ourselves obediently to fulfill thy holy commandments; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

When the Apostles went forth to preach to the Nations, Andrew seems to have taken an important part, but unfortunately we have no certainty as to the extent or place of his labours. Eusebius (Church History III.1), relying, apparently, upon Origen, assigns Scythia as his mission field: Andras de [eilechen] ten Skythian; while St. Gregory of Nazianzus (Oration 33) mentions Epirus; St. Jerome (Ep. ad Marcell.) Achaia; and Theodoret (on Ps. cxvi) Hellas. Probably these various accounts are correct, for Nicephorus (H.E. II:39), relying upon early writers, states that Andrew preached in Cappadocia, Galatia, and Bithynia, then in the land of the anthropophagi and the Scythian deserts, afterwards in Byzantium itself, where he appointed St. Stachys as its first bishop, and finally in Thrace, Macedonia, Thessaly, and Achaia. It is generally agreed that he was crucified by order of the Roman Governor, Aegeas or Aegeates, at Patrae in Achaia, and that he was bound, not nailed, to the cross, in order to prolong his sufferings. The cross on which he suffered is commonly held to have been the decussate cross, now known as St. Andrew's, though the evidence for this view seems to be no older than the fourteenth century. His martyrdom took place during the reign of Nero, on 30 November, A.D. 60); and both the Latin and Greek Churches keep 30 November as his feast.

El Greco, St. Andrew, 1606

St. Andrew's relics were translated from Patrae to Constantinople, and deposited in the church of the Apostles there, about A.D. 357. When Constantinople was taken by the French, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, Cardinal Peter of Capua brought the relics to Italy and placed them in the cathedral of Amalfi, where most of them still remain. St. Andrew is honoured as their chief patron by Russia and Scotland.

Click here to read it all in The Catholic Encyclopedia

Advent, 2011

2011-11-27T07:37:00.000-05:00

Annunciation

Salvation to all that will is nigh;
That All, which always is all everywhere,
Which cannot sin, and yet all sins must bear,
Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but die,
Lo, faithful virgin, yields Himself to lie
In prison, in thy womb; and though He there
Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet He will wear,
Taken from thence, flesh, which death's force may try.
Ere by the spheres time was created, thou
Wast in His mind, who is thy Son and Brother;
Whom thou conceivst, conceived; yea thou art now
Thy Maker's maker, and thy Father's mother;
Thou hast light in dark, and shutst in little room,
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb.

John Donne (1572-1631)

Advent Sunday, 2011

2011-11-27T07:28:00.004-05:00

Mark 13: 24-37

Good morning, friends, and on this holiday weekend we would greet one another not simply with a “Happy Thanksgiving,” but with a “Happy New Year.”

Seems a little out of synch, I know. But we are all familiar with the fact that the calendar of the Church Year in our Christian family turns on a different cycle from the secular calendar, and this Advent Sunday is the springboard, new and renewing in the seasons of our lives, as we are launched once again into the great pattern and narrative of the Holy Story. We look across the Sundays of Advent to Christmas and Epiphany, Lent and Holy Week and Easter, Pentecost and Trinity Sunday out there on the far distant horizon.

With prayers always that as we move through this deeply familiar cycle and pattern and travel this long road together once again there will be this year and each year a deepening in our minds and our hearts of knowledge and spiritual understanding, an opportunity for each one of us to grow in grace and love, in tenderness of heart and holiness of life, a spirit of mercy and forgiveness, knowing Christ and making him known, and in hopeful expectation of what God has for us in this life and in the life to come.

Having said all that, we would just say this morning that “Happy New Year” may not be the most helpful or appropriate greeting for Advent Sunday. Perhaps with the background images of holiday festivities, parties, champagne, and swinging around the dance floor to the wonderful music of Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians. “Happy.”

I love all those things about New Year’s Eve, and then a New Year’s Day of football games on the television and pork and sauerkraut and all the traditional observances of that holiday. But Advent Sunday is different, as we hear the deep poetry of Archbishop Cranmer’s collect—in my opinion anyway one of the most elegant and graceful and beautiful sentences in all the literature of the English language. For more than 500 years this the theme and guiding motif of the New Year in our Anglican family: give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility.

So we’re shopping for presents and enjoying holiday parties and wonderful meals and fun wintertime family activities, which is all fine and good. But the Church here is inviting us to begin the year together in what I would call a deeper place and a more serious place. At a point of decision-making about the fundamental values and loyalties and commitments that shape our identity. Who we are, and whose we are, and how we live that out, in our minds and our hearts, by word and deed. Casting away the works of darkness. Turning to the Father. Receiving from him as a gift, a new garment, the armour of light.

As we have our Advent wreath before us in this season we have begun to hear one version of the meaning of each of the candles and each of the weeks of this season. But just to say that from ancient days the four great themes of this season are death and judgment, heaven and hell. Four Sundays, four candles of the wreath. Which perhaps will catch us by surprise for a moment. Not the kinds of things we are especially likely to think about while we’re standing in line with the kids waiting to visit Santa at the department store. “Happy New Year” indeed! But again this ancient message of the Church to say that these are the four great topics that are essential for us to consider as we prepare ourselves to celebrate the awesome and breathtaking and even terrifying mystery of the Nativity of our Lord, and the miracle of Incarnation.

It isn’t so much about sleigh bells and snowflakes. Not even about a beautiful Church building and a magnificent choir and all the traditional gatherings of family and friends. More about cutting to the chase. About moving past gimmicks and unrealities and illusions, self-deception, superficialities, any spirit of denial. Which we all have and own in abundance. Getting down to brass tacks. Ultimate concerns. Last things. To ask what we’re really here for, anyway. Not just the presenting circumstance. The easier rationale. Of hope, a hope that is founded on something real and substantial, that comes as a gift from the only one who can give this gift, and that comes to rest in a sincere and deep place in our heart.

Death and judgment, heaven and hell. The point isn’t to stir up some kind of anxiety, some fear that a heavily armed policeman is going to swoop down upon us to catch us, to hurt us. The point is instead that death has been overcome, that the judgment is given on our behalf, that the crisis of heaven and hell has become now for us the promise of life. Forgiveness, and healing, mercy and blessing and life eternal.

Not about anxiety, not about fear. But if it could be in this new year to bring up in us instead a sense of longing. To meet the one who comes with healing in his wings, light and life. The Desire of Nations—one of his great titles. To say as we turn to this new year that what aches in us and what weighs us down shall all be lifted up and transformed. That the God who in Christ has begun this new work will bring that work to completion in a way that is beyond our understanding, but not beyond our desiring, not beyond our hope.

About that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep away—for you do not know when the master of the house will come . . . .

Happy New Year, then, for us all, this Advent Sunday. What we’re really here for. Not far ahead, the Traveler’s Inn, the Stable, the Baby in the Manger. The Angels singing. The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight. Once again this year, we’ll get there before we know it. Never quite ready, but excited nonetheless. Standing on tiptoes, looking forward.

Like the Shepherds rushing down from the surrounding hill country, to see this new thing that God has done. This new thing that changes everything.

Happy New Year indeed.

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

Advent, 2011

2011-11-27T07:26:00.002-05:00

A lovely meditation and overview of Advent, from the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Advent, 2011

2011-11-26T17:12:00.001-05:00

For a couple of years now I've posted this lovely poem by Jude Simpson as an introductory meditation for Advent.

St. Andrew the Apostle

2011-11-20T06:28:00.003-05:00

Patronal Festival: St. Andrew the Apostle (tr. from 11/30)
Deuteronomy 30: 11-14; Psalm 19: 1-6;
Romans 10: 8b-18; Matthew 4: 18-22

Good morning all, and grace and peace on this day. Especially a warm word of welcome to visitors and friends, and of course to our good friends once again this year of the Syria Highlanders Pipe and Drum Band. It is always just so enjoyable to have you with us, and we are very glad indeed that as you share in our ministry today we are able to share with you in your support of the Shriners’ Hospitals for Children. A great cause, and thank you for your creative and meaningful service on its behalf.

By custom going back at least a few decades the people of this parish have set aside the Sunday before the Thanksgiving holiday to observe our patonal festival, the Feast of St. Andrew the Apostle, moving or “translating” the observance from its official date on the calendar, November 30, to this Sunday. This our “name day,” then, and if on Whitsunday in the spring we observe the birthday of the Church, this day is one we can lift up for our own local celebration: bagpipes and cookies and a time of celebration that stands for me anyway as something of the gateway to the season ahead, with Thanksgiving and then Advent Sunday and all the way to Christmas and the New Year ahead . . . .

I guess I would say that we don’t have any record that I know of, any that our historian Marilyn Evert has shared with me, anyway, about the process of deliberation that our parochial ancestors may have engaged in, in the winter and spring of 1836 and 1837, as they prepared to leave their spiritual home and the warm embrace of Trinity Church and to venture out to the planting of a new congregation. There are obviously lots of candidates that might have been considered.

Why Andrew? Or so we might wonder. Back in the early part of the 19th century the descendants of the hard-scrabble Scotch-Irish farmers who had settled much of this region a generation or two earlier were still one of the dominant ethnic and cultural groups, of course—though by the 1830’s the population was beginning to have a much stronger Germanic bias. And in any event, those Scotch-Irish were mostly Presbyterians, not Episcopalians. But perhaps the selection of Scotland’s patron saint was a nod in that direction.

My own preference, though, is to think about Andrew more thematically than in terms of nationality or ethnicity. Who he was as a follower of Jesus, as we meet him in the New Testament. And there of course we get just a few stories. But stories that are quite compelling. This morning’s reading from St. Matthew gives us this glimpse of the beginning of Andrew’s life as a disciple, as he and his brother Simon Peter are called from their boats by Jesus with this great vocational promise, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

In the first chapter of St. John’s gospel there is another story in which it is Andrew who meets Jesus first, and who invites his brother to come to meet Jesus, saying “We have found the Messiah.” In John also a little further on in the sixth chapter there is the story of the time when Jesus was teaching and a great crowd had gathered in a deserted place, and we read there that it was Andrew who brought to Jesus the little boy who had in his knapsack the five loaves and two fish. From which, the great miracle of the Feeding of the Multitudes. Later too in the twelfth chapter it is Andrew to whom the inquiring Greeks first come, saying first to Philip that wonderful line, “Sir, we would see Jesus.” And then Philip goes to Andrew, and it is Andrew who then brings them all to Jesus.

And stepping away from scripture, there are these ancient traditions of Andrew, in the life of the Pentecost Church, traveling out as apostle and evangelist to Scythia, which is modern Kazakhstan and Russia. And then. Martyr, as we see by the traditional X-shaped cross on which he was crucified. Witness. So as our old friend St. Francis said, “Preach always. When necessary, use words.” Clearly Andrew was proficient as an evangelist both in word and deed.

I like to think myself that all this is what was somehow rumbling around in our ancestors’ minds as the question of a patron for a new parish in the rapidly growing and expanding city of Pittsburgh was being discussed. Vibrance and vitality, stretching to reach more with the Good News, to be witnesses, in words and in action, living signs of his presence in this expanding community.

In the 1880’s there was the foundation of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, which is the oldest mission and evangelism society in the Episcopal Church. And I know just in the past couple of weeks I’ve been thinking a good deal about the time I spent in ministry at St. Andrew’s Church in State College Pennsylvania. A parish that was founded by a chapter of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew at that time at St. John’s Church in Bellefont. And I wonder how many of the “St. Andrew’s” Churches you would find across the Episcopal Church founded in the 20th Century had a beginning in that way. Probably quite a few. St. Andrew got around, and he is in this way still moving around. In the days of the Pentecost Church, and back at the beginning of the 19th century, and here with us this morning.

The Psalm appointed for the Feast of St. Andrew, Caeli enarrant, it’s Latin title, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” A great line and theme for this day, as the pipers fill this place with song.

Andrew was always meeting people, connecting with people—family, friends, co-workers, fellow-travellers, complete strangers—and day by day what his gift seemed to be was that through him and his words and his life and service, there was for them good news. It wasn’t about Andrew. He’s never the star attraction, the one at center stage or in the spotlight. But in all these stories, to meet Andrew is to find your way to Jesus. To stand in his presence and to come to know him as Lord and Savior.

We’re our own quirky expression of that I think. We would aspire to be, in this time and place. Where Christ in his gracious presence blesses us with compassion and forgiveness, healing, grace and peace, and a vision of a future hope. In the end it wasn’t ever about St. Andrew, and of course in the end it isn’t about “St. Andrew’s,” either, but about the one we meet, who calls us into relationship and discipleship and to the beginning of a new life of faith.

A hundred and seventy-four years ago or so a brave and bold group of Christian missionary people set out to begin a new work here in this our City of Pittsburgh. Not to hide the light under the bushel basket, but to shine in a new way. To declare the glory of God and to fill the heavens with new voices, as our choir and we all of us continue to sing all these years later. And to extend that word of St. Andrean invitation that has rolled on down through the years and centuries. To say, “I have someone I want you to meet. He’s the one we’ve been waiting for.”

Twenty Second after Pentecost: Baptism

2011-11-13T06:50:00.002-05:00

Proper 28A2
Zeph. 1: 7, 12-18; Mt 25: 14-30
Baptism of Cole Alessandro West

A hint of winter in the early morning air, and the leaves mostly down, and the afternoon turning toward night earlier and earlier, and so all the signs of the year coming to an end. Almost as though the turn of the season is trying to echo thematically the weight of this season of the Church Year, which is informally named “Pre-Advent.” Before the wheel can begin its next upward arc, it all will need to complete the cycle and fall at last into the point of rest.

The lessons this morning look to the end. The Final Accounting. The Last Judgment. Dies Irae, the Day of Wrath. When the lights come on, and when there is no place left to hide, and when we are seen and known exactly as we are. No costumes, no make-up. Zephaniah talks about those who say to themselves that “the Lord will not do good, neither will he do evil.” He’s just going to leave us alone to do as we please. Well, we’ll see. Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps that echoed as we think about the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25. To think about how in our own sense of stewardship and accountability and trust we also may live in deep denial. In the fourteenth chapter of St. Luke Jesus says, “from him to whom much has been given, much will be expected.” Yet it does seem like we live all our lives, most of the time, as though that master will never return. As though there will be no last chapter to the story. As though we will be able to keep kicking the can down the road forever. It’s hard not to make some connections here to the horrible story out of Penn State in these last days.

As they say in the Twelve Step groups, “Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt.” It is a deep and broad river, and one we all do a fair amount of swimming in . . . . If you think he isn’t coming. Well, think again.

At least that is the perspective of the Prophet, persistently the word of scripture both Old Testament and New. A call to wake up, before it’s too late. To get our act together. To put our relationships in order. Relationships to one another and our relationship to God. With honesty and integrity. Walking the walk if we’re going to talk the talk. There is a day coming, says the prophet. There is a day coming, says Jesus in the parable, when the one who returns will call us in and take out our books and check the accounts. If there is a sense of urgency that we can feel in that.

The contrast for us is pretty dramatic. Fall turns toward winter and our thoughts turn toward last things, and then all at once there is a splash of water in the font and a prayer and a dab of spiced oil. And we are drawn especially here at St. Andrew’s to turn our eyes up over the High Altar to see that lovely window by Louis Comfort Tiffany, and to hear the words of Jesus. “Bring the children, don’t turn them away.” And to see him take them up into his arms and bless them. And to hear a promise in that, God’s promise, in Jesus.

I love the T.S. Eliot poem East Coker, part of the Four Quartets series, as it begins.

In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth.

And the last few lines:

Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

Can we hold it all in our minds? Contradiction and mystery. Beginnings, endings, all folded in on one another. Birth and death. Decay and renewal. And this morning, God bless him indeed: Cole West. What a mystery and contradiction he is. Each one of us are. Brother, son, grandson, nephew, cousin, new Christian life here today, mid-November and not just the end but in the end the beginning, and the journey to Bethlehem and already if we can hear them in the distance over the bagpipes of St. Andrew next Sunday, the angels singing to shepherds on the hillside about this new thing God has done. And already if we can hear them from here, in all that distance, the soldiers laughing and talking among themselves, without a care in the world, as they lift their hammers and begin to drive in the nails. Contradiction and mystery. Endings and beginnings.

As Jesus asked us to do. A splash of water and a prayer and a dab of spiced oil, and a November morning. May the whole story of our salvation open in our minds and rest in our hearts. Call us to an awareness of our brokenness, stir up in us our desire to repent and be reconciled, bring us to himself in all refreshment and renewal beyond all beginnings and all endings.

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

St. Andrew's Lecture, 2011

2011-11-12T10:52:00.002-05:00

The Fourteenth Annual St. Andrew's Lecture was presented last evening by Dr. Philip Harrold, Associate Professor of Church History at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania. The audience for the Lecture this year--which was co-sponsored by the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh--included a rich mix of parishioners of our East End Episcopal and Anglican Diocese congregations, clergy, and faculty and students from Trinity School for Ministry and the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. All to commemorate and celebrate the 400th Anniversary of the publication of the King James Version of the Holy Bible. The Lecture itself was fascinating, the questions that followed were thoughtful, and the reception afterwards was most enjoyable indeed. We expect that a video file of Dr. Harrold's lecture will be available via the St. Andrew's website, www.standrewspgh.org , in the next few weeks.

Englishing the Scriptures and Evangelizing the Nation:
The Theology of Translation in the King James Bible
by Philip Harrold, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Church History
Trinity School for Ministry, www.tsm.edu

St. Andrew’s Lecture, Friday, November 11, 2011
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Highland Park, Pittsburgh, PA
[this lecture will be published in a forthcoming volume of Trinity Journal for Theology & Ministry,
Trinity School for Ministry, Executive Editor: The Rev. Dr. Grant LeMarquand]

Translation it is that openeth the window, to let in the light…
[from the Preface to the Authorized (King James)
Version, 1611, par. 05]

This is perhaps the most quoted line from the Preface to the Authorized (King James) Version in its original 1611 debut. It is itself a window to the mind of the King James translators and their astonishing achievement—one that we continue to celebrate even in this 400th anniversary year. It is also a window to the ongoing task of translation and the many blessings and challenges this presents to Bible readers in our own day.

In terms of its reception, the King James Version is, by far, the most successful translation of the Scriptures in the modern era. It has been “authorized” as much by its popularity as any explicit sanction from the powers of church or state. It was practically the only Bible that English-speaking Protestants read from 1670 to 1885, and only after 1986 did another English translation—the New International Version—begin to edge it out. Even in today’s burgeoning market for modern English Bibles, the ‘good ol’ King James’ retains a venerable luster, its diction still dignified, if somewhat dusty, when heard in our solemn assemblies.

But what about that dustiness? We acknowledge, of course, that the singularity and sonority of the Authorized Version are no longer the claims to fame they once were. Numerous historians and literati have acknowledged, and in some cases mourned, the loss of the King James’ near universal status. No longer do we look to this text as the principal source of a common religious language—one that always seemed old and therefore reliable, uniquely deserving of God’s word. That is not my concern this evening, however. While its decline in status is itself a fascinating topic for discussion, its remarkable ascendency presents us with quite another range of issues that are equally pressing and provoking—especially concerning the nature of religious language and the challenges we always face in conveying what God has said.

In revisiting the Jacobean world, I hope to show you the kind of window that this text opened, in terms of its Englishing the Scriptures and evangelizing the nation —its theology and praxis of translation. In my view, the King James Bible’s achievement is best explained by tracing its distinctive clarity and richness to a non-naïve hermeneutics of trust. We need not venture far beyond the scriptural texts themselves to see this; I will focus most of our attention, in fact, on the Preface from which I have already quoted. Finally, because I am more a historian than a theologian, I will call very briefly upon two brilliant theologians for help: Rowan Williams and, of course, Bob Dylan.

Let’s begin by noting the urgency that surrounded the production and dissemination of English Bibles in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-centuries. It is well to remember that biblical scholarship, translation, and literacy were foundational to the Protestant Reformation. “[N]othing could be more important,” Adam Nicolson observes, “than a text which was both accurate and intelligible.” From the onset, English Protestants struggled to find a translation that everyone—Puritan and high churchman alike—could read in common and with confidence as true to the word of God. John Tyndale’s covert translation in the 1520s had been associated with the vernacular Bibles of peasant uprisings on the Continent or, closer to home, the machinations of troublesome weavers and wool merchants who had financed its printing and smuggling into England. No wonder it was banned, as all vernacular Bibles had been banned since the 1408 Constitutions of Oxford. Even loyal churchmen like John Colet, dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral-London, had been barred from preaching in 1513 for having translated the Lord’s Prayer into English.

Ironically, the first officially approved English Bible—the Matthew Bible, which Henry VIII endorsed in 1537—was largely Tyndale’s work. But like its successors, most especially the Puritan-sponsored Geneva Bible (some 20 years later), it contained copious study notes—over 2,000 in all!—with a scandalous Puritan slant. Not unlike today’s study Bibles, it told the reader how to interpret the biblical text, often in a way that was decidedly at odds with the sensibilities of the Anglican establishment. Ultimately, it was the marginalia, as much as the translations of particular words in the text, that sealed the fates of these early English Bibles.

The immediate recourse was to scale back on margin notes which, of course, raised questions concerning the locus of authoritative interpretation. Another maneuver was the publication of enormous folio-sized Bibles that were simply too big to carry around or too expensive for ordinary people to afford. This led to the appropriately named Great Bible in 1539, and, interestingly, this is how the King James Bible first appeared in 1611. In the intervening years, the Bishops Bible (1568) had been promulgated as the official English version for the Church of England, but it was decidedly royalist and anti-Puritan, beginning with the crowded frontispiece showing Queen Elizabeth and her hierarchy of bishops. It also happened to be chocked full of inaccuracies that embarrassed the Church and exasperated its Puritan critics, inspiring even more enthusiasm for the more refined, yet proscribed, Geneva Bible.

So, by the time of an unprecedented gathering of Puritans and Bishops at Hampton Court Palace in 1604, England was deeply unsettled regarding the prospect for an English Bible that could satisfy all sides in an increasingly fractious Church and literate public. Little wonder, then, that when a moderate Puritan scholar by the name of John Reynolds (president of Corpus Christi College-Oxford) proposed a new English translation, the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Bancroft immediately spoke in opposition: “If every man’s humor were followed,… there would be no end of translating,” he retorted. The king, still quite new to the English throne, responded more favorably, knowing that a new translation might serve his magisterial concerns for order and stability. A superior text might also displace, at long last, the Geneva Bible with its notes “very partial, untrue, seditious, and savoring too much of dangerous and traitorous conceits.”

Accordingly, James I expressed his wishes concerning the authorizing of a new English translation:

His Highness wished, that some especial pains should be taken in that behalf for one uniform translation… and this to be done by the best learned of both the Universities, after them to be reviewed by the Bishops, and the chief learned of the Church; from them to be presented to the Privy Council; and lastly to be ratified by his Royal authority; to be read in the whole Church, and no other.

Note the king’s expectations regarding the quality and scope of the work to be undertaken as well as the tight control required to pull it off. Premier scholars from the Universities and oversight of the whole of the Church’s hierarchy, the king’s council, and his own authority as royal governor were lined up to safeguard the project. In keeping with his personal motto, “blessed are the peacemakers,” James I envisioned a Bible that would unify, rather than divide, elevate, rather than succumb to the baser instincts of partiality in an age already ridden with “insistent individuality.” In satisfying a constituency that was torn between a penchant for the word and a fearful clinging to the power of symbol, James set in motion what would eventually become his only lasting achievement in the religious life of his people: a vernacular Bible for the whole English nation.

Englishing the Scriptures in the terms set forth by James I meant taking full advantage of the inherent fluidity of the language in order to evoke the grandeur of sacred writ and the legitimacy of a sacred office—the divinely appointed king. Everyone knew that the chief reason he found the Puritans’ Geneva Bible so repulsive was that it finessed the wording of certain passages in such a way as to accentuate the failings, especially the tyrannies, of rulers. The word ‘tyrant’ was, in fact, used more than 400 times where other terms for monarchs could have been used just as well. We have to remember that the king’s conceit was monumental: “If you will consider the attributes of God,” he later informed Parliament, “you shall see how they agree in the person of a king.” Not surprisingly, he expected his Bible to bless his crown, if only through the subtleties of word choices and phrasing.

But there was another side to the king that proved, in the end, to be of tremendous benefit to the work of translation. His personal interest in the Scriptures encompassed a deep appreciation for the power of language, especially religious language, to evoke the “sparkles of divinity” that he likewise claimed for himself. Thanks, in part, to the literary prowess of his chief translator and supremely loyal subject, Lancelot Andrewes, James’s Bible was driven by the idea of majesty. Adam Nicolson explains:

[The King James Bible’s] method and its voice are far more regal than demotic. Its archaic formulations, its consistent attention to a grand and heavily musical rhythm are the vehicles by which that majesty is infused into the body of the text. Its qualities are those of grace, stateliness, scale, power. There is no desire to please here; only a belief in the enormous and overwhelming divine authority, of which royal authority, ‘the powers that be’ as they translated the words of St. Paul, was an adjunct and extension.

Thus, from a royal ideology arose a literary strategy that aimed at dignity and richness. And, in the hands of the king’s translators, this Jacobean agenda was in some ways redeemed by painstaking attention to the power of well-chosen words and delicately crafted phrases. In the midst of their well-supervised endeavor emerged a theory and, indeed, a theology of translation that has inspired the ongoing work of translation to this day.

Before we proceed to that topic, however, we need to say something about the actual work of translation. Time does not permit me to explore the intricacies of the translation process—a complex project that spanned a period of two years and nine months, involving some fifty translators divided into six so-called “companies,” each taking on a portion of the biblical canon and following a letter of instruction with 15 “rules” drafted by the king himself. The instructions began with an insistence that the Bishops Bible serve as the normative text—“to be followed, and as little altered as the Truth of the Original [languages] will permit.” Any precedents derived from the ancient Fathers for word choices were also to be preserved. Certain “ecclesiastical words” like ‘church’ and ‘priest’ were to be preferred over Puritan innovations like ‘congregation’ or ‘elder.’ And, most conspicuously, margin notes were not permitted except to explain Hebrew or Greek words that had no immediate English equivalent. The word ‘circumlocution’ was used in reference to this literary operation—a word that, in the early seventeenth-century, referred to an interpretation that “set forth a thing more gorgeous, or else to hide it.” That is to say, “the words of this translation… could embrace both gorgeousness and ambiguity.” This, according to Nicolson, was “the heart of the new Bible as an irenicon, an organism that absorbed and integrated difference, that included ambiguity and by doing so established peace.”

Now let us turn to the theological implications of this project as they are laid out for us in the original Preface to the King James Bible. A moderate Puritan—a court Puritan, no less—by the name of Miles Smith was given the honor of writing the piece, “buoyant with enthusiasm and with a quality that can only be called grace.” Before serving on the First Oxford Company, which was assigned the Old Testament prophets, Smith had distinguished himself as a classical scholar and “orientalist” (fluent in ‘Chaldiac, Syriac, and Arabic’) while enjoying the benefices (endowments) of a prebendary at Exeter Cathedral and the rectory of Hartlebury in Worcestershire. He was also recruited to make the final revision of the Old Testament, a daunting task, no doubt, but one that he performed well enough to earn the favor of the king himself. The “gentle reader” addressed throughout the Preface is the English man and woman who share the king’s “zeal to promote the common good”—that opening phrase of the Preface that identifies so readily the civic function of the new Bible.

Smith’s Preface demonstrates, in fact, the literary via media of the project: avoiding the excessive “scrupulosity” that he himself attributed to fellow Puritans while, at the same time shunning the “obscurity of the papists.” There remains, however, a desire for clarity, on the one hand, and richness, on the other, and once we get past the language of commonweal we see this dual quest expressed in overtly evangelical terms. This can be illustrated in the three fundamentals of Smith’s theology of translation: the logic of illumination, the Spirit of the Word, and the sense of the words.

The Logic of Illumination

In his “praise of the Holy Scriptures,” Smith draws a kind of flowchart of derivations on which all work of translation depends: “But now what piety without truth? What truth (what saving truth) without the Word of God? What Word of God (whereof we may be sure) without the Scripture?” Did you catch that? Piety derives from saving truth which derives from the sure Word of God which derives or, in this instance, depends somehow on the Scriptures. We can assume, quite reasonably, that in the final link of this golden chain, Smith is thinking about the illumination of Scripture to the reader, not its inspiration. No Puritan, and certainly no Calvinist, would have subordinated God’s Word to written words (Scripture); that would, after all, undermine the authority of the Scriptures themselves. No, this is not a declaration of Scripture’s authority so much as it is a description of Scripture’s effects.

The logic inferred in this statement retraces what happens in the encounter between the reader and the biblical text. As we read the Scriptures, he says, we encounter saving truth in the sure Word of God. The results we call piety, for the “high and divine” words make us wise unto salvation, instruct us when we are ignorant, “bring us home” when we are “out of the way,” reform us when we are “out of order,” comfort us when in “heaviness,” “quicken us” when “dull,” and “inflame us’ when “cold.” These effects are evidence of the unique “perfection” we find in Scripture, and Smith is happy to turn to the early Fathers to amplify his point; Tertullian, Justin Martyr, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Saint Basil all bearing witness to the “fullness” of the biblical text. Smith’s gentle readers are reminded of the pantry of “wholesome food,” and the “physician’s shop” of remedies that awaits them as they turn to the life-giving and life-healing Word in the written words. Indeed, he declares, “happy is the man that delighteth in the Scripture, and thrice happy that meditateth in it day and night.”

The Spirit of the Word

This entire operation is, of course, a work of the Holy Spirit. It is crucial that Smith situate all aspects of reader response in a robustly Trinitarian framework. At this point, he weaves the always pressing issue of authority back into the picture:

The original thereof being from heaven, not from earth; the author being God, not man; the indicter, the Holy Spirit, not the wit of the Apostles or Prophets; the penmen such as were sanctified from the womb, and endued with a principal portion of God’s Spirit; the matter, verity, piety, purity, uprightness; the form, God’s Word, God’s testimony, God’s oracles, the Word of truth, the Word of salvation, etc., the effects, light of understanding, stableness of persuasion, repentance from dead works, newness of life, holiness, peace, joy in the Holy Ghost; lastly, the end and reward of the study thereof, fellowship with the saints, participation of the heavenly nature, fruition of an inheritance immortal, undefiled, and that never shall fade away . . .”

What a lively scene (!), moving from God’s authorship, the Word of truth and salvation coming down from heaven, and the Holy Spirit’s convicting and convincing activities—all of this applied initially to the microcosm of the reader, then opening out to the fellowship of the saints; and from the reader in time, to the reader’s participation in the Trinitarian life for all eternity.

Here is the “window” that translation opens—the window that lets in the same light that we associate with illumination:

Translation it is that openeth the window, to let in the light; that breaketh the shell, that we may eat the kernel; that putteth aside the curtain, that we may look into the most holy place; that removeth the cover of the well, that we may come by the water, even as Jacob rolled away the stone from the mouth of the well, by which means the flocks of Laban were watered.

The work of translation opens windows, breaks shells, removes covers, and rolls away stones that would deny us access to the light, the kernel, the holy place, and the well of God’s Word. It does so by extending the activity of the Holy Spirit into the particular languages we speak in everyday life—the “vulgar tongue,” as it was called in Smith’s day, or what today we would refer to as the ‘vernacular.’ “Indeed,” he observes, without translation into the vulgar tongue, the unlearned are but like children at Jacob’s well (which was deep) without a bucket, or something to draw with…”

The Sense of the Words

Given the logic of illumination and the Spirit of the Word, Smith asserts with confidence that it is indeed possible to “deliver the sense” of the Word of God in the particular words and phrases of vernacular language. He makes his case with a short and someone gritty history of translation. Remembering that the Greek Septuagint, despite its imperfections, was good enough for the apostles: “the Word of God being set forth in Greek, becometh hereby like a candle set upon a candlestick…” The seventy translators were not “prophets,” he insists; rather, they were mere “interpreters” who did many things well, “yet as men” they stumbled and fell through oversight, ignorance, by unwarranted addition and subtraction as they set about their task. Even so, the Apostles discerned the sense in the Greek translation “according to the truth of the Word, as the Spirit gave them utterance.” History lesson number one: the work of translation is actually a work of interpretation, and no interpretation is perfect due to the limits of the human condition. Nevertheless, the Spirit delivers the sense of the Word.

In the early church, new translations appeared, especially in Latin. The best work was marked by reliance on the “fountains” of the original Hebrew or Greek and a certain set of virtues associated with the task itself: “great learning, judgement, industry and faithfulness.” Jerome, of course, fit the profile nicely, but Smith is quick to note that the writer of the Vulgate was not the only translator in the Patristic era. John Chrysostom and Theodoret, and countless individuals working in Syria, Egypt, India, Persia, and Ethiopia—even the Venerable Bede in England—were busily turning out the Scriptures in vulgar tongues. Clearly the second lesson to learn from this history is that translating the Word of God into a mother tongue “is not a quaint conceit lately taken up…” Furthermore, the best work of translation has, from antiquity, always been done for evangelical purposes: to edify the unlearned “which hungered and thirsted after righteousness, and had souls to be saved.” Translators are after the sense of the Word that saves.

In the medieval period, Smith finds these lessons lost on a Roman Church that cared less for its children by depriving them of the “light of the Scripture.” Up to the present day, the papacy had required special licenses from local bishops and “Inquisitors” to read the Scriptures in English. Recalling such Roman tyrannies, Smith’s energetically Protestant side appears in a sudden burst of gratitude to James I for so graciously permitting the new Bible, especially with all previous translations so “maturely considered and examined.” And in that careful examination, it can be demonstrated—to the chagrin of the “Romanists” who refuse to hear and dare to burn the Word translated—that “the sense and meaning, as well as man’s weakness would enable,” has indeed expressed the Word by “the Spirit of grace.”

So the third and final lesson to learn from the history of translation is that God’s saving purposes will not be thwarted by those who shun the light of His Word. And of more immediate importance, the human fallibility evidenced even within “the house of God” is insufficient to impede the ongoing task of translation. For, as history has shown, “nothing is begun and perfected at the same time, and the later thoughts are thought to be the wiser: so if we building upon their foundation that went before us, and being holpen [sic] by their labors, do endeavor to make that better which they left so good; no man, we are sure, hath cause to mislike us; they, we persuade ourselves, if they were alive, would thank us.” In effect, Smith is expressing his confidence in the continual operation of the Holy Spirit such that an abiding “sense” of the Word can be discerned with ever increasing refinement. That is about as close to a self-congratulatory pat-on-the-back that we get as Smith concludes his historical argument.

* * *

We have seen how the logic of illumination, the Spirit of the word, and now the sense of the words constitutes the theology of translation that, according to Miles Smith, guided the work of the King James translators. I would now like to conclude with some thoughts on the ‘Englishing’ and the ‘evangelizing’ that accompanied this work. This also prompts some final reflections on the theory of translation that originated in this theology and its implications for you and I as gentle readers of the Bible today.

You will recall that clarity and richness were to be the hallmarks of the new translation. Given the limited use of margin notes, the text was itself to reflect what Smith calls a “variety” or “diversity of sense.” We have just learned that ‘sense’ was a profoundly spirited understanding of how the written words served the divine Word. But in the word-smithing of the translators, ‘delivering the sense’ also stood for a particular kind of literary technique. Instead of resorting to margins that prompted readers to dogmatize the Scriptures, Smith and his colleagues sought out words and phrases that evoked, where possible, a rich multivalence of meaning within the text. In a very practical way, this brought the burgeoning vocabulary of the English language into the service of communicating the sense of God’s Word. This was not an Englishing of the divine Word into ordinary, everyday prose, however, but the elevation of carefully selected vocabulary to a vitalizing level of sonority and dignity. As the translators, according to Nicolson, “plumbed and searched for the essence of the meaning,” they opened a window to majesty and multiple layers of meaning and signification.

Surprisingly, the King James Bible manifests this majesty through an economy of words and a rigorous attempt at literal or word-for-word translation. There is a “passionate exactness” to the word choices that had an aesthetic as well as a moral value that would satisfy a lingering demand in the Reformed tradition for “high fidelity reproduction.” But always the meticulous attention to word choices was governed by the sound(s) of the words and their visual evocations as much as their meaning. This meant that some words were chosen for their metaphorical value and, in fact, their ambiguity. Imagine a room of twelve- to fifteen divines all rattling off these words and phrases to audibly test their impact on fellow listeners. Such exercises, Nicolson concludes, were as much about euphony as accuracy—“if it sounds right, it is right.” If this can be properly called a literal approach to interpretation, it is certainly extraordinary in its attention to the atmospherics of words and what some might call the “dynamic equivalence” of metaphor.

Englishing the Scriptures was always, however, an evangelistic enterprise that had communal and, according to James I’s intentions, national implications. Smith is unflinching in his determination to produce a Bible that not only exercises the “wits,” and weans “the curious from loathing” the “plainness” of the text, but also “stirs up … devotion to crave the assistance of God’s Spirit by prayer.” In this regard, the “variety of translations” [within the new Bible] was profitable because it brought readers together as “brethren” in “conference” to “find out … the sense.” He imagines a communal hermeneutic—perhaps one that even widens to the scale of the nation. And it is a trusting and, indeed, trustworthy hermeneutic that achieves its coherence and discerns the “sense” with the necessary aid of the Holy Spirit. Ultimately, it is this sort of encounter with the Word that removes “the scales from our eyes, the veil from our hearts, opening our wits, that we may understand his Word, enabling our hearts, yea correcting our affections, that we may love it above gold and silver, yea that we may love it to the end.”

I promised that I would end with Rowan Williams and Bob Dylan. What, perhaps, is most remarkable about Miles Smith’s four-hundred year-old Preface to the King James Bible is how its aspirations continue to fire the imaginations of those committed to the ongoing work of translation. We live in an age that can seem both parched and flooded in its religious language. We bring to our texts—both sacred and profane—a penchant for intellectualization and analysis that can confuse what was clear or reduce what was rich. Think of those Dylan songs that beg some sort of direct experience:

Now I wish I could write you a melody so plain
That could hold you dear lady from going insane
That could ease you and cool you and cease the pain
Of your useless and pointless knowledge.
Smith’s vocabulary of deep wells and replenishing buckets of living water has a certain resonance about it. Certainly we live in an age when our “useless and pointless knowledge” often get in the way of meaning, of “delivering the sense” of the thing.

Rowan Williams speaks to this in his own lecture commemorating the King James achievement, and what he says about the work of translation is true, I think, for the faithful reading of Scripture in general. “To translate,” he says, “is to be taken up into the divine act of uncovering, deciphering the world, God’s ‘publishing’ of a readable text in which we can see both the meaning of what he has done and the present effects of it.” That is, indeed, the logic of illumination that Miles Smith assumed in concert with the Spirit of the Word, yielding the sense of the words. May that noble ambition be our own today as we, by God’s grace, we continue to English the Scriptures and evangelize the nations.

November 12, 2011

2011-11-12T08:40:00.001-05:00

Holy Matrimony
Jessica Lynn Spaid and Timothy Edward Schweinberg
Canticles 2:10-13, 8:6-7; I Corinthians 13

Tim and Jessica, what I want to say first to you, and I know I’m speaking for all the family and friends gathered here this afternoon, is thank you. It is for us all, and for me personally, a privilege and a joy to be sharing this moment with you, to be with you as witnesses and as supporters and cheering fans as you exchange the vows and promises, the words, and the commitments of the heart, that will make you one in Christ, as husband and wife. It’s a great day! We’ve been thinking about it and planning for it and involved in all kinds of preparation for a while now, and when we started this date seemed a ways away—but now, time has flown by, and here we are. Congratulations to you, as I know the years of your friendship and deepening relationship have been rich in so many ways, and as I know that the story that is yet to be told of the life and family you will share as husband and wife will be a great one.

The lesson that you selected, first from the Old Testament book of Canticles, or the Song of Solomon, and then from St. Paul, First Corinthians 13, are wonderful and very appropriate readings for this day. The Song of Solomon is a love song, through and through, a poetic expression of the deepest passion and compassion of the human heart, as we know that in our deepest and most intimate relationships, and as we would understand through that, that we are for at least a brief moment in this world catching a glimpse of the deep love, the passion and the compassion, that is at the heart of God’s life, and that we are all ultimately destined for. This day, the commitments you bring, the words and promises, speak about who you are today, and also about who we are all destined to become, God’s hope and dream for each one of us since the beginning of the world.

Many waters cannot quench love, no flood can sweep it away; if a man were to offer for love the whole wealth of his house, it would be utterly scorned. The rarest thing of all, the most precious, the most fragile, the hardest to find and the easiest to lose, yet somehow also the most durable, the most patient, the most forgiving, the most welcoming. The mystery of a relationship that begins in a club listening to music and that evolves into friendship and then into love.

And First Corinthians 13, a letter St. Paul wrote to a Church whose members seem to have fallen into disunity, has become for generation after generation a kind of guide, or even we might say a recipe, for Christian living. It expresses a deep set of values rooted in the way Jesus lived his life. And it is meaningful for us in our Church life and public life together, and all our personal conduct, but then more intimately in our marriages and families. Patience. Kindness. Not envious or arrogant. Not resentful. But grounded in honesty and trust and a spirit of hopefulness. So wonderful to bring these forward on the day you begin your marriage.

Within the life of the Christian family we say that this day is for you a day of sacrament and vocation. A day when God begins to make something new out of you which is and will become an outward and visible sign of his grace and his love. And to be that, for each other, and for those who will be a part of your lives in the days and years to come, is a very high calling indeed.

In the Old Testament Book of Exodus there is one of my favorite stories, about a moment of life-changing experience, a “vocational” moment, in a way kind of like a wedding. Young Moses is working for his Father in Law, tending his sheep out in the wilderness, and one day he sees something off in the distance that looks strange to him. He moves closer and finally comes to this great big tree or bush that is on fire, fully engulfed in flames, burning and burning—but no matter how long it burns, it doesn’t burn out. He watches for a while, amazed at the sight, and then all at once a great, deep voice comes from the flame. (I like to think it was the voice of James Earl Jones.) “Take off your shoes, Moses, for the ground on which you are standing is holy ground.” Holy Ground

We don’t actually have to take off our shoes here this afternoon. But I want to say that we might do so at least in our imaginations for a moment. Because the great reality here is that just as Moses at the Burning Bush came into the presence of God and discovered what the call on his life was that God had in mind for him, so here, for you. It was the beginning of a new chapter for Moses. A chapter in which he would play a key role in fulfilling the great plan that God had for his people. And so here, for you. “Take off your shoes. For the ground on which you are standing is holy ground.” May you know and experience that reality this afternoon, in this place, and in all the days you will share together in the years to come.

Friends, as Jessica and Tim now come forward to the altar to exchange the vows that will make them husband and wife, I would ask that we would all take a moment to bow our heads and in our thoughts and prayers ask God to bless and keep them always in his love.

Bruce Robison

St. Andrew's Lecture, 2011

2011-11-11T16:34:00.005-05:00

Introductory Remarks: St. Andrew’s Lecture

It has become something of a custom for me to begin my opening remarks this way:

Dr. John Murray, of Duquesne University and the commission that crafted the Allegheny County Home Rule charter; Pittsburgh City Councilman and community activist Sala Udin; Dean of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral and co-founder of the Downtown Pittsburgh Partnership, the Very Rev. George Werner; WQED President George Miles; beloved Pittsburgh mayor, the Hon. Sophie Masloff; economist and writer, Linda Dickerson; director of the Mendelssohn Choir and Pittsburgh arts community leader, Dr. Robert Page; Judge and civic leader the Hon. Cynthia Baldwin; columnist Tony Norman; KDKA economics and political reporter Jon Delano; Church Historian Dr. Jeremy Bonner; Pittsburgh Urban League President Esther Bush. WQED documentary film maker Rick Sebak. That’s thirteen, and amazing!

Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends, and Neighbors. My name is Bruce Robison. I’m rector of St. Andrew’s Church, and it is my great pleasure to welcome you to this Fourteenth Annual St. Andrew’s Lecture.

St. Andrew’s has been a part of the City of Pittsburgh and the Episcopal Church in Pennsylvania, first in the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania at our founding in 1837 and in the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh since it was formed from Pennsylvania in 1867, so 172 years now, and it continues to be very much a part of our sense of identity and our mission and ministry to be a positive force for this neighborhood of Highland Park, where we’ve been since 1906, and for the Church in our diocese, our city and the whole region. The St. Andrew’s Lecture was founded to build on and extend that mission, as we have been proud to bring guests and speakers of note from our wider community to talk about life and work, to reflect on the past, to describe the issues of the present, and to say something as well about the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead for us.

In any case, it has become a wide and varied and very gifted tradition, this lecture, and I’m glad we can build on it in such a positive way this evening. I would mention that the Lecture is funded entirely from special gifts, from the proceeds of our annual Summer Book Sale, and from contributions received in baskets at each Lecture. This evening’s lecture is also co-sponsored by the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, and we are very thankful for a generous grant as a part of that co-sponsorship. It is important to us in any event that the Lecture can continue to be a free event for the whole community, and I thus happily encourage you to be generous in leaving a Free Will Donation in one of the baskets at the door this evening.

As you leave your contribution, I would also encourage you to fill out and leave in the baskets as well the brief survey form included in this evening’s program, which helps us know who came and how you found out about the program. The incentive for returning the form this year, appropriate for our evening, is that we will be having a drawing over at the reception after the lecture to give away a number of brand new copies of the King James Version of the Holy Bible.

The evening and program are planned and hosted by our Adult Programs Committee, and if those members of the committee who are here would stand, I’d like among them all to acknowledge the special contribution of the Committee’s secretary, Peg Ghrist, who does so much of the organization and communication that this event requires. I also want to recognize and acknowledge my friend and colleague the Rev. Dr. Philip Wainwright, retired rector of St. Peter’s in Brentwood, who serves as Priest Associate here at St. Andrew’s and who was invited by Bishop Price and our Standing Committee to be the Prime Mover in arranging this event and in recruiting our speaker to focus our diocesan observance of the King James Version anniversary. Finally, I would acknowledge with great thanks as well the work of Jinny Fiske and so many of the St. Andrew’s Hospitality Team, who have prepared a gala reception for us over in Brooks Hall.

To say now a word about this evening’s lecture.

A lot has been written on this topic this year, and it’s interesting just to type King James Version Anniversary into a search engine and to see the great volume of recent material.

I read somewhere: "The last Harry Potter book is said to have sold about 44 million copies. Quite remarkable. But the Book whose first publication we note this evening is said to have sold, 6 Billion."

We also read that "It has been called one of the two greatest works of the English language, rivaled only by Shakespeare. For many, it is the only Bible they consider "authentic." It was seven years in the making, the work of a 54-member committee, but within 90 years it had come to be known simply as the Bible."

As we have said, this year marks the 400th anniversary of the printing of the King James Bible, a work of religious, political and linguistic force that continues to shape the thinking and vocabulary of much of the English-speaking world.

Perhaps many of us will know some of the story. Enough to have in mind the rich, dramatic context, social, political, theological, spiritual, of Reformation Era English life, and really the long span from the end of the 15th century all the way to the middle of the 17th. In the midst of all that, the story of the English Bible is one that can be for us both illuminating and inspiring.

A 1978 graduate of the Olivet Nazarene University in Illinois, the University of Kansas, The Denver Seminary in Colorado, and with Ph.D from the University of Chicago Divinity School, Dr. Philip Harrold is Associate Professor of Church History of our Trinity School for Ministry just downriver in Ambridge, having served previously in the faculty of the Winebrenner Theological Seminary in Findlay, Ohio.

Dr. Harrold’s publications and research interests show a fascinating breadth. His doctoral dissertation studied the history of secularization of higher eduction in the United States, but he travels highways and byways from the Patristic era to the present, and with a special interest in Wesleyan and Anglican subjects. In all that, with strong contemporary application to the concerns for mission of the Church today—and to quote him directly, “The question he finds especially intriguing is, ‘how do we read the past for the sake of the present?’ In other words, how do we actually put into practice the idea that the history of the Church is a vital resource for Christian wisdom in our own time and place?”

The title of Dr. Harrold’s presentation this evening, as you can see in our program, is “Englishing the Scriptures and Evangelizing the Nation: The Theology of Translation in the King James Bible.” Following his talk we will remain for a bit to invite a little dialog, and perhaps launch with some questions that will catapult us from the 17th century to the present--so if there are questions that occur to you along the way, please do your best to remember them at the end. And then of course again we’ll have an opportunity to chat with each other informally at the reception.

Please join me to welcome, Dr. Philip Harrold.

Click Here to Go to Lecture

Veterans Day, 2011

2011-11-10T20:38:00.003-05:00

John Christopherson, my grandmother's older brother, died in the Great War and is buried in England. His photograph in uniform, taken at the drug store in Stanley, Wisconsin, shortly before he departed, always had a place of honor on my grandmother's bedroom bureau. On this Veterans' Day, with deepest thanksgiving.

From the Office of the Suffragan Bishop for Chaplaincies of the Episcopal Church

A Prayer for Veterans Day

Governor of Nations, our Strength and Shield:
we give you thanks for the devotion and courage
of all those who have offered military service for this country:

For those who have fought for freedom; for those who laid down their lives for others;
for those who have borne suffering of mind or of body;
for those who have brought their best gifts to times of need.

On our behalf they have entered into danger,
endured separation from those they love,
labored long hours, and borne hardship in war and in peacetime.

Lift up by your mighty Presence those who are now at war;
encourage and heal those in hospitals
or mending their wounds at home;
guard those in any need or trouble;
hold safely in your hands all military families;
and bring the returning troops to joyful reunion
and tranquil life at home;

Give to us, your people, grateful hearts
and a united will to honor these men and women
and hold them always in our love and our prayers;
until your world is perfected in peace

through Jesus Christ our Savior.

This prayer may be used as a congregational litany with the following responses to each stanza:

1. We thank you and praise you, our Strength and Shield!

2. We thank you and praise you, our Strength and Shield!

3. We than you and praise you, our Strength and Shield!

4. Watch over and keep them, Blessed Savior.

5. Hear our prayer in His Name. Amen.

Compiled by the Rev. Jennifer Phillips, Vicar, St. Augustine’s Chapel, University of Rhode Island campus. Her prayers appear in supplemental liturgical materials for the Episcopal Church and in her books of prayers including “Simple Prayers for Complicated Lives.”

With thanksgiving and continued prayers for all those in our extended St. Andrew's parish family who have served in the uniform of our country, and for those who serve now.

Bruce Robison

For All the Saints

2011-11-06T07:54:00.005-05:00

Sunday after All Saints Day (A)
Rev. 7: 9-12; I John 3: 1-3; Mt 5: 1-12

Good morning indeed to all the Saints of God on this All Saints Sunday, which is always intended to be observed as a high festival day on the calendar of the Church Year—and especially of course for us here in this congregation, as we have for a number of years now brought together not just one day but a full week of amazing celebrations, with special services and recitals, and all coming together in such a magnificent way, and such a meaningful way, in this choral and orchestral service of the Holy Communion.

It is truly a blessing, and I know I speak for so many in expressing a word of thanks to all who have made this week and this morning possible. And I would especially say thank you to Pete Luley, who rides herd over all this week, to Tom Octave and his creative leadership both last Tuesday evening and this morning, to our Choir and Choristers, the recitalists, Ed Helgerman and the Liedertafel Thursday night, Nathan Carterette and Rowena Gutan on Friday evening, and of course to Joanne Luchsinger and our instrumentalists this morning of the Pittsburgh Festival Orchestra, Dr. George Knight and our Friends of Music, Jinny Fiske, Ken Williams, Becky Usner, everyone who assisted with the hospitality of our receptions, Joan Soulliere, Jen Palmer, Mary Pat Luley. Readers, ushers, acolytes, Altar Guild. The list just goes on and on and on, and I know even so I’m missing lots of people. Again, simply to express such gratitude for so many gifts shared so generously and abundantly.

I think it’s difficult to get much of a straight line on the theological context of our celebration and observance. A year ago or so a number of us read as our St. Andrew’s summer book a long study by Bishop N.T. Wright on what the scriptures and especially the New Testament have to tell us about the life of the world to come. Interesting, and challenging, pushing back against some of our own inherited imagery and personal reflections and opinions. Surprised sometimes to find that some of what we thought we knew from the scriptures weren't actually there at all. And surprised to find what was there instead. Which is important, though also somewhat disorienting I think.

On this day we seem to know what it’s about almost instinctively, even if it’s not all that easy to tease out the scholarly footnotes. All the Saints.

In a few places in the Hebrew and Greek Old Testament this idea of a special category of individuals, sometimes referencing both the living and the dead, other times a way specifically of talking about those who have died. Particularly martyrs, those who have endured suffering and painful death in heroic witness to their faith.

Those are the ones St. John the Divine sees in the part of his vision we’ve read this morning. And then more generally those who have been exemplars of Christian life and obedience, faith and virtues. They are like role models, then. Reminders of the fullness of life we saints are called and invited to share in through our baptism, through the great work of Christ. To know what forgiveness, repentance, grace, new life can be all about, and glimpses of them here and now. The Church Year and the calendar year coming to an end, and then with a turn of the wheel to begin anew. And this all about what and who inspires us, about how the wind fills our sails.

I know I sometimes think about this season comes around. A famous quotation from the Rev. Billy Graham from a few years ago. He said, “Someday you will read or hear that Billy Graham is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it. I shall be more alive than I am now. I will just have changed my address. I will have gone into the presence of God.”

In any event: we sing the song. They lived not only in ages past, there are hundreds of thousands still, the world is bright with the joyous saints who love to do Jesus’ will. 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.

We don’t need a long sermon this morning. The music and the hymns do most of the good work that needs to be done, and perhaps if the imagery doesn’t all flow together into one consistent pattern, we will simply contain some messiness. The nature of human beings, how we think and feel and understand. If we will just turn to the right and to the left and take a good long look at one another. I know you all are such inspirations for me. My friends the Saints in this place. In prayer and in worship, lifting up voices in song all the way to the choirs of heaven. In silence, in spiritual reflection, in thoughtful study. In robust discussion. Witnesses of our Lord here in the East End of Pittsburgh, in Lima, Peru, now in these weeks sharing in the opportunity to rebuild the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Port au Prince, Haiti. In quiet and unnoticed acts of kindness and generosity, affection, friendship. The old year comes to an end, a new year about to dawn, and you inspire me. That we are privileged in these moments, imperfect as we are, to be vessels of God’s grace and goodness.

You know I love the line attributed to St. Francis: “Preach always; when necessary use words.” And that we would pause and thank each other for all the bright and beautiful sermons that get preached in and through this one small corner of the Christian family.

St. John the Divine sees the vision. “They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

There it is, and there he is. At the center of that great choir of holy martyrs and sacred witnesses, the multitude that no one could number, from every nation, and it is all about Jesus. The fixed star, the beating heart of all there is in earth and heaven. Source of light and life. In his life and his death for us, there is forgiveness and healing, cleansing, comfort, and blessing, and a kind of triumphant victory that even John seems to find too great or too beautiful or too holy for words.

We catch a glimpse, in word and sacrament and in one another, all this communion of saints, past and present, and leaning forward with some anticipation for those we haven’t met yet, but who will be a part of our future. We sing, we pray. With open hands we receive and share the gift of his life, the Bread of Heaven, the Cup of Salvation. This is an invitation that we might hear and receive this morning. With open minds, open hearts. We catch a glimpse into the heart of this mystery, that the one we would see is always and only Jesus.

Bruce Robison

Twentieth after Pentecost

2011-10-30T07:25:00.004-04:00

October 30, 2011 Twentieth after Pentecost, Proper 26A2
Micah 3: 5-12; First Thessalonians 2: 9-13; Matthew 23: 1-12

Good morning and grace and peace, as we move on into this fall weekend. Or is it winter already?

In any event, today just wanting to pause in our life together to think about who we are and where we are. Last Sunday morning our guests and friends Mary Beth Campbell and Colleen Dybble from our Mission Partners at Five Talents were visiting with us, and with thanks to Marty Federowicz and all the members of the Five Talents Prayer Circle for hosting the wonderful Harvest Brunch, as we were able to enjoy great food and conversation together and at the same time to raise over $1200 for the work of the Five Talents ministry in Lima, Peru, and of our missionary friends John and Susan Park, who serve at the Cathedral in Lima. A wonderful outpouring of generosity, as I know we’ll see again as we respond this morning to Bishop Price’s request, that we would share in a meaningful way in the work of rebuilding the Cathedral in Port au Prince, Haiti. So the baskets in the transept and on the Welcome Table in Brooks Hall, with copies of Bishop Price’s letter.

As you might imagine, one thing that Mary Beth and Colleen commented on with great enthusiasm last Sunday was the ministry of music here at St. Andrew’s, as they had the opportunity to be a part of a service led by our exceptional Choristers—who sang so beautifully. And they talked about the friendly and fun spirit of the time at lunch with all of us afterwards. And that of course reminds me of this week ahead, on our way toward All Saints Sunday a week from today. Beginning this coming Tuesday evening with a choral service of Lessons and Carols for All Saints, then Evensong on Thursday evening at 8 p.m. led by our Choristers, a Candlelight recital on Friday evening again at 8 p.m., and then next Sunday for All Saints, the Holy Communion, with orchestra, and the Schubert Mass in G Major. There’s a wonderful text by the 19th century Baptist hymn composer Robert Lowery– The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart, a fountain ever springing; all things are mine since I am his--how can I keep from singing? “How can I keep from singing.” Indeed, very much our motto around here. A lot to sing about.

It takes my breath away—so many gifts, in abundance, in this place, shared with one another in the name of and for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. As we come together to worship and to share our lives and our service. In the next few days we’ll all of us be receiving a letter from Heather Eng, our Senior Warden, to kick off the Annual Campaign for support of St. Andrew’s in 2012, and it seems to me to be so appropriate to have as the theme of the campaign this year “Deo Gratias, In All Things Giving Thanks to the Lord.” Certainly so much always to be thankful for in our life together, in all the complexities of our lives individually and as families--and as that campaign moves on now over the next few weeks I would as I did in a pastoral letter last week say again, how thankful truly I am for you—and the good gift that you have been in my life and for this community and for the life and work of the wider church. It is indeed a great place—St. Andrew’s. And I thank you for being a part in the great things God is doing here through you, and through all of us together.

So having said all that, I would just say a word to notice that there is a lot in the readings appointed for this morning that will be a little unsettling for the rectors of cardinal parishes. The priests and prophets on the other end of Micah’s oracular diatribe this morning are all pretty comfortably situated in the secure embrace of the establishment. Of high office in the court of the king, with prestige and power and wealth in all kinds of ways flowing from that. And they know who signs their paychecks – and Micah of course really calls them on the carpet for that here. As they cut and tweak and massage the message, to make it all more palatable. Someone once said that it is the role of the Church, or should be, to comfort the afflicted, and to afflict the comfortable. But of course so very often we’re the comfortable ones ourselves, and it is just easy to say the popular thing, the expected thing. To make it all just one big, friendly, mutual admiration society. To skip over the harder truths, the more convicting demands. To make sure the spotlight only catches us on our good days. Comforting the comfortable. Always making sure that if there’s any “afflicting” to be done, it’s being done to someone else. Over there. One of them.

But Micah says, no matter how much you massage the message, the chickens are coming home to roost. God is going to make his truth known and felt with power and authority, and no amount of pleasant verbiage or psychological anaesthetic will protect us from the consequences. A message for every establishment. Ancient and modern. Conservative and liberal. Protestant and Catholic, progressive and evangelical. If the message lets us stay comfortably where we are, if it confirms our presuppositions and tells us what we already knew to be the case, if it leaves us comfortably right where we are. Well, be careful.

There’s a funny old story in ecumenical circles about clergy vesting rooms. They say, you know, that in all clergy vesting areas in Roman Catholic Churches there will be prominently displayed a devotional painting of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. On the other hand, in many Protestant clergy vesting areas there will be a print of the wonderful 19th century Holman Hunt painting called “The Light of the World,” of Jesus standing by the home of the Christian, with the line from the Third Chapter of the Revelation to St. John, “Behold I stand at the door and knock.” Of course, in our Episcopalian vesting rooms, as the saying goes, there will always be a full-length mirror.

In the reading from Matthew Jesus certainly goes at the Pharisees and Temple leaders with some of the same energy that we heard in Micah. They may read the right prayers and sing the right songs. But pay attention to what happens when the liturgy is over and the scripts and costumes are put aside—and do all those fine and holy words make a difference? A question of authenticity, and integrity. What do you see in their lives when the play comes to an end? When Sunday is over, and Monday has come? And Paul brings the same scrutiny to the situation among these new Christians in Thessalonika. To notice when there are folks out there who seem to be using the church to advance their own personal situation, with ulterior motives and agendas. “You know that I wasn’t like that when I was first with you,” Paul says. It wasn’t about me. Remember that, as it was on my heart for you. It was always and only to be about Jesus. It was my job not to take the front and center stage. My job was to preach the word, and then to get out of the way. So that it would be always and only about Jesus. When it’s time to talk about leaders and leadership, let that be front and center for you.

Well. Good stuff for rectors to read and think about, take seriously. Good stuff for a diocese to think about when it’s time to nominate and elect a new bishop. Good stuff for members of a congregation to think about as the inevitable annual campaign letters begin to arrive In the mailbox. For all of us. It is all about our integrity. Our authenticity and integrity in Christ. About more than talking a good game. Walking the walk. About being open to one another, and about being vulnerable. Taking risks. Moving out of our comfort zone. Wherever that comfort zone may be--and we do all have them. But about following him, as faithfully as we are able to do that, day by day.

It is for us all a work in progress, (we are all works in progress)--sometimes three steps forward, two back—sometimes two steps forward and three back. But making our way the best we can. Pehaps even at these moments being willing to take a deep breath and to hear a hard word and a challenging word. Thinking about what Jesus told Peter during their Easter season breakfast together by the Sea of Galillee. “Peter, do you love me?” He asked. “Then know this. Because of me, you are one day going to be picked up and carried to a place that you didn’t choose.” There are lots of people out there who will be glad to tell you only what you want to hear.

But here the Bread of Life, the Cup of our Salvation, the promise of Christ and his real presence—in our Holy Communion and in all our lives. It is a stretch. It is a blessing. And as the Stewardship Campaign says for us, as we make our way along this road together, following Jesus, even so: Deo Gratias. Thanks be to God.

Eighteenth after Pentecost

2011-10-19T15:03:00.001-04:00

Sermon preached on Sunday, October 16, 2011, by the Rev. Dr. Philip Wainwright, Priest Associate.

Giving to God

(RCL Proper 24A2 Matthew 22.15–22)

This morning’s gospel reading contains a phrase that almost everyone, Christian or not, recognises: the phrase is, in the older translation, which I can’t help using, Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. It’s so well known, that we might be tempted to think we’ve learned all there is to learn from it. But as I read it through, I realised that I’ve really only thought it through about half-way, and perhaps I’m being presumptuous in even thinking that, so let me share my thinking with you in case any of you are in the same position.

Context is always crucial, so let me remind you that the incident in which Jesus says this is an encounter between Jesus and the Pharisees, who hated Him and wanted to get Him into trouble. They thought they could do it with a question about whether it was right to pay this particular tax. The question wasn’t about whether the economy will do better if we raise taxes or lower them, but whether it should be paid at all, regardless of what the government said. Jesus’s answer was likely to get Him into trouble, first because devout Jews hated this tax worse than other taxes, and we know that there was a crowd of Jews watching, and second because the Pharisees had made sure there were also some government types present, the ‘Herodians’ of v 16. One of these two groups was almost certain to resent Jesus’s answer.

The Jews hated this tax because it didn’t just demand a certain amount of money; it demanded it in the form of a Roman coin called a denarius. And Roman money had the Emperor’s face on it, and for Jews the second commandment didn’t just prohibit images for use in worship, it prohibited images for any purpose whatever. So having to pay the tax with this coin added spiritual insult to financial injury.

Jesus’s answer to the question goes right to the heart of the matter, and as far as we know doesn’t get Him in trouble with either the devout Jews or the government. Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. Look at the coin, he says, it’s got the Emperor’s name and picture on it; that means it’s his. If he wants it back, you must give it back. End of story: when they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.

The Pharisees paid no more attention because they failed to get Jesus in trouble. But we should pay more attention, because Jesus’s answer is not a way of not getting into trouble, but like all Jesus’s words, profound spiritual truth.

So first we note that while Caesar’s name is no longer on anyone’s money, unless you’re an investor in rare coins, the name of the owner still is: Federal Reserve of the United States of America, it says on all the bills in my wallet. It belongs to the Federal Reserve, any time they ask for any of it back, Jesus says, the only right thing to do is to give it to them. So Christians pay their taxes. We pay all our debts, even if there is no debt collector on our heels. It’s the obvious lesson, and I don’t think I need to dwell on it.

What I want to say more about is the next bit, render to God the things that are God’s. It’s easy to assume that it’s just a nice thought, a rhetorical flourish that makes the statement memorable, but without the same practical application. But as I thought about that more, it seemed to me that I hadn’t thought it through very clearly. Partly it’s because of the context: Jesus has just talked about money and whose name is on it, and most of us don’t think of anything as having God’s name on it, or as belonging to God in that simple a way. But the Bible says a lot about what belongs to God, and what He asks us to do with it, and what it says has practical consequences for those of us who want to obey God that are perhaps even more important than the consequences of the duty to pay our debts.

The Bible even tells us that God’s nature, His image in one sense if not quite the same sense as the Emperor’s image on the coin, is on what He owns. In the letter to the Romans in the New Testament, the Bible tells us that Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. God’s signature is on what He creates, you could say, like an artist’s is. When we look at the world around us we see God’s power at work, and that’s His signature, His inscription, His image on His creation. All the wonderful things that make this such a great world to live in, that make living such fun for those who have access to them, grain to make food and clothing and wood and stone to build warm houses, people to play with and to talk to and to love, interesting things to learn, beautiful things to look at, all these are God’s, and Jesus is telling us to give those things back to God when He asks for them, just as we give the state back its money when it tells us to.

Money is just a means of setting a value on things, a measurement of value. It enables us to measure out amounts of value, whether for paying taxes or paying for college or going to the movies. But money itself is not the thing of value, it just stands temporarily for the value things have. Sooner or later we turn it in for the things that really do have value, like food and clothing and shelter and books and music and art and a week at the beach.

The money, the measuring tool, belongs to the government. The things of value, the wealth, the food and clothing and shelter and books and music and art and so on, those things belong not to the government but God. ‘Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool… all these things my hand has made, and so all these things are mine,’ says the Lord in Isaiah 66. ‘Every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the air, and all that moves in the field is mine… the world and all that is in it is mine,’ says the Lord in Psalm 50. When He tells us, as He does in Scripture, to use some of that wealth to preach the good news of salvation in Christ to those who don’t know Him, or to feed the poor, to heal the sick, to shelter the homeless, to comfort the sorrowful, the man or woman of integrity tries not to argue, tries not to say ‘after I’ve finished with it’, or ‘here’s some of it, that’ll have to be enough’. We try to say ‘Here You are Lord, thanks for letting me use it.’

But it is tempting to say something else. If the government didn’t set a date like April 15th and say ‘pay by then or we’re coming to git yer’, our army would still be fighting with muskets and there still wouldn’t be a paved highway from here to New York. Not because we’d refuse to give, but because we’d say ‘not now, too many other bills, we’ll send something after we’ve made our next mortgage payment, really.’

We get into trouble pretty quickly when we do that with Caesar, but we find it easier to do where God’s commandments are concerned. Because God doesn’t set a date and say ‘OK, my work is not getting done, give a tithe to the church by the first Sunday of Advent or I’m coming to git yer.’ He leaves it up to our sense of honor as men and women of integrity to give Him what is His when He asks for it. But unfortunately what He hears too often is ‘not now, too many other bills, we’ll send something after we’ve made our next mortgage payment, really.’ And so the gospel isn’t proclaimed with power, the poor go without, the homeless go without.

The Bible says that God asks us to use ten per cent of His stuff for His work rather than our own needs. Opportunities to give to God what belongs to God are all around us. Every week we read about something in the paper, or something arrives in our mailbox, reminding us of some need in God’s work, whether it’s help for hurricane victims or for missionary work overseas or for the work of this church. That’s God saying, render what’s Mine to Me for this. It’s not a begging letter, it’s the owner of the wealth reminding us of the conditions under which He lets us use the rest of it. Render to God the things that are God’s. Every good thing we have is His, we are simply His trustees. And we’re the best paid trustees that ever were: 90% of the Trust is ours to do what we want with, He asks for only a mere 10% to go to His other beneficiaries. If we want to follow the way of God in accordance with the truth, we’ll give God His cheerfully and thankfully. Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.

Seventeenth after Pentecost

2011-10-09T07:26:00.002-04:00

(Proper 23A2) Isaiah 25: 1-9, Ps. 23, Matthew 22: 1-14

Good morning. We begin with readings from the Old Testament that are familiar to many of us in part because they are so frequently appointed for use in the Burial Office.

The 23rd Psalm of course. After the Lord’s Prayer and perhaps John 3:16 perhaps the most memorized passage in all of the scriptures. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

And from Isaiah 25. Not as often known by heart, but nonetheless deeply familiar. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

So these to rest before us. Whatever the length of journey that brought us here this morning—wherever we began the day, and with all that we have carried in with us, to this place.

We never really check our luggage at the door. Old thoughts. Memories. Things we have lost. That have slipped away from us. Good intentions. The daily “to do” list. Ambitions. Hopes and dreams. Relationships. The things we wish we had said. The missing: words of confession, of reconciliation, of forgiveness. Questions we might have asked, but now the opportunity is past.

Sometimes thinking about what it would be like if we could hit the rewind button and go back a decade or two or three, and, knowing what we know now, giving it another try. Things done and left undone. Whatever the journey, it is to something I think quite deep in us that these words speak. Calling us scattered, isolated, hurting. Inviting us to his table, calling us to be gathered into the shepherd’s embrace.

I look at the figures on our Rood Beam, as they hover over us Sunday by Sunday—you see them there: the Beloved Disciple John and Mary the Mother of our Lord, as they stand wordless at the foot of the Cross. The jeering crowds and Roman guards and religious officials all fade into the background, and we see only these two. Looking for a moment, catching a glimpse in that Friday afternoon into the silent heart and center of meaning and purpose, the deepest reality of all the universe, in the very presence of God’s perfect offering of himself. And perhaps as well looking around and down and catching a glimpse of us here below.

Thou settest a table before me in the face of my enemies . . . .

Some time ago there was a visitor here I talked to who arrived about a half an hour early for a morning service. He said he lived in Friendship and had walked over. I asked him how long it took him. He paused, and he said: “honestly, about 25 years.” Which led to a very rich conversation, as I’m sure you might imagine. A life story.

But it has been for many of us, for all of us, quite a journey, to get here. How long did it take you? We could write a number of fascinating novels, I’m sure. Full of twists and turns, wild plots, adventures and misadventures, with all kinds of social and psychological and spiritual layers and levels unfolding along the way.

Until we arrive. Like John and Mary. An old stone church in a quiet neighborhood of the East End of Pittsburgh. We sing a few hymns, say a few prayers. And the Word is opened for us. It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation. It sounds like poetry, and it is. A song echoing generation after generation.

In any event, as he opens himself to us and for us, we would open ourselves to this all for a moment and take it seriously ourselves. Which we do, deep down. Finding our way here.

Perhaps it wasn’t the case that we were on the original guest list for this wedding banquet. And yet, unexpectedly, here we are. Gathered in from the highways and byways. As St. Matthew says, “both good and bad.” That in seeking him we might find him, and be found by him. Then the Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces. For all the distractions of the morning, and the jumble of kids and family and the usual busyness of chores and activities, conversations. Where we’ve been, where we’re going, where we are right now at this moment. That we wouldn’t be like the one who refused the invitation, who declined to don the wedding garment and become a part of the celebration.

The King is giving a wedding banquet for his Son.

It is by his mercy, which is so precious, his grace, and in his love, that we are here, that we draw breath. He knows our hopes, our frustrations, our steps and missteps, and every tear. And all that is such a gift. His love for us.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. That would be a word for us this morning, an invitation, heart and mind, body, soul, spirit, all that we are and all that God is in Christ Jesus. And a word of thanksgiving and assurance.

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

Sixteenth after Pentecost

2011-10-02T07:15:00.003-04:00

(Proper 22A2) Isaiah 5: 1-7, Philippians 3: 4-14, Matthew 21: 33-46

Grace and peace, as we sail on into that time of year that is in some parts of the country called “the post-season.” Though of course here in Pittsburgh, not so much: football and hockey, college basketball, and an early winter. Still some great baseball on television, but always that seems for us to be on a different planet, or in a different universe. But, forward.

The context for these two Parables of the Vineyard are of course very different, for Isaiah and for Jesus. Isaiah is offering a theological frame of reference for the disaster about to befall God’s Chosen People. Calling the Royal and Priestly leaders to account for their decision to pursue self-interest and to ignore the higher calling of God’s righteousness.

Jesus is continuing in his confrontational discussion with the religious authorities of his day. Challenging them about their complicit silence in the death of John the Baptist and by implication about their willful decision to oppose him and his message.

In both cases Isaiah and Jesus we might say “throwing down the gauntlet.” Breaking through the behavior and culture of denial and self-delusion. Getting down to brass tacks with clarity about what is really going on.

Many years ago I was a student in a course at the Church Divinity School very much like one I now help to teach at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. A classroom and discussion group for students involved as Field Education parish ministry interns. It was and is a whole new world for students in this situation, of course, and I remember we used to come to the group with some pretty interesting and challenging stories. Very much like the ones I hear today from my students. Some very complicated discussions trying to solve problems with youth groups and altar guilds and vestries.

I remember one time in the midst of one of those lively discussions one of our faculty conveners, Donn Morgan, who was also our Old Testament Professor, asking us to step back for a moment and consider whatever the issue of the day was from a different perspective. “I wonder,” he said, after we had talked around in circles for half an hour or so, “how someone might approach this problem if he believed in God.”

Which of course kind of took us back. Wait a minute. What are you saying? A little bit like Isaiah, or like Jesus with the Chief Priests and Scribes. “I’ve heard all your great insights and brilliant plans. None of which seems to have gotten you very far so far. I wonder what all this might look like from God’s point of view.”

Recognizing I guess deep down how so often even the most faithful Christian people, and maybe all of us as we look into the mirror—how we will so often talk the talk about God, when we’re in church or in a prayer group or Bible study. But how when the rubber really hits the road—at work, or in the community, or in our families, there really isn’t much evidence that we take our own talk all that seriously. Sometimes this is called "functional atheism." How we seem to imagine that what we know is more or less what we need to know. That if a problem is going to be addressed and solved, we’re the ones who are going to need to do it.

This is of course just right at the center for Isaiah and for Jesus. The moral of the story: if you don’t think God is going to act to set things right, you’ve got another “think” coming.

If we think we can just skate along taking the world on our own terms and without reference to his reality—well, the day will come when we will find out just how costly that assumption is really going to be.

Matthew tells us at the end of the reading this morning that as Jesus was speaking, in this Parable all about these unruly tenants who with just unbelievable blindness caused by their self-centeredness and greed bring down upon themselves the catastrophic judgment of the vineyard owner, in the midst of all of that, all of a sudden “they realized that he was speaking about them.”

And with irony, seeing themselves in the story, they continue to play their part. The realization not leading to a turning-around, a repentance, but instead to ride the story out to the conclusion themselves. Wanting to arrest him. Kill the messenger. So clearly they heard the story, but deep down they missed the point.

We don’t see the same dramatic moment in the Isaiah passage, though we can see the end as it played out as well. Because those who heard Isaiah didn’t pay attention, didn’t respond, and so the Lord’s vineyard, his pleasant planting, was indeed destined to become a dry and barren wilderness, and the glorious City of David a heap of smoldering ruins.

At least initially it comes as something a relief to read that these parables are all about the Kings and Priests of Ancient Jerusalem, all about the Temple Authorities of Jesus’s day, because it is always very interesting and sometimes even quite satisfying to read strong and compelling words of judgment, as they are addressed to others, long ago and/or far away.

So long as they have nothing to do with us, so long as they have nothing to do with me. So long as they set no costly or challenging claim against my sense of who I am. So long as they contradict none of my cherished opinions and values. My habits, my prejudices. So long as they have nothing too particular to say about the way I organize my work or my family or my finances or my relationship with my neighbors.

Let ‘em have it, Isaiah. You tell ‘em, Jesus. You tell ‘em.

But nonetheless, First Sunday in October, this just might roll up on our doorstep this morning to give us at least a little shake. If we can manage that. If the Kings and Priests of Isaiah’s day had their minds closed to the call of righteousness and obedience expressed in the Word and Covenant, how am I in that department myself? I wonder. And it’s good and important for me to wonder that. If the Scribes and Pharisees keep their eyes and ears closed and will surround themselves only with people who see things their way, who value the things they value, who refuse to consider the possibility that God might be speaking to them in the voices of persons who think differently, who value things differently, who are not open to the possibility that they themselves might be some ways down the wrong track—well, how am I in that department myself?

What if there is a God, and what if he has acted? What if he has spoken? What difference would that knowledge make to me? To my openness to hear something different, something new. To my willingness to step back and ask what the right thing to do is, what God is doing, rather than to focus only on what I think and what I want? We use those words anyway in our Creeds and Catechism, as we speak about the Holy Scriptures. As we speak about Jesus and the Cross.

It may be, says St. Paul, in this wonderful passage from Philippians, the one thing worth knowing. The single transforming moment of our lives. That, yes, there is a God, and that God has spoken, God has acted. That he speaks. That he continues to act in our lives and in our world. And so to have our confidence not in ourselves, in what we know and what we might do and accomplish, but to have our hope and our confidence in him. In Christ alone. To regard all as loss, as rubbish—such an extreme word—for his sake. To say not that it’s all about be, about winning, about my being right, about things turning out the way I want them to turn out. But to say, simply, in the midst of so much complexity of the world, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection.”

To have that phrase as background as we observe once again these Parables of the Vineyard, and as we would see ourselves reflected in them. And as we would reach out ourselves this morning to be made one with him in the sacrament of the bread and cup. We know what it is to be off track and down the wrong track. Deep down that’s no mystery to us, although we so often pretend otherwise. But there is a choice. God sends Isaiah, and John the Baptist, and he comes to us himself as his only Son walks this long journey to the Cross. And the invitation this morning not that he would see things our way, and come with us, but that we would turn and follow him. “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection.”

Fifteenth after Pentecost

2011-09-25T06:20:00.002-04:00

Proper 21A2 Ezekiel 18: 1-4, 25-32, Matthew 21: 23-32

Good morning and again all good wishes as we this morning gather on the first Sunday of the Fall season—fall having begun at 5:05 this past Friday morning. Certainly the weather is becoming more and more autumnal, the Steelers are playing, there’s pre-season hockey, and the Pens are off to a great start--and this afternoon Susy and I will head over to the North Shore for the last home game for our Pirates in the 2011 season. Another year, and no October baseball in Pittsburgh.

But in the midst of our lives in every season, there is a word for us: I love this really rich passage appointed for this Sunday from the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel. He is carrying out his prophetic ministry and speaking on behalf of God at this absolutely critical historical moment in the life of the Jewish people. It’s a moment of transition, but really we might say a moment of birth, or re-birth.

Ezekiel is speaking to the people in exile. A generation, two generations before, the armies of the Babylonian east swept across the desert and laid siege to the Royal City. And it was a situation of the horror of the worst of war, a whole generation of Judean youth wasted in battle, so that the city seemed ringed by a vast field of bones. Behind the walls of Jerusalem there was hunger, terror, desperation, and the king and the priestly leaders seemed so wrapped up in their own petty worlds of intrigue and self-interest that they were unable to rally the people with any vision, any sense of purpose. There was almost this loss of identity, and except for a few there seemed to be no real connection with the heritage of God’s Covenant, no real sense of discipline or obedience to God’s Word and Law. And then collapse and ruin and destruction, palace and temple plundered, the whole city leveled and put the torch.

The elites marched off in chains to Babylon, and everyone else scattered to the four corners of the world—Egypt and Syria and Persia, or just heading for the hills. The survivors living as refugees, resident aliens. Making their lives as best they can, but haunted by what had happened, anxious about what the future might hold. And in that era we might say the ancient faith of Israel experienced a kind of death and rebirth—some calling this the era when Israelite religion began to become what we have known since that time as Judaism. The foundation of the institution of the synagogue, and with the centrality of the monarchy and Temple sacrifice replaced with a sacrifice of the heart in the prayerful study of God’s Law, and a new spirit of personal discipline and pious obedience.

And now there is scarcely living memory of the ruin of Jerusalem, decades pass, 70 years, and shifts in the geopolitical universe have moved the center of power from Iraq to Iran—from Babylon to Persia. And the Shah of Iran, Cyrus the Great, has announced a new policy about refugees—that they are now free to return to their ancestral homelands.

And in this moment of transition, birth, rebirth, the remnant of God’s people begin to contemplate their homeward journey, and what that will mean. And, we might say, “how this time they won’t get things so terribly wrong, as their ancestors did.” And Ezekiel, and the call we read this morning for a new start, a new beginning, built on the foundation of a new and renewed Covenant relationship with the God of their fathers.

At the beginning of this passage, the rhetorical set up. The parents ate sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge. They lived the high life, all those years ago, and then they sent their American Express bills to their grandchildren. Are we doomed forever to suffer the consequences of their unfaithfulness? Is there any hope for us now? “Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me, and get yourselves anew heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord God. Turn, then, and live.” Life and hope and new beginning.

The story that Jesus tells, the Parable of the Two Sons in Matthew 21, has I think something of the same message. To say that no matter where we begin, no matter what we have said, what we have done, there is now before us the opportunity to choose a new way. God doesn’t condemn us for the sins of our fathers. But neither does he allow us to take on any of their credits. “Turn, then, and live,” as Ezekiel said. It’s up to us. The brothers answer their father’s first call in opposite ways. One says, yes, the other no.

But that’s not the end of their stories. Because even though the first brother had the right words, he fails, falls short, chooses not to put those words into action. While the second brother begins in defiance, rebellion, and rejects his father’s invitation, in the end he turns around, and makes it right.

The application in the moment, in Matthew 21, has to do with Jesus speaking to all these Doctors of Theology and Philosophy, noted church leaders, the heirs of generations of religious practice and devotion, who could not, who would not, who refused to see and recognize and respond when God was speaking a new word through John the Baptist.

And then to think of all the people of the street, the rif-raf and dregs of society, the notorious, the least and the last, the ones who had made all the wrong life decisions, the scandalous and the sinners—but who when they heard John opened their hearts to him, and heard him, and responded to his call to a radical conversion of life, turning away from sin and to a new life in relationship to god.

It’s not about the diplomas on your wall or who you were yesterday, Jesus says to the priests and elders, not about your ceremonial words and formal pieties. “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.”

And so Ezekiel: “Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord God. Turn, then, and live.”

I love the hymns this morning, the words of the anthems, our collects and creed and prayers. The opening of the Word in the reading of scripture. And as we share the bread and the cup together. The tragedy of the ancient story of Israel was that the people had in their very midst the source of all light and life, strength and health and goodness, and they took it for granted, and forgot about it, and so finally drifted on to their own destruction. The political leaders and religious officials didn’t just miss John the Baptist. They crushed him, swept him out of the way. Thinking that if they killed the messenger, the message would go away.

And we would be reminded this morning and always as Christian people, and we would want to be reminded, shaken up, called to attention—with the word that these aren’t just old stories about people long ago and far away. But for us this morning, every morning. It’s not just ancient Israelites who can live in denial. Not just priests and elders of Jerusalem who will practice selective devotion, obedience-when-convenient, and refuse to take personally the one personal word that God speaks to them. We hear the word, we sing the hymns, receive the bread and wine. And we would know that he is all the while whispering in our ear, this morning and every morning: Why will you die? Get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. Turn, and live . . . .

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

Fourteenth after Pentecost: Jonah and the Bush

2011-09-18T06:33:00.001-04:00

Proper 20A2, Jonah 3:10-4:11; Matthew 20:1-16

Good morning, and grace and peace to you this morning, which is on the calendar the last Sunday of the summer—the autumnal equinox arriving for us this year at 5:05 a.m. next Friday morning, September 23rd. It sure felt like Fall already a few mornings last week! I know for us in our family it has been an eventful summer in many ways, some of it challenging, but also a time of enjoyment and even with a little bit of break for rest and relaxation--and it does feel good now to be moving into the more active season of the fall. So may it be a new season of good things and many blessings for you also.

The short Book of Jonah falls into two parts. The first part of the story is more familiar, even kind of fun, and often good for Sunday School lessons and sermons. God comes to Jonah and tells him he is to leave his home in Israel and to cross the border into hostile territory and make his way as a hated foreigner to the city of Ninevah in ancient Babylon. Modern Iraq. And actually I think our former St. Andrean and good friend Scott Kleinschnitz was briefly stationed near Ninevah when he was deployed in Operation Iraqi Freedom a few years ago. And when Jonah arrives, if they don’t arrest him on site or stone him to death in the streets right away, he is to go to the City Center and address the Great Men and leaders of the people and instruct them to abandon their evil ways and repent of their sins and turn to the Lord.

And of course we know the story. Jonah is terrified, and for good reason, and he immediately gets up and flees as far as he can as fast as he can in exactly the opposite direction. Thinking he can somehow escape the claim that God has made on his life. But we discover that while Jonah can run, he can’t hide. Fleeing in the opposite direction, even as he gets on a ship and sails out into the sea, but the call of God pursues him, and his inner turmoil, guilt, and distress is matched by a roaring wind and storm, great waves, rolling seas. The others on board the sinking ship are terrified, and finally Jonah says, “this is all about me, because I haven’t responded to God’s direction for my life. Save yourselves now by throwing me overboard, and all will be well.” Which of course they do. And the storm suddenly ends. And then the story goes on, and this is the part the Sunday School kids like the most, how at the point of death in a watery grave Jonah is miraculously swallowed whole by a great fish, in which he rests for a wonderfully symbolic three days, and then miraculously he is disgorged and finds himself back on dry land.

Thematically of course this all about what it means to be faithful, and about renewal and restoration, about rebirth, about death and new life, and in Matthew 16 we hear Jesus himself talking about “the sign of Jonah” in a way that seems to reference and anticipate his own coming death and resurrection. But in this beginning of new life, Jonah steps forward a new and reformed man, this time in faithful obedience to God’s call, and sets out for the mission to Ninevah. And all this a wonderful framework for talking about how we would each of us in a way think about our vocation, about our relationship with God in Christ, and the kinds of storms that come to us when we run away from that relationship, and how there is a new birth for us when we seek to hear and respond in a spirit of obedience.

Then the second part of the story, including the very end, which we have in our lesson this morning. Not quite so familiar as the story of the Big Fish. Jonah indeed travels into enemy territory and gets to the City Square Ninevah and issues his announcement of God’s judgment and his call for the whole nation to repent of its evil ways. A moment that would seem sweet I suppose to an Israelite audience for the story, as they and it seems as Jonah as well are almost leaning forward in anticipation to see the first fiery bolts of God’s lightning to crash down on the city as the people receive the consequences of all their wickedness—and most especially including the crimes of war and hostility which they had committed against the Israelite people. It’s going to be a sweet moment of perfect justice.

But then of course this odd and incredibly surprising thing happens. The leaders hear Jonah. And they say, “My goodness, you’re right. We have been horrible and truly wicked. We are now so very sorry, and we repent profoundly for all the evil we have done in the past, ruin and destruction, rape and pillage, and we promise to do our very best never to do anything like that again.” Jonah doesn’t know quite what to make of this, but as we read this morning, he apparently doesn’t think these words are going to count for much, and he goes up to a nearby hillside hoping for a good view of the fireballs falling on the city from heaven. And then when that doesn’t happen, when he finally realizes that as a result of his preaching and the people’s repentance, God is no longer going to bring about the city’s destruction, Jonah is disappointed. More than disappointed. Angry. Generations of horrible conflict, war, oppression, destruction, war crimes of every imaginable variety, in a world where there of course was no such thing as the Geneva Convention. And now they say that they’re sorry and that they won’t do it again, and God wipes the slate clean? No retribution; no punishment fitting the crime? What’s the good of being a fire-and-brimstone prophet, if God is going to go all touchy-feely and Kumbaya at the last minute? Where’s the divine justice in that?

That’s the heart of the story. And then we get as a brief postlude the story of Jonah and the Bush, so that God can explain the moral of the story to Jonah. Jonah sitting out there on that desert hill, watching and waiting, and suddenly the bush grows up over him and gives him a delightful day of shade. Then, just as suddenly, the next day the bush is attacked by a worm, and so it withers and dies away, leaving Jonah once again baking in the sun. Jonah is once again swept up in anger. And God says, “you didn’t do anything to earn the comfort that the bush gave you yesterday, and I didn’t hear any comments from you about fairness or what you deserved or anything else then. And so what right have you to complain when I decide to take away the bush that I made in the first place? The fact is, your perspective is once again just way too limited, your understanding of my perfect righteousness always far too distorted by your own personal interest. When your idea of what I should do, when your idea of what is good, and fair, and right, is different from mine, Jonah, then you will just need to take a deep breath and let all that go. My ways are not your ways, saith the Lord, nor are my thoughts your thoughts, for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

And the moral of this story of course falls into line with the moral of the parable of the Vineyard Laborers in Matthew 20. We understand perfectly the outrage of the workers who have toiled all day long in the hot sun, only to see those who arrived at the very end of the day rewarded equally with them. We’ve been there ourselves time and again. To see the world rolling on in ways that seem just beyond our comprehension. Lost in our grievances, and sometimes confused by what seem to be gifts that fall into our lives entirely unearned. How is that possible? What sense are we to make of a “peace of God that passeth all human understanding?”

The “sovereignty of God” a doctrinal thread that is of course woven tightly through just about every page of the Biblical story, and a concern of emphasis especially of the great Reformers of the Protestant era in the 16th century, as they attempted to counter a view of God that was becoming a bit too mechanistic. When I do this, God rewards, and when I do that, God punishes. A tempting view, even though it obviously runs against all the evidence, and as we struggle with Rabbi Kushner about “why bad things happen to good people,” and with the experience all too often of wondering why so often such good things seem to happen to bad people.

The Prophet Jonah and all the workers of the vineyard—those who came to work at dawn, and those who arrived in the middle and at the end of the day—each simply had the opportunity, the challenge, to live faithfully with the call that was placed on their lives by God, whose vineyard this all is. To enter into a relationship of trust that will move beyond our own limited perspectives of what we deserve, of what the other guy deserves, of how this particular chapter of the story ought to end. Thinking of all those readings about forgiveness that we had appointed for the last few Sundays from Matthew 18. We receive the bread and the cup into our hands at the Holy Table, and in doing so we place our lives in his hands. Even in the midst of things so often that we can’t understand, or even that seem just plain wrong, of course we have our opinions, our sense of what’s fair, what’s right, what’s good, and as we push back, which seems to be something at the heart of our human nature, that we would remember this morning that this is his vineyard, not ours. And that he has better things in mind for us than we can ever ask for or imagine.

Thirteenth after Pentecost

2011-09-11T06:54:00.001-04:00

Proper 19A, Genesis 50: 15-21; Matthew 18: 21-35

Grace and peace to you on this second Sunday now in September, and in the informal but ancient and venerable tradition here at St. Andrew’s, “Round Up Sunday,” a wonderful day of gathering the family, old friends and new, not quite fall really, but for us the beginning of the fall season, with all the energy and interest of new beginnings.

And all that complicated today very much in our awareness as well and as we have acknowledged in our prayers--this day the tenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks at the World Trade Center in New York City and at the Pentagon, and we here in Western Pennsylvania always have a special acknowledgment for the place where United Flight 93 came down out near Shanksville and Ligonier. A part of the story that comes especially close to home.

I remember where I was, a little bit before 9 a.m. on that morning. Probably you remember where you were. I was out on the front porch of the Old Rectory. I’d been for a long run and had breakfast and was getting ready to go upstairs for a shower before going to the office, when the first news bulletin came over the radio. I know I sat there listening for quite a long time—and then I finally did shower and go over to the office, though I think actually the radio wasn’t turned off for much of the day.

At one point along in there somewhere Pete Luley and I talked and made the decision to open the doors of the church that evening, and he started getting in touch with members of the choir, and I began to put together an order of service. And perhaps some of you were here that evening, I know quite a few of you were, as we did have a good crowd from the parish and also from the neighborhood. Music. Prayers. The quiet of silent reflection. Don’t know at that point if any of us really knew what to make of what had happened. Some kind of terroristic act, we knew that-- but what it was connected to, and of course what it would mean for the next days and months and years of this decade we had no idea.

The other related memory I associate with this day is of the afternoon I spent several months on, in the later fall of 2001, when I was with the board of the National Network of Episcopal Clergy Associations at a meeting in New York, and through the offices of a colleague we were given credentials to serve with the chaplains at St. Paul’s Chapel, which is right next to Ground Zero, and which had been converted as a place for rest and refreshment for workers at the site. I spoke during that afternoon to a couple of construction workers who were with crews clearing debris, and with a New York firefighter who was a part of a team of firefighters and police that remained there all through this period to provide escort whenever human remains would be found and removed.

I spent a lot of time chatting with other volunteers who were serving coffee or sandwiches, and with one of the priests from Trinity Wall Street, who was serving on the regular chaplaincy team. And at each hour there was a very brief time of prayer up at the altar in the Chapel, and we were able to participate in that. The altar and space around it all decorated with drawings and cards of encouragement and expressions of sympathy and affection from all over the country and all around the world. Just very sad and beautiful, and powerful, and it’s hard for me to think now that it was ten years ago. Seems like last month, in some ways, and in other ways it seems like a hundred years ago.

I know we all have our reflections and memories, and we offer them up in prayer today, as we come together for worship and as we celebrate the richness of the life God has blessed us with here at St. Andrew’s.

The readings appointed for this morning in our lectionary continue to explore the themes of forgiveness and reconciliation that we began to talk about last week with the parable of the shepherd who leaves the 99 to go in search of the one who is lost and then with the instructions Jesus gives about how to deal with grievances and disputes and divisions in the church. This week all three of the lessons stay on the theme. In Genesis Joseph’s brothers worry that perhaps his apparent kindness for them has been for the sake of their father. And the anxiety-producing question: now that their father has died, will Joseph continue to maintain that good relationship?

In Romans, the lesson we didn’t read this morning at Morning Prayer but which you can find printed in the earlier part of our service leaflet from the 9 a.m. service, Paul talks about the kinds of divisions that have arisen between Christians who maintain many of the traditional Jewish practices and beliefs and those who come from the Gentile world and who don’t follow those practices. Paul really almost pleading with these Christians not by taking one side or the other but by calling them to a deeper sense of their unity in Christ. Again, pulling the flock back together, restoring it to a wholesome unity.

And then the gospel reading from St. Matthew, beginning with St. Peter’s question about how often to forgive, with the reply from Jesus: not seven times, but seventy times seven. And this parable about the servant who receives such a gift of forgiveness, but who is unwilling to pass that along to another. And clear and straightforward word from Jesus about the consequences of unforgiveness, in this life and in the life to come.

So forgiveness. Letting go of grievances, seeking reconciliation, really this sense of the urgency and priority of reconciliation, overcoming brokenness, restoring relationships and community, renewal, grace, generosity, new life. Something for us here perhaps especially on September 11. Jesus along this road to Jerusalem, planting seeds. A vision of the quality and character of the new life to begin in him, a word for his followers and friends. That what they and we come to know in him, the world would come to know in us.

I’m always struck by this wonderful phrase in Genesis 50, as Joseph speaks these words of care with his brothers. Looking back over the horrors of what they had done to him. Fuelled by jealousy and hatred, they plot his murder, then sell him into a life of slavery—a life that will in time include long years of imprisonment in a harsh Egyptian prison. Certainly we can understand what he has every right to feel about them. Why they are afraid. But Joseph steps back. “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good.” And to remember how Joseph had to be thrown in the pit and left for dead, sold into slavery, languishing long years in prison, before he could meet another prisoner who would one day bring word about his spiritual gift of dream interpretation to the attention of the Pharaoh—and how as a result a much greater good was accomplished, and the nation was saved from mass starvation and famine. God is in charge. Joseph’s interpretation of the story.

The story is God’s story, not yours or mine. When we are faithful, and when we seek to know and to do his will in whatever circumstance we find ourselves, he will show a way in the wilderness. Perhaps sometimes in ways that will be obvious to all, and perhaps other times in ways that will be deeply hidden and known to him alone.

It’s not to be a Pollyanna. Not to diminish the horrors of the Trade Center and the Pentagon and United 93, and always to acknowledge all the hard work and pain and suffering that have followed in the decade since in so many ways. All that just one chapter in the long history of our lives and our world. So much a story of brokenness, hurt, loss. In small private corners of life, and on the great stage. But to say even in this, we need to see not simply how we would want to respond, but to listen carefully for him. To keep the main thing the main thing. So that we can break bread and enjoy chicken and chili and fun together this morning at the picnic, even on September 11, and to give thanks even in times of ruin and destruction, and to seek to know as perhaps we will all of us find ways to learn from one another what new thing God intends for each one of us, for our church, and for the nation and the world.

Blessings and peace, in the midst of so much messiness around us in our lives and in our world. That we would hear in every situation a call to respond faithfully, and to reflect in our words and our actions, with a spirit of hopeful confidence, the good news of our Savior.

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

September 11 Prayers

2011-09-10T08:35:00.003-04:00

St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
Highland Park, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
September 11, 2011

Congregational Prayers on the Anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon, and United Flight 93. [Adapted from a litany composed by the Rev. Joseph Howard, St. Joseph of Arimathea Episcopal Church, Hendersonville, Tennessee.]

O God the Father, Creator of heaven and earth; O God the Son, Redeemer of the world; O God the Holy Ghost, Sanctifier of the faithful: have mercy and hear the prayers and supplications of thy people.

For all who died in the attacks of September 11, 2001; and for all victims everywhere of terror and war in the years that followed:

Remember thy servants, O Lord, according to the favor which thou bearest unto thy people; and grant that, increasing in knowledge and love of thee, they may go from strength to strength in the life of perfect service in thy heavenly kingdom.

For the families and loved ones of those who have died, and for all who mourn:

Almighty God, Father of mercies and giver of all comfort: Deal graciously, we pray thee, with all those who mourn, that casting every care on thee, they may know the consolation of thy love.

For all who have given their lives since that day. For all those who answered the call of their country, venturing much for the cause of freedom and defense, giving of themselves for the benefit of their neighbors:

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, in whose hands are the living and the dead: We give thee thanks for all thy servants who have laid down their lives in the service of our country. Grant to them thy mercy and the light of thy presence; and give us such a lively sense of thy righteous will, that the work which thou has begun in them may be perfected; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord.

For those who on September 11th were injured, in body, mind, and spirit; for firefighters, police officers, first responders, and for all those who were injured, or who gave their lives, that others might be rescued; for those who since September 11th have served as peacemakers, diplomats, and governmental leaders, for scholars, journalists, and teachers, for religious leaders, and for all who have sought to overcome hatreds and prejudice and to contribute to deeper understanding and healthful relationships, for peace and justice among the nations and peoples of the world.

O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Great Bell of St. Andrew’s Church is to be tolled for five minutes on the morning of September 11, 2011, beginning at 8:46 a.m., the time when the first plane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

September 10, 2011

2011-09-09T15:18:00.005-04:00

Holy Matrimony
Todd Edward Glass and Susan Theresa Frankiewicz
Colossians 3: 12-17

Susan and Todd, what I want to say first to you, and I know I’m speaking for all the family and friends gathered here this afternoon, is thank you. It is for us all, and for me personally, a privilege and a joy to be sharing this moment with you, to be with you as you exchange the vows and promises, the words, and the commitments of the heart, that will make you one, before God and in the face of this company, as husband and wife.

It’s a great day! I know you have been thinking about it and planning for a long time now. And now here we are. And so, congratulations to you, and with so many blessings upon you as you now step forward into this new chapter of your life.

As you know, the distinctive geographical feature of Pittsburgh is how the great Allegheny River, flowing down from the north from New York and Lake Erie, and the great Monongahela, rolling westward from the mountains of West Virginia, come together down at Point State Park to form the headwaters of the Ohio, as it begins its 1,000 mile course down to Illinois and the confluence with the Mississippi. One of the great rivers of the world. So we are here the place of Three Rivers. And so to me Pittsburgh seems very much like the perfect place for you two to get married.

You bring to this marriage of course your individuality and personality, character and values. Two accomplished and mature and thoughtful people, with your own rich life stories—and the accomplishments and experiences, the high moments and the low, all together, that make you the people that you are. Two great streams, flowing together in the creation of something new. Built on the foundation of love, of shared interests and goals--and so importantly of strong friendship.

In all this, the lesson that you selected, from the New Testament, St. Paul’s Letter to the Christians in the city of Colossae-- is indeed a wonderful and very appropriate reading for this day.

It is first of all a love song, written first of all about the life of the Church itself, but by extension it is about truly any Christian relationship—and just right to lift up as we celebrate the beginning of a marriage. A song about truly the greatest gift that God gives us, and in some ways a recipe book, a set of how-to instructions, in the context of a reminder of both the care God has for us, and of our call to live always with one another in that same spirit of humility and tenderness. How to “dress for success.” Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience . . .. Bear with one another . . . . Be thankful . . . .And let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.

And to know that especially in our marriages and in our family life, with our husband or wife, our children, our parents, to reflect God’s love in that way. Patience and kindness. A spirit of deep mutual respect. --A recipe for a successful marriage, and in those moments of our lives, as we would understand through that we are in this world catching a glimpse of the deep love, the passion and the compassion, that is at the heart of God’s life, and that we are all ultimately destined for.

It is a beautiful reading, for this beautiful day, and, I would simply offer the thought, as we would “dress for success,” that the gift of this moment is one that doesn’t ever need to wear out or to be exchanged. It’s the best gift of all, the richest of all blessings, a life-changing gift, and one that will last for a lifetime.

In the midst of this I’m reminded that in the Old Testament Book of Exodus there is one of my favorite Bible stories, about a moment of life-changing experience, a “vocational” moment, a transformational moment-- in a way kind of like a wedding. Young Moses is working for his Father in Law, tending his sheep out in the wilderness, and one day he sees something off in the distance that looks strange to him. He moves closer and finally comes to this great big tree or bush that is on fire, fully engulfed in flames, burning and burning—but no matter how long it burns, it doesn’t burn out. He watches for a while, amazed at the sight, and then all at once a great, deep voice comes from the flame. (I like to think it was the voice of James Earl Jones.) “Take off your shoes, Moses, for the ground on which you are standing is holy ground.” Holy Ground.

Now, Todd and Susan, we don’t need to take that literally, and you can keep your shoes on. But we would remember that in the vows and promises you make today, in God’s sight and in the presence of these friends and family members, the ground under your feet and our feet is consecrated, and made holy. That God’s holy presence is with you, surrounding you, with richness and blessing. All the prayers and blessings of this day don’t just happen here, in this one moment of a wedding, but they go out with you into your marriage and life together, from this day forward, and will be around you and under you and with you all the days of your life. Wherever your life takes you, that will be holy ground. And it is my and our best prayer for you that in God’s love you will continue to experience his love and his blessing always, and that your life together will be a catalyst, an inspiration, for that sense of God’s goodness to be known by others. That you will be blessed, and that you will be a blessing. As you already are. So many adventures, from this day forward.

Now as Todd and Susan come to the altar to exchange the vows that will make them husband and wife, I would ask all of us to bow our heads for a moment to offer a prayer and all our good thoughts and blessings, for them, for their protection and their encouragement, their joy, in all that God has in store for them in the days and years ahead.

Bruce Robison

Twelfth after Pentecost

2011-09-04T06:42:00.002-04:00

Proper 18A Matthew 18:15-20

Good morning, and blessings on this Sunday of the Labor Day weekend. I know school is already back in session, and has been for several weeks now for some. And although the weather this weekend so far has been pretty much like summertime, we already last weeks had a few cool evenings. Not crisp, exactly—but enough to send the message that fall is out there and moving in our direction. I understand that tomorrow the high is to be only in the low ‘70’s, and I find myself looking forward to the cooler days of early fall . . . . This always seems to me to be a “transitional” weekend: the end of one season coming near the beginning of the next. Perhaps a moment to pause, for a last moment or two, before pressing on to all the action ahead of us in the weeks and months to come.

There’s a bit of a transition going on in Matthew’s gospel now, too. Jesus and his friends having left the Galilee and now are headed on toward Jerusalem—on their way directly now toward Palm Sunday and Holy Week and Good Friday. And along this road and journey Matthew has us listen in as Jesus tells stories and parables and gives words of instruction with a sense it seems almost of urgency. As we step back and know the whole story now we might understand at least from his conversation with the disciples and Peter especially at Caesarea Philippi, as we heard it read in our gospel lesson appointed for last Sunday, that Jesus sees his road now to its end. The Cross in a sense already appearing on the horizon. And so he’s giving the disciples something of a review course. It seems he knows that it’s going to take them a long time to sort out the meaning of everything that has happened and everything that will soon happen.

Jesus wants to plant in their minds and hearts and imaginations and memories the kinds of seeds that will in time begin to grow and shape them, to make them ready to do the work and to be the people he is calling them to be. He touches on all kinds of foundational themes: faith in God, humility, costly and sacrificial obedience. He talks about marriage and family, about stewardship. And right at the center, at the very heart of this review section, and repeated several times, he talks about forgiveness—again and again, forgiveness, reconciliation, restoration. It seems to be something he thinks they and we need to hear a lot about.

Actually the passage that we have this morning from chapter 18 has right before it a story or parable that sets the stage for our section. In verses 12-14 Jesus says, “What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So, it is not the will of my Father who is in heave that one of these little ones should perish.”

I’ve said many times that if I were this shepherd’s insurance agent or business manager, I’d want to have a serious word with him. This extravagant and risky enterprise just doesn’t make much sense from any common-sense, worldly point of view. To put the whole flock in danger, the livelihood and wealth of the family, and perhaps of several families, all for one? In most enterprises 99% is a fine result, but here is what God has to say about the one who is lost, separated, estranged, cut off. No risk too great, it seems, no cost too high. And so the great joy when the wanderer is restored, and the flock is made whole again.

Jesus has told them this story before. The parable of the Lost Coin, and of the Treasure in the Field. The passage that we have just heard translates it in a less poetical way into the practicalities of our lives. Jesus tells his followers then, when there is brokenness and separation, when you have a grievance, when there is division, brokenness, you don’t just sit back and accept the situation, perhaps tapping your foot and saying, “well, if he wants to return, he’ll have to make the first move.” No, like the shepherd, you go to the one who is separated. You make the first move. And you make every effort. And if after trying your absolute best to work things out, you find that you can’t bring about a restoration of relationship, you don’t even then give up. You go and find other members of the community, and you bring them with you. Because this isn’t just about two people. Not just about the sheep and the shepherd. It’s about the health and well-being and wholeness of the flock. It may be Jane and Sally who are estranged, but their separation affects and diminishes and damages each and every one in the community. No such thing as a private dispute.

And even then, there is this saying which I have always found odd. If the subject of the grievance refuses even after all this to be reconciled, let him be to you, Jesus says, as “a tax collector and a Gentile.” I know what that sounds like Jesus is saying, and certainly we know how the orthodox Jew of First Century Palestine would have heard it. But then I think, I wonder if as they remembered these words later, the friends of Jesus would ask themselves, “how did Jesus relate to tax collectors and Gentiles?”

Isn’t that actually a pretty significant part of what got him in trouble in the first place? That even when these are folks who by their very nature are seemingly incapable of being included in the community, he doesn’t pass them by. Dinner at the home of Zacchaeus the tax collector, an absolute scandal. The healing of the Canaanite woman’s daughter, of the Roman Centurion’s servant. When it comes to putting relationships back together, Jesus just keeps pushing the margin. If every effort of reconciliation fails, then let that person be to you as a tax collector and a sinner. Which for Jesus seems to mean, never never never take “no” for an answer.

In the passage immediately following this story we’ve heard this morning Peter asks Jesus, “so how long do you keep at this?” What are the limits? Again and again and again, and again and again and again and again, seven times? And of course, Jesus: “Seventy times seven.” This kind of mystical number. Zillions of times. Zillions and zillions. The shepherd wouldn’t sleep until the flock was once again whole, and so our heavenly Father will never be satisfied, until every last wandering one is brought home.

And there is this commission in the reading today. Jesus says, “Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” This is what he had said to Peter just a short while ago at Caesarea Philippi. “The keys of the Kingdom.” And exactly what Jesus would say to his friends once again a few weeks later, on the evening of Easter Day, as they were huddled together in fear in that upper room. In the 20th Chapter of John, beginning at the 19th verse, sometimes called John’s Pentecost. This is the story when Jesus appears to the disciples when Thomas was away. He is there with them suddenly, despite the fact that the windows are shut and the doors locked. Suddenly. And he speaks. “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

It is just one of those things that he’s always talking about. From the beginning to the end. Calling us to him. Sending us out.

No question a challenge for us. Personally, as we wrestle internally with hurts and grievances, injuries, loss. In our marriages, our families. The neighbor who plays his stereo too loud. The colleague who took an idea I had and presented it to the boss as his own. Even in the Church, in our congregation, in our diocese, among all the groups and factions and denominations. I’ve been thinking about Pittsburgh Episcopalians and Pittsburgh Anglicans this week. A lot of history, a lot of bad blood sometimes. Difficult memories and fresh wounds. And then Politics. Democrats and Republicans. Labor and management. And nation and nation. Just how much can we risk? What amount loss are we willing to suffer? How patient, how persistent can we be, really? How much of an effort, deep down, do we really even want to make? Doesn’t it seem o.k. just to move on?

Of course, he’s put it out there for us, and we keep working on it. Which we’ll keep doing this morning as we come together to the Holy Table and then go out into all the messiness of our lives. It is the meaning in some way of both the Manger and the Cross. The heart of what calls us here this morning, however we would articulate it. Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saves a wretch like me. I once was lost, now am found. Was blind, and now I see. How he comes for us. And even here in all the messiness of our lives, how he keeps coming for us, and how he would go any distance to bring us home.

Our Guest Preacher's Notes

2011-08-31T08:04:00.005-04:00

Mary Beth Campbell, of Five Talents International, long-time mission partner of St. Andrew's, was scheduled as Guest Preacher for Sunday, August 28. Alas, though: Hurricane Irene stormed through, and all Saturday East Coast travel plans fell to the wayside.

Fortunately, though, Mary Beth was able to get to Pittsburgh later Sunday afternoon--in time to join a few members of the Five Talents Prayer Circle for a picnic in Joe and Marty Federowicz's backyard up in Glenshaw. That's Mary Beth, seated in the center of the front row in Paul Chamberlain's snapshot, between Jinny Fiske and Peg Ghrist:

In any event, Mary Beth was "ready to preach," and even though she couldn't make her way through the storm to our pulpit on Sunday morning, she indeed had a good word to share. I asked her if I could distribute her sermon notes here, and she generously agreed.

Texts for Proper 17A, Track Two, are Jeremiah 15:15-21 and Matthew 16:21-28.

Bruce, had I been able to be at Saint Andrew’s I would have said . . .

It would have been wonderful to worship with you at St. Andrew’s on behalf of Five Talents, a Christian micro finance ministry that St. Andrew’s has been supporting since 2006 through a dedicated prayer circle.

Your prayers and your gifts encircle our Five Talents community, especially the 30,000 micro-entrepreneurs in the developing countries in which we work, and especially the 2,213 micro-entrepreneurs, primarily women, who are in Peru. You dedicate your support to those entrepreenurs who live in Lima. There are also their Peruvian sisers, micro -entrepreneurs who live in a rural mountainous area of Huancavelica, which is the poorest region in all of Peru.

The suffering these women and their families have endured, the challenges they have overcome, and what they do to achieve success is not for the faint hearted, but then neither are today’s readings.

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is speaking to his closest disciples about what is in store for himself – and then for them as well. It is not the kind of stuff one brings up at the start of a relationship.

Jesus starts with himself explaining that he is going to Jerusalem and will suffer and be killed, but on the third day he will be raised up.

This is too much for Peter. And like any beloved friend he objects.

Jesus sees in Peter’s objections the same kind of temptation he met in the desert shortly after his baptism. He recognizes in Peter’s words the lure of Satan, and he says the same thing he said in the desert: “Get behind me Satan!” What he rejects in the desert and again here with Peter is the temptation to live out his ministry with criteria that humans would use to judge it to be successful. A ministry of "reasonable limits", the conditions placed on how much we love and give — or give up or suffer — and even who suffers. Some suffering —but not too much. Some money to the poor but not too much that I cannot live comfortably.

This reminds me of an anecdote related to tithing. A very wealthy parishioner, whose church was suggesting that people consider 10% of their income to charities and causes of their choice, of which the church would simply be part, did the calculation and said to the minister,
“That is unreasonable! I make too much for that to realistically work. I’d be giving way too much.”

Way too much for who?
And whose money is it anyway if all we have really comes from God?
No gift can be too big for God’s vision.
God’s vision is for abundance for all. God’s love is unconditional. God’s forgiveness is unreasonable. God welcomes and heals everyone. God’s hospitality is radical.
In God’s Kingdom everyone is valued. Everyone has dignity and gifts. In God’s Kingdom our identity is as brothers and sisters in the family of God, our status then is as equals.
In God’s Kingdom all are called. Even though few will follow.

I believe Jesus is calling Peter and us to a deeper understanding of what it means to be a disciple by teaching us that it involves sacrifice and suffering.

This is something so big I think we have to grow into it like Peter. We learn it enroute because our human standards have other ideas.

I think Jesus is also teaching that discipleship involves discerning about sacrifice and suffering: What kind of suffering to accept as a by product of our vocation and calling if you will, and what kind of sacrifice and suffering is a by product of circumstances that need to be transformed and changed? Like the sacrifice of a parent who does not eat so their children can eat. Like the parent and child who suffer from malnutrition.

The entrepreneurs who are lifting themselves out of poverty, through Five Talents programs are able to shed the kind of circumstantial sacrifice and suffering that does not lead to health and wholeness.
Suffering is a big word that encompasses a lot. On a day when you have the time and energy I invite you to sit with your own suffering. Bring it before Christ and sit with it with Christ.

Like Jeremiah each of us can talk to God about it.
At first I did not understand why these two readings were together and then I realized that, Jeremiah’s lamentation is an example not simply of someone taking to God about his suffering, but this is the suffering that has come to Jeremiah because he has accepted God’s call to him. So in Jeremiah we have an example not only of what it might be like to be a disciple, but also one way to respond and pray.

Like Jeremiah, I discover when I sit with my own suffering that it is deeply personal. I hurt. But it also has a spiritual and social dimension. Like with Jeremiah, God is involved and so are other people. I definitely have an opinion about my suffering and an opinion about God and the others. I do not know if like Jeremiah I would go so far as to say that God is like a “deceptive brook, like waters that fail…” but I definitely do not always understand what grace is unfolding or what God’s design is. It can feel like water failing, but I am too polite in my prayer. I want to grow to be more like Jeremiah so that I can be honest and raw in my prayer, asking questions of God, and moving back and forth between the joy and consolation of a relationship with God. Jeremiah says, “ Under the weight of your hand, I sat alone.”

After all these years, I still want to “pretty up” my prayers for God when God already knows my heart. Jeremiah did not have that problem.

At Five Talents we dedicate all our efforts to alleviating poverty, because we believe that it is not the kind of suffering we should buck up and accept. All our efforts are motivated by our Christian belief that each of us has dignity and value in the eyes of God and that all of us deserve an opportunity to develop our gifts and to live out the call God has given us. We take a holistic approach and do not just offer money, but also offer business training and spiritual support and development. And all our work is enfolded in circles or groups of support. Women may be in a loan-based or a savings-based group, but they are never alone and are never sinking or swimming with just a financial bottom line.

Without community how can one live into the suffering and sacrifice that is part of developing and being who God calls us to be? Relationships are at the core of our mission and work.

When I was thinking about this passage this week I was especially thinking about our entrepreneurs. People like Olga and Nicolasa in Huancavelica, Peru.
Olga is a single mother whose husband abandoned her when her children were small and whose early life was marked by poverty and suffering. With 30 soles (or $10.68) in working capital she received a loan through Five Talents and launched a business selling vegetables. She actually launched her business as a response to community need. Olga said “During a very difficult time, I realized that many people in my neighborhood lacked basic necessities and I saw the difficulties that they were facing in getting vegetables and groceries in our community. We had to travel for 30 minutes in a small bus to Huancavelica city to get basic products.” Now her buisness is florurishing and she has even hired someone to work with her, creating a job for another.

Nicolasa received her first microloan in March of this year and runs a little shop that sells everything from sodas to crackers and oranges. It is like a little 7-11. On weekends, Nicolasa also sells vegetables at a market in Huancavelica. And she has a dream: to purchase her own transportation—a motorcycle—so she can move her product to market more quickly.

The passages we heard today are for them as well.

They deserve to have suffering in their life not because of circumstance, but as all children of God, the sacrifice and suffering that they accept as part of their Christian life, should be as a result of whatever their own vocation may be, whatever gifts God has given them to develop, and however they choose to be of service.
Their suffering, like ours, should be worthy of the ministry God has called each of us to live out as a vocation. Entrepreneurs, like Olga and Nicolasa, should not be the poster people for poverty, carrying it dutifully as their cross, with the rest of us donating and feeling good that we helped. Until poverty is alleviated, it will be for the poor, a cross of circumstance not vocation; but the rest of us, must find ways to carry the cross as well, so that together we all can have a chance to be the people God is calling us to be.

To grow in discipleship is to suffer the sacrifice and consequences of our call and also the radical, unreasonable unconditional love of God. My prayer for us all is that we hear God calling us and have the grace to follow Christ as a disciple. Like Peter, we will need to hear the lessons about sacrifice and suffering over and over as they sink in. And in Jeremiah, we have a dramatic example of what to do with our joys, works, sacrifices and sufferings. Take them to God. And don’t worry about making them pretty and polite. God knows what we are thinking.

Eleventh after Pentecost

2011-08-28T06:39:00.000-04:00

(Proper 17A) Matthew 16: 21-28

Good morning, and grace and peace to you on this late summer morning. Last Sunday of August. Although you can’t tell it from the service leaflet, which we managed to get reprinted yesterday afternoon, I am this morning something of a pinch hitter as a preacher—and in that sense we are today among those affected by Hurricane Irene. For some weeks now Mary Beth Campbell, who is a senior program administrator and Director of Major Gifts with our mission partner, Five Talents International, has been on the calendar to be our Guest Preacher today—and then to be a guest for a gathering of our Five Talents Prayer Circle later on this afternoon, and then to meet with representatives of our diocesan Social Justice Task Force I believe tomorrow morning. But her Saturday flight was cancelled, and so she made a reservation for the Greyhound, and then that was cancelled. As of course I think we all understand, as so many of our friends and family members are among the 65 million people who live in the path of the storm this weekend. I believe she was rescheduled for a flight later today, which may get her here in time for the Prayer Circle gathering or at least for her scheduled meetings tomorrow, but I don’t know actually just how certain that is anyway—and we can hold her but then continue to hold in prayer all those whose lives have been affected, whether in terms of travel and business and vacation plans, or more seriously in terms of threats to life and property.

I’m also not sure of course what Mary Beth would have included in her sermon for us. In addition to her work with Five Talents she is also very active in her parish, St. Columba’s in Washington, D.C., working within healing and outreach ministries, and in the Diocese of Washington, where she chairs the committee that works on Millennium Development Goals, and she is a part-time student at the Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington—so I’m sure she would have had a lot to share, and I know we’re talking already about rescheduling, and I will look forward to that when it works with all our various calendars. In the meantime I do know for sure that she would have included in her sermon a time to express appreciation for the ministry of our Five Talents Prayer Circle in our support for the work of Five Talents in Lima, Peru, and for our support for our missionaries in Lima, John and Susan Park. Five Talents has been really a beautiful mission partnership for us of St. Andrew’s, for a number of years now, involving not just our adults but also our children in raising awareness and in opening the door to participation in Christian ministry in another part of the world. If she had been here, she would thanked us, and we in turn would have thanked her and all the folks at Five Talents for the opportunity for prayer and service and outreach that they have provided for us.

Where she would have gone with the reading from Matthew this morning, I’m less sure about. But I’m confident she would have had something to say about the call we have heard and that we share together, the invitation to conform our lives to Christ, to walk with him and in his footsteps, even as that walk can and will sometimes be costly and painful, even as faithfulness to him may within the experience and values of our life in this world lead us not to comfort and success but to hardship and suffering. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

This passage really has to do with a fundamental reorientation in terms of values. And even more, a reorientation of identity, and purpose. Our parish Outreach Committee had on its brochure for many years the motto, “Putting the love of God into action,” and I think that’s a helpful phrase. And if that sounds like any easy thing to do—putting the love of God into action in our lives,” then we’re probably not thinking it through all the way. There is this tendency in our culture to organize different aspects of our lives into categories. A dynamic filing system. I have family, friends, work, career, hobbies—and in there somewhere a folder for “church” or “religion” or “spirituality.” But what Jesus is talking about here is something very different. A commitment and a way of living that goes beyond the compartmentalized pattern of our lives. A commitment and a way of living that crosses between the dividers in the notebook, that takes hold of us and lifts us into a new frame of reference altogether. All of us. Not just the Sunday morning part. Not just the places where we’ve written “Church” in our dayplanner. Where it’s not just about us, about who we are, about how he fits into our busy lives and schedules—but where instead we offer ourselves to him. Where he is no longer a part of our agenda, but where we allow ourselves to be a part of us.

It is all about dying, which gives us the vocabulary of the cross in this lesson. Sometimes literally, as we read and hear of the stories of saints and heroes and martyrs of every generation, including very much our own. And sometimes about a dying to self, or to one version of ourselves, one set of priorities, so that through that death we can be raised in Christ to become someone new.

There’s a wonderful line in the third chapter of St. John, when John the Baptist says in reference to the life and ministry of Jesus, “I must decrease, so that he may increase.” In some ways it has to do with an emptying, with letting go. When we clear out the space filled with so much of the clutter of our lives, our goals and ambitions, our obsessions even, there can be this openness, this space, for him to grow up in us. If our hands are already full, then there’s nothing more we can do. No gift that we can receive.

An invitation this morning. All of us on a journey in faith, in relationship to Christ, drawn to him but trying to find just how that relationship can be perfected in us. And it will look different and be different for each of us. But an invitation to let go of our fear—which is what Jesus is talking to Peter about at the beginning of the passage this morning. To let go of our fear, as best we can, our need to control. And that’s a process. Step by step. Three forward and two back. Hearing his voice, responding, walking in his way. An invitation as we reach out our hands to receive his presence and to share in his life in the Bread and Wine of this Holy Communion, that we would ask him to put his love into action in our lives, to make us the instruments of his peace. That as we would share in his journey all the way to the cross, so we would even now begin to share in his eternal life.

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

Tenth after Pentecost

2011-08-21T06:47:00.002-04:00

(Proper 16A) Matthew 16: 13-20

Grace and peace this morning, and wonderful to see you today as we continue through this summer season. I do pray that it continues to be a good season for you, with an abundance of rest and refreshment along the way.

As you may know, Susy and I were in California last weekend, partly to visit family, especially my mom and my sister and her family, as I try to do every year or so, but timed this year to coincide with the 40th Year reunion of my high school class—which was a very rich experience in many ways: not just for the event itself, although it was very fun and enjoyable to be in that group, some friends I’ve known and to some degree or another have stayed in touch with over all these years, and then actually quite a few whom I haven’t seen since grad night 1971 (although we’ve lately been chatting on our new Facebook page!). But a rich experience because it really triggered for me a time of reflection about my own life story, thinking about my childhood and teenager years, reconnecting with those years in some ways, reflecting on how in good ways and sometimes in challenging ways those years really continue to shape and inform who I am, the direction and trajectory of my life—and helping me to reflect on the lives of some of my friends as well. Learning and re-learning the stories of our lives. So a lot to think about.

While I was in L.A., Phil Wainwright was here last Sunday, and as I read his sermon and the story of the Canaanite Woman and her encounter with Jesus, I found his reflections on that text really helpful. Jesus saying to her, in Matthew 15:28, “O woman, great is your faith.” That standing in contrast to the readings of the weeks before, in Matthew 14, also having to do with faith, and really problems with faith for the disciples.

If the woman from Lebanon had “great faith,” what to say about the disciples as they saw the gathering hungry crowds and wondered what could be done. Jesus says to them basically, “don’t you trust me to take care of this?” And then the miraculous feeding. And then later in chapter 14, Peter excitedly jumping over the side of the boat to rush to Jesus, and then looking down, losing his focus, and slipping into the waves. “O man of little faith,” Jesus says, “why did you doubt?” What to say about the faith of the disciples—and what to say about my faith?

But then today, Matthew 16, and this critical moment outside of Caesarea Philippi, the Confession of Peter. “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus, “Blessed are you.” Peter, the solid rock, whose faith will be the bulwark against all the powers of the enemy, in whom for the whole church will be vested the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

And so once again this question about faith. What it looks like. Where it comes from. We know it’s not natural to Peter, anyway. The story of his “Walking on Water” here, of course, and then, a few chapters later, in the Courtyard of the High Priest, and he’s all about fear, denial, betrayal. The epitome not of hope but of hopelessness. What does that have to say about what it means to have faith? Not the solid Rock, but quicksand. And Jesus then is clear about that too, as he responds to Peter’s remarkable affirmation. “Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.”

It’s a gift. That’s the point of what Jesus has to say here. Not something Peter has particularly earned or shown himself worthy of. Actually quite the contrary. He is the least likely in some ways.

I know when I in various aspects of my work and ministry find myself in the process of identifying and even appointing people to positions of leadership, there are some particular characteristics I look for. Committees, commissions, vestries, boards, and even now as in the diocese we are in the process that will lead to the election of our next bishop. And one of the things I look for is what I sometimes call “steadiness,” or even “calmness.” People who know how to measure twice and cut once. Who can enter into a process with some sense of deliberation, weighing different sides of a question without leaping to conclusions. People who aren’t about knee-jerk reactions. People with emotions and passions and loyalties and convictions, yes, but also and maybe first of all with minds, and sympathetic imaginations, with the ability to see things from the other guy’s perspective. My friend George Werner once spoke about how so many church leaders have the motto, “Ready, Fire, Aim.” Which always has made me nervous, and should make us all nervous. Especially when the rules of engagement are “shoot first, ask questions later.”

And Peter makes me nervous. I mean I love him for his strengths, his passions, his loyalties. But as the “Rock,” maybe not so much. I doubt if I’d appoint him senior warden. And even if he was the first Bishop of Rome, I’m not sure I’d feel all that comfortable with somebody like him as the 8th Bishop of Pittsburgh.

So it’s a supernatural discernment. Must be. Would need to be, for me.”For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.”

It’s interesting how so many religious and philosophical traditions really have to do with what I guess we might call the “formation of spiritual character.” The formational practice of meditation, perhaps, leading over years and decades to a state of enlightenment. Or the formational practice of obedience to a set of external practices, inwardly directed and outwardly directed. Wear this kind of clothing, not that kind. Eat this, not that. Perform these good works. Tithe. Serve the downtrodden. Lots of heavy lifting. Often mistranslated as: earn points, avoid demerits, come out on the plus side on the day of judgment.

For Peter, though, it’s just a gift. Not because he gets anything particularly right, and not because of his spiritual or moral preparation. He would fail on every count. But because Jesus has loved him, and in that love a door has been opened and a new life has begun.

The point here not to say that there is no value to prayer and contemplation and spiritual practice and growth, nor that we might not desire for all kinds of reasons to give our lives in some way or other to the accomplish of good works, making a difference for others and the world around us. As Christian people those spiritual and moral and social actions are things that we are as it were almost naturally drawn to.

But it is gift. Who we are, what happens in us in our relationship with Christ Jesus. That’s the thing about love. All gift. The Canaanite woman is a marginal character, an outsider. Peter probably the one person among the 12, of course not counting Judas Iscariot, whom you wouldn’t want to have as Senior Warden. But God seems to see things differently.

Even the unlovable, even people like us. The Glendale High School Class of 1971. The people of St. Andrew’s Church. Even us. With generosity and grace and affection and an abundance of divine tenderness and mercy, vast as every ocean, beyond our imagining, the gift is for us. Falling like summer rain on a hillside. All free. To begin to understand that, even to catch a glimpse of it, is to begin to unfold the deepest meaning of the Manger on Christmas Eve, and of the Cross on that Friday afternoon. God acting to heal and restore, to forgive and make new. As we open our brokenness to him, and as we turn to him, it is all gift. All blessing.

Ninth after Pentecost, August 14, 2011

2011-08-16T08:04:00.003-04:00

Proper 15A Matthew 15: 10-28
The Rev. Dr. Philip Wainwright
Priest Associate, St. Andrew's Church

In today’s gospel, Jesus praises a woman for her faith: ‘Woman, great is your faith!’ I’m not sure He says the same about my faith. Perhaps some of you aren’t sure about that either. If so, we might do well to think about this passage, and what it is telling us about faith. ‘Faith’ is one of those words that people use in many different ways; this gospel is an opportunity to see what Jesus means when He uses the word. So let’s think about that.

Jesus calls the woman’s faith ‘great faith’. He uses the same phrase in another passage, and on several other occasions He describes someone’s faith as ‘little faith’. In order to understand what Jesus means by faith, it’s helpful to compare His notion of great faith with His notion of little faith.

Jesus uses the phrase little faith in the Sermon the Mount, when He is describing people who are afraid of not having enough to eat or to wear. Why do you worry about clothing? He asks. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? The phrase is repeated in Matthew 16:8, after the feeding of the 5000, to refer to the disciples’ fear of going hungry. To worry about those things is to have little faith.

Jesus also uses the phrase in Matthew 8:26, when the disciples are afraid of dying in a storm that blows up as they sailing on Lake Galilee, and in 14:31, which we heard just last week, when Peter is suddenly afraid when He was walking on the water in obedience to Jesus’s call. That’s also little faith. So little faith is being afraid of living by God’s word. Afraid because you don’t have what you need, afraid because the boat is being rocked, afraid because the water is rising all around you.

Then there’s great faith. There’s the passage we heard this morning, of course, the Canaanite woman who asks for healing of her daughter. Jesus says ‘not likely, I’m only sent to the Jews.’ She begs, but He insists: ‘it isn’t fair to give the children’s bread to the dogs.’ She says, ‘even the dogs get to eat the crumbs that fall from the table.’ Then Jesus: Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted. And her daughter was healed instantly. Now no doubt she was afraid that her daughter was going to die. But she was not afraid to bring her need to Jesus, and was not afraid to keep it on Jesus’s agenda until He dealt with it. The other occasion where Jesus calls someone’s faith great is Matt 8:10, where a centurion, a Roman soldier, asks Jesus to heal his sick servant. On that occasion Jesus says all right, I’ll come and heal him. The Centurion says You don’t have to come, I know how authority works, You can just say the word here and now and I know it’ll happen! Don’t wait even to go to my house, do it now! Jesus: I tell you the truth, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.

So that’s great faith: not letting what you’re afraid of stop you calling on God, being sure that God will take care of you and can do it with no trouble at all, and being determined to keep asking for His help until you receive it or until you understand why He is not giving you what you’re asking for. Great faith is acting on faith, not just believing something but doing something because of what you believe.

The commonest statement I hear when discussions come up on faith is, ‘I wish I had greater faith’. The assumption is that we don’t have faith unless someone or something intervenes and gives it to us.‘I wish God would give me faith like that’—it’s God’s fault that I don’t have it!

But Jesus seems to have a different assumption. When Peter is beginning to sink beneath the water and cries out, Jesus holds out His hand to Him and says, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’ Jesus assumes that God has given it, the faith is there, unless we turn away from it. Peter was doing OK until he began to doubt, and then the miracle vanished. When the disciples say, ‘Increase our faith’ (Luke 17:5), Jesus says, ‘If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea,” and it will obey you.’ You don’t need more, even the little you have is enough to move mountains if you would only act on it.

That’s why Jesus tells us that we can never enter the Kingdom of Heaven unless we become like little children (Matthew 18:3). Children are believers by nature, until someone sows doubt in their mind. Tell a four year old that you’re the strongest man in the world, and he’ll believe you—till some wise-guy ten-year old says ‘you don’t believe that, do you?’

When we are first told all that God wants to give us and do for us, our hearts rise up to believe it and act on it. Then we suddenly hear the wise-guy, we hear him in our mind because we have so often heard him in real life: ‘You don’t believe that, do you? You’re not going to actually live by that, are you’ And all of a sudden we’re not sure… what would the guys at the office say if I said I really believe what the Bible says? What would the kids at school think? What would my wife, my husband, my parents, think? And we begin to sink beneath the waves, as Jesus asks, ‘Why did you doubt?’

God cannot give us the overflowing blessing that He longs to give us unless we believe that He can and will do it, and are eager for Him to do it. Romans 3:25 says that the greatest blessing of all, salvation, is ‘received by faith’. That’s how the universe works. We can’t explain why that is, any more than we can explain why there’s gravity, why things fall down when you let go of them, but we can recognise that it’s true, and use the knowledge for our advantage.

Faith is given to us already. Would God would withhold the means of blessing from us when we know He wants us to be blessed? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all— how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? God has already given us the faith we want, it’s the only way we ever knew God in the first place. The only question is, are we willing to act on it? A little? Enough to hope that God will accept us when we die, but not enough that we will rely on Him for our earthly needs while we are here? Or a lot? Great faith, enough to trust him totally for all our needs, so that we can seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and leave our kingdom to His care?

Let me end by pointing out one interesting difference between those who demonstrate the two levels of faith. Those of little faith are the disciples, the insiders, the children of the master of the house, the heirs. Those of great faith are foreigners, outsiders, the dogs that sit under the table, a Roman, a Canaanite—but outsiders who recognise the truth about Jesus, that He really wants to provide what people need, and are going to ask for it boldly: the soldier with his comment about not needing to come, the woman with her refusal to take no for an answer. I don’t quite know what to make of that difference in terms of doctrine, but I do know that I feel more like an insider, a privileged one, and maybe that means that means I should look at my own faith a bit more closely. I may think I have great faith, when in fact I rarely act on what faith I do have. Perhaps there are others here this morning in that same spiritual condition. This story is a reminder to all of us not never to be afraid, but when we are afraid to call on God with all our heart no matter who’s looking and never to stop. God is trustworthy, He is with us when those we love are sick, when the waters are rising around us, and He will not abandon us. Let us not only profess that faith, but live by it.

Eighth after Pentecost

2011-08-07T06:38:00.002-04:00

(Proper 14A) Matthew 14: 22-33

Good morning, on this summer morning, and grace and peace. First Sunday of August, and somehow turning the calendar page from seems to mark a milestone in the course of the summer—the long season beginning to roll on downhill toward September and the fall. Still time for warm evenings on the front porch, certainly. But the newspapers are beginning to run the back-to-school advertisements, and certainly around the Church Office we find ourselves more and more thinking about Round Up Sunday and the season of life that begins with renewed energy after the Labor Day weekend. In all that, I hope that this season continues to be an enjoyable one for you.

We have a couple of friends up in Massachusetts with sailboats, but Susy and I didn’t get out on the water while we were up there last month. Nonetheless, the gospel reading from Matthew 14 does connect for me to the experience of being out on the water. How often what seems to be a pretty quiet day on the shore turns out to be something more challenging out on the water. I’ve never been on the open water in any kind of serious weather, but even just having had a taste of it can be helpful in catching what’s going on for the disciples and Peter. Dark skies. Waves rolling one after the other. Roaring wind.

Of course, you don’t need to be a sailor to get the scene. Norway and the debt ceiling, stock market pyrotechnics, wars and rumors of war, terrorism, global economic dislocation, political turmoil. And all our personal lives. Highs and lows. Triumphs and failures. Marriage and family, parents, kids, medical issues, career. Sometimes feeling like one of those circus jugglers, with balls and bowling pins and flaming torches all in the air at the same time.

The disciples set out on their own across the lake, leaving Jesus alone in his prayers. But as the wind and waves become more turbulent they catch a glimpse of him out on the water. And we know the story. Peter, who is always the impetuous one, swings over the side of the boat and begins to walk toward Jesus. Then all of a sudden he realizes just where he is. He takes his eye off Jesus. In his fear he begins to sink. But then at the last minute remembers, he cries out. “Lord, save me!” And Jesus approaches, reaches out, lifts him up, brings him into the boat. “O ye of little faith—why did you doubt?” And there is awe-filled worship, the disciples in the boat anticipating the words of the Centurion at the Cross on Good Friday, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

Like the scene just before of the Feeding of the Five Thousand, as we read that story last week, the "sermon" is preached by Jesus not with words, but in action. About how when we look down, in doubt, in fear, in self-centeredness, when it is all about us, the storms will overwhelm us, and we will begin to sink beneath the waves. But to see here so vividly that when we keep our eyes on Jesus and place our faith in him, we will begin to participate here and now in the triumphant life of the Kingdom of Heaven.

A powerful, eye-opening, heart-opening moment in the lives of those on the boat that night, and for us and for Christians telling this story and living this story, living this story, again and again, over two thousand years. The dark night, the storm, and Jesus.

August 6, 2011

2011-08-07T06:33:00.002-04:00

Holy Matrimony
Pamela Virginia Bieranoski and Matthew John Derby

Matt and Pam: what a great day! There was snow on the ground when we began planning. And now the warm days of midsummer have arrived. And I do want to say for myself personally and I know for all those who are participating today and sharing the day as witnesses, a congregation of family and friends—thank you. Thank you for what is the honor, truly, to be a part of this. And thank you also and even more for being the people that you are. Two gifted young people of intelligence and good humor and wonderful friendship, sharing a kind and gentle spirit, gracious and engaging. Thank you for being the people that you are—and for finding each other! Which is certainly a great pleasure and a blessing for all of us. It is great to know you each as individuals, and even more wonderful to know you together.

It is fun, very enjoyable, as two people get married, to celebrate who you are and what you are for each other—and that is of course very appropriate. To be thankful for the joy that you bring to one another, for love and romance, for the sense of happiness which touches your lives now and which I and we all pray will continue all the days to come.

But I do want to say in the midst of that celebration, simply to point out, that we hear in the language of this service of Holy Matrimony, in the prayers we pray together, in the solemn vows you will exchange, in the words of Holy Scripture, in this great offering of sacred music which you and Peter and Alastair and the Schola have prepared for us, a high seriousness--and it is important just for this moment to take a breath and to recognize that in this moment you two are undertaking what can only be described as an awesome responsibility.

Sometimes at weddings I like to tell the story of Moses in the Wilderness, as he comes to the Burning Bush, and as the great voice booms out, “Take off your shoes, Moses, take off your shoes: for the ground on which you stand is holy ground.” And I say, we should all take off our shoes. B
ecause this is just like that moment for Moses: a turning point, a new beginning. Moses is called to a new vocation, to assume responsibility as God’s Agent, to be the one through whom God will work to accomplish his purposes. And that’s what this moment is for you, and for all of us here today. A moment of new vocation, Matt and Pam, to assume responsibility, to be a new person, husband and wife, through whom God will work. Which is why we call marriage a sacrament. Beginning now, and then continuing this evening and tomorrow and in all the years to come. In ways we can’t even begin to imagine.

In the story of Creation in the first chapter of Genesis we read, “Then God said, “let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sear, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

A sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward, spiritual grace. The image of God. Which is what now you are for us. The active present-time manifestation of Christ in the world. And as husband and wife, you become sacrament. You become a visible sign of God’s presence.

He is doing now and is going to do great and wonderful things in your life together and through your life together, to bless others, to forgive, to heal, to renew. It will be a great adventure, as he works in you and through you. Fun sometimes, sometimes challenging. But in it all, a calling, a high and serious vocation: and one I truly believe you have already begun, and that you will continue in a wonderful spirit all the days of your life.

And now friends, as Matt and Pam come forward to exchange the vows that will make them husband and wife, may we all pause in a moment of prayer for them, and may be open our own lives at this moment that we also may share in this time of God’s richest blessing.

Seventh after Pentecost

2011-07-31T07:30:00.002-04:00

July 31, 2011, Proper 13a

Grace and peace, on this warm midsummer Sunday morning. It is wonderful to be here with you and to be back home, as Susy and I yesterday afternoon arrived home after a couple of weeks up in New England, as we have spent our summer vacations for so many years now.

Scituate, Massachusetts, where a branch of Susy’s family has lived for about 350 years. Susy’s younger brother Mike, whom many of you have met, now has the family home actually where Susy’s mom was born, and we certainly always enjoy a time of summer relaxing by the shore, afternoon swims at the town beach, lots of great meals and conversations. Just a very nice time—though honestly with e-mail and the IPhone I guess we never really cut the cord entirely, and after a week or so I do find myself beginning to think more and more about life here, and am glad to get moving on for the return.

In all that I’m very appreciative of the way Phil Wainwright and Dean Byrom made themselves available for any pastoral concerns that might have come up while I was away, and of course for Joan and Becky and Pete and Liz and all of you for keeping “summer at St. Andrew’s” on track. Probably a lot of that is actually easier when I’m not around to pester and cause problems.

And of course with thanks to Junior Warden Brandon Cooper and Dr. George Knight and our Property Committee for completing the installation of our Church Air Conditioning system and getting that all up and running over the past two weeks. A great relief to us all . . . .

While we were away we did enjoy two Sundays with our friends at St. Luke’s Church in Scituate, and I also found it very meaningful to read the two sermons that Phil preached over these weeks, as they were posted on the Rector’s Page blog (which you can get to by way of the St. Andrew’s website, or just send me an e-mail and I’ll be sure you’re connected, if you’re not already). [Scroll down past this entry in the blog to read Phil's sermons.]

I do learn really so much from Phil especially as preacher and teacher of scripture, and I hope we would all be developing a rich sense of what a gift that it is to have him with us here. Certainly I know I have been richly blessed in this, and really enjoyed reading his reflections on the series of parables in the “Sermon by the Lakeshore” that Jesus preaches in Matthew 13.

Just thinking back to Matthew 13:10, as the disciples ask Jesus, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” And his reply: “It has been granted to you to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to these others it has not been granted.” You disciples have me right here with you in this close personal way, but others will need to follow a more indirect path, and these words of mine here will help them find their way. And then at verse 16, “Happy are your eyes, because they see, and your ears because they hear! Many prophets and saints, I tell you, desired to see what you now see, yet never saw it; to hear what you hear, yet never heard it.” Again, to focus on what it means for the disciples to be with Jesus in such a personal and intimate way.

After the Sermon by the Shore Jesus heads on home to Nazareth, where there is something of a buzz about his new fame, and perhaps a little jealousy. That's where he says, "A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown." And then comes the news that John the Baptist, the cousin of Jesus and like Jesus a preacher who has caused a great stir among the people—John the Baptist has been arrested by Herod, and then the story of his execution.

It appears to be a dangerous moment for preachers, and Jesus moves away from Nazareth, perhaps hoping to spare his family and friends the danger of Herod sweeping down on them. We might even remember that it is Matthew who had told us just a few chapters back the story of this Herod’s father and the visit of the Wise Men from the East and then, in such a horrifying way, the Slaughter of the Innocents in Bethlehem, which Jesus must have had in mind in this moment of gathering conflict with the authorities. And these days as we read this it’s hard not to be reminded of what so many have been dealing with in Iran and Syria and Somalia and the Sudan. This sense of a gathering storm of violence, and the kind of fear that would take hold.

But then following along in Chapter 14 this morning, and despite the danger, the crowds continue to seek Jesus out. Despite the danger. They’ve heard something in those Parables, they have for themselves begun to catch a glimpse of what the Kingdom of Heaven is all about, and nothing will turn them aside.

And so Jesus continues as well. As I read the stories of these two great miraculous signs I can’t help but think of that famous saying attributed often to St. Francis of Assisi: “Preach constantly. When necessary use words.”

Here Jesus we might say begins to preach in a different language, with a vocabulary not of words this time, but to reveal the infinite depth of his divine love in action.

He sees the crowd first, and Matthew says “his heart goes out to them.” And the first stunning miracle: he cures all of them who are sick. No disease in heaven, no brokenness, no decay. The wages of sin is death, but in his presence there is healing and renewal and restoration and abundance of life. And then he lifts up his eyes over the crowd and he senses their hunger. Their physical hunger, but also their deeper spiritual hunger. And there follows the miraculous Feeding of the Five Thousand. Five loaves, two fish. St. John tells us in his account that this small beginning was the gift of a young boy, shared now and increased and multiplied, in abundance, all filled, and even the baskets at the end overflowing. Bread and fish, and blessing, and a glimpse of heavenly banquet. From the beginning Christians have connected this story with the story of the Last Supper, and with the story of the two disciples on the Road to Emmaus, as Jesus blessed and broke bread with them, and to know that even as we come forward to the Table of the Eucharist this morning we share with those who were with Jesus in his presence and blessing. More than words. We are lifted up for a moment in anticipation, to the courts of Heaven. The Parables of the Kingdom of Heaven, coming alive in our hearts and in our lives.

I would just pray that it would be so for us all this morning. For each of us as individuals, as we grow in faith and grow into Christ, and for the life of the whole Church in the midst of such troubled times in the wide world. That as we hear the Word of Scripture we are brought into his living presence. That as the Bread is Broken and the Wine is poured out, we would be drawn to him. A desire to conform our lives to his, in obedience and in love. That even now as we affirm our loyalty to him and to him alone, we would begin to know the blessings of his Kingdom.

Guest Preacher

2011-07-26T12:13:00.002-04:00

With the Rector on his annual shore leave, the good people of St. Andrew's have heard from our Priest Associate, the Rev. Dr. Philip Wainwright, on Sundays July 17 and 24. His two sermons are shared here. With the Rector's deepest appreciation.

The Parable of the Weeds
Matt 13:24–30, 36–43

In the gospel readings last week and this week and next week, Jesus is telling parables. If you look closely at the gospel reading for this week, you’ll have noticed that we skip some verses, vv 34–43. In those verses Matthew tells us how important parables are: Jesus hardly ever taught without using a parable, Matthew says, and much of His teaching has only been preserved in parable form.

In Matthew 13, the disciples ask Jesus why He teaches in parables. You can sum up Jesus’s answer like this: parables make a point that can be easily rejected or ignored if you don’t like it. Parables are easy to brush off. ‘I don’t know what he’s talking about, first the kingdom of heaven is like mustard, then it’s like a pearl, then it’s like yeast, now it’s like a field—I can’t make sense of it, I’m not going to bother with it.’

Parables make their point in a way that is easy for us to miss, and if we’re not really determined to learn from Jesus, we will misunderstand them. The first step in understanding any parable is the belief that Jesus has something to teach us which only He can teach us, and which we want to learn. When you approach the parables in that spirit, you find that they always have something new to teach you.

So in that spirit, let’s look at the parable of the weeds, that Jesus tells in today’s gospel. It’s a good place to start if you’re not familiar with parables as a teaching tool, because it’s one of only two parables that Jesus explains. Usually, He doesn’t do that; He simply tells the parable and says no more, or says something along the lines of ‘He who has ears to hear, let him hear.’ With this parable, Jesus also takes the time to teach us how parables work, how He uses them to teach. But even in His explanation, He doesn’t cover everything, but leaves us with something to discover for ourselves, as we’ll see.

The parable is in vv 24–30. A farmer sows good wheat seed in his field, but when it grows, weeds turn out to be growing right there with the wheat. The weeds have grown from seed that has also been deliberately sowed, but by the farmer’s enemy, v 28 says. The farm workers say ‘don’t worry Mr Farmer, we’ll pull them up’, but the farmer says no, don’t do that, in case you pull up the wheat too. We’ll sort them out when we harvest them.’ That’s the parable.

Then in vv 38 and 39, Jesus explains the parable: the field is the world, and the good seed means the sons of the kingdom; the weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the close of the age, and the reapers are angels. Then he adds some wonderful fire and brimstone stuff about the ultimate fate of the weeds, but I don’t need to dwell on that with all of you, because I’m sure all of you are already eager to be sons and daughters of the kingdom, not of the evil one. If you’re not, you can think about those verses while I stress a couple of other points instead.

The sower is God, of course, but who are the servants of the sower? Jesus’s explanation doesn’t mention them. This is one of those areas where Jesus has left us something to discover for ourselves. If the sower is God, these are the servants of God; they could be angels, who are certainly servants of God, but Jesus says that in this parable the angels are the harvesters, the reapers. So I think in this parable the servants must be God’s human servants, not God’s angelic servants. In other words, you and me, members of the church, all those who are trying to do God’s work in the world. And if that’s true, there are a couple of important reminders for us in this parable that I’d like you to think about.

First, notice that these servants don’t really understand how God is working, do they? First they appear to think that God sowed the weeds as well the wheat, and when God explains that it is Satan who sowed the weeds, they think the proper thing to do is to pull up the weeds, and God has to say ‘No, no, don’t do that, you’ll pull up the wheat as well.’ They don’t have a very good understanding of what God is up to, or what to do when God’s work isn’t going the way they think it should. The parable suggests to me that God’s human servants assume that the first idea that comes into their head about God’s work is the right one, and then act on it. And while it’s not in the parable, my experience of God’s human servants suggests that the next thing they do is condemn those who disagree with them about God’s work, and either drive them out of the church, or walk away from them to found their own church. We have very recent experience of this that comes to all our minds, I’m sure, but it’s nothing new or exciting. My experience over the years I’ve been a Christian is that this reaction is not confined to one strand of churchmanship, or one theological approach. No matter where any of us stand on the various issues that divide Christians, we may be wrong, and we need to remember that possibility. We may be jumping to conclusions.

We need to be like the servants in the parable, and be ready to be corrected by God’s word. They thought one thing, God said something different, and they revised their position in the light of God’s word. For us, that means Scripture. If we can’t find support in Scripture, or if those who differ from us can find as much support in Scripture as we can, we need to consider that we’re not hearing the Holy Spirit as clearly as we think. That is the classical Anglican approach: look on p 853 of the Prayer Book, in the catechism, top of the page: We recognise truths to be taught by the Holy Spirit when they are in accord with the Scriptures. The only way to be sure that we are doing what God wants is to follow Scripture.

If we look at ourselves from another point of view in the parable, we see the same lesson being taught us. Let’s think of ourselves not as God’s servants, but as the growing seed, hopefully the ones growing into sons and daughters of the kingdom. In v 30, the Farmer in the parable says ‘Don’t pull up the weeds, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest’. When the Farmer says ‘you might pull up the wheat with the weeds’, He is saying, ‘you can’t always tell the difference between the wheat and the weeds’. The sons of the kingdom and the sons of the evil one have a lot in common, we look very much alike at times. We think we know which we are, but we only see part of the picture. Only God sees the whole picture. That’s why it’s not our place to judge. Our business is to grow in love and knowledge of Him, His business is to judge.

The wheat is still growing; harvest-time is not until the wheat is fully grown and ripe. God’s people are not yet ready to be harvested, we’re not fully grown. We’re not ripe. Most of us don’t know this. It’s a characteristic of human beings that we all think we’re as good as we’re ever going to get, even as good as anyone could ever expect us to be. Jesus says that God still has some growing for us to do—even those of us who have been His followers for years and years. In our opinion we are ready for harvest now, but God can see we still have some growing to do.

Even when harvest time comes, it won’t be those who are so eager to see the weeds pulled up who are given the job. The angels will do that, Jesus says in v 41. So those who are wrong about God’s will, the weeds, the unfaithful, the disobedient, are not ultimately our concern at all. We can leave them to God, and concentrate on what is our concern, which is growing in faith and love until we have become all God plans for us to be.

This not to say that in the church we shouldn’t try to exercise discipline, of course. The Bible tells us to do that when we can. But we know that even on the human level we sometimes get it wrong, that there are miscarriages of justice; so when it comes to ultimate things, to the world of eternity, it really is best that God and His angels take care of that side of things.

Our business as far as eternity is concerned is ourselves. In this parable Jesus is reminding all of us here today that we’re not yet what God wants us to be. We can ignore His words, or pretend that we don’t know what He is talking about if we like, but how smart is that? And we know it’s true anyway. Jesus is calling us to listen less to our own ideas, and more carefully to God’s word, and to apply it more thoroughly to our lives.

The Kingdom of Heaven
Matthew 13:31–33, 44–52

I mentioned last week that in our Sunday gospel readings we are in a season of parables, and in today’s gospel we get five of them—the parables of the mustard seed, the yeast, the buried treasure, the pearl of great price, and the net full of all kinds of fish. I thought about doing five three-minute sermons, but I have a friend who is a juggler and he seems to have a lot of fun, so I’m going to preach on all five at once and see what happens!

Actually, it’s easy to do because there’s a very important thing that links them all together; the phrase kingdom of heaven. Jesus begins each of these parables by saying The kingdom of heaven is like. And we should also note that last week’s parable, about the wheat and the weeds growing together, was introduced by the same phrase, and so is one more that comes later in Matthew’s gospel, the parable of the labourers in the vineyard. These seven parables, all of them in Matthew’s gospel, and only these seven, are introduced by this phrase. So let’s begin by thinking about what that phrase means.

Now it can’t simply be another way of saying ‘heaven’. We know that from last week’s parable, where the weeds and the wheat were growing together. The good and the bad grow together till the harvest, when the weeds are burned and the wheat brought into the barn. The barn could be heaven, but the parable is not about the harvested wheat, but about the wheat and weeds growing together. It’s about ‘before heaven’. Today’s parable about the net full of all kinds of fish makes the same point: in the net are good fish and bad fish, which will be sorted out later. Then the good fish will go to heaven, and the bad fish to the cat-food factory. But both parables are about life before heaven. Kingdom of heaven refers to something in this life, not the life to come, life before we go to heaven, not life in heaven.

Next, what about that the word kingdom, what does that mean here? It’s not quite what we usually mean by that word. We usually think of a Kingdom as a place. Earthly Kingdoms are places; they have geographical boundaries, which mark the area within which a King—or whoever is the sovereign—has authority. Queen Elizabeth has authority everywhere in the island of Great Britain, but no authority anywhere in the United States. When the Queen visits this country, she loses whatever authority she has in England. Not only does she have no authority, but she comes under the authority of someone else, in this case of Congress. She has to obey laws here that she doesn’t have to obey in her own Kingdom. And so does any congressman who goes to Great Britain. You are under the law of the place you are in, because you are in it, whether you approve of the place’s laws or not, whether you think they are good laws or not.

God’s Kingdom is not that sort of kingdom. His authority is not connected with place. You don’t come under His authority by being in a certain place—even a church. People sometimes talk about the church as though it were that earthly sort of Kingdom, as though when you come into the church, you’re in the place where God’s law operates, and you’d better obey it. People occasionally say things to me at the coffee hour, and then hurriedly add, ‘Oops, I’m not supposed to say things like that in church, sorry!’ But that’s not how God’s kingdom works. No one comes under God’s authority just by coming into a church. God’s Kingdom is not a place, but the human heart; when God is our king, we submit to His authority no matter where we are, and no matter who else claims authority over us. Christians live under His rule by their own free choice, and they live that way wherever they go. That’s why there are no officers with power in God’s Kingdom—Jesus’s disciples were always arguing about that: of course Jesus is in command, but who’s second in command? Who’s next most important, after Jesus? No one, Jesus says. His Kingdom is made up of people who have freely submitted to His authority, so no other officers will be necessary. The only way to be useful in this Kingdom is to be a servant. Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. No hierarchy of power, just Jesus and His servants, some of whom serve other servants as well as Jesus. And all seven parables are about life when you’re the subject of one king while you’re living where another king has authority. They are about living as a Christian in a non-Christian world. When Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is like Jesus is saying ‘life under my authority is like, the Christian life is like’.

These parables make important points about Christian living. Those who don’t obey our king aren’t our problem, we heard last week in the parable of the weeds, and the same point is made in the parable of the fish: the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous. Not our job—the angels will do the sorting.

Although there’s more to it than just a repeat of last week’s parable; the parable of the fish tells us something else too. It tells us that the Christian life is like a net, it’s designed to catch people. I will make you fishers of men, Jesus told the disciples when He first called them to be His followers. He sends His followers out to share the good news of salvation in Christ with others, so that those others will be part of the kingdom of heaven too. And we’re to share that news with everyone, to cast that net as wide as we can and fill it as full as we can.

And the other parables in this series also teach us important points about the Christian life. The parables of the mustard seed and the yeast tell us not to stress too much when it seems that our own efforts don’t amount to much. Living the Christian life can seem like a small thing; just trying to obey God’s word in our own lives and helping others in small ways, when the evil in the world seems so powerful and so well-established. Yet the parable of the yeast says that living the Christian life has an effect far beyond itself, an effect on the whole, and eventually spreads far and wide, and the parable of the mustard seed says it may be tiny, but in it is contained something much greater. Like the wheat and the weeds, we can’t see the whole picture; but God can, and He tells us here that there is more going on than we can see in our simple daily walk with Christ, and that we can trust that He is at work in what we do when we are faithful, little though it sometimes seems to us.

The parables of the buried treasure and the pearl remind us that in fact the Christian life is the most valuable thing there is—it’s worth sacrificing everything else in order to be able to have it. It’s certainly worth the criticism you get when you live by what the Bible teaches instead of what the world thinks is right—if that’s the most that you have to put up with because you’re a Christian, you’re getting a real bargain.

We don’t come under God’s authority by being in a certain place, even the church, in fact we don’t come under God’s authority even by being in heaven. Rather, the reverse is true: we enter heaven by being under God’s authority. Not by obeying His authority—only Jesus obeyed God in everything. The rest of us, even the most devoted Christian, disobey God again and again. But not because we reject His authority; we disobey Him because of our own failings, not because we reject His authority. We accept His authority, and when we do disobey Him, we ask His forgiveness and His help in doing better in the future. That’s faith in action—faith that when God says in His word that through Jesus Christ He forgives those who repent, He can be trusted. And it’s that faith that takes us to heaven, and even gives us a taste of heaven in this life. That’s why the Christian life is the Kingdom of Heaven already. It’s worth making sacrifices for. It’s wonderful now, and will be even more wonderful when Christ is all in all.

Confessions of a Carioca: Thinking Parochially

2011-07-16T08:52:00.000-04:00

Confessions of a Carioca: Thinking Parochially

En Vacances

2011-07-15T11:23:00.004-04:00

The second part of July, and Bruce and Susy head up to Scituate, Massachusetts, where Susy's family has lived more or less continuously since 1650, for a little shore leave.

Thanks as always to Church Secretary extraordinaire, Joan Soulliere, and to Priest Associate Phil Wainwright and Pastoral Assistant Dean Byrom for holding things together while I'm gone.

We'll be at St. Luke's, Scituate, on Sunday mornings at 10--and at the beach or napping the rest of the time. See all back home in the 'Burgh at the end of the month!

BruceR

Fourth after Pentecost

2011-07-09T22:59:00.007-04:00

Isaiah 55: 10-13; Matthew 13: 1-9, 18-23
Holy Baptism: Ada Alvarez Munson

Grace and peace once again on this summer morning, and a great day for a baptism—which it always is: a great day for a baptism. Ada Alvarez Munson. It was fun and wonderful to watch her grow during her gestational months and certainly as wonderful now to see her in this moment and to celebrate with her mom and dad and her godparents and all her family and friends the great blessings of this holy sacrament. In a way I've had her in mind from the days all the way back four years ago now and more when I first got to know Alison and Clark in the time of preparation for the celebration of their marriage. I knew just intuitively that you guys would have in your lives the foundation of a great family, that you would be wonderful parents, and now that intuition is beginning to be fulfilled . . . .

At the end of Matthew Christ commands his church to go forth, to teach, and to baptize, and it is a privilege and a joy to come together this morning in obedience to that command and in the love that surrounds that obedience. We’ve had quite a few baptisms this year here at St. Andrew’s, and now two, two July Sundays in a row, which is very exciting. Sometimes perhaps sensing God tapping us on the shoulder and saying, “pay attention to this.” And even, “Let’s hear it twice, to be sure we really do hear the word for us.”

We may be invited in this year to allow the sacred mystery of the font to enter into our lives, individually and as a congregation, to give shape to our sense of who we are as Christian people, to be a source of refreshment and renewal in our going forward in mission and ministry.

The two readings for this morning seem to me to be just perfect for a baptismal day. The great song from the second part of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. “As rain and snow fall from the heavens and return not again, but water the earth, bringing for life and giving growth, seed for sowing and bread for eating, so is my word that goes forth from my mouth; it will not return to me empty; but will accomplish that which I have purposed, and prosper in that for which I sent it . . . . The mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.”

Like the reading from the Prophet Zechariah last Sunday, this is spoken by the Prophet for that moment when the exiles of Jerusalem are about to return. A word of hope, a word all about renewal, about rededication to the Covenant at the heart of the relationship between God and his people. About the wonderful blessing and power and joy that will burst force in this new beginning. The water of baptism, in the soil of our lives. “Bringing forth life and giving growth.” Wonderful, and may we all have been showered with those baptismal waters this morning.

And something of the same in the famous parable of the Sower and the Seed in Matthew 13. The seed is scattered, and at first the story doesn’t seem too promising. Hard ground, thistles, burning sun. But then there is the seed that is sown now in the fresh new soil of God’s word, and it results in this miraculous and abundant harvest, growth in abundance.

It’s all transformation, new birth, resurrection. In the words of the Easter hymn, “as in Adam all die, but even so in Christ shall all be made alive." The Greek word we translate as "repentance," metanoia, means more than simply a sense of regret for something said or done. It indicates "another thought," or even, "another identity." It is about being changed, deep down, through and through. In repentance at the font we turn from sin and death and we turn to the one who is the Giver of Life. And in him we are changed and made new.

As we have been privileged to be a part of that this morning, and as we are privileged to be a part of that as Christian people again and again. His arms open in blessing—for Ada this morning, and for each of us, as we dedicate ourselves to him, as he comes along side to walk with us, day by day and all our life long.

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

Memorial Service: James Vern Kennedy

2011-07-09T08:55:00.003-04:00

Good afternoon friends, and grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. I welcome you to St. Andrew’s on this warm summer afternoon as we would give thanks for the life of Jim Kennedy, as we would hear in scripture and in the ancient prayers of the Church the gospel word of the assurance of God’s continuing love, and of the promise that is for us in the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and as we would express our continuing love and care for Pat, Lisa, and Vern and for all those who mourn the loss of such a great man.

Husband. Father and Father-in-Law. Grandfather. Colleague. Friend. Fellow-worker in so many ways in the mission and ministry of Christ’s Church. It is a privilege for me, and I know for our pastoral assistant minister Dean Byrom, and for all of us of St. Andrew’s to be a part of this today, to reflect these past few years as Jim and Pat have been a part of this church family, and I’m honored as well to share this service with my good friend and colleague Tom Phillips, rector of the Fox Chapel Church, where Jim and Pat also worshipped for a number of years, and I think both of us perhaps symbolizing and representing a number of churches in many places, east and west, north and south, where Jim and Pat and their family have contributed and shared in rich ministry in so many ways.

I know I was talking just recently to another friend and colleague, John Bailey, rector of St. Andrew’s up in New Kensington, who worked very closely with Jim some years ago as they developed the Stephen Ministry program when they were both at the Fox Chapel Church, and John was just so very effusive in saying how impressed he was with Jim’s faithful dedication to that work, to say that “it couldn’t have happened without him.” And John and Karen are away this weekend, but I know he is with us also in thoughts and prayers.

Certainly I have known Jim as a man of such great interest and engagement and desire to contribute, to make a difference. How even in the last months of his illness before his death last May he was so very connected and committed to thoughtful conversation, study, reflection. To talk some about his career and about his life in the church. To talk about things known and unknown, questions answered and questions still to be explored.

And just to notice that as we talked about the leaflet for the service here this afternoon we wondered if there was a “patron saint for chemists.” I couldn’t find that exactly, though that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. But Albert of Cologne, Albertus Magnus, revealed himself to us in that bit of research in a wonderful way, one of those early bridge characters in the first years of the scholastic movement and the renaissance, who was chiefly known for his somewhat controversial commitment to the co-existence of science and faith, rejecting neither one nor the other, and pursuing both with energy and enthusiasm. And that seemed just right for Jim. A man of faith, who was a man of inquiring faith, curious, skeptical, questioning, exploring faith. And a man of science, who was in his search for knowledge as well a man who trusted deep down in God’s love and God’s faithfulness.

In this I am so very appreciative of Peter’s reading just now from the Book of Proverbs, in the second chapter, a reading selected by Pat and Lisa and Vern, to speak of the man of wisdom: knowledge and understanding, grounded so completely in the service of God and sharing God’s love for a righteousness and peace among all people. That’s just right for Jim. Touching all the right notes.

As Christian people our Lord stands with us in the full integrity of who we are, and at our very best curious and questioning and creative, energized by the exploration and adventure. And at his Cross he drew us all to himself. In his death, reconciliation and healing.

Bringing restoration, and opening the gate of New Creation: sharing with us that reasonable and holy hope. That where he is now, there we might also be. Rejoicing in God’s love for us in Christ Jesus, we would today give thanks for Jim’s life, and we would look forward to the good things God has in mind for him and for us in the life of the world to come.

As we would remain seated, let’s turn to the service leaflet again, to the middle of page 4, and read together in unison Psalm 100.

Third after Pentecost

2011-07-02T22:39:00.003-04:00

July 3, 2011 Third Sunday after Pentecost RCL Proper 9A/Track #2
Zechariah 9: 9-12
Baptism of Arden Marie Bursick

Grace and peace to you on this summer morning, and in the midst of a holiday weekend. And to express my hope that it is a “safe and sane” weekend for you, as the fireworks advertisements used to say, and with much fun all around us, Pittsburgh Regatta and Independence Day and Fourth of July Weekend. And of course with that major holiday and festival next Tuesday. The joke I’ve made in our family, how all over the country people gather for band concerts in the park and picnics and then with glorious fireworks to fill the night sky, all in celebration of the Fourth of July, otherwise known as “Brucemas Eve.” Number 58 for me this year, and time certainly scooting along.

So we have the flag out in front of our house this weekend. Not to celebrate my birthday, of course, but with a sense of enjoyment and pride to acknowledge Independence Day. I don’t personally have anything against the British, of course. (Trust me on this, Phil!)

Actually very much the opposite. And especially here as Anglicans and Episcopalians, as we have received these great traditions of Church architecture and music and of course the Prayer Book and the very meaningful inheritance of sacramental life and apostolic community. I loved watching the recent Royal Wedding, and Susy and I continue with much pleasure from time to time to share memories of the wonderful trip to England that we had back in 2004 as such a generous and unexpected gift from you all in observance of my tenth anniversary as your rector. And we do enjoy spending a bit of time on Sunday evenings when we can with Masterpiece Mystery and are looking forward to the next season of Downtown Abbey. And to the last chapter of the Harry Potter . . . . So on the Fourth of July I don’t get too worked up about terrible old King George III, who in many ways as I’ve read history I’ve come to like, and you won’t find around me really any anti-Tory feeling at all.

In saying that, though, I would also say that I enjoy this weekend and holiday as a time to express what I do feel as a strong sense of patriotism. I’m not blind to the problems, and certainly we have always more to do generation by generation to preserve the great gift of our heritage of a society founded not to protect the powerful but to establish the greatest possible sphere of liberty for the individual. And of course to celebrate the great heroes of our national life, the defining events, from Washington and Adams and Jefferson to Lincoln and right on to our own day. Andrew Jackson and Alexander Graham Bell, Amelia Earhardt and Babe Ruth, Mark Twain and Warren Buffett. It’s a great country. And a culture that has not without some stress, obviously, including a horrific Civil War and all kinds of political and social polarization and distress in pretty much every generation-- but probably even so more successfully here than anywhere else figured out how to expand, grow, and yet also remain distinctive in the context of our more integrated global reality.

So, to all, Happy Fourth of July. Hot Dogs, Yankee Doodle brass bands, Baseball of course, picnics, fireworks. The whole package, and in the great traditions of our Church this a day of offering prayers of thanksgiving and remembrance and of praying for our leaders and for the role our nation plays so importantly among all the nations of the world. The Collect for Independence Day in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, composed by Bishop Edward Lambe Parsons of California: O Eternal God, through whose mighty power our fathers won their liberties of old; Grant, we beseech thee, that we and all the people of this land may have grace to maintain these liberties in righteousness and peace, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So I’m thinking all this, this week, in the context and with these readings for this Sunday, Proper 9A, Track Two, in our new lectionary, and on the special festival occasion of the baptism of Arden Marie this morning, and I found myself especially coming back again and again to this reading from the Prophet Zechariah in the ninth chapter—a passage we are most familiar with in reference to the Triumphal Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. “Humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

Zechariah was a prophet writing in those very early moments, actually like the prophet Ezekiel and the second part of the Prophet Isaiah, the very beginning of the time of return from exile, as a new empire and Persian administration begins to allow the refugees from the Babylonian wars of the previous generation to return to their homelands. And of course we would imagine that there must have been among those returning and those who were beginning to think about joining in the journey back to Jerusalem a real mixed bag of thoughts and feelings.

Memories, perhaps romanticized and airbrushed, of the glories of earlier days, hopes for the future, plans and even plots and political schemes. What we’re going to do when we get back, how we’ll start things over again. And after all those years in the refugee camps and the general post-war diaspora, a renewal of nationalism. A yearning for the restoration of king and high priest, palace and temple, all the great signs and symbols of the City and the Nation.

And in the midst of this, the Prophet sounds a welcome and gives voice to praise a different kind of King, and a different kind of nation.

It is, and I think we all know this, so tempting at times to experience our hopes and aspirations as they would be focused on political leaders, those at the head of social movements, the great men and great women of charisma and power, influence, holding the levers of control of governments and institutions. I heard a radio news program in 2008 about the phrase, “this is the most important election in our lifetime.” Tracing it as it has been used in one form or another by politicians and candidates in essentially every American election since the early 19th century. The watershed moment. The critical day of decision.

But then to think about disappointments. About how things always turn out to be messier than you thought they would be. You think, if only this candidate could win, if only that party take power. But how even when you may sometimes get the result you want from the election, life goes on in ways you didn’t expect.
But I think this morning, even on a Fourth of July weekend, we hear old Zechariah tapping us on the shoulder. There is a lot of work to do in the neighborhood, the nation, the wide world. Walls to rebuild, cities to reclaim, and of course there will be leaders and institutions and government ahead. Some better than others, I suppose—though it’s always a little problematic to try to make those judgments in real time.

But today at the font with Arden Marie and her family we all of us together celebrate an even more important citizenship. Echoing from the Old Testament prophet: Israel, the Lord’s people, hear the word of the LORD: remember that your true King is coming, remember that God’s plan is bigger than the next election, the next mayor or governor or president: way bigger. Almost to hear Zechariah singing the old hymn: Pride of man and earthly glory, sword and crown betray his trust; what with care and toil he buildeth, tower and temple fall to dust. But God's power,hour by hour,is my temple and my tower.

In the eleventh chapter of the Book of Hebrews there is this list of some of the great heroes of the Old Testament, Abel and Norah and Abraham, and these wonderful sentences. “These all died in faith, not having received what was promised, but having seen it and greeted it from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.”

Strangers and exiles on the earth, seeking a homeland. In the 24th chapter of St. John Jesus says, “I go to prepare a place for you.” And so we look forward. And so we would celebrate appropriately our citizenship in one country, one homeland, this weekend. Flags and brass bands. But as we do, and as we come to the Font and to the Holy Table this morning, we remember that we are also citizens of that “better country,” learning to live, and to hope, as subjects of the King who comes, as Zechariah sings, “ triumphant and victorious. His dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.”

And now let us renew the citizenship we know and look for in Christ, as we would invite Arden Marie Bursick and her mom and godparents to come forward, to begin the service of Holy Baptism.

Second Sunday after Pentecost

2011-06-25T09:05:00.006-04:00

A little change of pace at St. Andrew's this summertime Sunday, as we welcome as guest musicians and "musical preachers" Deborah and the Rev. Jonathan Hutchison, who share a ministry as "Heartsounds."

What they say about their work:

Building on a promising start as winners and headliners of the 1973 Northeastern Intercollegiate Folk Festival, our musical partnership has always been central to our life together. Even with jobs, school and kids, we’ve never stopped writing, recording and performing our songs from coast to coast in coffeehouses, churches, house concerts, schools and on college campuses. You’re just as likely to find us singing at conferences, interfaith events, benefits and peace and justice rallies.

Our songs are steeped in folk, R&B, rock, jazz, gospel and classical (sometimes all at once), accompanied on guitar, flute and piano, and sung in our signature harmony.

One listener describes our music as, “exciting, moving, thought-provoking and fun”. Another celebrates, “songs so alive, you want to dance, inspiring us with their clarity, strength and imagination.”

Susy and I first met Jonathan and Deborah during the years I served as Rector of St. Paul's Church in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. Jonathan had grown up in that parish and his parents, S. Duy and Edith Hutchison, and his grandmother Josephine, were dear friends of ours. Though Jonathan and Deborah had moved away by that time to their home in southern Indiana (where Jonathan served for a number of years as Vicar of St. David's Episcopal Church, Bean Blossom, Indiana), they were frequent visitors. It has been many years since we've seen them, and I'm delighted that we have this opportunity to introduce them to the good people of St. Andrew's this Sunday . . . .

Trinity Sunday, 2011

2011-06-19T07:47:00.003-04:00

St. Andrew's Pastoral Assistant, the Rev. Dean Byrom, will be preaching this morning, so I thought I'd re-post here my Trinity Sunday sermon from 2010. Blessings on the day.

Grace and peace on this Trinity Sunday. On the calendar of the Church Year we travel together through the great thematic and story-filled seasons of Advent and Christmas and Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost. This morning, the Sunday after the Day of Pentecost, the scene before us now opens wide to what we sometimes call the “Green Season,” which will be the color of our altar hangings after this week. In Roman Catholic calendars this is sometimes just called “Ordinary Time.” The interval in which we live, our focus now on the space between Whitsunday and the Second Coming.

There used to be this wonderful magazine called “Acts 29.” You look that up in your Bibles, and you’ll find . . . that it’s not there . . . . The chapter after the last chapter of the Acts of the Apostles.

Our chapter, you might say. The story of the Church as Christ’s body stretching out into the life of the world on our mission to live in Christ and be ourselves sacraments of his kingdom, outward and visible signs. Signs of restoration, renewal, healing, forgiveness, and even in the days of deepest challenge signs of a confident hope in God’s favor and love and perfect intention. The most important chapter in the whole of the Bible. Acts 29. Written in the story of our lives.

Trinity Sunday is for us then one big over-the-top day of celebration of the eternal life of God, Father, Son, and Spirit. God known to us in the experience of our lives, in our encounter with him in the creation, and at the Cross, and in the spirit-filled life of Christian community. In the scriptures and in prayer and in loving service, day by day.

“. . . confessors’ faith, apostles’ word, the patriarch’s prayers, the prophets’ scrolls; all good deeds done unto the Lord, and purity of virgin souls. I bind unto myself to day the strong Name of the Trinity . . . .” It’s a long hymn that we will sing perhaps only once or twice a year, but it is above all and in all that we are and all that we do. The theme song and background music, birth and baptism, and the unfolding of our lives. “Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me.”

The gospel for this morning once again as in previous weeks from St. John and the great High Priestly Prayer of Jesus on the night of Maundy Thursday, and the promise of the Spirit, who comes not on his own but with a deep message of Truth for us that is fully congruent with the character and life of Christ, who is himself fully one with the Father. The Spirit delivers the Word of the Son, who is himself the one who speaks all that the Father has spoken.

Again as the formula goes, Three in One, and One in Three. A mystical message, it may seem. But also the simple realities of our birth and life and death, our rest in him, our sharing in the new life of resurrection. The message for us, that all our life, past, present, future, what was and is and is to come, all will be in him, for him, through him. That the end of our journey is in our beginning, and that all roads will lead us home.

Blessings then simply on this Trinity Sunday, for the green season ahead, spring and summer, and for all the lives that we share together. Singing together, praying together. Opening ourselves to the scriptures; gathering at the table. Going out into the wide world: home and family, work and play; in prosperity and adversity, in sickness and in health. Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty: God in three Persons, blessed Trinity. It is a great gift, that he will live in us, and we in him.

Bruce Robison

Whitsunday, 2011

2011-06-12T07:34:00.007-04:00

Acts 2: 1-21

Good morning, and Hail thee, festival day! Whitsunday, Pentecost.

I was telling the folks in our Wednesday morning Bible Study about how this day was celebrated with a great afternoon fair at St. Mark’s Church in Berkeley back in the early 1970’s, when that was my parish as I attended the University of California across the street. They called it the “Pentecost Festival,” and I remember those days as always with California sunshine and with jugglers and musicians and glass-blowers and all kinds of food, games and a couple of small rides and a petting zoo for the kids, on and on. Everybody would wear something red, which seemed just right to inaugurate the summer, with lots of students and families, a real mix of people.

My rector then, George Titmann, used to say that it was the one great holiday of the Church that Hallmark Cards has nothing to say about. Ours and ours alone. The one great holiday where we’re unlikely to ask something like, “what is your family doing for Whitsunday?” Except of course to go to Church . . . .

As we heard in the lessons, and always with this very powerful way of entering into the story in the Acts of the Apostles, and as Fr. Bill Marchl reminds us in his meditation for Whitsunday printed on the back page of our service leaflet, we understand why this is called our Birthday: the Spirit surges through the Upper Room and then the friends of Jesus rush out into the street to proclaim the Good News in this miraculous explosion of language to the whole world, with energy and excitement, and all of a sudden here we are, Christ’s Church. You and I, all of us, around the world and across all the generations.

The Jewish holiday fifty days after Passover is Shauvot, the Festival to celebrate the Covenant in the Giving of the Law at Sinai, remembering this great moment when God in his generosity claimed a people for his own, called them into relationship. Before Shauvot they were a ragtag and random assembly of Hebrew clans and tribes. But as God gives and they receive the Torah at the Holy Mountain they become his Chosen People, God’s Israel. And if the in sacred story of God’s plan the Paschal Mystery of Easter is a new expression of the ancient Passover, so now this Whitsunday and Pentecost of the Holy Spirit is a new Shauvot, the birth in Christian witness of the New Israel.

And so we sing and celebrate and play croquet in the Churchyard and maybe even light candles on the cake. The miracle sends us out into the street speaking of what we have come to know, who we have come to know, in Jesus Christ, in a hundred languages.

Or perhaps not in any human language at all, but in what St. Paul will call the tongues of angels. Perhaps in the language of music, poetry. Mystic vision and ecstasy and the quiet assurance of his love.

A friend of mine said once and I believe it is true that very few people come to faith through argument and debate. That’s not unknown, of course, and reason and study and argument all have an important place in formation. But the spark of faith springs to life in us as we come near its radiance in others. How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given. Not that Peter and the others were whispering on that first Whitsunday, but I think the attractive and compelling force of that great evangelistic moment was not so much about words as it was about the music. Communicating spirit to spirit, heart to heart.

Some of my friends who are recovering Presbyterians will know that Anglican though I am, one of the expressions of Christian faith that I find most inspiring and interesting from the era of the Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries is the 1647 Westminster Shorter Confession. Which some of you may even have memorized in your younger years. There are a few places in that great doctrinal work where I would add a footnote or two, or even express a theological difference or reservation, but I want to do nothing but highlight and speak an “amen” to its opening sentence. The question, “what is the chief end of man?” Who are we really? What are we here for? What is this cosmic story all about? Great questions for a birthday on this Whitsunday. If we are born here, and now, and of the Spirit, what are we born for? And the word, in its simplicity and grace: Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

That is such a beautiful statement. A lot of Church committees have worked on a lot of congregational “mission statements” over the years, along with strategic plans and meeting after meeting--but this is what it is all about. Important to have before us on the Day of Pentecost. The Spirit rushes into the room like wind, like fire. All for us. To talk about what God made us for, about how we come into completed relationship to him, and completed relationships with one another. To glorify God and enjoy him forever. What we would seek to do in this service of worship. But to understand every breath and moment of our lives, every work of charity and compassion, of creativity and faithfulness, every relationship. Going to work. Raising our kids. All worship. To glorify God and enjoy him forever. Hail thee, Festival Day . . . .

The people in the streets of Jerusalem had a hard time figuring out just what was going on with the friends of Jesus that morning. “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?” Uneducated working men from some backwater village. Not by the farthest stretch of the imagination the sort of people you would turn to for religious insight and instruction and leadership. What has gotten into them? The jumble of languages, the excitement. Their very beings on fire, transformed, lifted up.

And even if they didn’t have the words for it, to communicate a new vision of God’s goodness, God’s hopeful future for us. The reconciling and graceful work of the Cross once and for all, and the transforming reality of the Easter miracle now flowing out in abundance. And it was all Holy Spirit, God present, Advocate, Comforter, New Life. Easter everywhere now, for everyone, a free gift. The invitation: come and be part of it! Come and see for yourselves! And we can say it is like a birthday. Like our birthday. Like a great birthday of the world and all new creation. All language and music and story and song, for all of us, and all for him, all our lives long. Glorify him and enjoy him forever.

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

Bruce Robison

D-Day, 2011

2011-06-06T08:28:00.007-04:00

67 Years Ago . . . .

When I was Rector of St. Paul's Church, Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, one of my parishioners, Wayne Schuyler, was a D-Day Vet. On the beach at +3 minutes, on the second wave of landing boats. Wayne died six years ago. I am remembering him, his dear wife Claire and their children and grandchildren, in my thoughts and prayers today.

2011 D-Day Observance

Bruce Robison

Seventh of Easter: In Ascensiontide

2011-06-05T07:10:00.008-04:00

Acts 1: 6-15, First Peter 4: 12-14; 5: 6-11; John 17: 1-11

In the wonderful T.S. Eliot series The Four Quartets the second poem, “East Coker,” begins with this compelling phrase, “In my beginning is my end.” Then it comes to a conclusion a few pages later with the reversal: “In my end is my beginning.” --“In my beginning is my end. In my end is my beginning.”

Perhaps on this Sunday we would feel the progressive, straight-line forward journey of our lives through time also to curve back in on itself. Seventh Sunday of Eastertide, almost midsummer sunshine and temperatures, the longest day of the year just a hop and a skip away.

And yet once again we are gathered in something of a jumble on a hillside outside of town; once again there are angels; once again our hearts are filled with hope in the promise of the fulfillment of God’s saving intention. The Advent of the Promised One.

Holy Week, Good Friday, Easter, all in one sense in the rear view mirror. But there is this new excitement, this fresh sense of beginning, and we can almost hear ourselves in the words of the disciples as they echo our old friends the Shepherds of Christmas Eve: Let us go now with haste to see this thing of which the angels have spoken. Seventh of Easter, the Sunday of Ascensiontide, leaning forward toward Whitsunday and Pentecost, and all is fresh and new. And certainly we’ve been here before. “Come thou, long expected Jesus.”

Once years ago Susy and I were driving along some back roads on the North Shore of Boston going to visit some friends who live in Marblehead. We thought we were lost, but then by the side of the road a sign, “Mablehead, 5 miles.” And a certain sense of relief, as we continued forward along the twisting and turning and mostly unmarked roads. Until, about 20 minutes later, yet another sign. “Marblehead, 5 miles.” Or was it the same sign?

And where are we this morning? In thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light. Jerusalem, not Bethlehem, but the details seem to make no difference at all. The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

All jumbled together. And lo, an angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them; and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go.” Fear not; for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Roughly half a year since Christmas, half a year until Christmas, but here we are. In my beginning is my end. In my end, my beginning.

So in the midst of that I hinted last week that I would be saying something this week about “What Harold Camping Got Right.” You probably heard of this. Harold Camping is what they call a “radio evangelist,” of course from my own home state of California (and where else?), who has made a reputation for himself beginning some years ago for predicting the day and the hour of the Lord’s Return. He developed a calculus, as I understand it, and according to the article in Wikipedia he was able to determine the date of the Creation of the Earth in the year 11,013 BC, with Noah’s Flood in 4990 BC, and I guess with a slide rule and some figuring on the back of an envelope using clues from the Book of Daniel and the Revelation to St. John and who knows where else he was able to determine with precision that Jesus would return to gather his faithful and set into motion the Last Days on May 21, 1988, and then with some recalculation September 7, 1994, and then again just a couple of weeks ago, May 21, 2011, and I love this precision, at 6 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, and now the next date on the calendar October 21, 2011.

All this of course in the midst of all the dreary economic news and three wars and all the rest an opportunity for a little light news in the media. The Facebook exchanges were humorous for the most part, and I played along myself with a few jokes on that Saturday morning about whether it made sense for me to mow the lawn. If Jesus were really coming at dinnertime, would that really be the highest and best use of my afternoon?

In any event, the most charitable construction that I can come up with is that the guy is a nut. Perhaps of the same genre as folks who tell me with all seriousness that a secret Vatican police agency is plotting the assassination of Dan Brown after he revealed the dark secrets of the Da Vinci Code. Either a nut or pathologically delusional, or an extraordinary con-man, and in all that, not really harmless, as he has taken advantage of the anxieties of some vulnerable and gullible people, as we saw the other week in stories of families disposing of property and leaving jobs and all the rest, in anticipation of the end.

And certainly you just wonder what is so hard in the midst of all this obsessing about arcane secret codes of the Bible simply to look at the plain meaning of what Jesus tells his disciples right here in this morning’s reading from the first chapter of Acts, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.” End of sentence. And yet of course this isn’t a new phenomenon with Camping. It’s how the Seventh Day Adventists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses got their start in the 19th century and it is something that has come and gone with regularity throughout the past 2,000 years. So it taps into something deep and real in the Christian psyche, no question about that.

In the end a lot of the popular humor directed at Camping in the media wasn’t so much about the goofiness of his calculation or the peculiar construction of his vision of the end time. I sensed anyway a deeper discomfort with any vision—and Camping was certainly an easy target—of the power of God or his purposeful intention.

But when you get right down to it I’ll just tell you that for all the weirdness and even delusional expression, in the end when the world starts tossing brickbats at Camping and at those who heard him and whose hearts were filled with hope when he spoke, I guess I’m going to need to go over and stand with them. Maybe not too close, but at least this close: “And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, And was made man: And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried: And the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures: And ascended into heaven, And sitteth on the right hand of the Father: And he shall come again, with glory, to judge both the quick and the dead—and he shall come again, with glory, to judge both the quick and the dead—Whose kingdom shall have no end.”

We lean forward in Advent: “Come thou, long-expected Jesus, born to set thy people free.” The whole pageant begins with this yearning, leaning forward into hope. The procession of the Prophets. Advent not simply the December weeks before Christmas but the character and meaning of all our lives, week after week, year after year, generation after generation. Waiting in hope. In anticipation.

“And his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with justice and with righteousness from henceforth even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.”

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn; To appoint unto those who mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified.”

“Go through, go through the gates; prepare ye the way of the people; cast up, cast up the highway; gather out the stones; lift up a standard for the peoples. Behold, the LORD hath proclaimed unto the end of the earth: Say ye to the daughter of Zion, behold, thy salvation cometh.”

“I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger.”

We are called to live coherently in this world. To roll up our sleeves. To do the work he has given us to do in our families and our churches and our vocational lives and in our communities. The harvest is plentiful, the laborers always too few.

But if we would shake our head with sadness and even with a bit of dismay at something like Harold Camping’s predictions, even so, may we be counted this morning and as we come to the Holy Table as among those who wait eagerly for Jesus, who is our beginning and our ending, our best memory and our true destiny. In my end is my beginning. In my beginning is my end. In the manger, on the Cross, ascended, at the Right Hand of the Father, who is coming to set things right.

No need to worry about the day or the hour. No need to stand gazing into the skies. But to make no mistake about it, in the words of the angel, Fear not: for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. And again, “This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go . . . .”

Holy Matrimony

2011-06-04T08:42:00.002-04:00

Marissa Lee Mueller and Justin Timothy Schaup
Song of Solomon 2: 10-13; 8:6-7; Colossians 3: 12-17

Marissa and Justin, what I want to say first to you, and I know I’m speaking for all the family and friends gathered here this afternoon, is thank you. It is for all of us, and for me personally, a privilege and a joy to be sharing this moment with you, to be with you as you exchange the vows and promises, the words, and the commitments of the heart, that will make you one in Christ, as husband and wife. It’s a great day! We’ve been thinking about it and planning for it for a long time, and when we started this date seemed a long way off—but now, time has flown by, and here we are. You’ll hear this a hundred times today: Congratulations! Congratulations to you, as I know this season of your friendship and deepening relationship has been rich in so many ways, and as I know that the story that is yet to be told of the life and family you will share as husband and wife, in the careers that you share in public service, that all will be a great and meaningful story indeed.

Weddings have been something of a theme this season because of the “Royal Wedding” of Prince William and now-Princess Catherine a little over a month ago in England. Some of my friends got up to begin watching that at 4 in the morning—but I was a little bit less ambitious and just caught the highlights later that evening on television. Certainly it was a wonderful occasion in Westminster Abbey, with the Archbishop of Canterbury and all the fanfare, and a memory of that fits nicely as we think here this afternoon about our lovely St. Andrew’s and the beautiful music and the richness of today for you. One of the things I most enjoyed about the Royal Wedding was the sermon preached by +Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London, who was the member of the clergy who had done what we would call the pre-marriage counseling with William and Cate, and that was important because he had also been the one many years ago now who had been the pastor for young Prince William and his brother when their mother died. So there was a deep personal connection, and I thought that was quite touching. And I’d like to share just a brief quotation, one sentence, from that sermon. The Bishop said: “In a sense every wedding is a royal wedding, with the bride and the groom as kind and queen of creation, making a new life together so that life can flow through them into the future.”

Every wedding a Royal Wedding. Your vows exchanged here before God and in the face of this company of family and friends. “King Justin, Queen Marissa!” Remembering the pattern that makes this all meaningful. The self-giving love of Jesus, which is the ideal and model of all our human love. With compassion, generosity, patience, and strength. Seeking his blessing in the life of his Church, and as you would set out on a new life together. Wives and husbands are called into this mystery, to love one another in Christ so profoundly, that the other becomes even more important than the self. A love that seeks not its own benefit, but the victory and completion of the other—a love that finds joy and fulfillment first and most of all in the knowledge that the other comes first in that joy. In this way, the two become one. The relationship of husband and wife then an image of Christ’s love for us, a hint of how we are all to live in our relationships with one another.

And this day, the commitments you bring, the words and promises, speak about who you are today, and also about who we are all destined to become, this moment like a window, through which we begin to see God’s hope and dream for each one of us since the creation of the world. The rarest thing of all, the most precious, the most fragile, the hardest to find and the easiest to lose, yet somehow also the most durable, the most patient, the most forgiving, the most welcoming. Here in this present moment, and yet also as Bishop Chartres told William and Cate, a new life that is born and that flows into the future, to carry God’s blessing in ways that today you and we can only dream of.

Marissa and Justin, may God bless and keep you in this new life that you begin today, and with joy and peace in all the days ahead.

Now as you will come forward to exchange the vows that will make you husband and wife, I would ask all of us here to bow our heads for a moment to offer a prayer for you, for your protection and your blessing, your joy, in all that God has for you and all that God will do in his goodness through you in the days and years of your lives.

Bruce Robison

Ascension, 2011

2011-06-02T08:13:00.001-04:00

Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that like as we do believe thy only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the heavens; so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with him continually dwell, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Ascension, Clara Miller Burd.
Transept, St. Andrew's Church, Pittsburgh
Photograph by William D. Ghrist, IIIrd

From the 24th Chapter of St. Luke:

And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures, And said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are witnesses of these things. And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high. And he led them out as far as to Bethany, and he lifted up his hands, and blessed them. And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven. And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy: And were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God. Amen.

Ascension

Salute the last, and everlasting day,
Joy at the uprising of this Sunne, and Sonne,
Ye whose just tears, or tribulation
Have purely washed, or burnt your drossy clay;
Behold the Highest, parting hence away,
Lightens the dark clouds, which he treads upon,
Nor doth he by ascending, show alone,
But first he, and he first enters the way.
O strong Ram which hast battered heaven for me,
Mild lamb, which with thy blood, hast marked the path;
Bright Torch, which shin'st, that I the way may see,
Oh, with thy own blood quench thy own just wrath.
And if the holy Spirit, my Muse did raise,
Deign at my hands this crown of prayer and praise.
~John Donne (1572-1631)

Sixth Easter, 2011

2011-05-29T07:31:00.002-04:00

(A)John 14: 15-21

Grace and peace on this Sunday, and as we would note this morning a confluence in our calendars of several themes. The Sixth Sunday of the Easter Season, with continuing focus on the central Christian affirmation of the resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus, and the message and meaning of that resurrection for us. Thus our gospel reading from St. John, continuing in the 14th chapter, which we began last Sunday with the reading from the first part, “In my Father’s House are many mansions,” and “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The promise, “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and bring you to myself, that where I am there ye may be also.”

And this morning that is followed by the promise that in the meantime, before he comes for us, we will be sustained and nourished and empowered to live in the Father’s love and in Christ by the Spirit of Truth, the Advocate, who will abide with us and keep us connected to the Father and the Son. Anticipating Whitsunday and Pentecost, now just Sunday after next, and we can almost hear those great hymns: Come Holy Spirit, come!

In the mix with the Easter season moving toward its dramatic festival conclusion, though, we also would know that by very long tradition the first weekdays of this Sixth Week of Easter have been called Rogation Days (“rogation” a word meaning a certain kind of prayer, as we still have in common English the word “interrogation”), the Sixth of Easter Rogation Sunday, and the custom is that these are days when the church blesses the fields as they are planted in anticipation of the harvest to come, with prayers of thanksgiving for God’s continuing care and with supplications for those who labor, and for seasonable weather, and for the material well-being of the community. To take the seasonal turning of the earth from winter to spring, darkness to light, barrenness to abundance, and to let those patterns speak to us of resurrection. Renewal. New life. Abundant and eternal.

When I was rector of St. Paul’s in Bloomsburg we had relationship with a little chapel about 20 miles north of town in the old farming community of Benton, St. Gabriel’s, and it was our custom to go up there in the afternoon on Sixth Easter for Evensong and a blessing of the seed and the fields and for a fun potluck supper with games and music. A day about our dependence on God, and about our stewardship of God’s world. And perhaps we in our urban and suburban gardens this week will want to say a prayer of blessing and thanksgiving, as we had reflected for us in the introit and opening hymn this morning.

And of course also the flags out this weekend in front of our homes, and ceremonies in cemeteries, and vigils and brass bands and parades, for Memorial Day, as we have reflected in the final hymn of this service. I believe the holiday on the calendar originally “Decoration Day,” from a time after our American Civil War when mothers and wives and children would go out to the burial grounds to mark the graves of the fallen. Though of course we have more on our mind and in our hearts today than ancient history or even the stories my grandfather would tell from the time of the Great War, or that my dad and so many others would tell from the time of the Second War, and to think of Korea, and Viet Nam. As we offer in our own prayers every Sunday and through the week remembrance of those dear to this congregation serving now in so many places around the world, and of those who go out into battle, and those loved ones at home who have them in their hearts. We give thanks for their service and sacrifice, on this spring Sunday, and pray always for a lasting peace. And in this moment of national prayer, also, gathering in our thoughts all the departed, those we have known and loved, those no longer of living memory, but known to God, and also all about resurrection hope.

So a rich Sunday in the midst of a late spring holiday weekend, and with thanks for the word that Bishop Price shared with us about the first part of John 14 last Sunday morning in that wonderful service, I would like to pause just over this passage the continuation of that great chapter as we have read it this morning, and simply to highlight one sentence, one verse, John 14:18: “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.” John’s word here in the Greek, the adjective, orphanous, literallly something like "bereft," in the NRSV the easy translation “orphaned," with the association of a child who has lost a parent, some translators give “desolate,” and in the English of the familiar King James translation Jesus says, “I will not leave you comfortless.” All in any event to speak of, to remind us of the consolation and companionship and love and spiritual sustenance the disciples knew and experienced in the presence of Jesus.

And there in the scene of that Upper Room and Last Supper Jesus says, again and again, what is to happen tomorrow on that hilltop outside the city is a departure and separation and loss that is at one and the same time and in a more profound way an arrival and a reunion and a restoration, a renewal and a deepening, an extension, a completion.

In the passage we read from the first part of this chapter last Sunday Jesus said, “and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and bring you to myself, that where I am there ye may be also.” And as Bishop Price told us, this promise addressed two truths at once. The truth of the return of the Son of Man at what will be both the last day and the first day, in the place prepared for us in the eternal presence of the Father, and the Truth of the anticipation of that return here and now in the lives of his disciples, here and now in those who are and will be Christ’s Body, and who will share in the foretaste of the Heavenly Banquet. Here and now. Soon and already. “I will not leave you orphaned, desolate, comfortless; I am coming to you.”

One of the most influential theologians of the 20th century was an American, Howard Thurman, whose work was especially influential on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. His most famous work—and the one which I have read—is called “Jesus and the Dispossessed.” And in that book Thurman takes a long, hard look at Christianity in its faithfulness to the life and message of Jesus, to ask whether in so many places in in so many eras the Church hasn’t become simply a resting place for the comfortable. He asks the Church instead, in a memorable phrase, what good news is there here “for the man whose back is against the wall?” I’m going to have some things to say next Sunday, as we come in the calendar to the Sunday of the "season within a season" of the Ascension, about the recent buzz around the radio evangelist Howard Camping and his prediction of the date and hour of the second coming of Jesus a week ago Saturday. I’m going to talk some about what he got wrong, but I also want to talk about what he got right, and we have an anticipation of it here. To ask, Christian people, if I’m really in trouble, is there any hope for me, any hope that things can get better, get good, get right for me, here and now, here and right now?

I’m not going to be able to unpack all that here this morning. Perhaps something we can continue to do in our thoughts and prayers together. But Thurman’s point is straightforward, which is that if the good news is true, then it needs to be good news here and now and for real. It needs to make a difference. And what we’re going to see in the Ascension and in the miracle of Whitsunday and Pentecost is that Jesus didn’t tell his friends simply to hunker down and lie low and wait patiently in quiet corners for his return. What he says to them instead is that for them, for us, in him, the future is now. The future is now. And this all Holy Spirit. When we turn to him, he comes alive in us. It begins today.

Memorial Day Weekend, 2011

2011-05-28T08:41:00.002-04:00

Fifth Easter, 2011

2011-05-21T18:47:00.006-04:00

At St. Andrew's today we welcome to our 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. services as preacher and celebrant the Rt. Rev. Kenneth L. Price Jr., Bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh of the Episcopal Church. We rejoice with Dominic Barbarino, Dawna Byrom, Pamela Groff, Dell Miller III, and Sophia Peterson, as they will receive the sacrament of Confirmation; with Ellie Abel, Molly Rose Danko, Ellen Gray, Hugh Gray, Bryce Matway, and Reid Stasolla, as they are to be admitted to Holy Communion; and with Jack Bowyer, Maeve Denshaw, and T.J. Montgomery, as they will receive their Acolyte pins. Festive coffee hour receptions to welcome Bishop and Mrs. Price and to honor our Confirmands, our First Communion class, and our newest Acolytes, will follow both services.

Fourth Easter, 2011

2011-05-14T15:28:00.004-04:00

Special Schedule for the Pittsburgh Marathon
Saturday, May 14, 2011, 5 p.m.;
Sunday, May 15, 2011, 9 a.m. & 11 a.m.

May 15, 2011 Fourth Easter (A) John 10: 1-10

Today, this fourth Sunday of Easter, and to reinforce the theme, as we hear as we pray the collect together and the psalm and lessons: Good Shepherd Sunday.

For the first four centuries or so in the Anglican Prayer Book tradition “Good Shepherd” Sunday came a week earlier, the Second Sunday after Easter, what we would now number as the Third of Easter, receiving that name because of the appointed gospel reading from the tenth chapter of St. John.

The older Prayer Book tradition had just a one-year lectionary cycle, and the Good Shepherd reading then was chapter 10, verses 11-16, which is essentially the reading we now have appointed for Fourth Easter in Year B of the three year lectionary—and chapter 10, verse 11 begins exactly with Jesus saying these words, “I am the Good Shepherd.” And then on in Year C we have the third extended passage from the last section of chapter 10, verses 22-30, in which Jesus says “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.”

Out in the narthex here at St. Andrew’s we have a lovely stained glass window of the Good Shepherd. A traditional image and a touching story really. Jesus with a lamb in his arms. The young rector of St. Andrew’s, Harry Briggs Heald, who died in 1924, suddenly and unexpectedly in his mid 40’s, in the third year of his service as rector, and this window in his memory given by the Children of the Church School, having raised the money themselves. The good, tender, loving pastor.

And as we may remember a few years ago in 2002 we undertook the repair and conservation of that window to honor the Rt. Rev. David Leighton, 13th Rector of St. Andrew’s Church and the only of our now 15 rectors ever to be elevated to the episcopacy, as the 11th Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland. One of the Chief Pastors of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, and of course always a great friend of this wonderful parish.

So here this morning as we are, again, Fourth Easter in Year A, and we have the first part of the “Good Shepherd” chapter of John , verses 1-10, and what I want to note first is something that will be obvious to you as soon as I say it: which is that in this section of Chapter 10 Jesus doesn’t talk about himself as the Good Shepherd. He will do so very soon, but before we get there, we have this first and somewhat more obscure image to address. Chapter 10 verse 7, “Truly, truly I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.” And then again, verse 9, “I am the door; if anyone enters by me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.”

So, "Door Sunday," or "Gate Sunday." I’m not sure about how to visualize Jesus as the image of the gate, the door to the sheepfold. Perhaps there may be a stained glass window or two with that picture, Jesus as a door, though I don’t recall right off hand that I’ve ever seen one. I’ve seen him standing next to a door, as in the 19th century Holman Hunt painting based on the text from the third chapter of the Revelation to John, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” But never Jesus as door. Would have to be Salvador Dali or something . . . .

Nonetheless it is how this chapter begins. And though we may not imagine it all that clearly in terms of visual or artistic representation, we can see that it means something fairly specific in context here if we’re simply reminded of what has come immediately before this chapter 10, in chapter 9, which is the story of Jesus healing the Man Born Blind.

That chapter begins with the dramatic healing, where Jesus makes a little mud by spitting on the ground, you’ll remember, and then has the blind man go to the pool to wash, which he does, and suddenly is able to see. But actually then the bulk of the chapter focuses on the controversy that follows, as the issue of whether Jesus could lawfully heal on the Sabbath becomes more important than the healing itself, as the Pharisees seek to interrogate the man and his family and other witnesses. Then the man meets Jesus again, and when he discovers who Jesus is, he says, “Yes, Lord, I believe,” and he worships him. So not just sight, but insight, true seeing, seeing and knowing who Jesus is.

And Jesus finally then says something like, “This is what my ministry is about, bringing sight to those who are blind, and demonstrating that those who think they see everything that they are truly blind.” The Pharisees object, “are you saying that we’re blind?” And Jesus says to them, again to paraphrase, “if you’re telling me that you can see what is happening here right before your eyes, and that you refuse to believe that it’s true, then you are convicting yourselves of willful rebellion against God.”

So this becomes a question we might say of authority. Who are you going to trust? A question of discernment. The Pharisees in this great rabbinic tradition claim to be spiritual guides and authorities for the people. But can they be trusted, if they can’t discern God’s hand even in a work as wonderful as this as it happens in their very presence?

And then we follow along into Chapter 10, this morning’s gospel. Jesus says, there are two kinds of people who want to get into the sheepfold. The kind who belong there and the kind who don’t. The kind who are about their business in a wholesome and constructive way, and the kind who are only about theft and destruction. There are shepherds--and there are rustlers. Those who have the well-being of the flock in mind, and those who are out for their own profit and self-interest, lawlessly and destructively. The ones who climb in through the back window, and the ones who enter by way of the front door. And then Jesus, again: “I am that front door.”

If you want to know about who someone is in terms of discernment and spiritual authority, and whether they are to be trusted, the question to ask is, “where do they stand in relationship to Jesus?” Do they come in by way of Jesus? That’s the key, the mark, the central question, as we relate to our teachers, and in the life of community as we relate all of us to one another, since we all in a reciprocal way may be this for one another. So not just about a few, but about many, and about all of us. Coming into relationship to one another through Jesus. Guiding, inspiring, teaching, living with one another. Entering by the door. Not for ulterior purposes, to serve ourselves and our own interests, not defensively, but in relationship first to him. This is how to be with one another, how to give ourselves to one another and how to receive from one another. Through Jesus. The door.

I think a couple of chapters ahead, in John 12, after the great miracle of the Raising of Lazarus, when in increasing conflict with the authorities Jesus returns to Bethany and to the home of Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha, and that wonderful scene when Mary opens the bottle of costly oil to anoint Jesus’ feet. An act of pure, loving worship, adoration, like that of the worship of the Blind Man at the end of chapter 9. It’s not about her. It’s all about him. All about Jesus.

At that moment Judas—the one who will soon betray his Master—interrupts the scene by questioning its propriety. Raising other values, and certainly an important one. “Shouldn’t we sell this valuable ointment and give the money to the poor.?” I think John is suggesting that the Evil One is already operating in Judas here, as he tries to change the subject. Not because of an interest in the poor—which John doesn’t believe Judas truly has in any case—but because of this reactive desire to move away from Jesus. To shift the spotlight. It’s almost as though Jesus makes him uncomfortable. As he of course does make a great many people very uncomfortable. Including sometimes, sadly, even in the Church. But the invitation today, the invitation of St. John’s gospel, with the image of the healed blind man before us, of Mary on her knees to pay him homage, is not to move away from Jesus, but to come nearer. To see, to know, to worship the one who is truly a "Good Shepherd."

And we would come near him, as it might be so today. Not to run away and not to change the subject when he comes near us. As the scriptures are opened. “My sheep hear my voice.” The bread broken and the wine poured out: his Body lifted up, given for us. To heal, and to bless. “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

Bruce Robison