Sermon 641+January 30, 2011

Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
772nd Week as Priest
598th Week at St Dunstan’s

Blessed are the Meek

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

Last week, I led us through a close reading of the passage from Matthew’s Gospel concerning the call of the first four disciples of Jesus. Do you remember this? Don’t worry if you can’t; I remember very few of the sermons I’ve ever heard—which may be an indication of something about preachers, or something about sermons themselves.

Anyway, we read from the previous chapter of Matthew, first from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, which we use in our worship each week. And then from the Revised Standard Version, and the Good News Bible, and the Contemporary English Bible, and a radical new version called The Message.

We also compared the story from Matthew with the same story as told by Mark and Luke. We looked at every word, and I asked you to think about what the story meant to you, personally.

Well, that’s what I want to do tonight. But we are going to focus on a single verse from Matthew 5:1-12, commonly called The Beatitudes. We will examine “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”

This isn’t my first rodeo. I’ve led a discussion on this verse before. Six years ago, when I also served as the vicar of Emmanuel Church in Opelika, I asked the children to come and sit down with me and help me with the sermon. There were six or seven little girls, all in their summer dresses, and one boy who was too little to talk.

“Blessed are the meek,” I said, “for they will inherit the earth.” And then I asked them, “Who are the meek?”

They looked at each other like I was crazy. They laughed into their hands. “Come on,” I coaxed them. “Who are the meek?”

The oldest girl said, “I know. The meek are girls with long flowing hair.”

Another one said, “That’s right. And they have beautiful dresses.”

And another said, “And they flow in the wind.”

“What else can you tell me about the meek?” I asked.

“They ride camels,” announced the fourth child. Everybody agreed: The meek ride camels.

“It sounds like the meek are sort of like you girls,” I suggested.

They looked at each other. “No, we’re nothing like the meek,” said the oldest girl.

So now it’s your turn. “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” What does it mean to be meek? Most people, if they are truly honest, will say that meekness is about being humble, gentle, even like a servant. A meek person is lowly, with no authority or standing in the world, like a slave.

Well, that’s one way to look at meekness, but I don’t think it’s the way that Jesus was considering when he said, “Blessed are the meek.” In fact, Jesus has been called “the meek King.” But this is different. This understanding of meekness is about being gentle, and mild, and humble, but it also means to be compassionate, and to be patient.

Jesus, as our meek King, tells us later in Matthew’s Gospel, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle (meek) and humble in heart.”

This meekness is a “disciplined calmness” and a “rejection of violence.” This meekness is an expression of true strength. Our meek King is the One who is unafraid and always ready to forgive. Our meek King is heroic in his purposeful love for us, and he is willing to lay down his life for us.

Now that is real meekness. If we can learn from him to be gentle and humble in heart in the face of adversity and hostility, then we will inherit the earth. I know this is true. Amen.

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With thanks to Deirdre J. Good, Professor of New Testament at General Seminary in NYC, for her fine book, Jesus the Meek King, and my old and dear friend Tim Holder for giving it to me.

Sermon 640+January 23, 2011

Third Sunday after the Epiphany
771st Week as Priest
597th Week at St Dunstan’s

A Close Reading of Scripture.

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

I am completely captured by the story of the calling of the disciples. Like a fish in a net. And like Simon and Andrew, James and John, I’m ready to jump in the water and follow him wherever he’s going.

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus walks by the Sea of Galilee and sees Simon (who is called Peter from the first moment) and Andrew his brother. They are fishing. “Follow me,” says Jesus, “and I will make you fishers of men” and women. Then he sees James and John, the sons of thunder, or in Aramaic, “Boanerges,” the sons of Zebedee. Immediately, Jesus calls them, and they leave their father with the boat and the servants and follow him.

In Mark’s gospel the story is practically the same, and it appears almost at the very beginning. Jesus is passing along by the Sea of Galilee, and he sees two brothers, Simon and Andrew, who are fishing. He calls them. James and John are mending the nets with their father. Jesus calls them too, and immediately they leave the boat, their father, perhaps their families, certainly all safety and security—and they follow him.

In Luke, Jesus is standing beside Lake Gennesaret. The people are pressing upon him to hear the word of God. Jesus sees two fishing boats close by, but the men have left them and are mending their nets. Jesus climbs into Simon’s boat and asks him to put out a little from the shore. Then he sits down and teaches the people from the boat. When he has finished, Jesus tells Simon to “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon complains—beginning another pattern that lasts throughout the gospel stories. He says they’re tired. They’ve been fishing all night and have caught nothing. But if you insist, which he, Jesus, gently does. And they let down the nets and enclose, miraculously, a great catch of fish, enough to break the nets. James and John come quickly to help. They are his partners, says Luke’s gospel. Andrew, it seems, is not named. The sons of Zebedee come to Simon’s aid—now, for the first time, called Simon Peter—and both boats are quickly filled with fish, enough to sink them. Simon falls at the feet of Jesus, in the middle of the boat, and says, “Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man.” Well, he is. And he will prove it several times over in the years to come. But Jesus has use to make of him. “Don’t be afraid,” he says. “From now on, you will be catching people.” And then, Luke says, when they all returned to the shore with the overflowing catch of fish, they left everything and followed him.

I love this story. Or I should say, these versions of the story. There are not many stories about Jesus that appear the exact same in the three “synoptic” gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But here is one that tells basically the same story, the call of Simon and Andrew, and of James and John, two sets of brothers, all fishermen, all of whom become the four first disciples.

This is what is called “close reading.” It’s when you go to the text, the story itself, and you read with great care and attention to detail. You take note of every word, everything said by each person, and you compare those with other stories in scripture. Here, we are fortunate to find Mark’s story repeated in both Matthew and Luke, and it is much the same, but we have already seen some fine differences.

They tell us things that we would not otherwise have known. For instance, Luke’s gospel story is much more of a story. Gennesaret is simply another name for the Sea of Galilee; it is not a different place on the map. But there is more detail here. Jesus has a purpose in being there. He has just taught and healed people in Capernaum, and he has tried to find peace and quiet in what he thought would be a lonely place. But the crowds have followed him here, and he tries to explain, “I must preach the good news of the Kingdom of God to the other cities also.” But they follow him.

This sounds like the real story, doesn’t it? This sounds like a fuller explanation of why Jesus is at the seashore and what he is doing there. But it is undeniably the same story, isn’t it? Matthew, Mark, and Luke have all remembered this important event of the calling of the first disciples—but one has remembered, or chosen to tell, more of the story than the other two.

So far, we’ve been reading from the Revised Standard Version and the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. The RSV was used in the Episcopal Church until sometime in the 1980s, when it was replaced by the NRSV. But it’s also helpful in a close reading of scripture, to look at other translations to discover more of the message, more of the detail, more of the truth. For instance, the New English Bible has James and John “overhauling their nets” in Mark’s gospel. This tells us that these men are fishermen by vocation. Fishing for them is no weekend hobby. It is their life, their life’s work, and they do the work competently and for the long haul. They are not intending to leave the boats or the nets or their father for any reason whatsoever. And yet, they do.

In the Good News Bible, Luke’s version of this story makes it clear that Simon is the owner of the first boat, an experienced fisherman, and yet he obediently orders his men to let down the nets. In the Living Bible, in Mark’s story, Simon and Andrew are described as “commercial fishermen.” Jesus tells them to follow him, and he will make them “fishers for the souls of men.” It may not sound so, but this kind of fishing is of eternal importance. The other kind pales in comparison.

There’s a new and very contemporary translation of the New Testament called The Message that is worth reading in its entirety, if for no other reason than that you’ve never heard the Bible like this before … here is Mark’s story of the calling of the four disciples:

Passing along the beach of Lake Galilee, Jesus saw Simon and his brother Andrew net-fishing. Fishing was their regular work. He said to them, “Come with me. I’ll make a new kind of fisherman out of you. I’ll show you how to catch men and women instead of perch and bass.” They didn’t ask questions. They dropped their nets and followed. A dozen yards or so down the beach, he saw the brothers James and John, Zebedee’s sons. They were in the boat, mending their fishnets. Right off, he made the same offer. Immediately, they left their father Zebedee, the boat, and the hired hands, and followed.”

What is this all about? Well, it’s about the way in which we read scripture, the attention we give to the readings each week in this service. Too often we hear them, but we don’t really hear them. Almost in one ear and out the other. Or we might hear part of the story. And that’s not bad. After all, we do read a lot of the Bible in Sunday services in the Episcopal Church. You can always count on an Old Testament Lesson, a Psalm, a passage from one of Paul’s Letters or the Acts of the Apostles, and then certainly a Gospel story.

But my point is this: The stories are very important. In fact, they are like no other stories you and I have ever read. You can read the Gospel of Mark and find in it something about who God is and who we human beings are, that you won’t find in the gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John. And you can read a different translation of the same passage, and discover something brand new, and surprisingly true, something that you never thought about before. Remember, it’s called “close reading,” and I highly recommend this way of reading Holy Scripture.

In the gospel story, Jesus has just announced that the time has come, the Kingdom of God is here, and all must change the direction of their lives and believe the Good News. Now Jesus must find people who share his vision.

But here is how remarkable the Bible actually is: Jesus makes the same announcement to us, today, in our own lives. He still wants fishers of people, men and women and boys and girls who are patient and determined and not easily discouraged, people who can decide in an instant to commit themselves—for a lifetime—to the cause.

It is the story of calling Simon and Andrew, James and John, but it is also the story of calling you, and me, and generations yet to be born.

Every time you pick up a Bible, every time you read a passage, you will be challenged in a way that is different and striking and unlike the last time you read the Bible or even that same passage of scripture. I will often describe the Bible as “The Most Important of Books,” but one of my professors at Sewanee used to say that the Bible is the most dangerous of all books. It’s true: Reading it—and hearing it, really hearing and understanding what it is saying—will change you and will change your life. That, I can guarantee. Amen.

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Sermon 639+January 14, 2011

MEMORIAL FOR RACHEL DAVIS STRICKLAND
Auburn United Methodist Church
769th Week as Priest
595th Week at St. Dunstan’s
 
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
 
It is a privilege and a joy for me to be with you today to celebrate the life of Rachel Davis Strickland, a most gracious lady and a woman of extraordinary beauty and strength.
 
Like the Rachel of the Book of Genesis, she was both wise and resourceful. Like the Ruth of the Hebrew Scriptures, she was loyal and capable and always willing to make the best of every situation.
 
Rachel and her husband Billy have been beloved members of our Auburn family for many years. Rachel is best known for the fine work she did as a wedding director for literally hundreds of marriages over those years.
 
There is a Shakespeare sonnet that I often recite at the wedding rehearsal, the night before a wedding. It seems most appropriate to describe the lifelong, loving relationship between Rachel and Billy:
 
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no, it is an ever-fixèd mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his heighth be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
 
Those beautiful words are more a hope than they are a realized fact for a young couple on the night before they are to be wed. They are a prayer for the man and woman who will become one in marriage, rather than any accomplishment.
 
But for Rachel and Billy, they are more than words; the sonnet describes their life together, a lifelong, loving relationship that began sixty-one years ago. They were both eighteen, and they had known each other all through high school. They drove from their hometown of Fayetteville, North Carolina, across the state line into South Carolina where they were married by a Justice of the Peace. It’s easier to get married in South Carolina, in case you need to know.
 
Perhaps the young woman who is married with as little public notice and lack of fanfare logically and emotionally becomes the woman who helps to make others’ weddings the most joyous of celebrations. She attends to every detail. She dots every “i” and crosses every “t.” She selflessly devotes her time and attention to the needs of other people, and she gives of herself willingly and wisely. This was certainly true of Rachel.
 
Their home on Felton Lane became a place of peace and conversation and hospitality and good food and pleasant surroundings and great comfort for many of us, and it was Rachel who made it so. After all, Billy doesn’t even know how to load the dishwasher or do the laundry. He has been a kept man, a king in his own castle, and it was Rachel who took such wonderful care of him, and us, all these years.
 
In her last days, in the comfort and care of Bethany House, it was Rachel who received tender loving care from her Billy. He did not leave her bedside for the eight days her body and mind held on to this life. He slept in a chair at night, and he was there when she fell asleep and there when she awakened. He was, to paraphrase W.H. Auden …
 
Her North, her South, her East and West,
Her dying week and her Tuesday rest,
Her noon, her midnight, her talk, her song.

They found a true home in Auburn, Loveliest Village of the Plains, but a part of their love and life will always remain in North Carolina. In Fayetteville, at Duke University, and in the sky of Carolina blue. Auburn became home to Rachel, after many moves in those early years. They shared a passion for sports—basketball, baseball, football —and they loved Auburn. Perhaps Rachel didn’t enjoy feel quite the consuming fire for the game that her Billy always has. But then he was the player, the scorekeeper, the director of marketing. She was always his helper, and for her, he always wanted to be a better man.
 
Just a few years ago, their family grew from three daughters—Julie, Cindy, and Penny—and their families, to include the Wittens—Beth and Steve, and their little girls. Beth was returning to work at the Red Cross from maternity leave, and she asked Rachel if she knew a good sitter. Billy did. He volunteered Rachel and himself for the job. It was the start of a new loving relationship, and years of devotion, and times of great joy and celebration. Kate and Caroline lost their grandmother in Macon about the same time, and Rachel became their grandmother. It was her way—to find joy in the joy of others.
 
And now, Rachel has found her a new home, in the courts of heaven. She is welcomed into the household of her loving Father. She is greeted by angels, and archangels, and all the company of the saints in light. And she has seen the Lamb of God face to face. And there is no more pain or sorrow, and all her tears are wiped away. She has only one small task left to perform: it was his last request that she save a place for her Billy. Amen.

Sermon 638+January 9, 2011

Epiphany 1—Baptism of Our Lord
Sunday, January 9, 2011
769th Week as Priest
595th Week at St Dunstan’s

Elements of Our Faith.

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

On this night of snow and ice, I have been thinking of the deep mystery which is the Universe, and the holy coincidence of life on this fragile earth, our island home. You know what we mean by a “holy coincidence,” don’t you? What appears to be random, arbitrary, mere chance, is anything but that. It is, strangely enough, the way in which our God works in the natural world. A lot of people, I think, try to put the God of All Creation into a little box, and then think they can take God out of the little box when they need to.

It doesn’t work that way. God was before time, before anything and everything. God is all powerful and all knowing. God is always present. God is Ultimate Being and Ultimate Reality. And God, I think, does not particularly care for our efforts to control him, or use him, or fool him.

On the other hand, what I know of the natural world—the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, sun, and the planets in the courses—suggests to me that God does make himself known to us.

And God does this using some very basic elements of our existence—earth, wind, fire, light, and water. These, you might say, are the “Elements of Our Faith.” Not that we are some kind of pantheists or pagans—not at all. We know that God is not his Creation; God does not exist in mountains, rivers, trees, and animals. But God, as St. Bonaventure said, does show us vestiges of his glory in the natural world. And this is precisely why we as Episcopalians, as Anglicans, welcome the discoveries of science, and we value the knowledge of investigation and inquiry, and we know that faith and science are not enemies of one other.

In the ancient story of the Garden, God creates the human being from the dust of the earth. This is not intended to be taken literally, but as Bill Bryson wrote in his Short History of Nearly Everything, if you were to dismantle the molecules which make up the physical body of your average person, you would be left with a small pile of cosmic dust. In the New Testament, you recall that Jesus heals a man by placing mud on his eyes. God makes himself known in the very earth we walk upon.

In the seven-day creation story, the Spirit of God moves above the waters. It is a mighty wind, this Spirit of God, or in Hebrew ruach, which means wind, breath, or spirit. Standing at the mouth of the cave, Elijah reminds us that God is not found in the wind, or the earthquake, or in fire—but in the deep silence of our existence. In the Acts of the Apostles, the wind appears again, this time as the precursor to flames of fire. God makes himself known in the wind which blows where it will.

Moses stood before the burning bush and heard the voice of YHWH, telling him to return to Egypt and free his people from the hand of Pharaoh, and the fire did not consume the bush. In our Christian Testament, on the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit appears as flames of fire above the heads of the Apostles. The writer of Hebrews tells us metaphorically that “Our God is a consuming fire.” God makes himself known in the fire that burns within us.

God’s first act of Creation, when “the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep,” was to say, “Let there be light”; and there was light.” Saul, who would become St. Paul, was traveling the road to Damascus, when “suddenly a light from heaven flashed about him.” Jesus, our God and Savior, is known to us as the Light of Heaven. God makes himself known to us in this Great Light.

And then there is the gift of water. Over it the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning. Through it God led the children of Israel out of their slavery in Egypt. In it Jesus received the baptism of John and was anointed by the Holy Spirit as the Messiah, the Christ. And we have also received the water of Baptism. God has made himself known to us in all these things—earth, wind, fire, light, and finally in the gift of water. I invite you to walk with me to the font, to the Living Water of Our Lord Jesus Christ, that together we might renew our Baptismal Vows. Amen

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Sermon 637+January 6, 2011

Feast of the Epiphany
768th Week as Priest
594th Week at St Dunstan’s

For the Time Being.

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

The short but beautiful season of Christmas came to an end last night, the Twelfth Night after Christmas Day. That’s right: Christmas did not begin the day after Thanksgiving, no matter what the world says. And Christmas Day was not the deadline to be dragging your highly flammable tree out to the street. That would have been last night, unless of course you have a fake tree, or nobody was there to help you take it down.

“Well, so that is that,” wrote the English-American poet W.H. Auden in his poem For the Time Being:

Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes—
Some have got broken—and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school.

All that fuss and bother over shopping, and food and drink, and parties and family gatherings, and opening presents, and more shopping, and New Year’s Eve, and six dozen bowl games—and still we paid very little attention to the birth of the Child. Or as Auden said,

We have attempted—quite unsuccessfully—
To love all our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away …

But there is still time to see the Child Jesus, for he has not yet left the building—or I should say, the stable. It is the Feast of the Epiphany, the high holy day of the church year when the wise men came to Bethlehem, following the star, to find the Light of the world, to honor the Prince of Peace, to bring gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh to the Child Jesus.

Another poet, the American-born English poet T.S. Eliot, wrote about this Journey of the Magi from the wise men’s point of view …

‘A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’

They traveled a long, long way from the East, through deserts and hardships, and then, wrote Eliot,

We arrived at evening, not a moment
too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say)
satisfactory.

Satisfactory? A strange choice of a word. I would have hoped for “miraculous,” or “life-changing,” or even “mysterious.” God comes to earth as Emmanuel, God-with-us, and this incarnate God is small, innocent, helpless, defenseless. This Jesus is one of us, a human baby, and yet this Jesus is also one with God the Father. This Jesus is God the Son.

The word Epiphany means a showing, or a manifestation. God is made known—God is shown—to the world. In the person of the Child Jesus, our God becomes the Messiah himself, the Savior of his people Israel. He is the fulfillment of the Holy Scriptures, just as we heard Isaiah’s prophecy a short time ago. The light has come. The glory of the Lord has risen upon us. Men from the East shall come, bringing gold and frankincense, and they shall proclaim the praise of the Lord to all the world.

Epiphany can also mean an experience of God, even an insight or a new understanding of God’s activity and presence in the world. I believe that small epiphanies happen to us all the time, yet we are typically not paying attention. We miss them because we are preoccupied with more important stuff like bills to be paid, errands to run, shopping to be done, cars to drive, TV to watch, fast food to eat.

But if we were to stop, and to become very quiet, and to listen very carefully, we might just experience the God of all Creation:

—in the face of a child, or the smell of a baby’s head,
—in the love of a family, or your closest of friends,
—in the words of a song, or the music of the spheres,
—in the joy and wonder of this natural world,
—in the stars on a cold clear night,
—in the waves breaking against the seashore,
—in the laughter of a loved one,
—in the adoration and affection of a Border collie,
—in the sights and smells and sounds of holy worship,
—in the clear morning light, and the possibility of a new day,
—in the peace and perfection of a silent night,
—and, for the time being, even in the holiness and the fullness of the
    present moment.

Happy Epiphany. Amen.