Sermon 575+June 28, 2009

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

687th Week as Priest
513th Week at St. Dunstan’s
148th Week at St. Matthew’s in-the-Pines

2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27
Psalm 130+De profundis
2 Corinthians 8:7-15
Mark 5:21-43

The Church’s Foundation.

We know from the hymns and lessons for today that the Church’s true foundation is Jesus Christ. Or as the Collect puts it, the Apostles and Prophets are the foundation, and Jesus Christ himself is the chief cornerstone. But there is a lot of work that goes into building a solid foundation. Consider today the characteristics of St. Matthew’s in-the-Pines as you would the blocks laid for a church’s foundation. Here is how I see it:

The Church should be inviting and welcoming to all people, so that we can all “enter his gates with thanksgiving; and go into his courts with praise.” This means that in our Christian community, we ought not to insist on our own way; rather, we should seek always to exercise patience and kindness, and we should seek to bless and not to curse.

The Church should be helpful and comfortable, so that God’s people experience the true hospitality of our faith. There are people who come to church because they are feeling “harassed and helpless,” and it is our responsibility and our joy to serve the Lord—and others—with gladness.

The Church should be a place of genuine friendship and fellowship. These words should remind us all of the four characteristics of the Early Church in the Acts of the Apostles … where “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”

The Church should also be a place of healing and wholeness. Jesus told his disciples to go among the cities and towns, curing diseases and healing sickness, casting out that which was unclean and unhealthy. There is healing of the physical kind, which Jesus did in Mark’s gospel today, but there is also the healing and wholeness of relationships to which each of us is called.

The Church should be generous and bold, compassionate and forgiving. We are all going to make mistakes. We have all done things we should not have done, and we have left undone things we ought to have done. That is why the chief business of the Church is reconciliation and restoration, of bringing people home, and of bringing new people into the household.

Our work together must be cooperative and collaborative, not competitive or confrontational. In many ways, St. Matthew’s in-the-Pines is like a family. We are small in number, but each person is of infinite importance to us and to God. It is essential for us to live in peace with each other, to communicate effectively, and to avoid making issues into opportunities for conflict and resentment.

The Church should be a place of discipline and order, of learning and discovery, of truth and tolerance. Christian people need both boundaries and challenges, opportunities and responsibilities, absolutes and exceptions. We need to read Holy Scripture carefully, to pray earnestly, and to honor those gifts of the Holy Spirit which are wisdom, knowledge, and understanding.

The Church should be both reformed and catholic, a place where the middle way is honored, where liturgy is broad, where preaching is inspiring, and where worship is frequent and engaging.

 The Church must be a place of beauty and holiness. Our God deserves the best we have to offer, for we are his “treasured possession out of all the peoples.” We give thanks to him and call upon his Name: God has every right and reason to expect the Church to be beautiful and holy, adorned as the bride of Christ, made sacred by the steadfast prayers of the faithful.

Finally, the Church ought to be a place of love and peace. If there is nowhere else on earth for a person to find the fruits of the Holy Spirit—which are love, peace, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control—it must be the Household of the Church. We have every obligation and every duty as Christian people to seek to do good, to pursue peace, and to live together in unity.

 When we do these things, we truly become the Household of God, his Household which is the Church. I believe that we are this household at St. Matthew’s in-the-Pines. I believe that we are truly a church family here in Seale. Would that all the churches learn to live in peace and love for one another. Amen.

Sermon 576+July 5, 2009

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

688th Week as Priest
514th Week at St. Dunstan’s
149th Week at St. Matthew’s in-the-Pines

Deuteronomy 10:17-21
Psalm 145:1-9+Exaltabo te, Deus
Hebrews 11:8-16
Matthew 5:43-48

Nation, Country, People

I decided last Thursday that we would use the Propers for Independence Day this morning rather than the lessons appointed for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost. After all, the Fourth of July was just yesterday, and it is, far and away, our most important national holiday. For us as Christians and Americans, this is an excellent opportunity to examine what it means for us to be both, Christian and American, and to think about the future of our nation, our country, and our people.

America today fights wars on several fronts—Iraq, Afghanistan, and terrorism throughout the world. Our economy is in terrible shape, presently in a kind of limbo between recession and recovery. The banking system is a complete shambles. Foreign governments and international companies own huge investments in our real estate. The Peoples Republic of China has taken over most of America’s manufacturing industry, and our own government owns a majority stake in General Motors and Chrysler Corporation.

In the beginning of these United States of America, there were no political parties, no federal government, no national bank, no military but state militias, and no precedents whatsoever for establishing the independence of a people or a new nation. Thirteen colonies became thirteen states, more a confederation than a republic, conceived in liberty, born of revolution, and dedicated to the proposition that all men were created equal. Democracy was a radical experiment in the late eighteenth century, and in many ways, it remains a radical experiment today.

Our freedom was bought first in blood, and we have fought to the death many times to maintain that freedom over the past 233 years. We almost lost the War of 1812 to the British, less than forty years after becoming a nation. The Civil War nearly destroyed our Union and cost 700,000 American lives. The First World War took another 200,000, the Second World War almost a half-million American lives. In the last half-century, we have fought wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and a dozen other places on a more limited scale.

Since 9/11 we have been engaged in a war on terrorism that has no clear enemy, no time table, and no way to recognize if we are winning or losing.

For a nation founded on liberty and freedom, we have made some egregious mistakes. The sale and enslavement of African men, women, and children was a part of America’s history for almost 250 years. We virtually exterminated the American Indian tribes by the 1830s. American women—half our population—were denied the right to vote until 1920. Over 120,000 Japanese Americans were placed in internment camps during World War II. The list goes on, but we haven’t the time.

And yet, Americans are a people of ingenuity and courage and optimism. Our pioneer and immigrant ancestors came to this land with little else, and they carved out of a great wilderness the most powerful and resilient nation in the history of the world. They built railroads and interstate highways, national parks and great cities, international systems of investment and commerce—all in the most pluralistic, diverse, and tolerant society that has ever existed.

Americans are also a people of faith. Eight out of 10 adult Americans believe in God, and nearly that many believe in miracles and in life after death. Nearly three-fourths of Americans consider themselves to be Christians, but less than 40% attend church regularly. Some studies suggest that only 20% go to church regularly, but the polls indicate that Southerners go to church twice as much as everybody else.

Yes, we have problems, big problems, but Americans are blessed with more freedom, more opportunity, and more material wealth than any other nation in the world, than any other nation in history. We have abundant natural resources, from sea to shining sea—clean air, clean water, fertile soil, and rich deposits of metals and minerals. We have excellent systems for education, health care, transportation, communication, public safety, and the administration of justice. As you’ve heard before, our country is far from perfect, but it’s a whole lot better than whoever is in second place.

If any nation has ever been blessed, we are a nation blessed beyond anything we could ask for or imagine. If any country has ever been favored with resources, beauty, and potential, it is ours. If any people on the earth have ever been chosen by God to be a light to the nations and a beacon of hope for the oppressed and downtrodden, we are that people.

And for all this, I ask you, what are we doing to be that light in the darkness? We know from the Holy Scriptures that it is our calling and our duty to “execute justice for the orphan and widow,” and to “love the stranger, providing them food and clothing,” and to live by faith that God will continue to bless us as we bless others.

We are called, as Christians and Americans, to live our lives in a way that is extraordinary and important for the life of the world. “Love your enemies,” says Jesus, and we must find ways to do this—in the Middle East, in our decaying urban centers, and in the daily life that we live.

It’s true that despite our many blessings and advantages, there is much that is wrong, and unfair, in the daily life and work of our nation, our country, and our people. But there is also much that is good, and worthy of praise, and honorable. On a weekend that we remember the dawning of our liberty and freedom, the birth of a democratic nation, and the accomplishments and achievements of our people, we should also commit and dedicate our selves, our souls and bodies, to doing what is good and right and perfect in the eyes of God.

Then, and only then—when we seek to be a blessing to others, the poor, the needy, and the oppressed in our own communities and throughout the world—have we any basis for asking Almighty God to bless our native land. Amen.

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Sermon 577+July 12, 2009

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19
Psalm 24+Domini est terra
Ephesians 1:3-15
Mark 6:14-29

Not Just Nice Little Stories

We return this Sunday to the lessons of the Long Green Season. In the Old Testament, we have been reading the saga of David, King over all Israel and Judah. This is a compelling narrative, a story that you probably first learned in Vacation Bible School, in perhaps a more sanitized version. But if we leave out the graphic and bloody events of David’s rise to power, we lose too much of the story itself.

You may recall that we began with the story of David and Goliath. The young shepherd boy felled the Philistine giant with a sling-shot stone to the forehead, and then he cut off Goliath’s head with his own sword. On another Sunday, Samuel the prophet anointed young David as King over Israel. A nice enough story, but we need to know that Saul was already King over Israel at the time, and God had turned his back on poor Saul. I say “poor Saul” because he went stark raving mad after that. We also need to know that David was chosen over all his older brothers. Each one of them was paraded before Samuel, and each one was rejected by God. Instead, our jealous God of the Desert chose the unlikeliest candidate in the shepherd boy David.

In today’s lesson, King David has gathered his army of thirty thousand soldiers, and all the people of Israel, and they are bringing the Ark of the Covenant to David’s own city. We need to remember that the Ark represents the mighty power of God, and Israel has had possession of it since the Book of Exodus, when God told Moses to build the Ark as a sanctuary and a tabernacle for his presence. In it they placed the Ten Commandments, the tablets of stone, and a small jar of manna, the bread of heaven. But they believed that God dwelled in the Ark, and as long as they followed the Ark into battle, they could not lose.

One of the typical signs of prophecy in those days was ecstatic or enthusiastic behavior. The word enthusiasm literally means to be possessed by a god. This is what happened to David as they were bringing the Ark of the Covenant to his city: “David danced before the Lord with all his might … girded with a linen ephod.” He was so taken over with enthusiasm that he stripped down to his underwear and was “slain in the spirit,” as the Pentecostals would say.

But his new wife, Michal, the daughter of Saul, found this spectacle ridiculous and embarrassing. When she looked out of the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, she “despised him in her heart,” hardly the way you want your new wife to consider you.

These are not just nice little stories, and we make a big mistake if we try to reduce the Holy Scriptures to Vacation Bible School level. No, they are filled with the grit and grime of humanity, the characters are typically violent and sinful, and their stories are often not entirely suitable for the ears of young children.

I’ve found this to be the case when I’ve used stories from the Bible for the program at Camp McDowell summer sessions. Over the years, we’ve taught the Acts of the Apostles, the Book of Genesis, and the Great Kings of Israel to 13 and 14 year-olds at Sophomore Camp. I confess that I have had to edit Bible stories from time to time in order to make them acceptable at church camp, but I try to avoid this practice wherever possible. You see, we shouldn’t have these stories sanitized for our benefit. Consider the passage from Mark’s Gospel for today. Herod Antipas had divorced his first wife in order to marry his brother’s wife. She, named Herodias, convinced her daughter to dance for her stepfather, and then to ask Herod Antipas for the head of the John the Baptist. Immediately, the king sent his guards to the prison. They killed poor John, and brought his head on a plate to the girl. In one small example, we find family dysfunction, public lewdness, intrigue, injustice, violence, murder, and a grisly presentation of the worst birthday present imaginable.

So why do we (to be continued)

Sermon 578+July 18, 2009

Sermon 578

July 18, 2009

The Recipe for Abundant Life

The Marriage of William David Michal and Anna Elizabeth Whitmire Robison.

Our sacred stories abound with images of good food and meals shared, of hospitality shown to family and strangers, and of abundant life lived in enduring relationship with God and each other.

Abraham and Sarah welcomed three angels into their home and fed them a most satisfying meal. Elijah shared a meal with a widow and her son from provisions of meal and oil that miraculously overflowed. The Passover meal was the sign to the People of Israel of their freedom from slavery. Jesus fed thousands from a boy’s lunch of fish and bread. And the central symbol of the Christian faith is, after all, a simple meal of bread and wine.

When Anna Robison was a little girl, she learned to cook in the home of a loving grandmother. Anna learned her grandmother’s wonderful recipes, and over the years she developed an abiding love for preparing delicious, healthy food and showing hospitality at table. And she learned the family business, working in their neighborhood organic groceries. It seems only natural that Anna would study Hotel and Restaurant Management at Auburn.

Seven years ago, she met a boy her age who was at first a very good friend. William was very intelligent and rather serious-minded, and he showed great care for other people, especially Anna. Over the years, their relationship grew and deepened. They shared a good sense of humor, and an interest in people. They shared a sensitive nature, and a profound gentleness. William said that Anna was the best person he’d ever known. She is loving and happy, and she knows what she wants out of life—to raise a family, to be successful in her career, and to fulfill her love for food, friends, and family.

Together, Anna and William have found a recipe for abundant life:

The main ingredients are the love of both friendship and romance. Add to that a spirit of gentleness and kindness. Mix in the yeast of passion and the sensitive nature of an abiding good will toward others. Stir with a sense of humor, and allow the flavors of family and friends to fill the house with goodness and peace. Cook slowly, enjoying the weekly cycle of work, study, exercise, sleep, rest, play, and worship. Welcome everyone to share the nourishment and hospitality they offer. And in all things, give thanks for the blessings of this life. Amen.

The Chapel at Sea Island, Georgia

Sermon 602+October 18, 2009

Sermon 602
The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
October 18, 2009

The Commitment of Our Life.

Peace be to this place, and to all who dwell in it. Amen.

A Complete, Unqualified Commitment.

A dozen years ago, feeling overwhelmed by my responsibilities as a bank president and a parish priest, I called my oldest and best friend in the Episcopal Church, Ken Fields. “I thought I could manage this,” I said to Ken, who was serving as the chaplain at Canterbury Chapel at the University of Alabama. “But I feel like I’m meeting myself coming and going.”

My small bank in Fayette was growing, and St. Michael’s, my small parish, was demanding more and more of my time and energy. Bishop Parsley kept reminding me to honor the Sabbath—to take a day of rest—but I would find myself at the hospital or nursing home on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons. Ken said, “Look, Wells. All that God expects of you is a complete, unqualified commitment. That’s all.”

A complete, unqualified commitment—not a man limping along with two opinions about life. Elijah demanded as much of the people of Israel, who were torn between the worship of YHWH and Baal: “How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.”

Bishop Parsley used to joke at clergy gatherings about my two full-time jobs: “Wells is an experiment to see if you really can serve God and Mammon.” Being a priest was wonderful, I thought, and being a banker was easy. “Go into banking, son,” a former Alabama governor told me way back in 1990. “All it requires is arithmetic and common sense.” I thought we would stay in Fayette forever. Ken was wrong; I could manage the situation. Instead I found myself being pulled more and more into the life of faith, and I came to despise the pursuit of power and the insatiable greed of bankers and the banking industry. And I came to despise myself as one limping along with two opinions, unable to commit fully to either one. Still, I was a good community banker, an officer in the Rotary Club, and the banking business in those days was very good. It’s hard to leave comfort and money, even if they’re slowly squeezing the life out of you.

The story from the First Book of Kings tells us that the People of Israel couldn’t make up their minds either. It’s hard to disagree with King Ahab and the wicked Queen Jezebel; it’s easier just to go along and get along. Elijah decided it was time for decisive action. Elijah confronted Ahab and Jezebel. He demanded a showdown with the prophets of Baal, and on Mount Carmel he defeated the pagan priests in a demonstration of God’s mighty power. Oh, and then “Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon and slaughtered them there.” All 450 of them. I guess we could call that the “down side” of a complete, unqualified commitment. If you’re faced with that kind of choice in life, make sure you make the right one.

My former boss Bobby Lowder has been in the news again lately. Years ago I was his vice-president for sales and marketing, and his public relations director. When I left Colonial Bancgroup in 1993, shares were trading at $28 and we were acquiring banks in Atlanta. We had weathered many storms—the Eric Ramsey scandal, the Board’s micromanagement of Auburn University, the rise and fall of football coaches—and I left his employ, under my own power and at my own decision. Sixteen years later, Colonial collapsed under the weight of worthless mortgages. The share price fell below nineteen cents before the New York Stock Exchange removed Colonial Bancgroup from its offerings. Commit yourself to the wrong path and you will find yourself lost in the wilderness. Wordsworth said two centuries ago …

The world is too much with us.
Late and soon,
Getting and spending,
We lay waste our powers.

James and John, the sons of thunder, said to Jesus, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” What they wanted was a position of authority and of power—a seat at his right and left hand. What Jesus wanted for them—and from them— was a complete and unqualified commitment. Like a lot of commitments, they had no idea what this one would mean. They had no idea that drinking from his cup would mean sacrifice and death. That would have to come much later, after he had been raised from the dead and ascended into heaven, after the coming of the Holy Spirit, after years of spreading the Gospel to the ends of the earth. All Jesus wanted from them was their hearts, minds, souls, and spirits. All he wanted was everything. That’s all.

The psalmist advised as much, centuries earlier than Jesus of Nazareth:

Trust in the Lord, and do good;
so you will live in the land, and enjoy security.
Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the Lord;
trust in him, and he will act.

Commit your way to the Lord. It’s a demand, a requirement, perhaps even a commandment for those who follow the life of faith. As busy, modern Americans, we are typically reluctant to make commitments—to an employer, a service organization, a college, a church, another person, even to God. You know the typical answers: “Not yet. Maybe later. After I graduate. When I’m retired. When I can find the time.” And yet we know the promise of God, that if we will but commit our way, he will give us the desires of our heart. He will act in our lives. He will change our circumstances. He will deliver us out of the pit, whatever that is.

As busy people in the modern world, we frequently protect ourselves against the dangers of commitment by compartmentalization. We live our lives in pieces and parts—work, exercise, family, recreation, school, church, hobbies, sports, politics—if you take on a new interest, just place it in a new compartment. That way, work and church can have little or nothing to do with each other. Sports and politics don’t have to be shaped by ethics or honesty. And you don’t have to deal with the incongruity and chaos of modern living.

Compartmentalization, however, is not the life of faith. For the Jews, the Shema, the fundamental statement of faith in the sixth chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy, is a complete, unqualified commitment:

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.
Love the LORD your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all your strength.

There is no compartmentalization in this way of living. Here, life is lived in a full and integrated way. There is no separation, or distinction, or conflict. You love God with all that you are.

For Christians, the commitment is still complete and unqualified. You find it in the Great Commandment …

Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Once again, there is no separation, or distinction, or compartmentalization here. We are commanded to love God completely, and to love our neighbor—all of our neighbors—as ourself. What I am asking you this day is to commit your way to the Lord. Strive to live your life free of internal conflict and compartmentalization. Choose the path that is consistent with your faith. Commit yourself to Christ with a willing heart and an eager mind. Give of your time and talent and treasure with a spirit of abundance and hope and love. And trust in God to give you the desires of your heart. Amen.

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Sermon 601+October 11, 2009

Sermon 601
The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
October 11, 2009

Peace be to this place, and to all who dwell in it. Amen.

The Foundation of Our Life.

The Psalmist recognized God’s hand in Creation when he said, “Long ago you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands.” It was that ancient cosmology that saw the four corners of the earth fastened securely to its foundation, “so that it shall never be shaken.” The science was all wrong, of course, what with the flat earth, the dome of the heavens, and the great sea monster Leviathan carrying it all on his back—but the essential truth is there—God’s presence is the foundation of our life, and God’s activity in our lives is what holds us “safe and secure from all alarms,” to quote one of my favorite bluegrass songs. We all need a firm foundation, don’t we?

All my adult life the Episcopal Church has been my foundation and my rock, my crag, my stronghold, a castle to keep me safe. The Church has blessed me, my family, and us all. In times of trouble and alarm, the Church has pulled me through … the loss of a job, a terrible car crash, the death of my father. I’m sure the same is true for you.

Back in the day the Hebrews, the People of YHWH, the Jealous God of the Desert, knew nothing of foundations. They were nomads, wandering from place to place, living in tents. Even when they escaped from bondage in Egypt, they wandered, seeking the Promised Land, following Moses, following YHWH.

Moses gave them the Law on tablets of stone, and they built the Ark of the Covenant as a dwelling-place for YHWH. But they would not build a Temple until the days of the Great Kings. David desired to build God’s Temple, but the work fell to his son Solomon.

In the stories of Kings and Chronicles the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. The Temple’s foundation was built of costly stones, sawn and cut to exact dimensions. The prophet Ezra tells us, “When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests in their vestments were stationed to praise the Lord with trumpets, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals.” It was a celebration of their life together, a life with the house of the Lord built as its center.

That would have been enough if not for the Babylonians, who conquered the land, destroyed the Temple of YHWH, and carried the People of God into exile once again. Only by the might of Cyrus, King of Persia, were they given freedom and a return home, at long last.

The Temple was restored and the priests offered sacrifices and prayers to the time of Jesus of Nazareth. When Jesus saw the moneychangers he lamented that the Temple was made a “den of robbers.” He said the Temple would be destroyed, and raised again in three days.

But Jesus was speaking of a new foundation, a new covenant, a new way of living. And the Temple was his own body, which would be raised from the dead. The second Temple would be destroyed by 70 AD, but the Church, the house of the Lord, would endure.

For fifty-eight years the Temple for us has been St. Matthew’s in-the-Pines, and it is Christ’s own body, the Body of Christ. St. Paul said that we are “members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.” But the foundation is our responsibility—to care for it, to restore the foundation when necessary. Paul said that in Jesus Christ, “the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God.

I have spoken plainly with you, placing the responsibility for this foundation squarely on all our shoulders. St. Matthew’s in-the-Pines must be supported financially each year in order to do the work of mission and ministry. We must have your help—your time, your talent, and your treasure. For each of us, for all of us, St. Matthew’s in-the-Pines is nothing less than the Foundation of Your Life. Father John and I will be talking about this Foundation, and the Commitment of Your Life (Oct. 18), and the Blessing of Your Life (Oct. 25), and the Celebration of Your Life (Nov. 1) in the Sundays to come. Please join us. Amen.

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Sermon 600+October 4, 2009

Sermon 600
The Feast of St. Francis of Assisi
18 Pentecost, October 4, 2009

Peace be to this place, and to all who dwell in it. Amen.

See Into the Life of Things.

I have long been a hopeless romantic, for almost thirty-five years in love with the Episcopal Church—its liturgy, architecture, music, sensibility, people, and what St. Paul called “good and decent order.” From the first moment I walked into the Church of the Holy Comforter in Montgomery, all those years ago, I have been a man hopelessly, completely, helplessly in love. There was no burning bush, no voice from the heavens, no fire, no earthquake, no mighty wind announcing the coming of the Lord on a day of judgment and great consequence. There was simply, fully, and forever, love … that unquenchable desire, that yearning of the heart, that seizure of the mind in which conscience and consciousness are bound in relationship with another—the path and the destination, the journey and the coming home, the new day of discovery and the memory of days and weeks and years of falling, deeper and forever, fully, completely, inexorably, in love.

You may think me a mad man, an eccentric, a person unhinged from the hard realities of daily life and labor. But I am, and have always been these many years, saner and clearer about my place and purpose in this life than perhaps anyone you have ever known. I am a man on a mission, and I have known this since I was first acquainted with the life that is “in Christ,” the life that is best lived in “the Body of Christ.”

It was a wedding of all things, on a day in autumn, a day much like this day, when I arrived at the place where I first knew myself to be loved and to love. And that is what happened: I fell in love, with the Church, the prayer book, the people, the priest (who would later be the bishop who ordained me), and the redheaded girl who brought me into that fellowship and joy divine.

Never assume that you know the mind of God. Never think that you have it all figured out. Because you don’t. Almighty God is at work in your life, and he will find a way into your heart. If you will only open the door of your soul but a little, he will come into your life of quiet despair and begin to transform what Hopkins called “your own sad self,” to change you, to make of you his new creation, to capture your heart, your mind, your imagination, your very soul, and to make you his own.

I have always loved the written word, the page, the book, and the order and development of plot and character and the telling and re-telling of stories. It was here, in the Church, that I truly discovered the Most Important of Books—that is, the sacred stories of Holy Scripture—not to mention the Red Book Under My Chair, the Book of Common Prayer. The two great books—Bible and Prayer Book—have become my compass, my treasure map, and my companions in the Way. With them in my backpack, suitcase, or bicycle panniers, I can go anywhere and find my way. Without them, I have no business even stepping outside my front door.

On the darkest of days, in the loneliest of nights, in the midst of suffering and heartache and disappointment and discouragement, I have only to open the two great books, and to sit in silence—in my red chair, or in a borrowed seat—and, as Mr. Wordsworth first recalled, “with an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and of the deep power of love, to see into the life of things.”

It is not a magic act, or a medication for “dis-ease;” no, it is prayer and plea, what George Herbert, my hero and template, called the

Churches banquet, Angels age,
Gods breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth ;
Engine against th’ Almightie, sinner’s towre,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six daies world-transposing in an houre,
A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear ;
Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,
Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,
Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest …

I Love Auburn, and I Believe in It.

It was no accident, no arbitrary and meaningless happenstance that brought us to this particular place, this Loveliest Village on the Plains, this Sweet Auburn. No, it was the Bishop of Alabama: Henry Nutt Parsley, Jr., who ten years ago called to ask us—and please know that a bishop never truly “asks”—to leave the Northern Kingdom and to come to Auburn, to rebuild and restore this flagship of Alabama’s storied campus ministry. We left our comfortable jobs, our comfortable home, our comfortable life in Fayette—where I was the banker-priest, one who actually thought he could serve both God and Mammon—and we came to this good and pleasant land.

You see, this was not an unknown Promised Land for us; I grew up in Auburn. I had two degrees from this University. I knew the place. I loved Auburn, and believed in it. Not that it was perfect, by any means. Far from it, actually, when we first arrived. A handful of grumpy students, a dirty and disorganized hovel of a church, and a spirit of division and criticism and complaint.

“What have I done to my family?” I asked near the end of that first year, now a decade ago. Why did we leave the leeks and cucumbers and melons of Egypt for this dry and desert wilderness? I was a bank president, for heavens’ sake! We were loved in Fayette, also known as The Northern Kingdom, the Hub of the Universe. We didn’t need this foolishness!

But Almighty God has a promise, you see. Not that he will exempt us from suffering or persecutions or sophomores in college. Not that he will protect us from the world. No, the promise is that he will be with us, even to the end, and that he will change us, note that: change us, to meet the challenges of the day and the ministry to which we have been called.

So that first year, we survived. We restored the building to the beauty of holiness. The second year, we turned our attention to the future, to the new students arriving, and we celebrated our life together. The third year, we called ourselves into community. Then into fellowship, and to growth, and to agape love, and to spiritual journey, and to the study of God’s holy word, and now to the discovery of our own direction and purpose and calling in Christ.

Through the love and fellowship of our Lord Jesus Christ, we have been made—and remade—God’s faithful people. We are given a second chance, and a third, a fourth, an eighth, a tenth, an unending number of chances to come into his presence and to be “in Christ,” to become “the Body of Christ.” And if we will only remain faithful and happy, and hopeful, and helpful, he will make of us his new creation. And he will welcome new people among us. People to be baptized, and married, and confirmed. Babies to be born and baptized. New life in Christ.

And we are promised that many who come to us will leave us, because that’s why they came to start with—to study, to grow, to learn, to graduate (in four short years, or five, or six) and to leave. To go out into the great wide world, to go forth and multiply, and to make more new little people who will live “in Christ” and be part of “the Body of Christ.”

We Will Remain in This Place

Leigh and I have now been married for thirty-two years, and for thirteen of those we have been a clergy family. But we are by no means the first or only clergy family to have served the People of God in this place. Campus Ministry began at Auburn ninety years ago. It was 1919, the year after the War to End All Wars, when Will McDowell brought his family from Virginia to the Church of the Holy Innocents in Auburn. They found a tiny wooden chapel nearly falling apart. A handful of disgruntled students, mostly interested in beer drinking and the “wild mania of the football games.” By 1924, Will and lay leaders like Algernon Blair of Montgomery had raised $40,000 and built the beautiful church building we have gathered in tonight.

Will and Mary Meade McDowell were here only a few years. After them came William Byrd Lee and his spunky, vivacious wife Mary. They were here for 24 years in all. Mary’s father was a railroad tycoon. She said, “We came to Auburn in a private railcar and left in a ten-year-old Ford.”

There have been many other priests and chaplains since then—Jim Stirling, Merrill Stevens, Rod Sinclair, Carl Jones, Dick Gilchrist, David Bargetzi, and John Cruse—but none of them has loved Auburn more than I, and none of them has believed in campus ministry and its mission more than Leigh and I do. We are here for the long haul, as my father used to say. Last year, when the bishop granted us official status as a “worshipping community,” and gave St. Dunstan’s permission to hold official memberships, I asked if he might also agree to let me stay in this place for another 10 or 15 years. He made no written offer, but he seemed to think that was a good idea. You see, Leigh and I would like to beat the record still held by Parson and Mama Lee. We believe in Auburn, and we love it.

Ten years from now, we will be celebrating St. Dunstan’s Century of Campus Ministry, and hopefully our 20th year at Auburn. I can think of no better plan and no greater purpose for my life. Twenty-five years at Auburn would make our joy complete.

Looking to the Future

But we still have much work to do in this wonderful and holy place. There are baptisms and marriages to celebrate, confirmands to present each year, and a thriving ministry to build and grow.

Our country is in a major recession, and times are tough for everybody. Still, the church must be supported with our time, talent, and treasure—and I will be calling on you in the weeks ahead to stand up for St. Dunstan’s. If you believe in Auburn, and you love it—and if you believe in this church, and you love it—you will help us in this great work which lies ahead.

Now we must get on to the most important work of the night—baptizing my grandson and welcoming him into the Household of God! Amen.

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Sermon 612+January 10, 2010

Sermon 612

St. Matthew’s in-the-Pines

Feast of Epiphany

January 10, 2010

Seeing God Face to Face.

Peace be to this place, and to all who dwell in it. Amen.

The God of Salvation History.

The story of the people of God, found in the Hebrew Scriptures, called the Old Testament, and the Christian Testament, or New Testament, is actually the story of God. Known first as YHWH, whose name was considered so holy that it was not to be written or spoken aloud, he was the God who brought all things into being out of absolute nothingness. Ex nihilo is the term, “out of nothing,” for the God of the Holy Scriptures created all matter and all life simply by the naming of things—heaven, earth, water, light. The scientists would come to call this singularity the “Big Bang,” but they have not attempted to explain why all life came into existence, or who was responsible for bringing it all into being.

In a sequence of seven days, and who knows how long a day was, this God YHWH of the Hebrew Scriptures made life forms, from the simple to the complex: plants, trees, the fish of the seas, the animals of marsh and bog and desert and woodland. And finally he made the human beings, male and female. In the 19^th Century, Charles Darwin would develop his Theory of Evolution to explain the process of creation and development, selection and survival. The son of an Anglican priest, Darwin was himself a non-believer. Little matter that he could not give YHWH credit for his creation; after all, the God of the Universe depends upon no one and no thing to do his mighty work ex nihilo.

YHWH would be known by other names in the sacred stories: LORD, Elohim, God, I AM WHO I AM, or “I will be who I will be,” or even “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious,” and more: “I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.” 

God’s Steadfast Love.

In the stories of the Patriarchs (or as I prefer, the Patriarchs and Matriarchs)—Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel—and in the Exodus from Egypt led by Moses, the God of Israel would show himself mighty in power and steadfast in love. Steadfast love, or chesed, is that quality of God which is to be faithful to his people, and concerned with their welfare, no matter the behavior or beliefs of his people. In the King James Bible, the word used is “loving-kindness,” and it is the kind of loving-kindness that knows no bounds and never reaches an end. Think of the devoted parent who would do anything for a child. Better yet, think of the love that I have for my grandson, John Wells. Steadfast love is intensely personal. It is not distant, or occasional, or conditional. God himself is intensely interested in the lives of his people. He would make his people holy by making a Covenant with them. This kind of holiness is not about people being righteous or deserving; no, God makes people holy by choosing them, and by setting them apart from the rest of the world. God takes their lives seriously, and I believe that God plays a crucial role in the lives of his people. Just look at the sacred stories: God creates us. God calls us into relationship with himself. God makes his covenant with us. God gives us his law, the commandments that will form a way of life based on loyalty to God as individuals and together as the people of God. Our God is a God of history, of Salvation History.

I hope that you are able to look back on your own life and see some evidence of God’s involvement and activity in it. Leigh says that we tend to see that God has been present in our lives only after he has passed by.

God’s Glory.

There’s a good Biblical precedent for this idea of seeing God only “after the fact.” God hides Moses in a crack in the rock, putting his hand over Moses’ eyes so that he cannot see God’s face. “For no one shall see me and live,” says YHWH in the Book of Exodus (33:20). In a later story, the prophet Elijah is hiding in a cave from the wrath of Ahab and Jezebel. There is a storm, and an earthquake, a fire, and then the sound of sheer silence. Elijah cannot see YHWH directly, but he experiences his glory in the sound of silence. This glory of God, or in the Hebrew shekinah, is what Moses and Elijah both experience. They cannot see God face to face. But the glory of God reveals God’s presence to them. A bright light, a shimmering glow, what it is the scriptures do not say. Some scholars compare shekinah to the patina or glow from a halo or nimbus.

God in Community.

So God is active and involved in our personal lives, whether or not we recognize it at the time. But God is also found and experienced in community. Do you recall the first words that YHWH spoke to Adam in the Garden of Eden? “It is not good for the man to be alone.” It could mean that the man needed a wife, or a family, or a community. Or as he said, “Go forth, be fruitful, and multiply.” Or make a community. YHWH called Abraham to go to the Promised Land, but he told him to take everybody in his household with him. Then he extended the Covenant with Abraham first to Isaac and his family, then to Jacob and his family, and then to all the People of Israel. God delivered Israel out of Egypt as a people, a community. And God gave them the Law in order to learn how to live as a community responsible to God. There is something essential and important about our being here, as the Christian Community. It implies something about God himself: our God involves himself in our history and in our common life. He is concerned with the life that we live together. There is more: God is not simply a power—although his power to create, to destroy, to transform, is mighty. God is not an abstract theological concept. God cares for us, his people. He enters into relationship with us. He acts and responds to our thoughts and prayers and actions. And God comes to us. He enters into our lives. He possesses us and makes us his own. He inspires us and leads us to right actions in his name. This is the very meaning of the word Epiphany, an experience of God. Epiphany is traditionally known as the shortest day and the longest night of the year. It is a time of cold and of darkness. And yet, in that darkness we experience a great Light. It is the Light of God coming into the world, coming to his people, as one of us. We experience his glory, his shekinah. We receive his loving-kindness, his chesed. We celebrate his long-awaited arrival in community. And we welcome him as the Child Jesus, the one true Son of God, Emannuel, God-who-is-with-us—the God we see face to face. Amen.

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Sermon 614+January 31, 2010

Sermon 614
4 Epiphany
January 31, 2010
719th Week as Priest
545th Week at St. Dunstan’s
180th Week at St. Matthew’s in-the-Pines

You Are Accepted.

Peace be to this place, and to all who dwell in it. Amen.

A Block of Ice.

When I was a child growing up in Auburn, the world was a very different place from what it is today. People still used iceboxes instead of refrigerators, and an icebox required a weekly trip to the Auburn Ice Company located just across the railroad tracks next to Spencer Lumber Company. I recall a trip in the worst heat of summer. My brothers and I were riding in the back seat of the Tiger, an orange 1958 Chevrolet coupe with lots of chrome and no air-conditioning. A very tall African American man brought a block of ice to the car with a pair of tongs. There was straw sticking to the frozen block, and I remember he placed it carefully in the back seat right in front of me. Back then, long before Rainbows or Tevas or Toms, we went barefoot in the summer or wore flip-flops that cost 19 cents at the A&P. I put my feet on that cold cold block of ice and thought I was in heaven.

Going to the Picture Show.

There was a drive-in movie on the way to Opelika, about where Panera Bread is located, across the highway from what is now Colonial Mall. We never went to the drive-in movie and I never knew why. However, my five brothers and I did go to the Tiger Theater on Saturday mornings. The seats were wooden, and all the kids would stomp on the floor until the picture show started. The first feature was usually a Flash Gordon or Batman serial, followed by a couple of Bugs Bunny cartoons, and then the main attraction, something like The Absent-Minded Professor  or Son of Flubber  starring Fred MacMurray, or That Darned Cat with Dean Jones and Hayley Mills. I won six Zero candy bars, the only thing I ever won, and I gave five of them to my brothers. The price of admission was six Royal Crown bottle caps and a Golden Flake potato chip bag. My oldest brother Mike always robbed the Coke machine at the Amoco station to get the RC bottle caps, and my mother bought the chips in those little individual bags for our school lunches.

Squeezing the Sugar Cane.

Once in a while we would have to go to Opelika. There was a department store named “Thrasher-Wright’s” that carried Wrangler blue jeans. Mike and Wick would get three new pairs of jeans, and the rest of us would have to grow into their old ones. But by that time, the knees were all blown-out and holey, and they needed patches. I didn’t have a new pair of jeans until I was a teenager.

There was a back road that now leads to Tiger Town, or you could take the Opelika Highway. I remember a gas station on the way that had restrooms marked “Men,” “Women,” and “Colored.” They also had two water fountains. The signs read “White” and “Colored.”

Before you got to the drive-in movie, there was a drive-in hamburger place called the Hungry Boy. It was the only such place in Auburn or Opelika, and it was always busy. We never went there as a family, but occasionally my brother Mike would take us to the Hungry Boy for two Hungry Boy burgers, French fries, and a Coke.

Past the drive-in movie was a curb market that sold vegetables and watermelons and boiled peanuts. An old mule walked in a big circle around a machine that squeezed the juice out of sugar cane. My dad would sometimes bring us several stalks of sugar cane and cut it up with a machete, and peel off the outer bark, and give each of us a piece to chew on. It was good.

Throwing Newspapers.

All of the Warren boys carried newspapers except Andy, who was still just a baby. We rode our bikes all over  … up town to pick up our papers, to the City Pool to swim, and of course to the Tiger Theater. My route was 32 papers from Southside Grocery, where Amsterdam Café is now, to the top of Woodfield Hill and back, and wound up on Camellia Drive near Wrights Mill Road Elementary. Mr. Montwell was the newspaper manager. He chain-smoked Kent cigarettes and drove a silver Buick Riviera. His wife had blue hair and lots of jewelry. Each Christmas, Mr. Montwell would give us a silver dollar for each year we’d worked for him, and then my brother Mike would buy our silver dollars from us for a dollar and a quarter. He still has a large horde of silver dollars, and they are now worth more than a million dollars.

If it rained on Sunday morning, our father would take us on our paper routes, but it was hardly worth it. You still got soaking wet, and you had to run non-stop to deliver your papers and keep up with a moving car. There was a haunted house at the corner of Wrights Mill and Samford, and sometimes you saw the witch sitting on the front porch in the dark and the fog. We would ride fast past the witch’s house and the old cemetery on Armstrong.

I spent most of the money I made throwing newspapers at the Kopper Kettle and Southside Grocery. You could get two chocolate-covered doughnuts and a 6 oz. Coke for about 50 cents.

Kidnapped by Methodists.

 I was a cradle Episcopalian who had been kidnapped as an infant by a roving band of Methodists and raised as one of their six boys. I knew this because my brother Wick had always assured me that I was “adopted” because I looked nothing like anyone else in my alleged family. I wore thick glasses and had a large egg-shaped head. I was bony and thin, and at least six inches shorter than any of my brothers when they were at the same age. I knew something was wrong, I just couldn’t figure out what it was.

We went to the First Methodist Church of Auburn every Sunday morning and to MYF every Sunday night. My mother made spaghetti for hundreds and fake tea and blond brownies with cream sugar icing drizzled on them. We went to Toomer’s Drugs between Sunday School and church, and my best friend Johnny shoplifted Mad magazines and candy and plastic army men. I could never bring myself to steal anything. Well, once I did take a pack of Wrigley’s Spearmint gum which cost five cents. I slipped it into my pants pocket at the lemonade counter and walked to the double glass doors. I froze there, trembling with fear and shame. I stumbled back to the cash register, placed a dime on the counter, and fled for the Methodist Church. My life of crime ended there.

We sat in the balcony during the worship service and tossed spit balls onto the crowd below. I can still see one I threw; it landed in Mrs. Goggins’s beehive hair-do.

One time Chris Beck brought a Phillips-head screwdriver to church. During the minister’s sermon, Chris dismantled the book rack on the pew in front of us. Just when Dr. Jones reached his third and final point, the book rack and hymnals fell to the floor with a loud crash. We fled in every direction, leaving Chris Beck stranded. Dr. Jones stopped his sermon, pointed into the balcony, and called on Chris Beck to stand up, which he did, still holding his Phillips-head screwdriver. Shortly after that, we started skipping church altogether and went to the basement of Samford Hall to buy cigarettes from the vending machine.

I had never smoked before, but Johnny knew all about it. He had been smoking rabbit tobacco in the woods for years. I smoked a couple of Winstons and didn’t feel very good. After carrying trays at the War Eagle Cafeteria, I went home and lay down on my bed. Just as I was drifting off to a fitful sleep, my mother woke me up to come into the kitchen. She had washed a big load of blue jeans with a pack of Winston cigarettes and was looking for the guilty party. I guess my green complexion and queasy expression gave me away. That completely ended my career as a juvenile delinquent.

The Psalmist said, “In you, O Lord, have I taken refuge; let me never be ashamed.” I can’t imagine feeling the scorn and disregard that I felt for the church back in those days. Sure, there were moments, but they were few and far between. Mostly I was just clueless about it all. Mostly I was thinking about how I hated wearing glasses and a crew cut. “For you are my hope, O Lord God, my confidence since I was young.” Any grace I received, any blessings that happened to come my way, were surely the actions of a loving God.

Jeremiah wrote that he knew God had formed him in the womb to be a prophet to the nations. I had no idea what I was doing from one day to the next. I was a confused, self-conscious, insecure, weird little kid. I knew nothing of the love of Christ. I was nothing. But God’s love for me was patient and kind, never arrogant or rude—even when I was. And I was forever being arrogant and rude and irritable and resentful. Somehow, for some reason, which I still don’t understand to this day, but which I gladly and gratefully and fully accept, I was brought out of the despair of my own sad self. I was sustained and strengthened, even when I wasn’t aware of it.

Surprised that I lived past twenty-four, and then unbelievably thirty, I am now pushing sixty, and I realize that I am blessed beyond all measure and all imagination. I have a great life as a priest and pastor. I love the people of my congregation at St. Matthew’s in-the-Pines, and the students and friends of St. Dunstan’s. I love my wife and family. I love my Border collie and my perfectly excellent grandson John Wells (not necessarily in that order). I love the church and all of its liturgy and hymnody, prayers and propers, architecture and nomenclature, tradition and spontaneity.

I am one of those rare people who has come back home after such a long time, and I have been welcomed and treated with rich and undeserved honor. I don’t deserve, but I certainly accept it. What I am talking about is that wonderful gift that is called God’s grace.

This past week in EFM we studied Paul Tillich, a German theologian from the World War II era. Tillich escaped Hitler’s grasp and came to New York, where he taught at Union Theological Seminary. In one of his best sermons, Tillich wrote this about the gift of God’s grace …

You Are Accepted.

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of meaninglessness and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we feel we have violated another life, a life which we have loved, or from which we were estranged.

Grace strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage.

Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: “You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!”

Amen.

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Sermon 615+February 7, 2010

Sermon 615
5 Epiphany
February 7, 2010
720th Week as Priest
546th Week at St. Dunstan’s
181st Week at St. Matthew’s in-the-Pines

On Close Reading.

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 James and John, I’m ready to jump out of the boat and follow him wherever he’s going.

Mark’s Story.

In Mark’s gospel 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. “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 they follow him.

Matthew’s Story.

In Matthew’s gospel, the story appears in the fourth chapter and is almost the same. Jesus walks by the Sea of Galilee and sees Simon (who is called Peter from the first moment) and Andrew his brother. The rest is the same. Likewise, James and John are mending the nets with their father. Jesus calls them and immediately they leave the boat, their father, perhaps their families, certainly all safety and security—and they follow him.

Luke’s Story.

In Luke, Jesus is standing beside Lake Gennesaret. The people are crowding in on Jesus. 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.

The Synoptic Gospels.

I love this story. Or I should say, these versions of the story. There are not many stories about Jesus that appear exactly the 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.

Close Reading.

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. 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.

Different Translations Tell Us More.

So far, we’ve been reading from the Revised Standard Version and the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. The RSV was published in 1952 and used in the Episcopal Church until sometime in the early 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 obeys Jesus and 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.”

The Importance of the Story.

What is this all about? Well, it’s about the way 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.

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.

Hermeneutically Speaking.

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. One of my professors at Sewanee used to say, “The Bible is the most dangerous of all books,” and 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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