Sermon 627+August 15, 2010

12th Sunday after Pentecost
Celebrating the Feast of St. Mary the Virgin
August 15, 2010
747th Week as Priest
573rd Week at St Dunstan’s
Visiting Priest at Christ Church, Arcadia Pretoria, South Africa

The Person of Mary.

Grace and peace to you, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Theotokos.

There is one remarkable person in all of human history who lived a life of such great humility and radical obedience to God that she was chosen to be the Theotokos, the God Bearer. Her name was Mary, and she was probably about sixteen years old at the time, a young woman living in the village of Nazareth in rural Galilee. She had been engaged only a little while to a man named Joseph, when the angel Gabriel came to her and said, “Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you.”

Do Not Be Afraid.

In the words of Luke’s Gospel, Mary was “greatly troubled and considered what sort of greeting this might be.” She was terribly afraid and completely stunned by the angel’s appearance—because he said, what angels always say—“Do not be afraid.” But then Gabriel said something altogether new and different: “Mary, you have found favor with God.” Furthermore, he said that she would bear a son, “and you shall call his name Jesus.” Gabriel said that the Child would become great, and he would be called the Son of the Most High, and he would sit on the throne of David in an everlasting kingdom. In the Book of Genesis, Sarah laughed when the angel told her she would have a child. But then Abraham and Sarah were in their nineties at the time. Zechariah was struck speechless when Gabriel visited Elizabeth with similar news, just before the angel appeared to Mary. But Mary responded differently in her encounter with the holy: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” Though she had no husband, the Holy Spirit would come upon her and the power of the Most High would overshadow her, and she would bear a holy child, the Son of God. She was a human being who became the Mother of God, the one person who stood in so close a relationship to God the Son, that she must, of all the people who have ever lived, have the place of highest honor in the kingdom of heaven. Accordingly, we honor Mary and we look to her life as an example of humility and obedience to God. She was with Jesus in his most impressionable years. She was his follower, and she was present at his Crucifixion. After he was raised from the dead, Mary was with the disciples in the upper room, waiting and praying until the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. She was the Mother of Jesus, and we all know a mother’s influence on her son …

 A Mother’s Influence.

Fifty years ago, my brother Jim sat on the floor of the kindergarten room at Vacation Bible School, coloring a picture of Noah’s Ark. His teacher, Miss Grace Wright, knelt beside him and said, “O, Jim, what a wonderful drawing! Do you think you’d like to be an artist when you grow up?” “Oh, I don’t know,” replied Jim, “I guess I’ll be whatever my mother decides.” Our mother thought Jim would be a doctor or a lawyer, but never an artist. He decided, instead, to study literature at Yale University, and he is the head of the English Department at Washington and Lee University, and the author of several books.

I don’t remember deciding what I would be when I grew up … I sort of fell into different careers along the way. Twenty years ago, my wife Leigh and I were visiting her parents in a nearby city. I saw a photograph and story about her old boyfriend, Steve Woodie, in the Advertiser-Journal. “Look at this, Leigh!” I said. “Your old boyfriend, Steve Woodie, has been promoted. Now he’s the supervisor of the city garbage department!” I was convulsing with laughter and self-congratulations. “Just think, Leigh,” I said. “If you had married Steve Woodie, you’d be married to a garbage man now, instead of a bank president and a priest!” “No, Wells,” she said. “If I had married Steve Woodie, he’d be the bank president and priest.”

The Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission.

Representatives from the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church have been meeting since 1965 in an international commission to find common theological ground. Their most recent statement is entitled, “Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ.” Divisions over the Virgin Mary were clearly drawn in the Reformation, and extreme Protestants were outraged by any special notice or noble status given Mary. “Our Lady” and the “Queen of Heaven” were considered blasphemy to the Puritans, whose special joy it was in the Cromwell years to destroy the statues, icons, vestments, and crosses of England’s cathedrals and abbeys.

Developing Marian Doctrine.

From the Middle Ages to the present age, the Roman Church has adopted practices of Marian doctrine extending beyond belief in the Virgin Birth … The first of these dogmas or doctrinal statements is the Immaculate Conception. This dogma states that the Virgin Mary was born without the stain of Original Sin. Next is the belief in the Perpetual Virginity of Mary. The premise is that Mary had no other biological children besides Jesus, although the “brothers of Jesus” are mentioned throughout the New Testament. The third dogma is called the Dormition of Mary in the East, or the Assumption of Mary in the West. The belief is that Mary did not die, but was taken up into heaven. It is true that Anglicans and Episcopalians have been “making a larger space for Mary in their liturgy and devotions,” but these extra-Biblical beliefs are not considered necessary to salvation, at least not in our Anglican tradition. But there is a wideness in God’s mercy, and there is a wideness in our Beloved Church.

The Via Media.

Anglicans and Episcopalians typically find themselves standing theologically somewhere in the wide middle, the via media or “middle way,” between Catholic and Protestant, and claiming to be both orthodox and reformed. In this middle way of thinking, the Blessed Virgin Mary is nothing more or less than the most extraordinary of persons. Her full humanity, her complete humility, and her total obedience are all that God ever needed of Mary—and she responded to God “at the fullness of time” with faithfulness and trust, and God found favor in her.

Heresies and Creeds.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is both fully God and fully man. His true and physical birth came from Mary, in every sense a human woman. Thus, Jesus is truly of our human substance, as well as being of the same divine substance as God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. This is the emphatic statement of both the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed. The Nicene Creed was finalized early in the Fourth Century AD at a Church Council to defend the Orthodox Faith against two principal heresies—Gnosticism and Arianism. There were some in the early Church convinced that Christ was not truly human, only that he appeared to be. In reality, they said, he was a purely divine and spiritual being. These Gnostics believed there was special, spiritual and hidden knowledge available only to the inner circle of “true believers.” The other heresy was Arianism, the belief that Jesus was Perfect Man, but in no way divine. There was an insidious logic to Arius’s theology, but it was based on the belief that much of the Gospel was misreported and misunderstood—and the belief that Jesus was perfect, but he was not the Christ. Fully God and fully man: This is the foundation of our understanding of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, of Emmanuel, of God-with-us.

The Fullness of Time.

St. Paul described this moment as “the fullness of time.” The world as we know it would never be the same Anno Domine as it was Before Christ. And we remember this day the most extraordinary of human beings, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and we celebrate her faithfulness, her humility and obedience to God. She is the Mother of Jesus Christ, who bore him in her womb and brought him into the world at the fullness of time. “The fullness of time” is a concept that we ought to see as operative in our own lives—the point at which God brings great change into our lives, and he hopes we will respond with humility and obedience. God opens a door for us. He breathes new life into an old institution. He brings new life into a family. He brings favor to us. “Let it be to me according to your word,” said Mary. “Let my soul magnify the Lord, and my spirit rejoice in God my Savior.” Amen.

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Sermon 629+August 22, 2010

13th Week after Pentecost
748th Week as Priest
574th Week at St Dunstan’s
Welcome Night 2010

On a Mission from God.

Grace to you and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

A year ago, the Episcopal Church completed a strategic plan that called for a new focus on mission and ministry. Top of the list was this one:

The Church needs to see campus ministry and young adult ministry as the most important evangelism and mission area there is. It is where our culture is the most dynamic, most committed, most culturally diverse.

The Year of Mission is our theme and direction for this academic year at St. Dunstan’s. The original idea for a Year of Mission came from Dr. Norbert L.W. Wilson, one of our Faculty Advisors and a candidate for the ordained ministry of Deacons. Clearly, the work of campus ministry and young adult ministry is our top priority—and has been for the past 91 years!

Eleven years ago, when Leigh and I arrived at St. Dunstan’s for the start of the academic year, this Christian community identified an annual theme or spiritual direction for Auburn’s campus ministry—and we have continued to do this each year:

2000-2001      The Year of Restoration
2001-2002      The Year of Celebration
2002-2003      The Year of Spiritual Journey
2003-2004      The Year of Community
2004-2005      The Year of Growth
2005-2006      The Year of Fellowship
2006-2007      The Year of Agapé 
2007-2008      The Year of Renewal
2008-2009      The Year of the Word
2009-2010      The Year of Discovery, and now for
2010-2011       The Year of Mission

Lately, we have been brainstorming about mission work that we have done and hope to do as the Episcopal Church at Auburn University. Here are a few ideas that have surfaced:

Our Missionaries to China: Maegan Collier and Jaime Burchfield
Alabama Rural Ministries and “Bike Across Alabama”
The Veterans Home in Southside Opelika
The East Alabama Food Bank
Education for Ministry (EfM)
The Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration
The Friends of Jimmy (12 Step)

But what I want to do tonight is to focus on your personal mission work. Think of it as being “On a Mission from God.” That’s a quote, by the way, from a 1980 movie titled The Blues Brothers, starring Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi, which, now that I think about it, came out well before almost all of you were born. Anyway, “On a Mission from God.” That’s our focus this year.

In tonight’s gospel lesson, Jesus gets in trouble with a synagogue leader for healing a crippled woman in the middle of his teaching lesson. Jesus laid his hands on her and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” In our own Anglican tradition, healing is one of the seven sacraments of the Church. But in Jesus’ day, the Pharisees outlawed such activity on the sabbath. The writer of Hebrews really had it right, however. Our God is not a rule book. He is a consuming fire. Jesus was telling them that the sabbath was made for us—as a gift, a blessing from God. Not to punish people with violations, restrictions, and penalties. Back in the day people would get stoned to death for picking up sticks, or cooking, or whatever. I think Jesus is telling us today something much more important, and much more personal. On your mission from God, whatever that is, people will doubt you from time to time. They will misinterpret or misunderstand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. They will not believe that you are on a mission from God, or that God’s is calling you in any way. But do not doubt yourself. Just continue to be faithful.

Furthermore, if God is your strong rock (as the psalmist tells us he is), and a castle to keep you safe, then don’t worry about approval or disapproval of your mission work. Just keep on doing it. And don’t worry about getting to heaven, or going to hell, for doing your mission work. Remember that Christ has already conquered sin and death. All sin and death. Your sin and death. Concern yourself instead with living a life that is worthy of Christ. Keep your eyes and your heart on the mission.

But because we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, we must also realize that God means serious business. God takes your life seriously—and what you do with it. Realize that God is asking you right now what the poet Mary Oliver asks:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Realize that your one wild and precious life is of infinite importance to God—even if you don’t think it is, even if you don’t care about your life, your purpose, your mission in life. God cares. And God will not leave you alone. He will keep coming after you, bringing you back home on his shoulders. And you will find no peace and no rest until you rest in God.

So we return to the concept of Sabbath and our deep need to rest in God. Jesus was not condemning the Sabbath or a day of rest. He was telling us to observe the day of rest, but don’t let it become a restriction. Do whatever has to be done that day. Bend or break the rules if necessary, but do Christ’s own work. That may mean feeding the hungry, or healing the sick, or any number of small, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.

But remember yourself, too—your soul and body. How can you function without rest, or sleep, or healthy food and drink, or exercise, or the continual process of learning, or the daily discipline of meaningful work? In 1930, the agrarian poet John Crowe Ransom wrote about work in a way that carries much meaning for us today. He said:

The first principle of a good labor is that it must be effective, but the second principle is that it must be enjoyed. Labor is one of the largest items in the human career; it is a modest demand to ask that it may partake of happiness.

It is God’s good pleasure that your mission in life would partake of happiness and purpose. But you must decide to choose and accept them—or not. It is our mission and our responsibility to get up—with God’s good help—and do what needs to be done.

So what exactly is your mission and your responsibility this academic year? First let’s realize that we may have one main mission or purpose in life, but we all have many responsibilities. That means we’ve all got to learn to multi-task. And it also means seeking balance for your life. It means setting priorities, using your time and talents and your resources wisely and well.

The members of 12 step programs know that you’re in big trouble if you let yourself get hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. That’s when you have to stop—to HALT—and think about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

Just a week before Leigh and I left for South Africa, I was going to run home on a Sunday afternoon for about an hour. It was three o’clock and the Compass Bank clock read 102 degrees. I had just pulled out of the church driveway and was in front of 17-16, when a guy and a girl were crossing the street. (By the way, it seems that students and locals alike all disregard traffic laws. They jay-walk and pull across on-coming traffic to park, and don’t stop at yellow lights or stop signs—like we’re in an old Andy Griffith episode and we live in Mayberry.)

But back to the story: The two of them were crossing the street, when suddenly the girl collapsed in the middle of Magnolia Avenue, like she had been shot by a sniper. I stopped my car and asked, “Is she sick?” He ignored me and pulled her to her feet. “Do you want me to call for help?” “Naw,” said the guy. “She’s just drunk.”

On a Sunday afternoon. How can this happen? Sadly, I think this kind of thing happens over and over to people who have forgotten how important and precious and fragile life really is. They’ve lost their balance and their common sense and their mission in life. Or they just don’t care.

I don’t want you to be like this. Your life is of infinite importance to God, and it is of infinite importance to me as God’s servant and as your priest. You have a mission and it started on August the 18th. I want you to go to class every day, and study every day, and sit on the front row, and meet with your professors at least twice during the semester. I want you to be successful, and healthy, and happy in your work. I don’t want you to become hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. I want you to make the most of your one wild and precious life. I want you to come with me, with all of us, on a Mission from God. Amen.

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Sermon 628+August 21, 2010

12th Week after Pentecost
747th Week as Priest
573rd Week at St Dunstan’s
Marriage of Craig Eugene Bertolet and Anna Vladimirovna Riehl

At Long Last, Love.

With apologies to William Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, Boris Pasternak, Simon and Garfunkel, Frank Sinatra, Felix Mendelssohn, and the Commissioner of Major League Baseball.

Grace to you and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

There once was a man who had his books and his poetry to protect him. Shielded in his armor, safe within his office on the top floor of Haley Center, he laughed and punned and changed the subject with amazing skill. He was a rock and he was an island. And we believed that he would remain so throughout the remainder of his scholarly, solitary life.

But he was not done, and although I am not Donne, I can say with conviction that

No man is an island, entire of itself,
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”

Do you remember the scene from Doctor Zhivago when Yuri and Lara see each other again at the ice-covered farmhouse in the Russian countryside? Do you recall how beautifully the sun shone on the snow and ice, and how lovely Julie Christie looked in that fur coat?

Well, the weather here is nothing like that. We are as far from snow and ice as once could imagine. But this is love more than any movie, book, poem, or song. And if I may quote Sinatra, “it is love at long last.”

Our Lara is a Russian beauty just as lovely in wedding dress and no fur coat, and though our hero is more like C.S. Lewis than Yuri Zhivago, “A woman would run through fire and water for such a kind heart.”

All this snow and ice reminds me of T.S. Eliot’s “Little Gidding.” Which begins with that image of “The brief sun [that] flames the ice, on pond and ditches, In windless cold that is the heart’s heat,” This poem always makes me think of my own mentor and English professor, Dr. Ward Allen.

But now I am more drawn to the end of the poem, where Eliot concludes that

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Anna and Craig have been making separate journeys in order to arrive at the remarkable intersection of their lives, what we tend to call “holy coincidence” here at St. Dunstan’s. It all may appear arbitrary and random, but we know it is not. The journey has guidance and purpose, although it is seldom realized until after the fact, when we arrive where we started—that is, seeking and finding purpose, meaning, clarity, relationship, at long last love—and knowing it for the first time.

Not that Craig and Anna have been running in circles all this time. After all, they are accomplished scholars in their own right—a medievalist and a Shakespeare professor. Well, Craig may have been circuitous in his own navigations, returning time and time again to his beloved England—but they have each been making a separate journey, at times “such a long journey, at times the ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter.” A little more Eliot, if you please, but a journey nonetheless, a journey to each other.

The image of a journey is central to the sacred stories of our faith and to the great works of our literature. Mr. Shakespeare said that “Journeys end in lovers meeting.” Imagine a set of stairs, if you will, or As You Like It …

No sooner met but they looked;
No sooner looked but they loved;
No sooner loved but they sighed;
No sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason;
No sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy;
And in these degrees have they made a pair of stairs to marriage.

The simple truth is that we need each other. We need the help and support of another person. We need comfort and understanding. A shoulder to lean on, to cry on. We need to share our lives, our laughter and joy, our prosperity and adversity. This, I believe, is God’s best intention for Anna and Craig, and for us all.

We know this essential truth about ourselves from one of the earliest of the sacred stories. The LORD God creates man, takes one good look at him, and says, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” Not good at all.

We need each other. Craig needs Anna. Anna needs Craig. Life goes on, and gets better, and God has said from the beginning that this is very good.

Let me tell you a secret about the three essential elements of a lifelong, life-giving, healthy relationship—and they are not a cup of tea, Mendelssohn, and tenure. In fact, you may want to be taking notes.

The first of these essential elements, to no one’s great surprise, is romance. Here I mean love as W.B. Yeats described it,

I had a thought for no one’s but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;

Here I admit, freely and openly, that I am a hopeless romantic. There, I said it. I believe in the love that is a consuming fire. I believe in the love at whose name we grow quiet, or as Mr. Shakespeare said, “Speak low if you speak love.” And I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days.

That last one is a quote from Annie Savoy in the baseball movie classic Bull Durham, not the Song of Solomon, but then we all know that baseball is not only God’s favorite sport, it’s also poetry.

The next essential element is friendship, but you probably guessed that already. Not a casual or convenient friendship. Not fair weather or I’m outa here, but an enduring and deep relationship based on trust and mutual respect. In this modern world we tend to discount friendship in favor of prenuptial agreements and one-night stands, but I stand, instead, for friendship. Here is the measure of friendship amidst the tempests of life: to be able to say that “I would not wish any companion in the world but you.”

And the last of the essential elements? Well, this may come as a surprise. Marriage requires nothing less than a complete, unqualified commitment. That’s all. Just a complete—and completely unqualified—commitment to the other person. In sickness and health. In life and death. “The courses of true love never did run smooth,” so we must make that deepest and strongest of promises in marriage, the kind of promise that lasts for a lifetime.

So, Craig and Anna, we love you and in our love for you our joy is complete. “Now join your hands, and with your hands, your hearts.” Amen.

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