tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-95938392024-03-13T09:48:34.653-04:00EkklesiastesSermons and Reflections from an Episcopal PriestTobias Stanislas Haller BSGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08047429477181560685noreply@blogger.comBlogger371125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9593839.post-85405545322078815832015-11-01T17:08:00.001-05:002015-11-01T17:09:37.876-05:00The Stone of Obstruction<iframe frameborder="0" height="20" scrolling="no" src="http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=P29623168712e8524b4707909399a51edY118SlREYWNw&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap21" width="246"> </iframe> <p><blockquote>All Saints Day 2015 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG <br>Jesus came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.”+</blockquote><p>Considering that this is my last sermon at St James as I head off into retirement, I was tempted to take as my text, “Unbind him, and let him go.” The story of Lazarus reminds me of a bulletin blooper I saw in a parish years ago, before I was ordained. This parish’s bulletins always included illustrations that went with each Sunday’s gospel. On this particular Sunday, the illustration showed Jesus standing at the door of the tomb, with Lazarus stepping out of it, looking like the Mummy from an old horror movie, or in keeping with the season, a Hallowe’en zombie. The only problem is that right next to the picture of the Mummy coming through the door of the tomb the regular parish message was printed: “Everyone is Welcome at St Bart’s!”<p>All humor aside, there is a serious message in all of this — the serious message of new life, and life restored to what was dead. I take this personally as I head off into retirement and <i>its </i>new possibilities, and in this my last sermon here I bid you to do so corporately as a congregation, and individually as Christians.<p>“Take away the stone,” Jesus said, “Unbind him and let him go.” The stone and the binding are not obstacles in their normal use — for the dead. The dead don’t care if the door is open or shut, they don’t really care how they are dressed. They don’t eve n care about the funeral: as a wise priest taught me years ago, funerals are for the living, not for the dead — they are a way for the living to mourn their loss, to grieve, and to celebrate the life of one they loved. But the dead feel no pain, no loss. They truly have been laid to rest.<p>The bindings used in the days of Lazarus to wrap the dead body are not meant to keep it from getting up and walking, but to hold the bones together as the flesh of the body corrupts and turns to dust. The stone at the door of the tomb is not to keep the dead man from getting <i>out</I>, but to keep wild animals from getting <i>in</I> to disturb the body. The only thing the stone serves to keep <i>in</I>, as Martha reminds Jesus and us, is the stench of a body four days dead and beginning to decay.<p>For in the normal course of things, decay is all the dead do. Apart from their slow dissolution, they do not change. If you want something to remain alive, it had best be capable of change: change is a sign of life; and <i>not </i>to change is to be dead.<p>This is as true of the church as of a human body: congregations that want always to remain the same have chosen the course of death and decay. You know that you don’t have to look too far to find examples of churches who chose <i>not </i>to change as their neighborhoods changed around them — here in the Bronx and north in Westchester I know of a few churches that tried to remain little Irish or German islands in a city that was becoming more diverse. Instead of inviting that new blood in, these churches kept their doors closed, kept the stone in place, kept the bindings tight, and today they are almost empty monuments to those sad mistakes of the past — trying to keep unchanged meant the only change was that of decay and dissolution. The Bishop of New York solemnly deconsecrated one such church a few weeks ago just to our north in Mount Vernon. And that’s too close for comfort!<p>Not that St James is in danger of closing. I rejoice that Father Basil Law of blessed memory, who led this parish for 31 years during that same time of change, did not allow this church to become a tomb, did not try to preserve it as a little island, but opened the doors to all, and welcomed all to worship here. A church that might have died, as others did and do, lived, and lives. I have tried to follow in his path, insisting that all are welcome — though I suppose even I would draw the line at zombies!<p>Still, in this my final word to you, I want to challenge and charge you all to continue to take away whatever stone may obstruct the path into or out of this church, to loose any bindings that might hold you back or keep someone else out. When this church was consecrated, 150 years ago on this very day, a beautiful prayer was used at the dedication of the porch: “Make the door of our parish church wide enough to receive all who need human love and fellowship and a Father’s care; and narrow enough to shut out all envy, pride and uncharitableness. Make its threshold smooth enough to be no stumbling block to children, to weak or straying feet; but rugged and strong enough to turn back the tempter’s power.” And I would add, and make it wide enough to send us back out into the world in service.<p>As I said, this church was dedicated 150 years ago today, on All Saints Day, November 1, 1865. It has seen much in that century and a half, priests coming and going, lay people too; deacons and deaconesses; and bishops at their visitations; and seminarians during their training and their field placement — including me! As I mentioned a few weeks ago, because I was a member here in the 1980s and did my seminary field placement here, before heading off to my first parish in Yonkers, I’ve been connected with this parish in one way or another for over thirty years. I have served as your priest for exactly 16 years, as All Saint’s Day 1999 was my first Sunday here as Vicar. And in the 16 years of my ministry as a priest in this place I have seen many come — and some go. With today’s baptism — and what a wonderful way to spend my last Sunday here! — with this baptism I can now say that I have baptized 245 new Christians over the course of my priestly ministry here. (That’s not counting the baptisms at which I assisted Father Basil back in the 80s; but I have now personally baptized the children of young people at whose baptisms I assisted over twenty-five years ago.)<p>Over my time as Vicar, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve celebrated the Holy Eucharist; or how often I’ve visited members in hospital or their homes; but the records show I’ve presented 68 of you for confirmation or reception, blessed the marriages of 20 couples, and bid farewell to 44 Christian souls, as they were sent off to that place in eternity where only the foolish think they are dead, but we know and trust they have eternal life — life in God as saints of God in the Church Triumphant, of which this place is but an earthly embassy.<p>When Bishop Potter blessed and hallowed this place on All Saints’ Day 1865, he made it one of God’s mission outposts — not a tomb, a place of the dead, but a source of life, a fountain for God’s mission. The door of the church opens in, but it also opens out.<p>+ + +<p>Out it opens; but will we go? I don’t mean me — I am indeed going to continue working after my service in this place. I will keep busy in retirement — the Bishop of Maryland already has some things in mind to put me to work, though I asked him to give me at least a few months to get settled!<p>But I mean all of you, for you are all ministers of this church: servants of God, and because of that called to serve others beyond the doors of this church out in a world in desperate need of Good News. You are the bearers of that gospel news, commissioned — some of you by me — in your baptismal covenant as ambassadors of Christ, sent off from this embassy. We will repeat that covenant today as part of the baptism.<p>So I ask you all to ask yourselves, as I ask myself every day, What stone of obstruction needs to be removed in your life, what bindings need be loosed? What is there preventing you from doing all in your power to serve your Lord and God? What obstacles and stumbling-blocks stand in your way? For we are not dead — we are alive, and with life comes hope, and with hope comes faith, and with faith comes strength and with strength comes action! So take away the stone, dear Lord, unbind us and let us go, that we may live — and serve — until that last great day when we see each other once again, and for ever, and see you face to face, our Lord and our God, in whose name we pray, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.<p><HR>Tobias Stanislas Haller BSGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08047429477181560685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9593839.post-67865883663029553122015-10-18T13:34:00.001-04:002015-10-19T15:51:43.259-04:00Our Servant GodGod is love and service....<iframe frameborder="0" height="20" scrolling="no" src="http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=P8d15653ca8de6f2aefbbcd128f5838a0Y118SlREYWNx&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap21" width="246"></iframe><br />
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Proper 24b - SJF - Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG </blockquote>
The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?<br />
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Two questions, among others, are asked in today’s Scripture readings: Who is this that darkens counsel with ignorant talk? and What do you want me to do for you? Thinking about these questions can help us answer the Big Question: Why are we here? and help us to understand what it means to be made in the image of God.<br />
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The first question comes from the latter parts of the book of Job. God finally speaks after a long silence. God has listened to Job’s three friends as they try to get him to admit he’s a wicked sinner — he must be, or why would he be suffering? God has heard Job claim his righteousness. And God has heard a young man try to defend God — as if God needed a defense.<br />
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So finally God speaks, to settle the argument. But when God speaks, it is not to provide a comforting answer to the question, Why do the innocent, and even worse, the righteous, suffer? There is no question that Job <i>is </i>righteous, yet suffer he does — but God doesn’t so much as address that question. When God speaks it is to reveal a deeper truth, to help Job — and us — see our place in the universe.<br />
Job and his companions have been debating the meaning of life, the universe, and everything — just as we do. Finally God confronts Job, “Who is this that darkens counsel with ignorant words? Pull yourself together, and let me ask <i>you</i> questions.” And, of course, the questions God asks are beyond Job’s or any human being’s skill to answer. That is the whole point. God is saying, in a not-so-subtle way, Just who do you think you are, anyway?<br />
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Human pride is such that we often put ourselves at the center of the universe, and sometimes act as if we were in control. People have very powerful <i>control needs</i>. We are haunted by the fear that if <i>we</i> aren’t in charge, then <i>no one</i> is. Think for a moment what that means: the fear that <i>no one is in charge if we aren’t</i>. Isn’t this just a kind of faithlessness, that doubts the loving providence of God? And doesn’t it also paint God in <i>our </i>image rather than us in God’s — seeing God as a tyrant superman, controlling the world? Is that what God shows us to be the true nature of God whom we know in Jesus? When we think of God in terms of control, we forget that God assigned us — made as we are in God’s image — as the stewards <i>in service to</i>, not <i>in control of </i>creation.<br />
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Human need for control led to the human fall — thinking we should take charge “as if we were gods.” As if “being in charge” was the main truth of God — which it isn’t. The pagans see God as power: Zeus the storm-god armed with thunderbolts, Neptune ruling the sea with an iron trident. But we who know God in Christ know that God came to serve, not to be served, and to give his life as a ransom for many. As John the Beloved Disciple reminded us, God is love, and those who <i>love </i>— not those who rule — are most like God.<br />
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But human mistrust of the costly extent of God’s love was the gap through which the serpent wiggled, in his wily tempting: “Oh, you will not die... are you sure God is telling you the whole story? maybe God doesn’t want you to touch the fruit because you might become all-powerful like him?” The serpent led humans to forget that we were placed in the garden to <i>tend</i> it, to <i>care </i>for it — as <i>servants</i>, not <i>owners</i>. And they, instead of doing as God said, decided, “We’d better take the fruit and become gods ourselves, because who knows if God can be trusted to take care of us. It’s every man and woman for him or herself, and the devil take the hindmost.” And the devil did, and has been doing so ever since, nip- nip- nipping at our heels until we summon the strength to crush his head. (For our strength isn’t in our heads or hearts, where we resemble God, but in our very human heels!)<br />
The tragedy was that we were <i>already </i>like God — made in God’s image and likeness. It was as God’s images that we are called to serve — so that should tell us something about God. And what is worse, we still forget that God is one who loves and tends and cares for the created world, the world God loved so much that he gave his son so that we might not perish. We forget the Gospel truth and project our fears about lack of control onto our beliefs about God, and so put God into the position of being a tyrant, a control freak whose primary interest is in forcing everything to his will — even though God tries again and again to show us that he is the source of all care and love and concern.<br />
Listen to that language from the Job: God is concerned to provide rain for the plants, food for the young lions and the raven. As Jesus reminds us, and as the old song says, his eye is on the sparrow! God is the ultimate care-giver.<br />
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Jesus brings the point home in warning the disciples not to be like earthly monarchs who rule with an iron fist — surely in their lifetimes they had seen a few of those, from the Caesars to the Herods — the rulers of this world who could, at a whim, literally say, “Off with his head” and off the head would come! Jesus wants his disciples to be like him, like his loving Father in heaven: the God who serves and cares,the Lord who serves and saves, the God who is Love. If we can learn to live and love and serve in the manner of Jesus and his heavenly Father — and we can, for we are made in his image — perhaps we can understand what it means to be stewards.<br />
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So what kind of a Lord is Jesus? First, Jesus is the <i>original</i>: “the firstborn over all creation.” He is the answer to God’s persistent question to Job, Who, who, who? The answer: Jesus the Christ, following in his Father’s footsteps! <i>He </i>is the one who was there at the beginning, as our Creed affirms: God from God, light from light, true God from true God. Through him all things were made, and without him nothing came into being.<br />
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He is also the answer to the disciples’ demand for thrones in the kingdom. He was there when the foundations of that kingdom were established! But look — he doesn’t work like a manager, sitting back and ordering the angels around, even though they are his ministers. The creator gets his hands dirty, at the beginning kneeling down by the riverbank to take the dust and mold us in his image, and at the Last Supper kneeling to wash the feet of his disciples -- and that is dirty work in a day when people walked around all the time without socks on! This is fitting for one who plied an earthly trade as a carpenter. But at the beginning of creation, it is he who sets a compass on the face of the deep, stretches forth the line upon it, shuts in the seas with hand-made doors, and lays the cornerstone of the earth while all the morning stars sing together for joy. Christ’s stewardship and service is from before time: he is the <i>original </i>worker.<br />
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Second, Christ’s stewardship is <i>loving</i>. His word to the disciples reflects his own loving service — they are to serve as they have seen him serve. This is particularly manifest in the ministry of healing, so it is appropriate that today is the feast of Saint Luke, the beloved physician.<br />
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For few ministries are more aligned with the image of God in humanity than the ministry of healing. I give thanks that many members of St James work in the healing professions. You nurses, nurses aides, caregivers, technicians — you are realizing the image of God in one of the most powerful ways one can: in service that gives life and saves life.<br />
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Finally, the stewardship of Christ is <i>self-giving</i>, not self-preserving. His stewardship challenges others to be as generous as he is himself: not to lord it over others, but to give and serve as the real Lord himself gives and serves.<br />
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So what about us? Can we be like Christ, who is original, loving, and self-giving? Can we serve in the manner of the Lord? All we need is the faith to follow the example of our Lord himself: Christ the healer, Christ the worker. All we need is faith in him, and if we have even a tiny faith, even as tiny as a mustard seed, we can be like that seed that unexpectedly grows not into a mustard plant but into a mighty tree that also serves to provide a home for the birds of the air, and shade for the creatures of the field. Through this blessing of servant oneness in Christ, we can take our part in the loving stewardship which embraces and holds creation together, caring for it with the skills God gives, in self-giving love and charity.<br />
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The whole creation is waiting for us to accept our destiny, our true identity as children and servants of God who loves and serves. All God’s creatures are waiting: the birds flock and circle around us; the cats and dogs look up at us expectantly, waiting for the door to be opened; the horses stamp their hooves and snort; the fish and whales are gathering in schools; the spirits of the blessed wait in hope, while the devils in hell tremble in fear; and far out in the endless reaches of space the morning stars are holding their breath, waiting to burst into joyous song once more, when the whole creation is reborn — and we become all that we are meant to be — through the original blessing of the Father, the loving stewardship of the Son, and the outpoured gift of the Holy Spirit.+<br />
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<br />Tobias Stanislas Haller BSGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08047429477181560685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9593839.post-6143113897240939082015-10-07T12:01:00.001-04:002015-10-07T12:02:04.616-04:00Naked NeedLearning the difference between "I need" and "I want..."<br />
<iframe frameborder="0" height="20" scrolling="no" src="http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=P956ffc66c252fa6f733f4e8ad011c764Y118SlREYWN2&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap21" width="246"> </iframe> <p><blockquote>October 4 2015 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG <br>Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” </blockquote><p>Today we hear the <i>second </i>saying of Jesus concerning children and the kingdom of heaven, to which I referred a few weeks back. This is the one that is better known, the one of which people most often think, when they think about this subject at all. Jesus wants his disciples to <i>receive </i>the kingdom of God like children in order to <i>enter </i>the kingdom.<p>But what does it actually mean to receive the kingdom “as a little child?” If “little” is the most important part of it, I guess I am half-way there, tall as I was when I was 14, as I never did experience the “growth spurt” they kept promising me would come along. But I don’t think that Jesus is giving much weight to physical size, so let’s set that aside for a moment. Whatever Randy Newman may have thought about short people with their little tiny hands and little tiny legs, we who are short have just as much of a challenge in receiving the kingdom as our larger companions. It is no more easy for <i>me</I> to fit through the eye of a needle than it is for a camel — or a rich man.<p>So what <i>is</I> it about children that Jesus wants us to emulate and embody? If not their physical size, is it their innocence? I don’t know about <i>your </i>experience of children, but I’ve known some children who behave as badly as any adult. St Augustine once observed that anyone who doubted the existence of original sin only need spend an hour in the presence of a crying infant: for Augustine, the crying child revealed the naked self-centeredness of all that it means to be a sinful human being — a center of “I need” and “I want” with no patience or care in the world so long as its needs or its wants are met.<p>And surely it is true that children can be selfish, possessive, dishonest, demanding, mean, cruel, and angry. The person who said “It’s as easy as taking candy from a baby” likely never actually experienced the wrath of a child so deprived — and God save your eardrums!<p>So, again I ask, what is it about a child that Jesus wants us to emulate? Could it be that very neediness and dependency? Could it be that St Augustine missed the point of a child’s dependency — not as a sign of sin, but of what it means to be human? Scientists tell us that one of the reasons the human family came to be — including the general favoring throughout most human cultures of monogamy, to which Jesus also refers in our reading today — that this is due to the fact that infant humans require lots of care for a long time: human childhood lasts for years. A young horse or a cow will be up on its feet within minutes of being born; but a human child will take months even to crawl, and more to toddle or walk. Human children are <i>dependent </i>for years on end, and this dependency has shaped the form of human families from the very beginning, including the need of a settled home for the upbringing of the child; or even more, as the saying has it, that “It takes a village to raise a child.” The long childhood of human children is both source and result of human society and civilization.<p>+ + +<p>Not that all human civilization is always civilized. A few weeks ago, the world was moved by the pictures of a little child dead on a beach — a child who drowned in his family’s efforts as refugees to find escape from a war-torn middle east. I would like to hope — and I still do hope — that this child’s death will not be in vain, and that the hearts of enough people will be moved to do all in their power to end this tragic crisis. But, sadly, as with the challenges around gun control, I know human beings are sometimes moved by tragedies, but rarely moved to action.<p>Still, I refuse to give up hope entirely. I know that while we all have that needy, crying, self-centered infant deep within us, we also have within the capacity to transform our need, not by losing it, but by presenting it to the one who can and will <i>supply </i>all of our needs. Perhaps this is what Jesus means when he says we need to <i>receive </i>the kingdom as a child — to receive it as a child receives a <i>present</I>, for surely heaven is a gift that none of us deserves, but which our Lord is prepared to give to each and every one who holds out their hands to receive it. It is not that we should give up our neediness, but that we should realize that there is one who can supply all we need; one who is ready to do so — to place his gift of salvation into our hands as easily as the Bread of communion is placed upon our palms or on our tongues.<p>+ + +<p>Seven hundred eighty-nine years ago today, a man from Assisi, Italy died. His name was Francis. He came from a well-to-do merchant family — his father sold cloth, which in those days before modern technology was far more of a luxury than it is for us today. Francis was a trendy young man with a taste for the finer things in life; but he experienced a conversion that is among the most powerful ever experienced by a human being. He did a complete turnaround and rejected all that he had, all that his family wanted for him, all that they had given him; even what they hadn’t given him — for he took several bolts of cloth from his father’s shop and gave them to the poor. His father hauled him up before the local bishop and complained he was ungrateful and wasting the family fortune, reminding the boy, “You owe me everything!” In a dramatic gesture, Francis called his father’s bluff and said, “You want everything? It’s yours!” and he stripped himself bare naked right there in the town square.<p>It may seem a bit odd to make the comparison, but Francis took on voluntarily the poverty that the good man Job suffered at the hands of Satan. Our reading today omits the verse, but it is fitting: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” As Job also says, in our reading today, “Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?”<p>Francis knew how to receive the good and the bad because he embraced a life of complete poverty, of complete <i>need</I>: he refused to own anything, and he lived as a beggar his whole life. He learned the crucial difference between “I need” and “I want.” In this he learned the secret of how to receive the kingdom as a child — he learned that what people <i>need to live</I> is far less than what they <i>want to have</I>. He learned how to be a child his whole life — a child who receives care and nurture not because she has earned it, but purely as a gift and because her parents and her society provide for that need.<p>He took it all the way, Francis, all the way to the end. Even as he was dying, he asked his brothers to let him strip himself naked once again, one last time, and to be placed upon the cold, dirt floor of his cell, on the ground, naked, so that he could die without any belongings at all, not even the clothes on his back: naked as he came from his mother’s womb, as naked as a new-born child. His brothers could not bear this for long, seeing that miserable, shrunken body — marked as it was in hands and feet and side with the miraculous gift of the wounds of Christ that he had received as a gift from God! — and they convinced him finally, at the last, that the robe in which they insisted he be clothed was only on loan, and didn’t belong to him. And so he died, in borrowed clothes, receiving Sister Death as he had received life — not as his own, but as something given by God.<p>+ + +<p>The New English Bible translates one of Jesus’ beatitudes as “Blessed are those who know their need of God.” Is this what it means to receive the kingdom as a child — a child who needs everything, and who can do nothing for itself? It seems to me that is a large part of it — being able to be in need, to be dependent upon God in the way we were dependent on our family when we were infants. Perhaps it is the family of humanity that needs better to learn how to care for children, so that all can learn what it means to be a child — a child of God and humanity — as Jesus himself is Son of God and Son of Man.<p>It is said that a society can be judged on the way it treats its children. I will go further and say that our society, and our world, <i>will</I> be judged on the basis of the way it treats not only its own children, but the children of others, the ones seeking asylum and refuge, the ones towards whom we who <i>have</I> stand in the position of being <i>able to give,</I> and to save. We need to learn that powerful difference between what we <i>need to live</I> as opposed to what we <i>want to have</I>. We don’t <i>need</I> everything we <i>want.</I> And what we <i>have</I> we can share with those who do not have. We dare not expect one day to receive the kingdom as a child, if we turn away the children who seek our help here and now, on God’s green earth, and be unwilling to share. Let us all, like Francis, give up the claim, and accept the gift, from the one who knows our needs before we ask, and gives us better than we deserve.+<p><HR>Tobias Stanislas Haller BSGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08047429477181560685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9593839.post-40271976070510021382015-09-21T12:40:00.001-04:002015-09-21T12:42:16.987-04:00Welcome the ChildWe welcome here below in anticipation of welcome there above...<br />
<iframe frameborder="0" height="20" scrolling="no" src="http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=P410a00332b4f59e607605f27eedaeb8eY118SlREYWN3&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap21" width="246"> </iframe> <p><blockquote>Proper 20b 2015 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG <br>Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.</blockquote><p>Our Gospel passage today ends with a saying that is so much like <i>another </i>saying of Jesus, and said in such similar circumstances, that it is all too easy to blend the two, and miss the import of each. We’ll hear the second one in a few weeks, so I want to alert us to it now. But first, let me summarize what we heard in this morning’s passage from Chapter 9 of Mark’s Gospel.<p>Jesus tells the disciples that he will be betrayed, suffer, die, and rise from the dead; but their minds are clouded and they do not understand. In spite of not understanding, they are afraid to ask for clarification. It seems the disciples would rather drive around lost rather than stop and ask for directions! Jesus then upbraids them for having argued as they walked, about which of them is the greatest. In response to this exercise in pride, (which reminds me a little bit about a debate I saw last week...) he reminds them that whoever wants to be great must be the servant, must be willing to serve; and he then takes a little child in his arms, and says to them that whoever <i>welcomes </i>such a child in his name is welcoming not him but the one who sent him — which is to say, God.<p>That’s what we heard today. In a few weeks we will hear a different but similar account from the next chapter of Mark’s Gospel, Chapter 10: people are bringing little children to Jesus for his blessing, and the disciples try to stop them. Jesus again speaks sternly, and tells them to let the children come, reminding them, “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”<p>Do you see the difference? It is subtle, but it is clearly there. In one case — today’s Gospel — Jesus is talking about welcoming children — and that whoever welcomes a child in his name is welcoming God. In the next chapter, Jesus is talking about how we need to receive the kingdom <i>as</I> a child. The first passage is about <i>welcoming </i>children and so receiving God, the second about <i>becoming </i>children ourselves, children of God in order <i>to be received by</I> God.<p>Now, I’m sure some of you may be thinking, Father Tobias is making a distinction without a difference. And I agree that these two sayings of Jesus are as like as two peas in a pod —<br><br />
— and yet they are two, not one; and I think Jesus must have had some reason to say these two different things — and for Mark to record them for his disciples to pass this double message along to us. They are as like, and as different, as your face and your face in a mirror — but let us remember as James warned us in that Epistle a couple of weeks ago: don’t be like someone who looks in a mirror and then as soon as he turns away, forgets what he was looking at. Let us look a bit more closely at the text before us today, and the teaching that we are to welcome the child in Jesus’ name.<p>+ + +<p>I think we get this right, here at St James Fordham. You can visit some churches and see no sign of children in worship — the children are dropped off to Sunday School by their parents before anything starts — and some of the parents don’t actually make it to the worship themselves. The children stay there, out of sight, out of mind, away from the worship, sometimes being allowed to come to communion, but more often than that treated to their own separate communion in the kiddie classroom, as I said, out of sight, out of mind. I know congregations where to bring a child to the adult worship will earn you dirty looks — some people treat church like they treat the opera or the symphony — and having a child present, especially if the child is acting up a little, is considered poor form.<p>The irony is that these same people wonder why it is that such children, excluded from the worship of the church, once they make it through Confirmation class are never seen again. In fact, there is an old joke about a church that had a problem with bats in its belfry, and it was suggested the easiest way to get rid of them was to have the bishop confirm them at the next visitation. They would never see them again!<p>But is it any wonder that children who have been so little exposed to worship — who have never developed the habit of learning to sit quietly, to pray, to listen to the Scripture as it is read — is it any wonder such children never soak up the joy of worship, and so are left high and dry and ready to be blown away at the slightest breeze, or the gusty winds of worldly opportunity for sports, for shopping, for video games — for whatever it is that is more welcoming to them<i> than their own church?</i><p>So I am happy here at St James that the children are present for the main part of the Liturgy of the Word, and only head off to Sunday School prior to the sermon — some might say, Thanks be to God! — so they can receive the milk and honey of instruction down in the Sunday school room, the kind of learning that is suited to their age; so that they can receive that milk and honey, better than I am able to deliver; but also to allow me to speak to you mature members of the church with the more challenging beefed-up message you are capable of hearing and digesting. And of course, the children come back for Communion — the most supremely digestible of all foods, the bread of heaven, and the cup of salvation, which we all share together. By doing this, we are honoring the children and incorporating them in the worship of the church so that they will be familiar with all of this as the grow older — things not strange to them, that only grown-ups do — but they will have developed a habit of prayer and attention and presence, encouraged by those who have already framed their lives in accordance with these Godly disciplines.<p>And I am happy to say that I see the results in young people now going off to college after serving here at this altar, or reading from that lectern, or sitting in the pews with their families to hear the word of God, to sing the hymns, and then to come to this altar rail — these young people who I have known for most of their lives, as I’ve been privileged to serve here in this choir and at this altar, as a lay-person, priest-in-training, deacon and priest, for almost thirty years. For though I’ve only been the vicar since 1999, I joined this parish back in 1985, and I’m happy to say I’ve baptized the children of some at whose baptisms I assisted back in the time of Father Basil Law.<p>+ + +<p>Now, just so you know, this is not my retirement sermon: there is still more than a month to go; but the impending nature of my retirement has brought some of these thoughts to mind, and I hope you don’t mind my sharing them. For it is all part of what it means to be a church — the church is a living thing, and its members come and go over time, entering and welcomed in as children baptized in that font, later confirmed as the bishop takes a seat and lays hands on them — and then not disappearing (except when college calls them away, but then coming back); sometimes standing here at the foot of the chancel or at the altar gate to exchange marriage vows, and then again at the font with their own children; and then, rich in years and full of faith, gently carried to this spot to be remembered, blessed, and sent off to the sweet pastures above, to that well-earned rest deserved of all faithful souls — not by their own deserving, but by the blood of Christ — welcomed at last as the child of God they are into the eternal dwellings.<p>So in the long run, our welcome of children here in our worship, here in this church, is a preparation for the day when we trust we shall all be welcomed as children of God into the kingdom of God. Those two sayings of Jesus are connected after all, aren’t they? He taught that we are to do to others as we would be done by, and isn’t it as clear as crystal that we should welcome children here below even as we hope to be welcomed <i>as </i>children there above? When we welcome a child in God’s name, we welcome God; and when we approach God <i>as </i>a child we are assured that God welcomes us.<p>This is not just fair and fitting. This is God’s Way with us, and we are called to follow that way, and to welcome the child.+<p><HR>Tobias Stanislas Haller BSGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08047429477181560685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9593839.post-57308467226132095602015-08-30T12:22:00.000-04:002015-08-30T12:22:04.739-04:00Weeding and Whiting(no audio this week... sorry.)<p><blockquote>Proper 17b 2015 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG <br>The Pharisees and scribes asked Jesus, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders?”<p></blockquote>A few weeks ago I spent a few days in Baltimore at my future retirement home. The abundant rain and warm weather — and when they say “warm” in Baltimore they mean it! — had produced a huge amount of growth in the modest back yard. The worst of this was that most of the growth was of <i>weeds</I>! In particular, a plague of morning glory vines had covered almost everything else in the garden, strangling two rose bushes and knocking them to the ground, and wrapping around a peony and a fig tree. By the time I pulled up all of the morning glory vines, and a few other weeds, I had a four-foot high pile of garden refuse to dispose of. Fortunately, the local hardware store supplies <i>five</i>-foot high brown-paper refuse bags for just this purpose — a purpose they are fit for, as I noted last week!<p>+ + +<p>Would that it were as easy to get our lives in order as it is our gardens! We heard a reading from the Letter of James — not our Saint James (the brother of John and son of Zebedee) but the James referred to as the brother of the Lord, and who served as an early leader of the church in Jerusalem. In it we hear some good advice about the sort of spiritual gardening that is necessary if we are to bear fruit. James tells us we need to strip away the “rank growth of wickedness” so that the welcome and implanted word — the word of God that Jesus himself had likened to seed scattered on different kinds of soil — might germinate within us, so that we ourselves might become, as he says, “a kind of first fruits” to the glory of God. Just as in a garden, this can be hard work, as we strip away the parts of our lives that are keeping us from proper and productive growth.<p>The problem with this kind of personal reform, as with some garden weeding, is that it isn’t just an external sprucing up that is needed. Weeds have roots, and if you don’t pull up the root with the stem and stalk and leaves you may just have made the problem worse, or at best deferred the problem until the stem and stalk and leaves pop up once more from the stubborn root underground. Many weeds, as you likely know, are even gifted with the ability to break off their stem just at ground level and make you think you’ve solved the problem, only to pop back to life in a few days twice as strong as before. I spent a good bit of my time a few weeks back, as I wrestled with some crab-grass, twining my hand around and around on the stalk, down to the ground so I could dig my fingers in to grasp the root and pull it up.<p>It is the same way with our bad habits — it is so easy to make a list of New Year’s resolutions that are forgotten within a week. Saint James gives us the example of one who is a hearer but not a doer — “all show and no go” as they say in the Islands. Such people look in the mirror, but the moment they step away, forget what they look like.<p>The point Saint James is making is that righteousness isn’t about appearances, about the outside — but what is going on inside. If that inner word of God is smothered by vice it will perish; but if allowed to breath and grow and bear fruit, it will eventually show on the outside. Good roots from good seed bear good fruits, if they are planted in good soil with depth to grow and freedom from weeds.<p>And our Gospel today addresses this distinction between inside and outside directly. It might appear at first glance that Jesus is being a bit hard on the Pharisees and the scribes. After all, their criticism, “Why do your disciples eat with defiled” — could come from the mouth of many a mother or grandmother or aunt talking to a son or granddaughter or nephew or niece. At least I was brought up that way — and so it was a tradition in my family home, as much as it appears to have been for the Pharisees, as Mark observes. It is not <i>that </i>unusual to be expected to wash your hands thoroughly before you eat — particularly when you are eating without knife and fork, by dipping your hand in the bowl and breaking the loaf with your bare — and, one hopes, clean — hands.<p>But as Jesus notes, there is more going on here than hygiene and table manners. The thing that seems to pull Jesus’ last nerve is the tendency of the Pharisees and the scribes, at least the ones who confronted him, to miss the point of God’s law, and to substitute their own rules and regulations, and focus on those hand-made laws, rather than on the deeper matters of justice, truth, and love, embodied in God’s sublime law: the Law summarized so well in the commandment to love God and neighbor.<p>As important as washing your hands may be, there is something superficial about it. It cleans only the outside; it does nothing for the inside. In another Gospel passage Jesus will accuse the Pharisees of being like whitewashed tombs: lovely and clean on the outside, but full of corruption within. A lick of paint to cover the evils of the heart, like weeding that fails to get the root as well as the stalk, is a half-way measure that may be worse than doing nothing at all! Jesus contrasts the talkative lips that honor God with literal lip-service, and the all-too-fallible and sinful human hearts that conceal God-only-knows what evil mischief deep within, where sin crouches for employment, ready to leap out at the first opportunity.<p>In the present case Jesus addresses the question of food — for the Pharisees would hold that even kosher food would be contaminated by eating it with unclean hands. But Jesus goes beyond the food question to expound on one of his favorite themes: what does God really want from us? Does God want merely the appearance of righteousness, a superficial ship-shape on deck while down in the engine room is all is filth and confusion? Does God only want clean hands and a clean slate, or rather a clean heart, an inside cleaned of all the impurity that lurks within, and defiles as it comes out?<p>+ + +<p>Surely that is the message for us today, and it is echoed in the teaching of Saint James. He calls for the inside of the believer to be purified — weeded of the rank growth of wickedness, and transformed inwardly by the implanted word of God, like a seed planted in a cultivated garden plot, ready to grow inside the heart of a faithful person, so that the righteous person can actually do what God requires — not only hearing the word with the ear or speaking it with the lips, but actually doing what it requires; not being like those who look at their superficial reflection — their outside — in a mirror, but who take the word in, in to the heart, where it empowers the righteous to act rightly, and the good to do good.<p>Ultimately goodness does not come from within us, as James testifies: “every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” But if we allow this graceful gift to enter us, to cleanse us inwardly of all our faults, allowing the hand of God to weed our garden even as God plants the seed, then we can bring forth things other than those awful and defiling things that are all we could do on our own, without God’s grace. As Jesus is quoted as saying in the parallel passage in Matthew’s Gospel, “Clean the inside of the cup and then the outside will be clean.” The vessel that needs cleaning — inside — is us, and only God’s grace and God’s gift can do that cleaning, deep down where it matters, in our heart of hearts.<p>God’s hand is working on us now — twisting around the stalk and reaching down into the ground where sin and unrighteousness take root. May we be ready to allow this gardener to do his work in us, to cleanse us from all sin, that we may be prepared to bring in a plentiful harvest on the great last day!+<p><HR>Tobias Stanislas Haller BSGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08047429477181560685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9593839.post-48267302635357603212015-08-23T13:24:00.001-04:002015-08-23T13:25:28.122-04:00Fit for PurposeGod is working out a purpose for which we have been equipped appropriately...<p><iframe src="http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=P87716bfc8c17d807ca522d39a8621456Y118SlREYWN0&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap21" height="20" width="246" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"> </iframe><p><blockquote>Proper 16b 2015 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG<br>Solomon asked the Lord, “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!</blockquote><p>There is a wonderfully useful phrase from the early years of this century, used primarily in England as part of product regulation, advertising, and licensing: “Fit for purpose.” It certifies that a product actually does what it is supposed to do, or is suitable to accomplish the work for which it is designed, created, marketed, sold, and used. Leave it to the English, you might well say — we Americans so often seem to be satisfied with products that not only <i>aren’t </i>fit for purpose, but which readily admit so right on the label. I’m thinking of those health food products that say one thing in big, colorful letters, but in the fine print add something like, “These statements have not been verified” or “Not intended for the treatment of disease.” There was a bit of a scandal a few months back when independent testing of some herbal supplements revealed that not only did they not contain the advertised <i>amount </i>on the label, they didn’t contain any at all!<p>And how many of us — as we try to invest for retirement or education — are wooed by the offers that claim that they can multiply your money like loaves and fishes, and they say look how well we have done in the past — but then in a little footnote say, “Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.” Makes you want to join Arsenio Hall in saying “Hmmmm.”<p>Such advertising is not just inconvenient; it can lead to a life or death situation, or financial ruin. I doubt anyone will die on account of getting less than the advertised dosage of Echinacea or St John’s wort — but we hear often enough about product recalls to know that when an item isn’t fit for purpose it might be lethal. From defective air-bags to defective ignition switches, automobiles seem to be a focal point for such tragic insufficiencies — and when an automobile isn’t fit for purpose, it can end your, or someone else’s, life.<p>+ + +<p>In our Scripture readings today we hear of aspects of our religious heritage that are all fit for purpose in different ways. They have both physical and spiritual aspects. And as the Apostle affirms in so many other things, it is the spirit that is important.<p>First comes Solomon’s Temple, about which we hear part of Solomon’s prayer of dedication. We heard in the earlier readings over the last weeks from the Court History about how David wanted to build the Temple, but God told him that he had no need of one, and that it wasn’t for David to build anyway, but for his son Solomon. And Solomon clearly understands that the Temple isn’t there because God needs it: God is where God chooses to be, God does not need a house or a home. Solomon admits this in that beautiful prayer of dedication. He knows full well that God has no need of a house to dwell in — in other words, the purpose for which the Temple is “fit” is not for God to “fit” inside. “Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you,” Solomon affirms of God. The Temple is not there because God needs it — but human beings, creatures of flesh and fragile as frail, need to focus their attention, have a sense of direction, to move their hearts Godward — and it is that purpose for which the Temple is fit. It is to be a house of prayer for all people, both Jews and Gentiles, a place towards which and within which prayer is to be made on earth, and God, who is in heaven, will hear those prayers. That is the purpose for which Solomon built it, and for which it stood for hundreds of years, until it came to be abused by the very people for whom it was designed as a holy place. I won’t dwell on that — but just remind us all that when something is designed with a purpose, and is fit for it, it is meant to be used to that end. In time the Solomon’s Temple and its successor came to be misused — not as a place of prayer, but of commerce — and double-dealing commerce at that; as well as being defiled idols set up within it, and even used as a storage shed for somebody’s unused furniture. These were not just <i>different </i>purposes — but <i>bad </i>purposes, real misuses of the holy place.<p>+ + +<p>That doesn’t mean that there may not be other purposes or uses for some thing, unintended by the designer. If that were the case, TV’s inventive Mr McGyver would have bit the dust many times over. And who here hasn’t used a paper clip for something other than clipping paper!<p>We see a bit of that in our reading from Ephesians today, where the Apostle takes the language of military armor and imbues it with spiritual meaning. Everyone knows that in the real world a belt is not truthful — except to the extent it might tell you that you are putting on a little bit of weight! Earthly shoes will not really help you preach the gospel — though a good pair of walking shoes might speed you to your church on Sunday morning. No earthly shield will protect you from evil, nor will a helmet save your soul — though it might save your head if you go on a construction site. And as for a sword being the Spirit of the word of God — well, as a wise man once said, the pen is much mightier than a sword when it comes to telling the truth.<p>In all of these cases the Apostle is re-purposing these pieces of equipment — like McGyver — to make them fit to the purposes he intends. It isn’t the belt that counts, but the truth it symbolizes; it isn’t the shoes, but the gospel itself; it isn’t the brazen shield and helmet but the power of faith and salvation, not a sword but the living Word of God itself — this divine armor is fit for the purpose of any of God’s armed forces here on earth, ready to stand against the wiles of the devil, or the rulers and authorities of the present darkness, the spiritual forces of evil — some of them perched in high places. These are the purposes for which God’s armor is not only fit, but essential.<p>+ + +<p>In our Gospel, we return, as we so often do, to the two things that Jesus gave to his disciples on the night before he suffered and died for us — the Bread and Wine of his own flesh and blood, the gifts of God for the people of God. This heavenly food and drink is fit for the purpose God intends.<p>You will note that in this passage there are some who do not believe the label — Christ’s words of promise. They are looking for the fine print that says, “These claims have not been independently verified.” They say, “This teaching is difficult” — and surely it was! To be told that you needed to eat a man’s flesh and drink his blood in order to be saved! Who could think that made sense, particularly in a Jewish world in which eating blood any way at all is strictly forbidden, and even a chicken has to soak in salt water to draw out any blood, to make it strictly kosher.<p>Jesus acknowledges how hard this teaching is — but he promises that those who are open to the spirit will understand and believe; and that even this is the work of God, at work in them, by grace through faith, to give them ears to hear and hearts to believe: ears and hearts fit for God’s purposes, to hear and receive God’s grace.<p>+ + +<p>It is three thousand or so years since Solomon prayed in his Temple, some two thousand years since the Apostle wrote of divine armor and Jesus spoke of his flesh and blood. The Temple was destroyed, but many other houses of God — such as this small example in this little corner of the Bronx — have been built since then to help us to turn our hearts and minds in a Godward direction, in the knowledge that God hears and answers our prayers; and as <i>that </i>these places are fit for the purpose of hearing God’s word. Many Christian souls have found God’s armor fit for purpose in combating the forces of evil set against them — heroes of the faith who have shed their blood rather than depart from the purposes for which God intended them. And that bread and that wine of our Holy Communion, the flesh and blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, has nourished countless thousands of thousands with the promise of eternal life.<p>As the old hymn puts it, “God is working his purpose out.” We, my friends, are called to be fit for that purpose. Gathered in this place, equipped with this armor, fed with this spiritual food, with God’s help so shall we be.+<p><HR>Tobias Stanislas Haller BSGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08047429477181560685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9593839.post-22387021978547906422015-08-16T12:31:00.001-04:002015-08-16T12:35:46.089-04:00Surprising WineThe Real Presence gives a new meaning to reality...<p><iframe src="http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=Pd8d4e2cbe9dee3cffb8e3fe922c790eaY118SlREYWN1&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap21" height="20" width="246" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"> </iframe> <p><blockquote>Proper 15b 2015 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG<br>The Apostle wrote to the Ephesians, Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit.</blockquote><p>We take a bit of a break this week from the Court History — now that David sleeps with his ancestors and his son Solomon is on the throne; and we’ll return to hear more about Solomon next week. But today I want to turn to Ephesians and the challenging Gospel account concerning the flesh and blood of the Son of Man.<p>And I do that with reference to — of all things — a Christmas movie, one of my favorites, <i>The Bishop’s Wife</I>. I’ve spoken of it before, so you know it is a real favorite of mine. It dates from the 1950s and I have the DVD, along with <i>Miracle on 34th Street</I>, <i>It’s a Wonderful Life</I>, and Alastair Sim’s version of <i>Christmas Carol</I>. Every year (starting with <i>Miracle on 34th Street</I> on Thanksgiving!) Br James and I watch the whole collection.<p>All of these movies tell of transformation, as so many Christmas movies do. And doesn’t that make sense, given that Christmas is all about the greatest transformation of all, when the Word was made Flesh and dwelt among us? And since this hot summer weather we’re experiencing makes thoughts of Christmas and snow and cold welcome, let’s reflect for a moment on this well-beloved, snow-filled movie.<p><i>The Bishop’s Wife</I>, as you can guess even if you’ve never seen it, is about an Episcopal bishop and his wife, their friends and acquaintances, and an angel —played by Cary Grant— who comes in answer to the bishop’s prayers, but answers them in unexpected ways. “No spoilers” in case you haven’t seen the film, but I want to mention one minor character, an old professor who lost his job teaching at a college for tangling with the board of trustees who run the place. This grumpy and curmudgeony old professor is a scholar of early Roman history. He is the kind of man who believes in the rational and the provable, and who put away his faith — and most of his joy — when he grew from childhood to the supposed maturity of adulthood. Even though he has lost his position at the college, he longs to work and exercise his mental muscles, so he has been planning to begin work on a great history of Rome — planning for nine years, but has yet to put pen to paper!<p>When the bishop’s wife and the angel visit one day, the old professor offers them a glass of sherry, and the angel performs a hidden miracle, and transforms the almost empty sherry bottle into a wine-merchant’s nightmare. For as with the widow’s jar of meal and cruse of oil, no matter how many glasses of sherry the old professor pours from the bottle, it never empties! But the truly miraculous thing, the surprising and wonderful thing, about this wine, as the professor later discovers — and tells the bishop when he too suspects that unearthly forces are at work— is this: “This wine never dulls the senses. However much you drink, it never inebriates; it only inspires and invigorates.” So much so that the old man finally sets to work on his history, and even recovers his long-lost faith in God.<p>+ + +<p>The Apostle writes to the Ephesians, warning them not to get drunk with wine, but to be filled with the Spirit. We all know that too much wine can deaden the senses, and strong drink can ruin ones life — and the lives of others — when taken to excess. But we also know that wine in moderation can gladden the heart and soothe the stomach. I even have a friend who suffers from essential tremor — and her doctor prescribes a large glass of red wine each evening!<p>And we here in the church also have been taught that a special kind of wine — the wine of which we sip or dip the tiniest amount when we come to this altar rail — wine can do far more than merely heal our ills. This wine, this communion wine, is the means by which we share in the blood shed by Christ, and it can not only lift up our hearts, but save our souls unto eternal life.<p>The fictional professor’s fictional sherry became <i>more</I> than sherry when the fictional angel touched the bottle. But the wine of our communion <i>truly</I> becomes more than wine in <i>reality</I> right here upon our altar, when the Holy Spirit descends upon these gifts and upon us, and they are transformed and we are transformed, and we experience the presence of Jesus Christ, his Body and his Blood. Through these gifts, offered here, then taken and eaten, taken and tasted, we participate in the great miracle, next to which a never-ending bottle of sherry, or jar of flour or cruse of oil, must rank as mere parlor tricks. For the bread and wine of our communion, true food and true drink, is also truly the means by which we share in the flesh and blood of the one who came down from heaven, the Word made Flesh who came down at Christmas and rose at Easter and abides with us still, and in whom we have life everlasting.<p>+ + +<p>But, speaking of reality, do we <i>really </i>believe that? Think for a moment what is commonly meant by saying, “I saw him, flesh and blood!” That means <i>for real, in person</I>! Do we <i>really</I> mean it when we say we partake of the flesh and blood of Jesus when we come to this altar? And if this is hard for <i>us</I> to understand, think about what it must have been like for those in the synagogue of Capermaum, who heard these ideas for the first time.<p>For there can be no escaping Jesus’ meaning. He is not talking about some kind of memorial banquet to be held in his honor. He is not planning a philosophers’ cocktail party like Plato’s <i>Symposium</I>, where people discuss the meaning of life over their wine goblets. He is not even talking about a pagan mystery rite in which the participants imagine that they partake of their gods’ essence as they eat a sacrificial meal. <i>They </i>are all, to quote another favorite Christmas film, “but shadows of the things that were.” What we encounter in the Holy Communion is not a shadow from the past, but a reality from before time and for ever.<p>For it <i>is</I> of Christ’s own body and blood, his <i>flesh and blood</I>, that he speaks when he says he is the living bread. He knows that before long he will go to Jerusalem, where his body will be nailed to a cross, his very real flesh torn by very real nails, his blood will be poured out, his very real blood will sweat from his brow, and flow from his pierced hands, his feet, his side. He when he speaks of eating his flesh and drinking his blood, at the <i>end</I> of this address he says, <i>“This</i> is the bread that came down from heaven... whoever eats <i>this</i> bread will live forever” — and there can be little doubt that as he twice says “this”<i> he points to himself,</i> so that no mistake can be made as to his meaning. And that is why the crowd say, “How can he do that!?” And we might be tempted to say the same, except that we are fortunate enough to live <i>after</i> — after the crucifixion and the resurrection; to know that he is speaking of <i>his own</i> saving death, the real death of the real Jesus, the real man from the real town of Nazareth, the man standing there talking to them in flesh and blood, talking <i>about</i> his flesh and blood which is the only means to give life to the world.<p>This is hard to understand, but it is what Jesus said. And I believe we ought to take him at his word, as the church has done for nigh on two thousand years. What Jesus said and the church has taught, is that the bread we eat and the wine we drink— while not enough to satisfy an earthly hunger or make us even slightly tipsy — is sufficient, through the Holy Spirit, to unite us to the sacrificial and saving death and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord. Our Holy Communion is no mere memory; it is not just a reminder, but <i>participation</i> — in which we do not simply remember but <i>partake</i> of our Lord’s blessed Body and precious Blood. This is, truly, echoing the proverb, wisdom’s banquet to make us wise, Christ’ssacrifice of his own Body and Blood. This is the festival meal in which God’s Holy Spirit comes to us and fills our hearts so we cannot help but sing, as we join the apostles and prophets, the blessed martyrs and confessors, the saints in glory and the saints who still walk and work among us, in giving thanks to God the Father through the Spirit, at all times and in all places, in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. <p><HR>Tobias Stanislas Haller BSGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08047429477181560685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9593839.post-10435491746811703762015-08-09T12:30:00.001-04:002015-08-09T12:32:22.632-04:00Home to RoostDavid's vengeance is his own punishment, from roof to roof to roof.... but Christ shows us a better way.<p><iframe src="http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=P4a1101b16f25c61475280c87c9bcb299Y118SlREYGp8&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap21" height="20" width="246" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"> </iframe><p><blockquote>Proper 14b 2015 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG <br>Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another… Live in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.</blockquote><p>There is an old saying that the wrongs you do are like chickens; they always come home to roost. Over the last two weeks we’ve heard the sad story of King David’s great sin — his adultery with Uriah’s wife Bathsheba, his plot to murder that good man by putting him in harm’s way and then withdrawing all support, and his cover-up of the whole nasty business. But what men may hide, God exposes, and last week we heard how the prophet Nathan confronted David for his terrible crime, and pronounced a terrible judgment: that just as David had stolen another man’s wife, when he spied her from the rooftop and lusted after her, so too David’s own harem of wives will be taken from before his eyes, and given to his neighbor to lie with them in the open daylight, for all to see; and the sword will never depart from his house. David pronounces that the judgment is just, but I don’t think he realized how bad it would be when these particular chickens would come home to roost.<p>For the neighbor who will commit these crimes against David, who will lead an armed rebellion against him, who will try to steal the throne from him, in fact will be the closest kind of neighbor, one from within his own house. It will be none other than his own son Absalom. Our excerpts skip over the incident, but Absalom starts a palace rebellion, and gets most of Israel on his side against his father David, getting a great deal of military support in what we now would call “a coup.” David has to flee his beautiful palace, leaving behind only some of his harem to keep an eye on the house. At this point you would think David would have remembered Nathan’s prophecy concerning the penalty, the price, he would pay for his sin: for at the urging of one of Absalom’s advisors, the rebellious son Absalom pitches a tent on the roof of the house and throws an orgy on that roof with his own father’s harem - in the sight of the sun, as Nathan had prophesied, and in the sight of all Israel. Truly these chickens have come home to roost — and with a vengeance, right up on the top of the roof, in the sight of all the world.<p>And this roof on which Absalom now has his way with his father’s mistresses is the same roof from which David had spied Uriah’s wife down in her bath. Call it poetic justice or just plain justice — but there it is, and the prophecy is fulfilled.<p>+ + +<p>Today we hear the final aftermath of this tragedy, and it too involves a roof — this time the roof of the city gate. The tide turns against the rebellious Absalom and his supporters, and while he is on the run, riding his mule, he has the misfortune to get himself caught in the branches of a tree. He’s caught by his lavish hairdo — Scripture tells us that he only cut his hair once a year, and when he did it weighed twelve and a half pounds! Vanity, in this case, is its own reward, as the rebellious son is caught with his own hair, his own hair of which he was so proud, caught by the tresses in the branches of an oak, as the mule rides on, slaughtered by Joab’s armor bearers, <i>against </i>the orders of David, who had told them to deal gently with his son when they captured him.<p>Word finally comes of all of this — and David, who set the tragedy in motion when he spied Bathsheba from the roof of his palace, is now at the depths sitting at the base of the city gate, looking up to hear the news from the sentinel who is posted on the roof above, when the word comes from the battle. And the word that comes pierces David like a spear: Absalom his son is dead. Vengeance, like the chickens, is home to roost, but it does not give David any satisfaction. On the contrary, it brings him great, great pain. For his vengeance is also his punishment.<p>And perhaps the most surprising thing is that David still has enough love in his heart for this rebellious son of his — this son who tried to steal his kingdom, who had his way with his mistresses — David still has enough compassion to mourn his death, and he laments with weeping as deep and as lavish as his lament over Saul and Jonathan. This is surprising, but at least it also shows us what kind of person David is; for all his faults he is not, after all, a completely heartless villain. He was ready to forgive his rebellious son, even after everything he had done; as he had forgiven him many times in the past — because Absalom was no saint, believe me — and of course the problem is, that the more his father forgave him the more he encouraged him to greater and greater rebellion. So David is responsible, in many ways, for his son’s bad behavior.<p>But David is also true to his own name; David, in Hebrew, means “Beloved.” He is a lover, not a hater. He is able to feel the pain of losing this rebellious son, this good for nothing son, because he loved him, even though he turned against him, even though he rebelled against him, even though he committed the scandalous assault upon David’s own mistresses.<p>+ + +<p>We are, of course, called to forgive our enemies, to do good to those who harm us. But I can’t in good conscience put forth David as an example for us to follow. But we can learn from his tragedy that there is power in forgiveness. I can’t commend David as a good example in part because of what continues to happen in the rest of this Court History, which isn’t part of our Sunday readings. But if you look into the later chapters of Second Samuel and the start of First Kings, you will see that David’s ability to forgive and forget runs dry by the end, and even on his deathbed he is giving orders for payback against all who had offended him, like the Godfather he is, instructing his made men to see to it that “all who disrespected me get what’s coming to them.” So I can’t really commend David as a great saint; he forgave his son, to his own detriment, but at the end he wanted payback against everyone who had done him wrong.<p>+ + +<p>So let me turn from this imperfect model of David to the better counsel of the Apostle: who reminds us of the power of forgiveness in that passage we heard from Ephesians. It is an appeal about anger and sin, about speaking the truth to one another because we are part of one another — in Christ and through Christ. Absalom never learned the lesson of love — for each time his father forgave him he was back doing the same thing or worse the next time, until his final rebellion literally caught him up short. Yet even then, David was ready to forgive him.<p>That is the one thing in David’s sad story we can emulate: to forgive even when the wrong done to us is serious; to turn away from bitterness and anger, and wrath; from wrangling, and slander and malice — and to be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as Christ has forgiven us. We are not called to be imitators of David, but imitators of God in Christ: to live in love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.<p>What this teaches us is that forgiveness isn’t easy; forgiveness is costly — it isn’t easy to return a word of love when a word of hatred has been given. But this is God’s way of dealing with us; God who came to us in Christ Jesus “while we were yet sinners” while we were in rebellion against him, a rebellion as real and as dangerous as the rebellion of Absalom against his father. But in spite of our sins, in spite of our rebellion, God reached out to us in forgiveness; the ultimate and costly forgiveness bought with the price of Christ’s own blood, upon the cross, for our salvation.<p>Christ offers himself to us, as a perfect sacrifice and fragrant offering: he gives himself to us as the bread of life, so that whoever eats of it may have life, and whoever believes in him may never be thirsty. This is the bread of forgiveness, to which we are led by the Father — for no one can come to this feast unless the Father calls them. And the Son has given us a promise — that he will raise us up on the last day.<p>Chickens will come home to roost — and we will reap what we sow! If we sow dissension and anger, we will reap the grapes of wrath; if, however, we sow the good seed to make the bread that nourishes to life at the great harvest — if we forgive and love one another as Christ has loved us, we will harvest the bounty of blessing that the Lord has promised to us, in his holy word.+<p><HR>Tobias Stanislas Haller BSGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08047429477181560685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9593839.post-32030388131940928812015-07-26T12:39:00.001-04:002015-07-26T12:42:28.130-04:00From the height<iframe frameborder="0" height="20" scrolling="no" src="http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=P809a8dbc8182fe89aea0afc74540efa1Y118SlREYGp9&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap21" width="246"> </iframe> <p><blockquote>Proper 12b 2015 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG <br />
It happened, late one afternoon, when David rose from his couch and was walking about on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful.</blockquote><p>Everyone knows that if you want to get a good look at the landscape, you want to get as high up as you can. I’m sure we’ve all seen those scenic view spots on the highway, where you can pull off the road, park the car, and get a magnificent view of the valley or the mountains across. What you see can often be spectacularly beautiful.<p>But beauty comes in many forms, and some of them can get you into trouble. This is what happens, or begins to happen, with David the King in the passage from Second Samuel we heard today. He is content in his kingdom, living in his spectacular new palace, about which we heard last week. His battles are over — he now has an army of loyal soldiers ready to fight for him; they’re out in the field fighting even at that moment — and the crown sits easily on his head. He is content in his unchallenged position as king, and he has everything his heart could desire.<p>Well, almost everything. For with this week’s reading, we begin one of the most wicked stories in all of Scripture, a story that will lead to tragedy not only for King David, but for all who become involved in his crime — even the innocent who take no part in it. I’m sure you all know the saying, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Well, David has absolute power — power that was poured out upon him by God working through the prophet Samuel, when he was chosen to be the king; and for most of his life David has used that power well, and justly, walking in righteousness with his God. But now he is at ease — he’s no longer walking, he’s sitting on the throne, he’s even lying down on his couch, secure and high and mighty in his beautiful palace, like a Hollywood star in his Beverly Hills faux-Mediterranean MacMansion. David’s new palace literally gives him the high-standing roof from which he can survey his kingdom from the heights of the City he has renamed in his own honor: the City of David.<p>And from that height he can also look down over the walls of the more humble citizens’ homes, even into the cloistered garden of one of his leading generals. And there he spies out the naked beauty of General Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, as she goes about the religious duty laid down in the law of Moses, bathing in the purifying waters of the ritual bath after the end of her monthly period.<p>And David sins. He sins in his heart and he sins in his actions — sending for that woman as any heartless criminal boss might do, bringing her to his bed, and having his way with her, and then sending her home. He sins again when he finds she has become pregnant. He plots to call Uriah home from the front, to send him to his house to sleep with his wife — hoping to fool him into thinking that the child conceived is his.<p>But David doesn’t reckon with Uriah being a more honorable man than David is himself. Like a good general, loyal to his troops, he refuses to take the leave offered him, to have some R&R while the rest of the army is still camping out in discomfort in the field. David tries to make him drunk — but even drunk honest Uriah will not be disorderly, and he still refuses the comforts of his home.<p>Then, in those chilling last lines of that reading, David adds to all of his other sins by plotting to put an end to Uriah by sending this faithful soldier on a mission, a dangerous mission, and then cutting off all support, so that he will die. And to add insult to injury, he gives the letter with those instructions to Uriah himself to deliver. Doesn’t that make your hair stand on end? What a terrible, terrible thing. David plots the kind of murder that you could see in “The Godfather” — something a Dictator might accomplish. (You could picture Saddam Hussein writing a note like that, and giving it to someone, to make sure someone is put out of the way.) David will not get any blood on his own hands, but will have his sinful desires accomplished by accomplices.<p>We will hear the beginning of the end of this story next week. So for now I want to focus on how sad it is that even good people can forget their duty and their God when they have risen to the heights of power. The Scripture is full of such warnings: “Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall” — that’s a proverb from the time of David’s own son Solomon; and David himself had lamented, after Saul’s death, “How the mighty have fallen!” — so David has absolutely no excuse in thinking that his high position entitles him to low crimes. David has coveted his neighbor’s wife, then committed adultery and finally murder — well that’s three strikes from the Ten Commandments given by God to Moses on another height —the height of Sinai. Three strikes and you’re out, David! as we will hear next week. For this cannot be hid from God. What David has done, beginning on that rooftop, in the sight of the sun, is surely seen by God — and the punishment will come.<p>+ + +<p>Is there any good news in this? I say that there is, for there is no necessity that a climb to the heights must be accompanied by descent into the depths of sin. Though that is often the fate of those who climb up so as to be able to look down on others, with contempt or with desire — there is another way to rise up without losing humility and care and concern for others. The point of view — the height — is not the problem — as with so much else in life, the problem lies in what you do with your new knowledge gained through your new perspective from your new position.<p>David could have caught sight of Bathsheba in her ritual bath, and then shielded his eyes and turned away, and given thanks in his heart for this good and dutiful woman carrying out her ritual duty in accordance with the Law of Moses. He could have thought, “That must be my neighbor Uriah’s wife — how fortunate he is to have such a beautiful and dutiful and religious wife; blessings be upon them both.” He could have returned to his couch and resumed his nap. He made a choice to do wrong, a choice he could have refused at any of those steps of the way of sin upon which he deliberately set his foot and kept on walking, deeper and deeper and deeper into the filth of his own wickedness.<p>+ + +<p>But no one needs to take that path, that downward spiral from the heights, into the depths of depravity. From the heights instead we can look with admiration upon beauty without the need to possess it or to control it— to enjoy the gifts God gives without having to claim them for our own. We can make use of the heights not to grasp, but to share.<p>We see this better way, as we do in so much else so often in today’s Gospel from John. Jesus is high and lifted up as well — not in a palace, but on a mountain. From that vantage he can see the crowds of thousands who have followed him, <br />
<br />
who have joined the throng to come out to hear about this preacher, and see the wonders of healing that he has performed. Jesus could, up there on the mountain, stand there like a first-century Donald Trump; he could say, “Look at how all these people love me!” He could — but he doesn’t. He could fall into the temptation with which the devil has tempted him when he fasted on the mountain, and order all the people to bow down to worship him. But he doesn’t.<p>Instead, he takes another of the devil’s temptations and turns it on its head. He asks the disciples about the well-being of the crowd, testing his disciples, for he knows full well what he is about to do. He will feed his sheep. He transforms the devil’s offer to make stones into bread, and instead he takes bread and fish and multiplies it thousands of times over, to make enough bread to feed that teeming multitude of thousands and thousands of hungry people.<p>And, more to the point, at the end of the miracle meal, when the people rise up and want to take him by force to make him king — what does he do? — he withdraws deeper into the mountain landscape by himself. He has no need for their accolades and praise. He has no need to have them make him a king: He is Jesus Christ, our Lord and God. He is not offering himself like a politician trying to gain favor from an electorate, feeding them so they will make him king. Instead, he is feeding them because they are hungry — they are hungry, and they have followed him. He loves them; he cares for them — but he does not need <i>them</I> to make him a king.<p>We can do the same. We can take advantage, when we are lifted up, of the position we hold to do good, the good God has empowered us to do. None of us is a monarch, but each of us is a child of God — and that means we are heirs to an eternal kingdom, and have many gifts to share with those who lack, with those who hunger, those who thirst. We need but accept the grace of God, who has put us where we are, to do what we can, with what we have.<p>Let us pray.<p>Fished from the ocean of compassion, <br />
baked in the oven of his heart, <br />
broken, given; in like fashion <br />
may we do our part: <br />
<br />
catching the fish you have provided, <br />
baking the bread from grain you give, <br />
sharing with all the gifts, divided <br />
that we all might live.+<p><hr>Tobias Stanislas Haller BSGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08047429477181560685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9593839.post-1607370244197720722015-07-19T12:06:00.002-04:002015-07-19T12:06:44.116-04:00A House not Made by Hands<iframe src="http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=P36fb1697816e3c811b8cddcb28aa59c3Y118SlREYGpy&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=FFE095&kc=FFFFFF&bc=FFFFFF&player=ap21" height="20" width="360" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"> </iframe><p><blockquote>Proper 11b 2015 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG <br>You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ himself as the cornerstone.</blockquote><p>We continue our readings from the Court History of ancient Israel with an incident that tells us a great deal about God, and our relationship with God. King David by this time has settled in and settled down as a comfortable monarch secure on his throne. He has wiped out the few who continued to support Saul that remained of Saul’s friends who still considered David to not deserve the throne. He has conquered the Jebusites who held the heights of Mount Zion and he has renamed that part of the Jerusalem as his own: the City of David. He has defeated the last few outbreaks of Philistine resistance, as Second Samuel tells us, from Geba to Gezer, whipping their tails back to the seaside, away from Jerusalem. His neighbor to the north, King Hiram of Tyre, no doubt wishing to curry favor with this new powerful ruler on his borders, sends a small army — not of soldiers, but of carpenters and masons, with a supply of cedar-wood, and builds David a beautiful house, a palace to live in. This is the act that finally convinces David that he has it made, and one of the first things he does in this new settled kingdom, as we heard in last week’s reading, is to fetch the Ark of God from where it has rested, to bring it into the City of David with dancing and rejoicing.<p>And so we come to today: David reflects on the fact that<i> he </i>has a nice house to live in, but the Ark of God is still camping out in a tent; and he tells the prophet Nathan about his plan to build God a house of wood and stone. Nathan at first gives his OK, but then God speaks to the prophet and tells Nathan to tell David to hold his horses. God tells David through the prophet that he hasn’t asked for a house to live in — just as God had never asked any of the tribal leaders, judges or prophets<i> before </i>David to build a house as a dwelling or resting place. On the contrary, God has clearly preferred the outdoor life — traveling with the people of God in a tent and a tabernacle. God moved about, enthroned upon the cherubim adorning the Ark of the Covenant — the Ark that had rings built right into the side so that carrying-poles could be slipped through and put in place at the drop of a hat, and the Ark could be carried by bearers and move as God willed. This moveable Ark has served for centuries as the sign of God’s presence — a presence that moves with God’s people.<p>But then, after declaring no need for a house, God takes it one step further. Not only does God <i>not </i>ask for a house, but God will make <i>David</I> a house — and here is a play on words, for God is not speaking (in David’s case) about a house of wood and stone, which David already has thanks to King Hiram of Tyre. God is talking about making David into a <i>royal house</I> — like the House of Windsor or the House of Hanover. God will set up the House of David as a royal lineage.<p>That became a reality, attested not only in the Scripture, but in an artifact discovered just over 20 years ago in an archaeological dig in the Holy Land. It is an engraved stone war memorial dating from about one to two hundred years after the time of King David On it, the King of Damascus celebrates a victory over the King of “the House of David” — <i>Beit David.</I> It is the only archeological find (so far) that mentions David by name, and one of only four that mentions Israel. Not all scholars accept that this war memorial actually means what it appears to say, and there are other different interpretations. (One of the problems about Hebrew writing is that it is open to many interpretations — which is one of the reasons the Scriptures themselves have received so many different readings down through the centuries. For instance the letters that spell the name of David in Hebrew can also mean “uncle” or “beloved.” It all depends on what you mean. Just look at the two different meanings of the word “house” in our present example — David intends to think about a physical example, the house built of stone and cedar, but God provides him with the another meaning of “house” — the house of flesh and blood in his descendants stretching on through time. )<p>And this is the important thing for us about this House of David: this is not a matter of engraved stone war memorials, or even of the Scripture, however interpreted, but of David and his descendants forming a new <i>living</I> house — a house made not of wood and stone, but of human flesh and blood. For that is what God intends to build: a house not made by hands.<p>+ + +<p>Flash forward a thousand years and we find the Apostle writing to the Ephesians in much the same tone: God is doing a great new work of construction. God tears down the dividing wall that separates Jews from Gentiles, and is in the process of building “one new humanity in place of the two.” This has a strong architectural reference, also, and may even refer to the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem — which had a literal dividing wall between the outer Court of the Gentiles and the inner parts of the Temple into which only Jews were allowed. With the literal destruction of the Temple, that dividing wall has been torn down.<p>More importantly, what God is doing in this new construction project is similar to what God did with David — that the house God really desires is not made of wood and stone, but of flesh and blood. In this case, it is in Jesus — who is the flesh and blood heir of the royal House of David — but in whom God has also acted once and for all to lay the cornerstone of the new temple of God’s presence, in which the Gentiles have now come to be full and equal citizens, no longer aliens and strangers, but heirs with Christ and members of God’s household, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ himself being the cornerstone. And, as the Apostle affirms, this whole miraculous construction project is God’s new Temple — the human Temple not made by hands, but by the will of God, as the many members are joined in one as God’s dwelling place.<p>This new Temple is the Church. Not the church building — this is still made of wood and stone. The new Temple of God is the people, held together not with nails and mortar but with the water of Baptism and the flesh and blood of the Holy Eucharist. This church building has stood for almost 150 years (give it another couple of months!), but the Church of Christ has stood for more than a dozen times that, and it will continue to stand, long after all the memorials and temples and sanctuaries have become as fragmentary as that war memorial from the King of Damascus, as lost and gone as the Temple of Solomon and the Temple of Herod, as lost and gone as some day even this beloved little church building will be, for wood decays and stone dissolves, and, as the hymn we will sing at Communion says,<p>Though with care and toil we build them, <br>tower and temple fall to dust. <br>But God’s power, hour by hour, <br>is my temple and my tower.”<p>In Ephesians, the Apostle assures us that the union of the two in one — whether the two peoples, the Jews and the Gentiles, or two spouses, as he also teaches — all represent the new humanity that finds its new life in Christ, as a great mystery, the greatest mystery, the mystery of God’s will established in God’s adopting us as his children from before the foundation of the world. And not just us, as the Apostle affirms, for God’s plan for the fullness of time will gather up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.<p>+ + +<p>That can sound a bit overwhelming, as I’m sure it did to the church in Paul’s time. But this is what we are part of, my friends, not just caring for this sweet, little church of wood and stone, but helping by our own extended hands reaching out beyond these walls, helping to grow and to build the house <i>not </i>made by hands, as we <i>join </i>hands with brothers and sisters newly adopted into God’s great family, the church of God, to fulfill the mystery by which the many become one in God, who is One: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.<p><HR>Tobias Stanislas Haller BSGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08047429477181560685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9593839.post-33120064027443751692015-07-12T12:31:00.003-04:002015-07-12T16:38:34.324-04:00Shall We Dance?<iframe src="http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=P9360d5f86162f7cc76f1927210d391d0Y118SlREYGpz&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=FFE095&kc=FFFFFF&bc=FFFFFF&player=ap21" height="20" width="420" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"> </iframe><p><blockquote>Proper 10b 2015 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG<br />
David danced before the Lord with all his might; Michal daughter of Saul looked out of the window, and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, and she despised him in her heart.</blockquote><p>Anna Harriet Leonowens served for a time in the 1860s — just about the time this church was being built — as the governess to the children of King Mongkut of Thailand — the land known in those days as Siam. She wrote a memoir of her experiences which was adapted into a novel, <i>Anna and the King of Siam,</I> which then became a film, and finally a Broadway musical — <i>The King and I, </i>which also became a film,<i> </i>and later a short-lived TV series. As so often happens when history moves into historical fiction and then into musical theater, film, and TV, the story moved further and further away from the truth. For example, in the novel and the film based on it, the character of the king’s prime minister is very noble and serious; but by the time the story made it to TV this noble character has become a buffoon suitable only for comic relief.<p>+ + +<p>The king himself fared similarly, moving from nobility and grace in the memoir to a kind of tyrannical, short-tempered stiffness in the musical — who can forget Yul Brynner — that stiffness only charmed by the winsomeness of Anna the governess. There is no evidence that the King of Siam and Anna were romantically involved — but that doesn’t suit a musical very well, so Rodgers and Hammerstein introduce a significant romantic theme, summed up in one particular song, “Shall We Dance.” As Anna and the king dance together, the stern tyrant begins to relax a little bit, and become less forbidding, less off-putting. This is fiction: but as with all good fiction, there is a grain of truth. Dancing can make for loosening up, growing closer — whether dancing on a bright cloud of music, or on a very terrestrial dance-floor. Dancing <i>can </i>be a way to break the ice, to warm the heart, even to spark a budding romance.<p>+ + +<p>But what if you are not a good dancer, if you dance with two left feet, or step on your partner’s foot? Or what if the dancing is going on in the apartment above you at two o’clock in the morning? Then the dance can be more annoyance than joy. Instead of singing a chorus of “Shall We Dance?” some might sing a number from a different Hammerstein musical — you might have seen the movie with Fred Astaire — “I Won’t Dance, Don’t Ask Me!” If the dance doesn’t lead to joy, what, after all, is the point of dancing?<p>In our Scripture readings today, we see two dances: and both of them also involve kings — not of Siam, but of Israel and Galilee, King David and King Herod. In each case the monarchs are having a grand old time, until someone rains on their parade — David’s wife Michal, Saul’s daughter, <br />
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and Herod’s daughter, in Mark’s Gospel named for her mother, Herodias. (We might call her “Herodias Jr.)<p>Our reading from Second Samuel stops short, so we don’t get to see David’s wife Michal greeting him in the doorway, a little bit like Hyacinth Bucket (<i>it’s Bouquet!</I>) when David comes home, and she confronts him in the doorway. A few verses later in the tale when she greets him, after having watched his dance from the window, despising him in her heart, as the Scripture says; and she greets him with words of contempt and sarcasm, “How the king of Israel honored himself today, uncovering himself today before the eyes of his servants’ maids, as any vulgar fellow might shamelessly uncover himself!” Can you hear Mrs. Bucket saying, “Richard!” No, Michal is not amused, she has despised David in her heart, because he danced — in his underwear! — and this dance has far from warmed her heart: this dance, disgraceful in her eyes, has frozen her heart in contempt. We doen’t get to hear the reading, but a few verses later David curses her for her coldness of heart, and the Scripture goes on to tell us that she was barren to the day of her death. So much for raining on a dance that is danced for God’s glory!<p>But what about that other king, King Herod — does <i>he </i>get an unpleasant surprise, on his birthday no less! His heart is warmed with the wine and the birthday banquet and his dancing daughter, Herodias Jr, so much so he is willing to give the dancer anything she asks — only to be asked for a blood-chilling horror, a murder and a grisly prize. Did the music stop as his face fell, grieved (for he respected John the Baptist, visited him in prison, liked to listen to him)? Did he suddenly feel a coldness enter <i>his</I> heart as his daughter asked for the head to be brought to her? But he is also deeply embarrassed in front of his guests because he’s sworn an oath, and <i>he </i>can’t afford to lose face — even if it means John will lose <i>his entire head</I>! So, reluctantly, he grants her desire, and John meets his untimely and horrific end, as the voice of the great prophet is silenced, his head served up on a platter.<p>+ + +<p>So the question remains: Shall we dance? As Anglicans we are fortunate not to be stuck with the contempt for dancing that is common among some fundamentalist Christians. We Anglicans don’t think dancing is sinful. How many churches have dinner dances? What matters, for us, is the <i>reason </i>for the dancing, the motive and the intent of the dancers.<p>The dance before Herod — here is a dance with wicked motives, a means to incite Herod to make a poor decision after he’s had a few too many birthday drinks, to trap him in an oath that he just as soon would have broken, were it not for his guests. The motive for this dance is anger, resentment, bitterness, and the result is gruesome.<p>But to dance joyously before God — what a wonderful thing for David to be able to do, his heart full of joy that the Ark of God, the visible presence of the invisible God who rides upon the cherubim, should be restored to the tent of God’s presence, given a hallowed resting place, as God promised would be the case. Only an angry prude like Michal would find fault with such a dance in honor of God, and to the glory of God.<p>+ + +<p>Now, I’m not suggesting we start dancing in church; although there is a parish out in California where the congregation dances in church each week. Their church — and it’s an Episcopal church — has two large rooms, instead of a single worship space: in the first room the congregation gathers to worship for the liturgy of the Word, the Scripture readings, sermon, and prayers. Then, at the offertory, the whole congregation forms a line and dances its way into the adjoining room for the Holy Communion, as they dance to the altar and offer their gifts. I’m not suggesting we do that — although we get a bit of that flavor here at St James when we have our special Gift Offering, as we do today and on one Sunday each month; so please feel free to shake it a bit as you come up the aisle to make place your thank offering in the basket. We <i>can</I> dance; we can <i>dance!</i><p>In this way we reflect something of what King David did when he danced before the Lord — with no other motive than to express his joy and to give thanks and glory to God who had so blessed him and his people, delivering them from their enemies, and deigning to dwell among them in that Ark of his presence, brought to the Tabernacle as the place chosen by God for God’s name to reside.<p>For we too have an Ark of presence and a tabernacle, there on <i>our</i> altar. And we too trust, as we sang in the hymn, that God himself is with us, as we worship in <i>this </i>place. So let us dance, my friends, in our hearts and minds if not with our feet — but even <i>with </i>those feet if the Spirit moves us to give glory and praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives, to the one who moves the universe, in the great cosmic dance of creation; in whose Name and to whose glory we rejoice: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.<p><hr>Tobias Stanislas Haller BSGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08047429477181560685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9593839.post-77841728984836222002015-06-21T12:40:00.001-04:002015-06-21T12:44:10.711-04:00Love and EnvyLove is the power that builds up even what envy tries to tear down.<p><iframe src="http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=Pd21fa20430bd25e891d45ecc8606e663Y118SlREYGpw&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap21" height="20" width="246" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"> </iframe><p><blockquote>Proper 7b 2015 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG<br />
Saul was afraid of David, because the Lord was with him but had departed from Saul… But all Israel and Judah loved David.</blockquote><p>Today’s reading from the First Book of Samuel is a classic example of the difference between love and envy. Two weeks ago we heard of the prophet Samuel’s warning that having a king is a bad idea; last week we heard of how Saul turned bad, and the spirit of the Lord departed from him, and Samuel set off to find a new king for Israel, the boy David. And today we hear the aftermath of young David’s first military victory — his one on one, <i>mano a mano</I> fight with the Philistine champion Goliath.<p>Saul can’t help but admire this young man, and David becomes a member of the king’s band of most trusted warriors, and their leader. Saul sends David out to battle again and again, and the young man always returns victorious — so victorious in comparison with Saul that the people come to favor David over Saul — and their cheers and their songs about David’s victories begin to ring discordantly in Saul’s ears. Even the music of the harp that David provides to soothe Saul’s vexed spirit becomes an annoyance — even David’s <i>presence </i>arouses Saul to thoughts and acts of mayhem, tossing a spear at David as he plays.<p>Here we have the very picture of green-eyed envy at its worst, at its most bitter and soul-destroying. Pride, as sins go, is often classed as the worst, but isn’t envy just a form of <i>wounded </i>pride? Saul has God’s favor for a time, and is proud of it. But as it drains away from him and rests on David, isn’t Saul’s resentment and anger just another form of pride? He is angry that someone else is able to do that of which he is no longer capable — and to do it better and more successfully than ever he did. And he just can’t stand it!<p>So much for envy! what about love? We see great love in Saul’s family too — in his son Jonathan, who, as soon as he sets eyes on David, feels his heart melt as if — as Scripture puts it — his own soul is bound to the soul of David, and he loves him as his own soul. That is powerful language, so powerful that some are embarrassed by it. It reads this way in the Hebrew Scripture, but when the Greeks got around to translating the Hebrew Scripture into <i>their </i>language, they seem to have been so put off by this passage that they left it out of their version of the Bible entirely.<p>And the urge to omit this story doesn’t stop with the Greeks. Those who prepared the Scripture reading cycle for the whole church chose to offer this passage, what we heard this morning, only as an option — so there will be many congregations who will never encounter it on a Sunday. Yet there it stands, the beginning of what some have called the greatest love story in the whole Bible.<p>And envy comes into this, too — for Saul knows full well that his son has taken a liking to David — to put it mildly. In succeeding chapters of First Samuel Saul will curse Jonathan on account of David, and even try to kill his own son. For it seems that Saul and Jonathan, father and son, have become rivals (at least in Saul’s mind) for David’s love and loyalty. Talk about a tragic turn to Fathers’ Day!<p>Of course, it starts even before David kills Goliath — though we didn’t hear that part of the account today, it tells a bit about what bothers Saul. When David first volunteers to take down Goliath, Saul tries to dress him up in <i>his own armor</I>, and gives him his sword. But they don’t fit — as you recall, Saul is a big fella, a mighty warrior. But David is still a boy, probably no more than fifteen or sixteen. So he rejects Saul’s armor — which doesn’t fit him — and that unwieldy sword, as I’m sure you recall. So what does he do? He uses his trusty sling and a smooth stone from the riverbed to bring down the proud giant Goliath. Then, after David’s victory, as we heard today, Jonathan, Saul’s son — also a young man about David’s age and size — is so taken with David that he strips off <i>his </i>robe his armor, and gives them to David, along with <i>his </i>sword, his bow, and his belt. Imagine how Saul felt at that moment: this David has rejected me, and chosen my son instead — and my son chooses him, and rejects me! And green-eyed envy is stirred up and Saul begins to give in to the Dark Side, even against his own son. And you’ll forgive me, I’m sure, if I say I can’t help but see an overtone of another father-son conflict involving turning from good to evil: the relationship of Star Wars’ Luke Skywalker and <i>his </i>father Darth Vader!<p>+ + +<p>Such is the dark side of the force of envy: it cannot bear to see others have what one lacks oneself. But while envy <i>is </i>a powerful force — that Dark Side of the Force — it cannot do what love can do. For even in the midst of this envious struggle, love is there, conquering all, as the Roman poet said.<p>Think for a moment, about how much of the world is driven by these two engines, love and envy. Think how much they resemble so many of the other pairs of joys and pains, of what builds up and what tries to tear down; and how the building-up always seems to triumph in the end. The Apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians about some of these conflicting forces, and how love always manages to triumph in the end. Envy may raise obstacles, but love will knock them down, or pass right through them: for all the dark forces of affliction, hardship, calamity, beating, imprisonment, riot, labor, sleepless nights and hunger — all of these are overcome by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness, love, truth, and the power of God. All of this is better armor than a mere sword, bow and belt. These are the triumphant weapons of righteousness for a two-fisted fighter inspired with the love of God. All it takes is opening the doors of the heart — turning away from the dark side of envy and embracing true affection and love.<p>+ + +<p>For with God, and through the love of God, even the seemingly impossible is possible. With God, as the Apostle testifies, the one treated as an imposter is the one who tells the truth; the one undocumented and unknown is the chief witness; the one threatened with death and even dying is revealed to be alive and well; the one who seems to be in sorrow is lifted up with joy; the one who seems to have nothing is able to provide everything. And, as the Gospel reminds us, the one asleep in the stern of the boat is able to quell the storm and quiet even the winds and the sea.<p>And all of this is from the power of love, not envy — from the force that builds up and restores. Love opens doors and breaches the barricades that envy builds around a bitter heart. We will hear more of Saul and Jonathan and David in next weeks’ Scriptures — the story ends sadly for all three of them, and David laments the loss — and yet he continues to become a great king; not perfect, by any means — and we’ll hear about that as well — but one devoted to God even when he fails in how he treats others, even when he himself gives in to the envious desire to have what another possesses; even when he stoops to a criminal act worthy of punishment.<p>But for now, we have the image of young <i>David </i>— this teenager fresh from victory over Goliath, clothed in the garments of another young soldier — one who loves him as he loves his own soul — envied by Saul yet adored by the people. We have the image of the <i>Apostle</i>, shaming the haughtiness and closed hearts of the Corinthians by his own humility and the open-handed offer of forgiveness and love. And we have the image of <i>our Lord himself</i>, one who will also suffer attacks by the envious, but who will triumph in the end, as surely he triumphs over sea and wind, calming the storm and strife — not with a shout — but with a gentle word of peace.<p>And I will add one more sign of love’s victory over envy that we saw enacted this week, when another young man stood in blank confusion before the families of those he had so heartlessly slaughtered, and those daughters and sons, and sisters and brothers, and mothers and fathers, did not heap curses on his head, as he may have expected and deserved, but poured out a tsunami of forgiveness — a force and a power I can only hope may rend his heart in shame and bring him to repentance.<p>For the power of envy may stir up, but the power of love <i>will </i>conquer all. Even that dark force of envy itself and all the other evils that beset us, will, in the end, be calmed and quieted, and all our fears relieved; when we too place our trust in the love of God. Even if we do not see him, even if we fear he is asleep in the stern, he is the one who keeps us safe in the storm and the strife through the night; and it is to him, as is most justly due, that we ascribe all might, majesty, power and dominion, henceforth and for ever more.<p><hr>Tobias Stanislas Haller BSGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08047429477181560685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9593839.post-5424868220264152212015-06-14T12:30:00.001-04:002015-06-14T12:32:02.791-04:00Surprise Surprise SurpriseGod has many surprises in store for us, and don't we love to be surprised!<p><iframe src="http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=Pac17c03bd5d841d0eccd031c40931ad0Y118SlREYGpx&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap21" height="20" width="246" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"> </iframe><p><blockquote>Proper 6b 2015 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG<br>If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!</blockquote><p>We heard in last week’s Scripture readings about how the people of Israel rejected God and asked to have a king instead. Samuel agreed, and Saul became king, but as we can see from today’s reading it didn’t take very long for the glow to fade from this particular rosebud. King Saul enjoyed a very short honeymoon, and things quickly went from bad to worse. It got so bad that God had to step in, and even while Saul was still king, set about choosing someone else to take over when the inevitable total collapse of Saul’s leadership would come to pass.<p>This is one of the few sections of First Samuel that we <i>have </i>heard in our Sunday lessons, but this time around it comes with a different twist, given the other readings that accompany it. And that twist is about the power of God to surprise even a prophet, even a saint, even the church itself.<p>The big surprise for Samuel — as we’ve heard before when this passage comes up — is that for king number two God doesn’t want another king like Saul. Saul is a kind of Hebrew Hercules, a strong-man military leader; but this time around, God chooses the runt of the litter, the youngest of all of Jesse’s sons; not big tall Eliab, high of stature, but the shepherd boy David — the one even his own father Jesse doesn’t think is a likely candidate to throw his yarmulke into the ring and call him home from keeping the sheep. But when the boy finally comes, God lets Samuel know that <i>this </i>is the one God chooses to be the new king — and Samuel anoints him in the presence of all his brothers and his father.<p>In addition to perhaps reminding us of the pile-up of presidential candidates we see around this time every four years, this passage should also remind us of another Scripture about younger brothers and older brothers. We read one, and studied in it in Bible Study not too long ago — the one where Joseph’s dreams are realized and he stands before his father and his brothers as Pharaoh’s right-hand man. Does that ring a bell? This is a theme that runs through Scripture — God favoring the younger over the older: Abel over Cain, Jacob over Esau, Joseph over his brothers and David over his, and even, you might note, Jesus over John the Baptist (though they were more distant relatives than brothers. Jesus was younger than John by six months; and as John himself finally had to admit, “He must increase; I must decrease.”)<p>Still, in spite of how often it happens throughout the Scripture, this seems to come as a constant surprise — that God is not impressed with age or power or strength, but on the willingness to do as God says, and respond to God’s call. That shouldn’t surprise us, and more than that it shouldn’t have surprised Samuel or Jesse. Maybe it’s just that God knows his children, and that deep down we love surprises. And like a child who never tires of peek-a-boo, so too we always respond to God’s surprising grace, no matter how often God bestows it.<p>In this game of divine peek-a-boo we do, to a large extent, have our eyes closed — walking by faith and not by sight — so that when God does tell us to open our eyes and behold the surprise, we can rejoice like the children of God we are. For if anyone is in Christ — which is what it means to be a child of God — there is a new creation: we are reborn in Christ. Everything old has passed away; and see — peek-a-boo — everything has become new.<p>Saint Paul, while still known as Saul, experienced this himself on the road to Damascus; he thought he had God in his hip-pocket and was doing what God wanted by arresting the first Christians and sending them off to prison. He was no better than his namesake Saul the king, who thought God wanted sacrifice instead of obedience — Saul the king and Saul who later became Paul just couldn’t understand and couldn’t follow directions! God gave the second Saul a second chance — showing him in a surprising flash, a flash that blinded him for a time, how wrong he had been about his religion and his God. And, peek-a-boo, the scales fell from his eyes and he regained his sight — and he saw the whole new-created world with new eyes. And everything looked new. Not just because <i>it </i>was new, but because <i>he </i>was new: he was reborn.<p>God is always out to surprise us, and Jesus shows us one more way God does so in the parables of the sower and of the mustard seed. The first parable emphasizes the hiddenness of God’s subterranean working. The one who sows the seeds scatters them — but does not know how it is that the seeds sprout and grow. It happens out of sight. He knows when they <i>have </i>grown, however, and he eagerly sets about the work of the harvest. Now that’s not so surprising, though it does emphasize that the one who sows does so in faith and not by sight — that is, much of the sprouting and growth is underground, and it is only when the stalk, the head, and the grain appear that he can truly rejoice in this new creation.<p>So Jesus follows up with a <i>truly </i>amazing parable — as if you were to take a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds, and plant it, but instead of a mustard plant growing up — a mustard plant which is a bush a few feet high — up sprouts a mighty tree so big that birds can build nests in it. I mentioned Cinderella in connection with our readings last week — but this week it’s more like Jack and the Beanstalk! You wake up and look out your window and instead of a shrub you see a gigantic tree reaching for the heavens. As Jim Nabors used to say, Surprise, surprise, surprise! The kingdom of heaven is <i>never </i>what you expect, it is always an amazing surprise.<p>+ + +<p>Do we still have the capacity to be surprised by the grace of God? Have we become blase or accustomed to the same-old same-old and lost the wonder a child experiences when Grandma plays peek-a-boo — or more importantly, when God brings us a personal miracle, whether of healing from disease, or being delivered from an accident, or just being able to wake up in the morning and get out of bed! Isn’t that a miracle enough to give thanks for — that each new day is a new creation, and if we will let it everything will become new for us in that day? For every day is “the day that the Lord hath made” if we will open the eyes of our faith and behold God at work in every instant of our lives — every day in every way: in our journeys and our resting places, in our sitting down and rising up again. If only we can know of God’s presence, not just in the parts where our eyes are open and we can see, but even, and maybe especially, as we sleep and the deep subterranean work of God goes on we know not how, germinating and sprouting underground but preparing to burst forth in an avalanche of blessing at the harvest time? We may have to, from time to time, cry our eyes out when we go out carrying the seed; but Oh! how we can rejoice when we behold the harvest and bring in the sheaves!<p>Keep that spirit of readiness, my friends, that willingness to be surprised by the grace of God as it fills and forms your life — for without that grace we can do nothing at all. But with it — surprise, surprise, surprise: all that we do can be done to God’s glory, and to the praise of God’s most holy Name, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.<p><HR>Tobias Stanislas Haller BSGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08047429477181560685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9593839.post-71312113721420121232015-06-07T14:11:00.000-04:002015-06-07T14:11:10.157-04:00King of Shreds and Patches<a href="http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=Pccf4715e9cafee64b63e3de7458433f9Y118SlREYGp2&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&autoplay=1&brand=1&player=ap21"><br />
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</a><p><blockquote>Proper 5 2015 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG<br>He will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen. He will take the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves.</blockquote><p>Two hundred thirty-nine years ago this Thursday, Thomas Jefferson sat down to begin working on a document that would come to be known as the Declaration of Independence. Every year on the Fourth of July, National Public Radio broadcasts a recitation of this whole Declaration. It is read by different people, each one reading just a line or two; sometimes it’s all the various announcers from the different NPR programs; one year it was read by a whole class of new American citizens. Most of us probably know the opening line, “When in the course of human events...” We are very likely also familiar with the opening of the second paragraph: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” and we will remember that among those rights are “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Unfortunately, that’s about as much of the Declaration of Independence that most of us know. So on the Fourth of July I commend listening to NPR’s morning show for their annual reading of the whole declaration — it’s shorter than this sermon!<p>The reason I mention it <i>in </i>this sermon is due to what comes later in that Declaration. It is a list of all of the faults and failings of King George III — all of the things that the English monarch has done to upset and anger the American colonists. And it is quite a laundry list. Let me just mention a few of items, and I quote:<p><blockquote>He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies... He has combined with others ... to subject us to a jurisdiction ... unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country…</blockquote><p>You get the idea. And I hope it also rings a bell of familiarity. For in our first reading today from the First Book of Samuel we heard a portion of a similar list, also concerning a king — but in this case <i>predicting what he will do</I> instead of <i>protesting what he has done. </i>And the irony is that while the American colonists were declaring <i>in</i>dependence from the domination of a monarch, the people of Israel are clamoring to <i>obtain </i>a king to rule over them in spite of all the terrible things that Samuel warns them that this king will do. So this passage of Scripture is a Declaration of <i>Dependence</i>!<p>+ + +<p>Or is it? Let’s look more closely. The people say they want to have a king so that they can be like the other nations. And in doing so they <i>are </i>submitting to a form of dependent government — one in which they will be virtual slaves; a king on whom they will depend, will protect them from foreign invaders, but in exchange, they seem to be willing to give up everything: a tenth of their crops, their sons for the army, and all of the rest.<p>But look more closely: what they really want is a change in the <i>form </i>of government they have had up to that point — which is dependence on God speaking through the prophet Samuel. So they are trying to declare <i>in</i>dependence from God, even as they accept <i>de</i>pendence on a king; they are rejecting God, their true King for someone a little closer to home.<p>Their God had chosen them out of all the nations, brought them out of the land of slavery. But now they want to be slaves again — not to serve their God but to serve an earthly king, so they can be just like all of the other nations — not special, not chosen — just like everybody else; like other nations each with its <i>human </i>king with all his faults; and believe me, King Saul will have plenty of faults, as will nine out of ten of all the other kings of Israel and Judah to come. And we’ll be soon be hearing more about all of that.<p>Because today begins a new cycle of Sunday readings from the Hebrew Bible — new to us at St James, but also relatively new to the church as a whole, since the church adopted what’s called the Revised Common Lectionary. In the readings for this liturgical year, we will be hearing readings from what the Hebrew Bible calls “the Writings” — the books of poetry and history. Last year we heard from the Law, and next year we will focus on the Prophets. “Law, Prophets, and Writings” are the three main divisions of The Old Testament. So this year, we hear from the writings; in particular, over the next ten or so weeks we will be hearing passages from what some people call “the Court History” — stories of the kings from Saul to Solomon.<p>Why do this? I’d say rather, why didn’t we do it sooner? I think we need to hear these parts of Scripture, because they get neglected, and because I believe they still speak to us, and they speak of things we need to hear. Because what the people of Israel did when they rejected God as their true king, choosing an earthly ruler instead, is something we are all tempted to do.<p>Not literally about choosing a king, but about other aspects of our lives. It’s not about forms of government — monarchy or democracy, or a republic for that matter — but in the ways in which all of us are liable to try to shirk our own responsibilities as citizens, not just of a nation but of God’s kingdom. It is so easy to say, let someone else do it; that’s not my responsibility; I don’t want to have to be the one to make decisions and get to work — and the work goes undone. This is a practical lesson for us as a church, as a congregation. I know of one parish upstate that had a large cardboard cutout made in the outline of a person — and he even has a name tag: his name is “Somebody.” When anyone would notice that there was a job that needed doing, they would say, “Somebody will do it.” And so they go up to Somebody and ask him to do it, and guess what? Somebody doesn’t do it. Nobody does it; and if Nobody does it, it doesn’t get done.<p>There are many tasks that we all, as members of and leaders in this congregation can take up to help this church grow and survive and prosper — and it needs all hands on deck. Otherwise this too will be a house divided against itself; and that house will not stand.<p>+ + +<p>It is also no good just thinking that having a priest or pastor will solve all the problems and do all that needs to be done. That’s a little bit like asking for a king, when God actually has given each and every one of us some gift, some talent, that we could put to use for the good of this place. Why, after all, does God give gifts of skill to all of his people, if not for the good of God’s kingdom, Each of us has gifts which we are not using because we think “Somebody” will do it — either the priest or the deacon, or some other member of the church.<p>There is plenty of work to do, and you all know the old saying, “Many hands make light work.” It’s true; those hands need to work, though, to get the work done. I mentioned last week about how we were all the adopted members of a family — the church — and how in every family there are chores to do. Well you know there are plenty of chores to keep this church open and worshiping and praising God; God, our true King. Look around you, as Jesus did when he looked around at those who sat with him, listening to him preach and teach, and say and believe what he said about those sitting around him: “Here are my mother and my brothers.” You, <i>my </i>sisters and brothers, <i>you </i>are the family that will make this church <i>what it is</I>. You are also the family that will make this church <i>what it is to be. </i>Do not think this task you can turn over to Somebody else to do it for us. Do not be like the people of Israel who rejected the gifts God gave them, who rejected God himself. Realize instead that we have been endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, and a with wealth of spiritual gifts: not just life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness: but those important gifts: faith, hope, and above all, love. Let us put these things to work, my friends, with all the power God provides, and we will do great things.+<p><HR>Tobias Stanislas Haller BSGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08047429477181560685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9593839.post-42340594639950405502015-06-05T11:18:00.001-04:002015-06-05T11:18:12.206-04:00Spirit of Adoption<a href="http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=P5ba92c2a607376268b86edbe6165e559Y118SlREYGp3&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&autoplay=1&brand=1&player=ap21"><br />
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</a><p><blockquote>Trinity B 2015 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG<br>All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.</blockquote><p>Most of us learn early on where babies come from. Our parents may have tried to keep us in the dark for a time in our early childhood, with stories of deliveries by stork or finding children under the leaves of the cabbage patch, but soon enough we are ushered into the company of the birds and the bees, if not something more explicit. The long and the short of it, as we ultimately learn, is that babies come from their parents — from their father and mother. This is the most elementary of the “facts of life.”<p>As far as we know, there are two only exceptions to this rule, and both of them are in the Bible. The first appears in the second chapter of Genesis. It tells us that Eve — whom Adam calls the “Mother of all living” had no mother herself; she came from Adam’s side. You all remember the story: God saw that it was not good for Adam to be alone, and cast him into a deep sleep; then God took that rib from his side and made it into the one designed as Adam’s companion — bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.<p>The second exception to the general rule about fathers and mothers concerns the second Adam — Jesus Christ. Just as Eve came out of Adam without a mother being involved, so too Jesus was born of the flesh of the Virgin Mary without no earthly <i>father </i>being involved — he was conceived by God, of the flesh of the Virgin Mary, working through the power of the Holy Spirit.<p>These are, as I said, exceptional instances. Everyone else who has ever lived is born of a father and a mother, and in many cases — perhaps most, but certainly not all — children are also <i>raised</I> by their father and their mother. There are many circumstances in which children are <i>not </i>raised by one or both of their biological parents. Tragedies can happen, leaving the child as an orphan. Other unfortunate events can also take place, and many families experience divorce or separation which often leaves the children in a painful and delicate situation. And in both of these and in many other cases, the concept of <i>adoption </i>comes in. Someone who is not the child’s biological father or mother takes the child as their own — in some cases joining with a remaining biological parent, or in some cases with a new couple replacing both of the child’s original parents — and in each case putting the child under their protection and in their care. This is legally recognized, an action that has existed in many human cultures for thousands of years — for the reality that children are sometimes left without one or both parents has been true for as long as there have been human families.<p>+ + +<p>But just as there are few exceptions to the rule of parenthood and the facts of life, there is one exceptional human family into which <i>no one is ever </i>born, and in which every single member is adopted — and that is the church, the family of God. Although people will sometimes say, “I was born an Anglican,” that is not literally true. No one is <i>born </i>a Christian of any sort — you become one through baptism. As Jesus says in John’s Gospel, you join that household of God by water and the Holy Spirit; that is the way into this “kingdom of God.” All of us are adopted into God’s family, the church. None of us is here by nature of our birth. (Although it does help if our biological or adoptive parents — your family, your grandparents — are already members of the church, and they, together with the godparents, see to it that you are baptized — brought into the church at an early age; so the earthly family <i>is </i>important in extending the heavenly family.)<p>Becoming a member of the kingdom of God is not like being born the citizen of a nation — that is more or less automatic. If you are born in the United States of America — with a very few special exceptions, like a diplomat from another country whose wife may have a child here in the US — with those few exceptions you are automatically a United States citizen. But becoming a member of the household of God, the family of God, the kingdom of God, is a process more like that required to become an American citizen if you were born in another country. All us born in this earthly realm have to apply for citizenship in the heavenly one. We need the water and the Holy Spirit to become citizens of the kingdom of God.<p>+ + +<p>I mentioned that our biological or adopted family, and the already existing family of the church, play a role in this process; the most important role — for it is through <i>this</I> family that the family grows. But supporting this work, the work of God which we could not do on our own — is the work of God working <i>through us</I>, through the power of the Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: which is one of the reasons that that’s how we baptize — those are the words we use. We baptize in the name of the Holy Trinity, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit. For the Holy Trinity is the major worker in this — we’re just the assistants.<p>That short reading from the Letter of Paul to the Romans sums this up in a few choice words. Notice how all three persons of the Holy Trinity are involved. The Holy Spirit is the primary agent in this work — and I use the word <i>agent</I> as I would to describe someone who assists me in obtaining citizenship or arranging for an adoption. Any of you who have done either of those things knows the amount of paperwork you need to go through, and how helpful and even necessary it is to have an agent working with you, to help you in that process. The Holy Spirit is our great helper: we sing about “God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come...” Well, the Holy Spirit is the primary helper, the Comforter, the one who works through us and with us to help us do all God aks of us. And that begins, right at the start, at Baptism. The Holy Spirit helps guide through the process, to set up all that is needed. The text of Romans uses the term “adoption” specifically — and it is the Holy Spirit that Paul calls “the spirit of adoption,” the one who cries out through us, naming the one whom we desire to be our parent — one who is not our parent by nature but only by choice and adoption — as the Holy Spirit, working in us, gives us the power to call out, “Abba! Father!” to God above — something we would have no right to do on our own, if the Holy Spirit were not working within us. This is a cry that is part of the testimony, the documentation, in order to be adopted by our new Father in heaven, becoming God’s children.<p>And, so the text tells us, if children, then heirs — heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. Just as an adopted child becomes an inheritor in the estate of her adoptive parents, so too do Christians become inheritors along with their new brother, the only-<i>begotten</I> Son of God, Jesus Christ, who becomes our brother when we are joined into his family through baptism.<p>So it is that all three — God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit — are involved in this work of adoption, and it is through their action — working through the church, the family of God — that we are added to this great assembled body that is the Body of Christ; the kingdom of God, the family of God.<p>+ + +<p>And this action of the church, the family of God, through which God acts by means of the Spirit, brings me to my last point. Once you have become a member of this new family, you are expected to take on new responsibilities— there are chores to do in any household, and the household of God is no different.<p>And it isn’t as if some of us were the natural children and all the others were like the step-children, like Cinderella who got all the dirty jobs and no chance to go to the ball — until she was aided by her fairy <i>godmother </i>(and isn’t it interesting that even in a fairy tale the language of baptism makes its way into this story of a girl who starts out cleaning up the fireplace, but rises to become a princess! The godmother is the crucial figure in that story.) No, in God’s family <i>all of us </i>are stepchildren, but all have also been blessed by the Holy Spirit, the BGE: the Best Godmother Ever, and raised from the cinders to the throne, brought into the family of God, heirs with Christ, joint-heirs, princes and princesses each and every one of us in the kingdom of God.<p>But we still have work to do — chores in this household, even for the royals, such as us. You’ve seen them on TV: Harry and William have their jobs to do; they’re out there dedicating supermarkets, opening bridges, christening boats — everybody’s got a job no matter how royal they are. And that counts for all of us too, in this royal kingdom of God, in which we are part of the royal family.<p>+ + +<p>Fortunately the Spirit continues to help us in this work. The Spirit may be like a wind that blows where it chooses, so that we hear the sound but cannot tell its source or destination, but when <i>we </i>are moved by that Spirit we share in its motion, we can sense its direction. You can’t tell where the wind is blowing all by itself; but if you see a leaf flying through the air, you can tell that’s the way the wind is blowing. And so it is with those who are moved by the Spirit — when we are moved by the Spirit we can tell where we are moving, and we can tell where we are going. That’s what God does for us: invisible and yet made seen by the movement of the church itself.<p>The primary chore of this church, this royal family, is to serve as God’s hands and feet, as each of us, filled with and empowered by the Holy Spirit, spread God’s word and bring others into this household, this royal family, helping the kingdom to grow by acting as agents ourselves, agents of God filling up the number of those to be adopted. Our task is to assist others to be made citizens in God’s kingdom, new princes and princesses in God’s royal family — the one into which no one is born, but where all are welcome.<p>This is our task, my friends — you and I and all of God’s children by adoption, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ — to spread the word as free and as far as the invisible wind. This is our <i>mission</i> — our assignment and our task, our chore in the household of God. May the Lord find us hard at work when he comes in the glory of his kingdom.+ <p><HR>Tobias Stanislas Haller BSGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08047429477181560685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9593839.post-26220062011830598462015-05-18T15:57:00.001-04:002015-05-18T16:00:04.170-04:00By the BookHow the Scripture is alive... in us, and for us.<p><iframe src="http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=P0aea05506ac4c5131f4f762d303740aeY118SlREYGp0&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap21" height="20" width="246" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"> </iframe><p><blockquote>SJF • Easter 7b • Tobias S Haller BSG<br />
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In those days Peter stood up among the believers and said, “Friends, the scripture had to be fulfilled...</blockquote><p>A few weeks ago you heard a Scripture reading from the book of Acts about the role of the Bible in the Christian life. I’m don’t know if Fr Farrell preached on that text the Sunday I was away, but I’m sure you recall the story of that Ethiopian who was reading Isaiah on his way back home, but couldn’t, on his own, understand what the prophet meant. The Holy Spirit put Philip in the right place at the right time to open the scripture for him, and to achieve God’s goal for him: his baptism.<p>Through wise teachers guided by the Holy Spirit, the scripture performs this task, the task for which it is intended and sufficient: to bring us to Christ. We might call this the <i>proactive </i>side of scripture. It is a map that leads us to the goal we seek, a lamp that lights our way through the dark wood of this world, the cookbook with the recipe for the food that nourishes us unto life. The scripture is our guide, our map, and our recipe. But we need to be careful how we do things “by the book” — and the story of Philip and the Ethiopian reveals that this is best not a solitary task. To understand the scriptures best we need each other, just as the Ethiopian needed Philip.<p>Taking the scripture in one’s own hand without a guide can be dangerous. You may have heard of the man who, whenever he needed to make a decision, would take his floppy Bible off the shelf, close his eyes, let the book fall open and then plant his finger on a passage — which he would then take as God’s guidance for him in his life. One day he was feeling a little low, and so he went through this exercise to see what God wanted him to do. Well, he lighted on — appropriate given our reading from Acts — was, “Judas went and hanged himself.” Somewhat taken aback he decided to try again. This time he landed in the gospel of Luke: “Go and do likewise.”<p>Doing things by chance — as in casting lots for a new apostle — is best done as a group, not on your own. One of the many things for which I am grateful is Deacon Bill’s ministry here among us in the Bible Study group that continues to meet week by week. It is in that group that the Spirit speaks, and I know those who have taken part in it are as grateful for it as I am. This is the best way to engage with the Scripture, as the Spirit brings light to the group — through each other as the body of believers. God be praised!<p>+ + +<p>Today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles shows us another side of how the church makes use of the scripture, and this is what I’m calling the <i>retroactive </i>or <i>reflective </i>side. This is when we take up the scripture not so much to tell us <i>what to do,</I> but so as to tell us the true meaning of <i>what we have done</I>. In addition to being a map showing us where to go, it’s like one of those maps in a shopping mall, with that crucial highlighted spot, clearly marked, “You are here.” As well as a headlight down the road ahead of us, the Scripture is like a streetlight that illuminates <i>where we are</I>. More than a recipe to prepare a dish, it is also the cookbook we go to to find out what ingredient it was in that dish that someone else prepared for us, that we so enjoyed.<p>In the time prior to our reading from the passage from Acts, the Apostles have gone through a very difficult time. Their Lord was arrested and they were scattered; Peter denied he knew his Lord — and wept; they heard that Judas suffered a terrible fate; they received the good but hard to believe news that the Lord is risen, and finally they have seen him with their own eyes, and then watched as he was taken up into heaven. And for each of these things they have looked to the Scripture retroactively, reflectively — to understand that the things written there<i> have been fulfilled</I>. The Apostles have been, as our Lord himself gently chided them, slow of heart to believe all that had been promised in God’s word — <i>until it happened.</I> Once it happened, then, retroactively, they were able to take up the Scriptures and recognize those Scriptures that had been speaking to them all along but they didn’t understand. Suddenly the light goes on and they understand where they are.<p>So where <i>do </i>they go from here? They know where they are now: The number of the Apostles is short by one — yet Jesus had promised that the Apostles would sit on thrones to judge the <i>Twelve </i>Tribes of Israel on the last day. Suddenly Peter recognizes that this too<i> has been addressed </i>prophetically in the Psalms: <i>Judas </i>is the one whose homestead has been abandoned, and to which another will succeed as overseer. So the Apostles conduct the first episcopal election, illuminated by Scriptures that before that day none of them thought had a special meaning for them.<p>+ + +<p>So it is that the Scripture can not only tell us<i> what to do,</I> but show us the true meaning of<i> what has been done</I>: for us, for the world. It tells us where we are so that we can better be prepared to go where we are sent.<p>As part of my own discipline of Scripture reading, as part of the Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer, I have been reading the Scripture, especially the Psalms, every day for about forty years now. You may have noticed in the Book of Common Prayer how the Psalms are divided up with headings that begin with, “First Day: Morning Prayer” and so on through all 150 right up to “Thirtieth Day: Evening Prayer.” That was a way of reading the Psalms over the course of a month that goes back to the very first Book of Common Prayer. Archbishop Cranmer came up with it back in the 1540s. It is far easier way to follow than the complicated systems that the monks had used for many centuries, with the Psalms spread out all over the course of a week. (As Archbishop Cranmer observed, it would take you longer to find what page to use than to read what was there once you found it!) And so he came up with this idea of a monthly system of reading the Psalms, spread out over thirty days. On the first day of each month, and on each day (repeating the 30th in months with 31 days!)<br />
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I read the Psalms — together with tens of thousands of others, who have been reading the Psalms this way since 1549.<p>I commend you do the same, and I think you will find, as I do, that reading these ancient poems — three thousand years old — reading them through, day by day, through the course of a month will illuminate your life as they have illuminated my life. I know by this that the Scripture is a alive: it is constantly renewed in ways I might never understand until some situation or circumstance in my life is suddenly illuminated by one of those Psalms.<p>I will close with a personal example that happened in a particularly striking way. On 9/11, Saint Paul’s Chapel, the Episcopal church that’s just two blocks from the World Trade Center, survived the devastation with minimal damage. It became in the weeks and months following a refuge of hope and restoration. It was a place where food was distributed, and those doing the horrible work down in the pit of destruction would come up for rest and counseling — to help them deal with the horrors they handled literally day by day emerging from the dust and the rubble. The clergy of New York and New Jersey were called upon to assist as counselors.<p>My first shift at Saint Paul’s was on the morning on the 16th of October, and I decided to wait to read Morning Prayer until I got to the church. As I came up out of subway and headed down the street towards the St Paul’s Chapel, I was shocked. What I had seen on TV had not prepared me. The whole neighborhood was transformed. The smell of damp concrete was in the air, heavy and thick, masking the scent of corruption and chlorine. Everything was dusted with gray powder. There were piles of rubble swept off the sidewalk in the doorways <br />
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of still unopened shops. Then looking ahead down the street, just two short blocks away, just behind St Paul’s Chapel, was the twisted wreckage of one of those two proud towers. Only about two stories were left, a stump rising from the rubble at its base; no longer the gleaming silver columns side-by-side, but only a twisted, rusted remnant the color of dried blood. I passed through the gate in the Chapel’s wrought-iron fence, covered with the images of those still missing, still hoped for, though by that point with hope fading as fast as the photographs; the flowers, dying, were taped to the wrought iron of that fence and that gate, the candles flickering in the cool, damp breeze that carried the odor of the dust to which one day all of us will return.<p>Inside the church it was dark and quiet. People were sleeping in most of the pews, bundled in blankets. They sought a little rest before heading back into the pit for another shift looking for the bodies, and the parts of bodies, of the victims of this horror. I found a quiet spot, and sat down, and took a red prayer book from the rack and opened it to the Psalms appointed for Morning Prayer on the 16th day. And this is what I read:<p><blockquote>O God, the heathen have come into your inheritance; <br />
they have profaned your holy temple; <br />
and have made Jerusalem a heap of rubble. <br />
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They have given the bodies of your servants <br />
as food for the birds of the air, <br />
and the flesh of your faithful ones <br />
to the beasts of the field. <br />
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They have shed their blood like water <br />
on every side of Jerusalem, <br />
and there was no one to bury them.</blockquote><p>Were those words written for me that day? Well, of course not; but yes, they were. God spoke to me that morning. These were words I needed to hear and see. Not to make a foolish equivalence of who the “heathen” might be, and who the servants, and what Jerusalem, but to bind me up in solidarity with all the suffering that has ever been suffered upon this warring earth, all the ancient world of wrong and anger and unrighteousness and injustice; the guilty rage and its innocent victims; and to let me know that <i>I was not alone</I>, either in my grief or in my service that I might do that day, or any other day, to comfort the seekers after the dead. The light went on for me <i>to tell me where I was</I> — words from the Psalmist of 3,000 years ago, resounding down the halls of time into my present through my past, to give me hope for the future.<p>This is what the Scripture can do for us, my friends. It tells us who, and <i>whose </i>we are; it will comfort us in our terrors, and encourage us in our fears, and strengthen us in our weakness — if we will open those pages and let them do their healing work, in the solitude of personal devotion, but even more when we gather in God’s name. The Scripture not only saves but helps us to make sense of a world gone senseless, to show us that love prevails when all else fails, and that God who created and redeemed us will also send us his Holy Spirit to comfort and to guide. Even so, Lord Jesus, send your Spirit to your people — by your word, and as you promised — that they may know you and themselves, and serve you in this life until they come to rest with you for ever in the new Jerusalem above.+<p><hr>Tobias Stanislas Haller BSGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08047429477181560685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9593839.post-81501537515296807412015-05-11T13:09:00.001-04:002015-05-11T13:17:09.614-04:00Withholding the WaterThe waters of baptism reach the Gentiles as Peter learns a lesson.<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="20" scrolling="no" src="http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=P80c3df721b57c47c84a0aac0a502b790Y118SlREYGp1&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap21" width="246"> </iframe><p><blockquote>Easter 6b 2015 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG <br>The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?”</blockquote><p>One of the major issues facing the world today involves changes to weather patterns, known collectively as “climate change.” To a large extent this is about water — too much water in some places, where either the rains have increased or the sea level is rising; and too little water in other places, where the drought seems to be unending. So the problem isn’t with water itself, but with where the water is — or isn’t. There has been a good deal of discussion concerning water in the state of California. Much of that state is very dry even in the wettest of seasons, and when there are several years of drought — as has been true for the last four years — the amount of water available can fall far short of what is needed. The snow in the mountains that used to pile up many feet high — and feed the valleys below as it melted — has been measured in inches instead of feet. And so the valley thirsts.<p>Many in Los Angeles have been upset to have to withhold water from their lawns so that the people growing fruit and nuts in the central valley can water their orchards — and much is made of the fact that it takes a gallon of water to grow a single almond! The problem is that agriculture is a major contributor to the economic health of the whole state of California — and the produce from California is served in the salad bowls of much of the rest of the country — so the effect of this drought will be felt far and wide.<p>In short, this issue of water is something that touches everyone. Water is essential to life — not just drinking water, without which one cannot survive for more than a few days — but the water that grows the plants that nourish us: water which is with us literally from soup to nuts.<p>In our reading from Acts this morning, we hear of another life-giving aspect of water — the water of Baptism. And what might seem strange to our ears is the fact that Peter even suggests<i> not</I> baptizing the Gentiles to whom he has been sent in response to a vision from God. Isn’t baptizing the very thing the church is meant to do?<p>+ + +<p>Well, this is one of the many things about which the leaders of the early church had to be enlightened and instructed bit by bit. It was a lesson they had to learn. As I said a few weeks ago in one of my sermons, God informs and educates the church, through many means, bit by bit, story by story, in poetry and prose, by vision and revelation, and by the experience of the faithful. What we see in our reading from Acts is one step in that process of enlightenment — as baptism is extended to the Gentiles.<p>As I’ve reminded us in the past, all of us here are Gentiles by birth, and so the idea that there might have been a time when the water of baptism was withheld from us seems odd. This gives me an opportunity to remind us all once again of the essential Jewishness of Jesus and the earliest church. Jesus was a Jew, and so were all of the apostles. And baptism — a ritual by which water is used in a symbolic way as a cleansing from sin — was and is a particularly Jewish ritual. Now, of course, Jews are not the only people in the world who have given a symbolic meaning to washing with water as a way to cleanse from sin. We are reminded of this forcibly every year in Holy Week as the Gentile Pontius Pilate washes his hands as a way of cleansing himself of any responsibility in the death of Jesus. But for Jews of the time of Jesus, this ritual washing was a central part of the observance of the Law of Moses, which spells out numerous circumstances in which washing with water is required, as a means to restore them to the status of being ritually “clean.”<p>I remember a couple of years ago, there was a TV special about the Dead Sea community that lived outside of Jerusalem — a Jewish community of just before the time of Jesus. And their concern — being in the desert — was to have enough water so that they could carry out the rituals of what is called the <i>mikvah</I>: the cleansing tank where you would walk down steps into a pool of water and then up the steps on the opposite side. The archaeologists have excavated all of the water-works that were used in that ancient and now abandoned city. Water was central to the understanding of their rituals and their laws.<p>And for many Jews of the time of Jesus, there would be no point in a Gentile doing these exercises of washing — going down the steps into the pool and then up the other side would mean nothing for a Gentile — Gentiles are unclean by nature; you can wash and scrub and rinse and spin-dry, and from a Levitical standpoint a Gentile will be just as unclean after as before. What’s the old saying? “Beauty is skin deep, but ugly goes to the bone!” Well, from the standpoint of the Jews of Jesus’ time, Gentiles were <i>sin</I>, not just skin deep, but right to the bone. So washing them would make no difference. And this way of seeing things would have been as true of Peter as of any other Jewish man of his time.<p>Except that Jesus had given Peter some of that “information” I referred to — a lesson, — a revelation that came to him in a dream, also recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. Peter was taking a nap before lunch and in a vision saw <br><br />
a great sheet lowered from the sky, full of all kinds of animals, clean and unclean, and a heavenly voice had commanded him to kill and eat the unclean with the clean. When he protested that he had always “kept kosher” a voice from heaven chided him by saying, “Don’t call unclean what God has cleansed!” And to strike the message home, this dream was repeated three times. Didn’t I remind us a few weeks ago that God is a patient teacher who will repeat the lesson as often as is needed? Well, Peter needed three “reps” to get the point of this one. And he finally realized it wasn’t about what he was going to have for lunch, but about the mission on which he would soon be sent, to visit a household of Gentiles who had found God’s favor.<p>Now, these Gentiles — the Roman Cornelius and his household — had also been alerted by a vision, and had been promised that salvation would be coming to their household. Yet they know, as Peter acknowledges, that Jews want to have nothing to do with Gentiles. But Peter also says that he has understood this vision from God to mean — not that he should feel free to eat a ham and cheese sandwich — but that he was no longer to consider any <i>human being </i>as unclean by nature. God is not concerned with food, but with people.<p>So the stage is set; and when the Holy Spirit ratifies God’s direction in all of this, descending on the gathered Gentiles even before Peter can finish his sermon, he knows that he is called to baptize them — not with the old baptism, the baptism that he had used for most of his life as a Jew, a washing from ritual uncleanness that would have to be repeated again and again the next time he became unclean by touching something he shouldn’t have touched, or doing something he shouldn’t have done. Not the old baptism, but the new baptism in the Name of Jesus, the baptism that Jesus had told them to do (as Matthew records in his Gospel), going to all nations (and the word we translate as “nations” is the word the Jews used for the Gentiles — the <i>goyim</I> — which means the all of us!) the commandment to go to all nations and to baptize them. Even though Jesus had told them this was their missionary task as apostles, it took that additional trio of lessons on the rooftop to get Peter to understand. It took the vision of the great sheet of animals let down from heaven — three times; it took the heavenly voice. Finally it took the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Gentiles as they listened to Peter preach — it took all these lessons to get Peter to understand God’s message that <i>salvation is for all</I>, for every human being who can become a child of God through this wonderful grace — flowing as freely as water itself; whether a tidal wave washing over a continent, or a bare trickle of life-giving water welling up from a spring in the middle of a desert.<p>This is the water that gives life, the water of baptism that doesn’t just cleanse from sin, but incorporates the believer into the Body of Christ. For it is not just the water alone — as John the Apostle attests — but the water and the blood. It is not the water alone, but the Spirit of truth who testifies to the power of God. God’s power and greatness are at work in unexpected places, among unexpected people, among those from whom the pious might be inclined to withhold their blessing, but among whom the Spirit has shown itself not only pleased to dwell, but to manifest the signs of God’s presence — so that, watered with the nourishing water of baptism, they may bear fruit, fruit that will last, to the everlasting glory of God, and in praise of God’s most holy Name.<p><HR>Tobias Stanislas Haller BSGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08047429477181560685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9593839.post-74258656377672503252015-04-26T13:19:00.001-04:002015-04-26T13:21:16.096-04:00WoolgatheringJust as he is a shepherd and a lamb, so too we sheep become shepherds to each other as we grow up into his likeness.<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="20" scrolling="no" src="http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=Pb83ebdb4b68c432698e98941e54e063cY118SlREYGt8&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap21" width="246"> </iframe><p><blockquote>Easter 4b 2015 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG <br>The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, he leadeth me beside the still waters; he restoreth my soul.... You know the rest!</blockquote><p>There is no denying that sheep and shepherds play a huge part in the imagery of Scripture. This is natural given the times and places in which the Scriptures were composed — sheep and shepherds were as central to the economies of those times and places as retail sales are to ours. I suppose we can be thankful for that; otherwise we might be stuck with, “The Lord is my supervisor,” or “He maketh me to shop in the bargain basement.” I don’t think we would want to pray, “The Lord is our Walmart and we are his customers.” And when Jesus said he came not to be served but to serve, I don’t think he was thinking about being as a sales clerk!<p>No, instead of mercantile imagery, we are blessed with a wealth of pastoral images, of sheep and shepherds; and most importantly of a shepherd who is also himself describe as a lamb — the Lamb of God. In fact, John mixes up all sorts of pastoral imagery in his gospel and his epistles, and this imagery is carried forward into the last book of our Bible, that is also attributed to John: Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world; he is the gate of the sheepfold through whom the sheep enter and leave in safety; he is the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the flock; and he is, at the end, the Lamb again, with the marks of slaughter upon him, the innocent by whose bloody death the guilty are acquitted and reconciled with God.<p>+ + +<p>Most of us, I’m willing to guess, have little experience of sheep beyond owning a wool sweater or two — so what are we to make of this flock of images? When we say that the Lord is our shepherd, and when our Lord says that about himself, what do we mean, and what is he getting at.<p>Well, what we mean is that we belong to him. When we pray the Psalm that says, “We are his people and the sheep of his pasture,” or “The Lord is my shepherd,” we are reaffirming our relationship with God is one of dependence and trust. We belong to God, and if we are wise — or at least as wise as sheep can be, which isn’t much — we will follow our Good Shepherd and put our trust in him.<p>For that is what we mean when we accept Jesus as our Shepherd — we belong to him and we know that he cares for us. We know his voice, when he calls us each by name. We trust him and we know that he will not lead us astray; or if we do, as sheep will often do, wander off ourselves, we trust that he will seek us out and bring us back, even if it is only one percent of us who wander off and get into trouble — and don’t you wish that only one percent of us were ever in trouble at some point in our lives.<p>We also know that Jesus is the gate of the sheepfold: our safe passage into the fold for the night, to be kept safely from the wolves and lions of this world; and out through that gate by day to go to those lush, green pastures, to recline beside the still, calm waters, or to be fed on the herbage that nourishes body and soul.<p>And ultimately, we know that he is the Good Shepherd who will lay down his life to protect us. He doesn’t run away when he sees the wolf coming — even if it means he will die in the process of protecting the sheep from that ravenous danger. For this is no ordinary shepherd — this is one who not only will <i>lay down </i>his life for the sheep. He is one who is able to <i>take it back up again</I> — no one takes it from him, but he lays it down of his own accord, and he receives it back from God his heavenly Father.<p>+ + +<p>And this is where we leave off our woolgathering and reflecting on sheep and shepherds, and the penny drops and the light-bulb goes on, as we recall, after all, that we are not sheep, and Jesus is not a shepherd. We are human beings, made after God’s image and in God’s likeness, and Jesus is himself that perfect image, the only-begotten Son of God. And yes, even though we are not sheep and he is no shepherd except by way of a parable — still we are his and he is ours: we belong to him, and he did in fact lay down his life for us, and took it up again; he was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, but raised from the dead by the power of God. That is the truth, the truth that we affirm every week as we say those words of the Nicene Creed.<p>+ + +<p>And this truth impels us to do more than merely to believe, merely to say those words week after week, even more than to believe it and to share it. For we are called not merely to follow our shepherd, but to grow up into him — to become shepherds ourselves, shepherds to each other. John gets into some of that mercantile imagery, after all, when he challenges and chastises “anyone who has the world’s goods and yet sees a brother or sister in need and refuses to help.” We are called to emulate the greatest love one human being can show for another, <br><br />
to lay down our lives for each other, just as Jesus laid down his life for all of us — each and every one of us both a sheep and a shepherd, bearing one another’s burdens, as the Apostle Paul would also teach.<p>John teaches us that it is by these loving actions that we will know that we abide in God, and God in us. This is nothing other than the power of God, who is love, love made real, love come down from heaven, love shared among the sheep of God’s pasture — not sheep after all, but children of God, God present among us by the power of the love we share.<p>+ + +<p>The Apostles knew this power fresh from God. How many people had passed by that crippled man who sat at the Beautiful Gate — how many of the very members of the high-priestly family before whom Peter and John now stand, accused of doing a good work of healing — how many of them, Annas, Caiaphas, John and Alexander and all their kith and kin, had passed by that crippled man and never given him so much as the time of day. And yet, Peter and John with healing him. Peter and John told him they had no money to help him out — but what they had, they gave him, freely and without any conditions: they gave him the name of Jesus, and the power of that name healed him of his infirmity. No wonder the selfish priests are confounded by this act of generosity; they are hired hands, who had no real love for the sheep; <br><br />
they were ready to sell out the Lamb of God to the Roman wolves so as to keep their precious peace.<p>Yet, here, even here as Peter and John stand before them, the grace of God is shown forth and even they — Annas and Caiaphas and John and Alexander and all their relatives and colleagues — they are given yet one more chance — and it won’t be the last one! — another chance to repent and believe, as Peter, filled with the boldness of a sheep become a shepherd, confronts them and shames them with the Name of Jesus strong upon his lips.<p>This, my friends, is what happens when we follow a Good Shepherd, and grow up into his likeness, caring for each other with the sacrificial love that gives and gives and never counts the cost. This is the Paschal mystery, my friends, the mystery of Easter, that it is in giving that we receive, that it is in pardoning that we find pardon, that it is in dying that, behold, we live. Alleluia, Christ is risen; the Lord is risen indeed, alleluia.<hR></body></html>Tobias Stanislas Haller BSGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08047429477181560685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9593839.post-46957836769153322532015-04-19T14:07:00.001-04:002015-04-19T15:06:46.951-04:00The Man at the GateGod enlightens our ignorance bit by bit, story by story, revelation by revelation.<br />
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Easter 3b 2015 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG<br />
Peter said, “Why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power of piety we had made him walk?”</blockquote>
Our reading from the Acts of the Apostles begins a bit abruptly, including a reference to an “it” and a “him” whom some of us might not recognize. We are fortunate in having a beautiful stained-glass window depicting him and it, right on the southern wall of the sanctuary — take a look at it as you come up to communion because it is hard to see from the nave of the church; it will be on your right as you approach the altar rail. It depicts Peter and John standing before the man at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple. He is the “him” and the “it” is his miraculous healing through the name of Jesus. To refresh all of our memories, let me read a slightly abridged portion from the Acts of the Apostles just prior to our first reading today, as it sets the scene for what follows.<br />
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<i>One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer... and a man lame from birth was being carried in. People would lay him daily at the gate of the temple called the Beautiful Gate so that he could ask for alms from those entering the temple. When he saw Peter and John... he asked them for alms. Peter looked intently at him, as did John, and said, “Look at us.” And he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them. But Peter said, “I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, stand up and walk.” And he took him by the right hand and raised him up; and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. And jumping up, he stood and began to walk, and he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. All the people saw him walking and praising God, and they recognized him as the one who used to sit and ask for alms ... and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him....</i><br />
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That’s the “it” and the “him.” Our reading today continues the tale with Peter’s testimony to the crowd that are amazed at all of this; that it is the power of Jesus’ name that has wrought this miracle. He castigates the people and their rulers for having rejected and killed the author of life, and testifies that he and the apostles are witnesses to the resurrection of God’s chosen and righteous one, in whose name and by whose name this man has been healed. And he calls them to repent, even though, he says, they “acted in ignorance.”<br />
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Ignorance is a theme that runs through all of our readings today, including the bit I added from the first part of chapter three of Acts. But before I go any further I want to clear up a possible misunderstanding, and that revolves around the meaning of the word <i>ignorance</i>. Sometimes people will use the word <i>ignorant</i> as a synonym for an insult, for <i>“stupid</i>.” They’ll say, “Oh, you’re ignorant!” But that is not really what <i>ignorant</i> means. To be ignorant is not to know something — not to be <i>incapable </i>of knowing something, but merely <i>not </i>knowing a particular something or some things. Even the smartest people in the world are ignorant, because no one knows everything. In fact, the smartest people in the world <i>know</i> that they don’t know everything, and they are always willing to learn. It is the people who <i>think</i> they know everything that are usually the most untrustworthy. And the other good news is that ignorance can be remedied: as soon as you learn something that you didn’t know before you are no longer ignorant of that fact. Once you have new information, you are no longer, but <i>informed</i>.<br />
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So with that cleared up, let’s look at some of the ignorance laid before us in the Scripture passages we read today, beginning with that passage from Acts. In the part that I read, it is the man at the gate who is ignorant. He is not a disciple. Although he’s lived in Jerusalem for a long time — for the Scripture tells of how people would carry him in every day, and set him in the gate to beg for alms, and after his healing they all recognize him (they’re not ignorant about him; they know him very well!) — but he is ignorant of who Peter and John are. He doesn’t know them from Adam. He is <i>ignorant </i>of them — he doesn’t know who these out-of-towners from Galilee are. He’s lived in Jerusalem his whole life; people from Galilee may come and go, but he doesn’t know who they are. All he is interested in is what he can get out of them, and as soon as Peter addresses him, you can well expect that he stretched out his hand for a coin or two. Peter immediately remedies his ignorance, <i>informing</i> him that he and John have no money to give him; and I can well guess he is disappointed! But then Peter surprises him, and says, I’ve got something better than gold: he reveals the name of Jesus, the best bit of information this world has ever known, at which point Peter takes him by the hand to raise him up, healed of his weakness and able not just to walk, but to leap for joy! More than his ignorance is remedied! His heart is filled with the knowledge of God’s healing power, known in his own healed limbs.<br />
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The next ignorance addressed is that to which Peter refers in what follows. He charges the people for having rejected Jesus, even when Pilate was ready to release him, and they chose a murderer to be released instead. But, as Peter continues, they and their rulers acted <i>in ignorance </i>— an ignorance that helped in its own ironic way to fulfill God’s promise that the Messiah had to suffer. However, now that the suffering is over and Christ is raised from the dead, the school of God is back in session: it is time to learn something new, something of which they were ignorant before. It is time for them to put that ignorance behind them, to become informed by the Gospel, and to embrace the truth of the power of Jesus’ name — not just to heal a disabled man, but to restore all of them to the wholeness that God intends for each and every one, through grace by faith.<br />
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The next ignorance described in our readings — this one from the First Epistle of John — is double: The world is ignorant of God and of us as children of God; but we too are not without our limitations, our own ignorance: As John says, “We are God’s children now; what we <i>will be</i> has not yet been revealed.” There is still more to learn, more revelation to come, more opening of the eyes of our faith. The good news is that our ignorance is not total: “What we do know,” he writes, “is this: when he is revealed we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.” We don’t see him yet, but when we do we will be like him. We will learn something wonderful and new. This is the hope of all who seek Jesus, who number themselves among the company of those who have believed in his name, and are washed with his blood, united with him in a death like so that we may be united with him in a rising from the dead like his. At present, as St Paul would also affirm, our knowledge is partial as if seeing dimly in a mirror. But when Christ is revealed we shall know as we are known, fully informed, fully enlightened by the light of the world, the revelation of the Son of God.<br />
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And so it is fitting that the final ignorance with which we are presented today is that of the apostles themselves. They have heard the testimony of Peter and the disciples who had encountered Jesus on the way to Emmaus. And while they are still arguing and trying to understand all of this, Jesus himself appears among them — to their amazement, and in the case of some, disbelief. And Jesus, ever the good teacher, gently instructs them, relieving their ignorance with the good news, reminding them that this is what he had told them beforehand would happen, before they came to Jerusalem in the first place, before the time that he said he would suffer; and, moreover, that all of this was attested in the Scriptures (in the Law of Moses, in the Prophets, and in the Psalms) — Scriptures they had read their whole lives, Scriptures they knew by heart and yet somehow they had never put two and two together even when those holy promises were being fulfilled before their eyes. Such was the ignorance of the apostles that they needed not only to experience, but to remember, to be <i>reminded</i> that the experience matched the promise. They needed a good teacher to inform them of how the promises of the past become real in the present.<br />
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And this is the gentle way in which God continues to enlighten our darkness, to lift our ignorance, to inform our minds and rejoice our hearts. Not suddenly, but bit by bit, story by story, and revelation by revelation. By promise and reminder, by poetry and prose, by repeating the lesson until we understand; by words from on high and hopes uttered in our inmost hearts by the groaning of the Spirit within each of us — so it is that the Good Teacher teaches, and the Great Physician heals.<br />
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May we, like the man at the gate, reach out for what we know not, but find that we are grasping the hand of the One who brings us gifts better than we can ask or imagine, even Jesus Christ our Lord.Tobias Stanislas Haller BSGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08047429477181560685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9593839.post-18177756180417119182015-04-12T14:34:00.001-04:002015-04-12T14:39:45.869-04:00Full Atonement MadeWhat it means to be at one with God and our neighbors...<p><iframe src="http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=Pcf545e7e32cc28a65a417c2d8b0fbe9cY118SlREYGty&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap21" height="20" width="246" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"> </iframe><p><blockquote>Easter 2b 2015 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG <br>If anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.</blockquote><p>In today’s reading from the First Letter of John, we hear not only of his eyewitness testimony but of the mysterious truth of the atonement: how Jesus Christ the righteous is not only our <i>advocate </i>before God, but is also the <i>“atoning sacrifice</i> for our sins, and not of ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” This concept of atonement is not easy to grasp, and I want to spend a few moments today reflecting on what John — and the church after him — are getting at when they use this term <i>atonement.</i><p>First of all, it is a term with a great deal of Old Testament baggage, baggage that served the Jewish people well on all their journeys and in all their resting places even on and up to this present day. For it is the word used to describe one of the holiest days on the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the day on which in ancient Israel the priests made solemn sacrifice to cleanse themselves and the whole people of their sins.<p>+ + +<p>Secondly, some have packed their own ideas into this already heavy baggage, by giving to the word “atone” a sense of feeling sorry for something you’ve done. But feeling sorry for something you’ve done wrong is really not at the heart of atonement: the heart of atonement lies in<i> making reparations</i> for the wrong that has been done. It’s not enough to feel sorry, or even offer a heartfelt apology; it is not enough to make a tearful confession of a crime — there are reparations to be made, and maybe a fine and court costs to be paid.<p>The surprising thing — and this goes back to the Day of Atonement — is that this restitution or reparation does not need to be made by the guilty party. On the Day of Atonement in ancient Israel it wasn’t the people who suffered punishment for their sins and failings — it was a bull and a goat who paid the price of sin. They were sacrificed, and their blood was the price, along with another goat on whose head the high priest would place the iniquities of the people — the scapegoat — that would be sent off into the wilderness to only God knows where. This is the bloody image that John develops in his Epistle: that, as he says, “the blood of Jesus… cleanses us from all sins.” Jesus is the “atoning sacrifice” that makes full reparation and reconciliation between humankind and God — for only Jesus Christ, truly human and truly divine, completely free of any sin himself but taking on himself the sin of the whole world, only Jesus Christ could serve as both our advocate <i>before </i>God, and as the atoning sacrifice who reconciles humanity <i>with </i>God.<p>Reconciliation is at the heart of what atonement means, this in a literal sense: for the word “atone” was created from the two words “at” and “one” — and it used in fact to be pronounce “at-one” instead of “a-tone.” The sacrifice of Yom Kippur “at-oned” the people of Israel with God, restoring what was broken in their relationship, re-joining the two so that they were “at one.”<p>The problem with this at-oning sacrifice of Yom Kippur was that it was temporary. It reconciled and “at-oned” the people with God only for one year at a time, so the sacrifice was part of the annual round of Temple worship. Every year the Day of Atonement would come around, and the goat and the bull would be sacrificed, and the other goat sent out with the sins on its head into the wilderness. Think of all of those hundreds of bulls and goats, slaughtered or set off into the wilderness as substitutes for the sins of the people, year after year, enough beef to fill a slaughterhouse and goat, Mon, to provide for a curry to end all curries! No shortage of curry there! Yet each and every year the people would accumulate their sins, only to bring them back to the Temple each Day of Atonement.<p>The sacrifice of Christ is different; it is, as Saint Paul was fond of saying, “once and for all.” We use that phrase casually and so lose how dramatic it is: once — that is, once Christ was crucified, once died and then once on Easter raised triumphant over death; and “for all” — for <i>everyone </i>who, as I reminded us in Lent, would look upon him and put their trust in him. Unlike the High Priest on the Day of Atonement, going through that ritual year after year and only for himself and the people of Israel, Jesus “at-ones” God with all of humanity over that three-day weekend from the cross to the resurrection — <i>once and for all</i>. It is through Jesus — one person, one death, one sacrifice — that, as the hymn puts it, “reconciled are we with God” and that “we” includes <i>all </i>of humanity — as John would say, “the whole world” — made one in him, by him and through him.<p>+ + +<p>We see the results of this kind of unity, this at-one-ment, in that short passage from the Acts of the Apostles. It describes the behavior of the whole group of believers, who are reported to be “of one heart and soul.” They are “at-one” with God and with each other. And just as atonement for sin isn’t just about feeling sorry (though it includes it), so too this way of life in the newborn church wasn’t just about feeling friendly towards each other (though it included that as well). These disciples took action, and literally put their money where their mouth was. I reminded us in Lent of the truth of the teaching, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Well, we see that principle in action in this short reading from the Acts of the Apostles.<p>This first community of Christ, this first incarnation of “the church” is of one mind and soul and heart; no one claims private ownership of any possessions, but the community holds everything in common. They have put their money where their mouth is — and there is not a needy person among them, because those with wealth and property liquidate their assets to spread them around for all to benefit. They show that what they truly treasure is each other: <i>that </i>is where their treasure is — in each other. And because of that, you know where their heart is, too: united one to the other and each to all, in a community of faith the like of which is rarely seen on this good, green earth of ours.<p>And that is the challenge before us, my friends: the challenge of the At-one-ment; to become as filled with love for each other, at-one with each other and with God, that we support each other in good times and in bad, to such an extent that anyone seeing us would be amazed, and say to himself, “Those people at Saint James Fordham must really love God and their neighbors.”<p>May we so live our commitment, so embrace the at-one-ment purchased for us by Christ our Savior on the cross by his precious blood, so show forth in our lives what we profess with our lips, that our light will shine, as a beacon of hope, to bring others out from the perilous waters of this world, into the safe harbor of Christ’s holy family, the church of God, of which this little building is but one of the many ports. +<p><HR>Tobias Stanislas Haller BSGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08047429477181560685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9593839.post-65894391695589370712015-04-05T14:40:00.001-04:002015-04-05T14:48:45.968-04:00The Real ThingWe stand between what we were and what we shall become, when the Risen Christ is revealed.<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="20" scrolling="no" src="http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=Pb4c5541b73eab97c5517f072be07b07cY118SlREYGtz&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap21" width="246"> </iframe><br />
<p><blockquote>SJF • Easter 2015 • Tobias S Haller BSG<br>God raised Jesus on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.</blockquote><p>Alleluia, Christ is risen! <i>The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia</I>. That, my friends, is the Easter message, short and sweet; the heart of the gospel and the center of our Creed and acclamation. (Don’t get too excited, though; the sermon will be a little longer...) Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. It is why we are here today, and why we are here every time we gather week by week and year by year — some of us, if we are honest about it, tending more to the year-by-year than the week-by-week! But if you can only be here one day a year — or for the first time in your life! — this is the day to be here: Easter Day, the day of resurrection.<p>It is fashionable in some theological circles to debate and discuss the nature of the resurrection, asking, Did it really happen? or What was it like? At the furthest reaches of skepticism you have those who suggest that Jesus was not <i>really </i>raised from the dead; but rather, that the power of his personality and his teaching were so persuasive that the apostles decided to continue their teaching and preaching<i> as if</I> he had been raised from the dead. In addition to transforming the apostles into either fools or con-men, does this really make any sense at all? Who would risk their lives to preach a gospel based on a fabric as thin and weak as wet tissue paper? Who would be willing to face down the authorities of Rome and the Sanhedrin on the basis of such a dream or a hope? Who would be willing to die — as most of the apostles did — in defense of a pious memory?<p>And if the apostles <i>were </i>con-men, if indeed they stole the body from the tomb — as the slanderous rumor would have it — then we are, as Saint Paul once said, of all people the most to be pitied, for having been hoodwinked by first-century con-artists — who, if they <i>were </i>con-artists, weren’t very smart themselves: for they got nothing for their scam but persecution, beatings, imprisonment, exile and death! Who is more the fool?!<p>+ + +<p>But look at what Saint Peter says: “God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.” Peter is testifying as an eye witness; he’s not making this up; he’s not elaborating a pious memory, or engineering a clever scam. He <i>saw </i>the risen Christ with his own eyes; he and the other apostles ate and drank with Jesus over those days before he was taken up into heaven and exalted at the right hand of the Father. Whatever else one wants to say about the resurrection, Saint Peter affirms that<i> it is real</i>.<p>+ + +<p>Now of course, you might well say, well, what is <i>real</i>? What <i>is </i>reality? Could someone who died really come back to life — not just resuscitated, like Lazarus, but totally transformed into a person who can walk through walls or locked doors to confront his frightened followers — and we will be hearing more about that in the coming weeks. This risen Christ, this Jesus Christ who was raised from the dead by the power of God, was not merely <i>restored </i>to life, but was given a whole new <i>kind </i>of life. When Saint Paul tries to explain this to the Corinthians, he says, “It is sown a physical body, but is raised a spiritual body.”<p>The problem with this is that we tend to hear the word <i>spiritual</i> as being <i>less real</i> than the physical. But it is the other way around: the spiritual is more real than the physical. For God is Spirit, and God is the most <i>real </i>reality that is, the reality upon which all other things depend, the Creator of all that <i>is</i>. If God is not real, nothing else could be real!<p>Christ could walk through the closed doors of those fear-filled rooms, not because he was like a ghost, but because he was ever so much more real, solid and substantial than those merely physical barriers. He could walk through those barriers the way we walk through a puff of smoke or a haze of fog. The stone at his tomb was rolled away not so he could get out — he could have walked through that stone like it was tissue paper — the stone was rolled away to let the disciples see that the tomb was empty; that he had been raised. The risen Christ, in the power of the spirit, was <i>more</i>, not less, real than the substantial world he came to save. <i>We</i>, my friends, are the ghosts: dead in our sin. But the Easter message proclaims: <i>He</i> is alive! And if he is alive, then we who live in him are alive as well.<p>The spirit, you see, gives life — and compared to what is dead (as we all are in our sins) what is alive is <i>more </i>real,<i>more </i>substantial, <i>more </i>solid, and <i>more </i>full of the energy that drives the universe. That cosmos itself is supported and sustained only by the love of God who created it; the nurturing care of God’s Holy Spirit that sustains it — what the poet Dante so beautifully described as “the love that moves the sun and the other stars.” And that same power — the power that moves the universe - is the same power that raised Jesus from the dead.<p>+ + +<p>Some skeptics will say this is impossible. But I ask you — who of us here is <i>possible</i>? Each and every person sitting here in this church, each and every person who ever walked this earth, at one point didn’t exist, <i>wasn’t real </i>— didn’t exist <i>at all</i>. Yet here we are! Each and every person sitting in this church, young and old, big and small, and the billions of others born upon this earth came into being from the joining of two cells: one of them smaller than a pinhead, and the other smaller still. That’s reality, my friends. Each of us here started out as a speck no bigger than the period at the end of a sentence, a wiggle no bigger than a comma. And yet here we are.<p>And our present bodies are as miraculous as our beginning. For as we grew from that little point, we drew substance first from our mother’s womb, then when we were born and came forth into the world with a cry as all mortals to, we grew from the food we ate, the air we breathed — yes, we are built up with material gathered from the four corners of the world — and that world itself is compacted of the substance of exploded stars! What a miracle that each of us can sit here in this church, both it and we made up from elements from the four corners of the universe, from literally billions of miles away, gathered here against all odds to this very spot, gathered from the air that God spreads upon this earth, from the water that flows so freely, from the food from far afield.<p>There are atoms in my body that once were part of other lives, that swam in the fish off the coast of Alaska, that browsed in the herds of the Great Plains of Iowa, that grew in the fruit groves of Florida. What an impossibly unlikely reality I am, that each of us is: that the substance of the universe scattered to its ends should find itself collected and gathered, here and now in you, in me!<p>Is it real? Can it be? And can God who works this miracle a billion times over in every human being , not work a single miracle in one human being that is a billion times as great? Can the power of God that works to bring life from such a tiny beginning to its present state, to summon the substance of exploded stars to form billions of human lives, can he not continue the amazing transformation one further step in one very special human being? What if our bodies now stand in the same relation to what we shall be in the resurrection, (when we shall be like Christ in our risen spiritual bodies) as the first beginning of our lives, when we were sheltered in our mothers’ wombs no bigger than a period or a comma — not even as big as a question mark — bear to what we are now? We are only in the middle, my friends, we are in-between what once we were as a tiny speck that was almost nothing, and what we shall be in the life of the world to come: and oh, what a sight it will be.<p>+ + +<p>For we have been given a promise, my friends, a promise passed down for nearly 2,000 years, a promise first given by our Lord himself and repeated by the angel at the tomb, who reassured those fearful, faithful, women who came to find a body. “He he is not here; he has been raised; but he is going ahead to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”<p>“We will see him.” That is the promise. And it is real. We will not see him as we do now, only in the acts of charity and self-sacrifice done in his name. We will not see him only under the forms of bread and wine, as we see him now. We will not see him only in the icons and the paintings and the stained-glass windows, however beautiful they are they are only shadows of the things that are to come, when the glory is revealed, and we will see him as he is, see him with our own eyes — our own new spiritual eyes seeing him in his super-substantial, and spiritual body — raised from the dead, transformed and glorified for our sake and on our behalf, that we might be led into the way of transformation that will change us too, into his likeness and according to his great love and promise.<p>So if anyone asks you, my friends, “Is it real?” you can assure them it is the most real thing that is: more real than death, more real than life itself — this <i>new </i>life that is raised from the dead in the power and the glory of God, to whom we give, as is most justly due, all might, majesty, power and dominion, henceforth and for evermore.<p><HR>Tobias Stanislas Haller BSGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08047429477181560685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9593839.post-38733773575745239742015-03-22T15:47:00.001-04:002015-03-22T15:49:04.785-04:00The Signpost Up AheadYou don't have to go to any Twilight Zone to find a world where things are not the way they should be...<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="20" scrolling="no" src="http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=P00f18bc62fc0718d99d7511e6b9ad117Y118SlREYGtw&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap21" width="246"> </iframe><p><blockquote>Lent 5b 2015 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG <br>Now is the judgment of this world, now is the ruler of this world to be driven out; and I, when I am lifted from the earth, will draw all people to myself.+</blockquote><p>There is a 1960s TV show that has remained in reruns ever since. It’s not <i>I Love Lucy, </i>though I’m sure you would instantly recognize it from the music of the opening credits just as easily. Perhaps you know the opening text that the host recites as well as the music. “There is a land between mystery and imagination...” Do you remember? It ends, “There’s the signpost up ahead...” as the title comes shimmering into view, “The Twilight Zone.”<p>Strange things happen in the Twilight Zone; things in the Twilight Zone are not as they should be. But what I want to say to you today is that right here in this world things are not as they should be, either.<p>Things are not as they should be when people with mental illness wander the streets because hospitals have been shut down, and the small apartments they could afford to live in have been converted into condos for the one percent. Things are not as they should be where people have to live in cardboard boxes over sidewalk grates to get warm. Things are not as they should be where children go without food — not just in famine-stricken deserts or countries in the midst of war — but right here in this city, one of the wealthiest in the world. Things are not as they should be where the government cuts support for food for the poor because some think they might make a habit of eating. Things are not as they should be where corporations are treated like people, and people like commodities; where politicians of both parties sell their favors to the highest bidder, and are more interested in the next election than in doing the job they were elected for in the first place. Things are not as they should be where people are killed by those who are meant to protect their lives. Things are not as they should be where people are beheaded and burned alive, and raped and murdered and all in the name of religion.<p>No, my brothers and sisters, things are not as they should be right here amongst the swift and varied chances of this world of ours. You don’t have to go to any Twilight Zone to find a world where things are not as they should be. Things are not as they should be right here and now, and many of us are looking for a signpost up ahead to lead us to a better place.<p>Sometimes people will look backwards, back to that they like to think of as the “good old days.” But when we look to the past with a careful eye, we will find there’s nothing new in any of the problems we suffer today. Homelessness, hunger, violence, crime and crooked politicians, have been a part of human life almost from the beginning. This world of ours never <i>has </i>been what it should be — except maybe during that first afternoon, in those few precious hours in before Adam and Eve decided on an apple for dinner. Ever since God strolled by in the cool of that first human evening, and asked a terrible question, “Where are you?” — ever since, humanity has been a stranger in a strange land, where things are no longer as they should be. So there is nothing new in homelessness: Adam and Eve were the first homeless to walk the earth, when God kicked them out of Eden.<p>There is nothing new in hunger. When God led the people out of Egypt’s land, and through the Red Sea, were they grateful? No, they grumbled about the pickles they’d left behind, the delicacies of the Egyptian fleshpots. They complained, when God gave them bread from heaven, they grumbled and asked him, “Where’s the beef?” And so instead of leading them into a promised land, God kept that generation of ungrateful people marching in circles for forty years, until all the grumblers were dead.<p>There is nothing new in political deceit. Prophets tried and tried again through the history of those naughty sisters Israel and Judah, tried to warn the idolatrous rulers of the error of their ways. But did they listen? One or two, maybe, but the rest just tried to shut the prophets up — burning Jeremiah’s scroll and even tossing him down a well. There is nothing new in political corruption and cover ups — why, one ancient politician just tried to wash his hands of the whole sorry business; and you can find a picture from the photo op right over there in the First Station of the Cross: Pilate washing his hands: “It’s not about me!”<p>And, Lord knows, there is nothing new in violence. Jesus himself came into the world amidst violence and he left it amidst violence. After his birth, the boys of Bethlehem were massacred, as Herod tried to wipe out the rival child king, in one of the great crimes against humanity. And some thirty years later, we need look no further than to the cross itself to see the horror of human violence done upon another human being.<p>+ + +<p>But do that: look a week and a half ahead for a moment; look to Good Friday in your mind’s eye, look to the cross where the Savior hangs dying. Could it be that <i>this </i>is — after all — the signpost we’ve been looking for? I mentioned last week that the byway sign on the highway of our Lenten journey — on our “lighten up” Sunday in mid-Lent — pointed us towards Good Friday. The sign at the middle is the same as the sign at the end. The Good Friday cross stands as it has ever has, since that gloomy afternoon of pain and sorrow. Could it be that this is the signpost up ahead that shows us the way to the world where things <i>are </i>the way they should be? Could it be that this is the signpost up ahead that shows us the One who takes this world that God made, this world that started well but fell, and by the power of God begins to make it right? Could that be it?<p>It is at the heart of our faith to affirm, Yes, it is! The cross is the signpost where the world turns around and the new creation begins, as the world begins to become what it is meant to be. This is no easy transformation. It took the sacrifice of Christ once offered for the sake of the whole world. For that world to be set right, for that world to turn the corner and become what it should have been all along, the world itself would have to perish. Just as a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies and is reborn in the fruit it bears, so this earth would have to suffer judgment. We are still living in the last days of that judgment, the birth pangs of the new world as the old world dies and is reborn. And let me tell you, it doesn’t want to die; it’s a hard death before rebirth comes — as hard as the death of the cross. Jesus told us, “Now is the judgment of this world, now the ruler of this world will be cast out; and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”<p>He, the homeless one with no place to lay his head, is the signpost up ahead that points the way from homelessness. He leads us to an eternal home with many mansions; but he also teaches us to open our doors to welcome the stranger and the refugee. He challenges us to work and pray and give so that all of God’s children may have decent homes in which to live, in God’s world where things are the way they should be.<p>Jesus, who fasted in the wilderness, who thirsted on the cross, is the signpost up ahead that leads away from hunger. Not only does he give us his Body and Blood, as spiritual food and drink, but he gives us every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God to nourish us as can no earthly food. And he challenges us to share our abundance — for abundant it is even when we think it isn’t, even when all we’ve got is five loaves and two fish — he challenges us to share our rations with those who have less, or nothing at all, so that all may be filled, in God’s world where things are the way they should be.<p>Jesus, whom the rulers of this world connived to defeat, to find guilty before a crooked court, this Jesus is the signpost up ahead that points the way to justice. He engraves the new covenant on our hearts, the new covenant that asks that we do justice, love righteousness, and walk humbly with our God, following in the way of the cross into God’s world where things are the way they should be.<p>Jesus, the one <i>born </i>amidst violence and <i>dying </i>amidst violence — he is the signpost up ahead that transforms violence into peace, by taking the very instrument of violence, the cross, and fooling everyone — including our ancient enemy Satan — as he turns that instrument of death into the instrument of peace and life. This was the reason he came to us, this was the hour for which he was born, this was the judgment of the world, the casting out and the casting down of the ruler of this world; this was the hour when Jesus was glorified, lifted up, to draw the whole world to himself, so that it might become at last God’s world of peace where things are the way they should be.<p>+ + +<p>Good Friday is just a little over a week away. Keep your eyes on the old rugged cross. It is the signpost that leads the way to life everlasting in the kingdom of God, but also to more abundant life here and now, as each of us disciples of Christ takes up our own cross, day by day, to share what seems to be small and weak and little, but which the grace of God can magnify. Keep your eyes on that cross in the midst of homelessness and hunger and injustice and violence — but also, <i>put our hands to work,</I> right here, right now, to help to make it right. Keep your eyes on that cross and God will give you strength to endure and to do your part in turning those wrongs around, to do your part in the redemption of this world. Keep your eyes on that cross, the instrument of death that is become for us the means of life; keep your eyes on the signpost up ahead, glad to suffer shame and loss, if shamed we must be, but willing to lose all for the one thing of worth: the inestimable love of God; revealed to us in and through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.<p><HR>Tobias Stanislas Haller BSGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08047429477181560685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9593839.post-67743207569871865042015-03-15T12:52:00.001-04:002015-03-15T12:53:07.103-04:00Lift High the CrossThe cross he bore is life and health -- to us -- though shame and death to him.<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="20" scrolling="no" src="http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=P723b7aa4b052ecce13f4febb48f3a580Y118SlREYGtx&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap21" width="246"> </iframe><p><blockquote>Lent 4b 2015 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG <br>Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.</blockquote><p>Today we reach the midpoint of our Lenten journey. It marks a turning point and a resting place. I’m sure we’ve all seen the signs on the turnpikes or superhighways alerting us to the service area coming up, or those spots that are set aside for the long-distance truckers to pull off the road when they find themselves getting drowsy. We are also familiar with the sign announcing a scenic view — a spot off the road set aside for people to pull over and appreciate the countryside, the lake, or the mountain view. All of these special spots are indicated by a sign of some kind.<p>One of the signs that marks this Sunday as special is the color code — we switch from purple to rose for this Fourth Sunday in Lent. We might think of it as the color of a rosy sunset, before we plunge into the deeper evening darkness of the last half of the Lenten season leading up to the terrible events we commemorate on Good Friday, when the sky grows dark and the Son of God breathes his last.<p>But what points us towards Good Friday is the very sign we are reminded of today: and that is the cross itself. Jesus tells the crowds that just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so too the Son of Man will be lifted up. To fill in the background we are treated today to the passage from the Book of Numbers. This passage that gives us the backstory about this serpent that Moses lifts up. The wandering Israelites become inpatient, and complain about the quality of the food that God has provided (notice how foolishly ungrateful and inconsistent they are when they say there is <i>no food</I> — and we <i>hate this </i>food!). God punishes them by sending poisonous serpents to bite them, and when Moses intercedes, God instructs him to make a bronze replica of a poisonous serpent and set it on a pole. And when anyone who has been bitten by one of the real serpents looks at this bronze replica they will be healed and live.<p>Jesus applies this incident to himself — he promises that the Son of Man will be lifted up, so that whoever believes in him will be saved and have eternal life. He is referring, of course, to the cross upon which he will offer the supreme sacrifice of himself for the sake of the whole world. Why? Because, as probably the most quoted verse of Scripture puts it, “because God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through him.” This is what Jesus came for, this is what Jesus was born for, and this is why he will die — not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. The world has rejected God’s gifts and been stung by the poisonous serpent of ingratitude, and it is only by looking upon the Son of God, given for us as the greatest gift, that we can be healed. And the sign that marks this gift, this saving gift for the good of the whole world, is the cross.<p>+ + +<p>Sometimes a sign indicates ownership or possession. Along many a country road you will see signs on the trees saying, “no trespassing.” And you might well wonder, what are they so worried about out here in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes the sign of ownership or possession is symbolic and consists in planting a flag — why, there’s even a flag up on the moon; and I can guarantee you there will probably be no more trespassers there than there are in most of those remote country woods.<p>The sign of the cross fulfills a similar function — especially when we use it in baptism. Every time I baptize a child, I also mark their forehead with holy oil, making the sign of the cross and saying, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own for ever.” I like to think that when I make that same sign of the cross on people’s foreheads on Ash Wednesday that I am dusting for God’s fingerprint — the cross is already there and those ashes only make it show up so that it can be seen: truly a sign that tells you something about the one who bears it. It tells us who we belong to — the one who bought us with his own precious blood; the one who gave us life by his death, who healed us by his wounds.<p>+ + +<p>As the old hymn says, “The cross he bore is life and health” — to us — “though shame and death to him.” We were worse than just snake-bitten — and I can tell you from personal experience, a lot worse than cat-bitten! — we were, as Paul told the Ephesians, dead through our trespasses. We had not just pouted and frowned and complained about the food. We were Gentile sinners — by nature children of wrath, as Saint Paul puts it. We were not just occasional lawbreakers but renegades and outlaws, without any hope of salvation or even all that much interest in it.<p>Yet God, “who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.” And this is all by grace, all by a free gift from God to us; not because of anything we did or anything we deserved, but just <i>because God loved us</I>, so loved us that he gave his only son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. And God set up the sign for all who choose to turn towards it to see and behold — — that Good Friday two millennia ago when the Son of Man was lifted from the earth, so that any and all people could behold him in his sorrow and his glory.<p>Signs do many things. I’m old enough to remember the signs for the fallout shelters when everyone was worried an atomic war might break out any day. There are signs that tell you to stop and there are signs that tell you to yield. There are signs that tell you where to get a good deal on a used car, and there are signs that warn you not to drink the water in the pond because it is deadly poison. A sign can save your life.<p>The cross is such a sign. It is a shelter from the stormy blast, whether that blast is an atomic bomb or a frigid wind. It is a sign that tells you to stop — to stop your foolishness and look and listen and see and hear that the train is bearing down on you and will wreck you if you don’t get off the tracks. It is a sign that tells you to yield to the one to whom all obedience is due. It is a sign that points you to the best deal you will ever get in your life — salvation for free, without a price to be paid by you because someone else has paid it for you, with his own shame and death.<p>It is the cross, upon which the Son of Man was lifted up. May we who bear his name as Christians never fear to bear that cross, and trust in it, as the emblem and sign of our redemption and salvation. Lift high the Cross, my friends, lift it high, every day of your life, every way that you can — for in doing so you may call others to this banner, where they too may find shelter, peace, and life.+ <p><HR>Tobias Stanislas Haller BSGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08047429477181560685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9593839.post-70432830927215668262015-03-02T14:06:00.001-05:002015-03-02T14:12:14.553-05:00A Fair ExchangeGod gives it all and wants it all back.<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="20" scrolling="no" src="http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=Pd3bf1312b2d996a0a97c56447b9a249bY118SlREYGt2&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap21" width="246"> </iframe><p><blockquote>SJF • Lent 2b • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG <br>What will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?+</blockquote><p>God often goes to extremes to make a point. But when we read the Bible or hear a Scripture passage in church on Sunday morning, we often miss just how extreme God <i>is</I>, because we know the end of the story. We know that after Christ is betrayed, tried, tortured and crucified — that <i>he will be raised from the dead</I>. We know the happy ending, so we don’t experience this whole story as quite so suspenseful.<p>In order to get the full impact of the Scripture, put yourself for a moment in the shoes of the Big Fisherman, Peter, so put off by the whole idea, when Jesus says he is going to Jerusalem and will suffer and die there that Peter doesn’t even <i>hear </i>the part about being raised. He is not afraid to rebuke his own Lord; he isn’t about to let him put himself in danger, no siree!<p>This Gospel carries an almost unbearable message. Not only does Jesus prophesy his own death, but he says that any who choose to follow him must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow him. Does the misery of Jesus so crave company that he wants the disciples to be crucified too? Does he want <i>us</I> to be crucified?<p>The answer, of course, is No. What Jesus is doing to the disciples, and to us, is <i>daring </i>them and us <i>to risk what we love most — </i>those “dearest idols” we sang about in the hymn. Jesus challenges them — and us — to weigh our most precious possessions <br><br />
against our hope and faith in God. Jesus is defying us to put our money where their mouth is.<p>We are not quite so dramatically challenged as the disciples were, at least not usually. But there are still places in the world where being a Christian can bring you into serious danger and even death. All you have to do is listen to the news reports of churches burned with worshipers inside, of Christians being beheaded, children kidnapped and murdered. Extremists acting in the name of Islam, from Isis to Boko Haram, will maim, torture and kill anyone who stands up for Jesus against their ferocious and intolerant zeal.<p>For most of us, in what we like to think of as a more civilized country, we do not usually face attacks for being Christian. But I’m sure the people in London and Paris thought the same, when they were attacked and killed on the streets of their own cities. Most of us, we hope, in our everyday lives will not face such lethal threats or assaults.<p>But we will find challenges in having to choose between what we know in our hearts God wants for us, and what we feel in our bones we’ve just got to have for ourselves. Maybe it’s the new car; or the new PlayStation or XBox, or that shiny new Blu-Ray player.<p>Or maybe it’s something less physical? We know God wants us to be faithful in our relationships; to treat others as we know we would ourselves be treated — but then there are those temptations to cheat; and the wandering eye can lead you astray. We know God wants us to be loving parents; but then sometimes the kids are such a chore, such a pain in the you know what — it’s easier to send them out to spend time on their own, to send them out into the streets rather than to spend time with them. We know God wants us to be honest; but it’s so tempting to pad the expense account, or fail to report that little under-the-table cash that comes in on form 1040 that comes around this time of year.<p>What does God ask of us? Our deaths? No. Not really; does he? No, I think God asks for something simpler, and maybe, like many simple things, harder in the long run. God does not ask for our deaths, but our lives. God asks us for our love — love for him and for each other. It seems simple; but like many simple things it’s hard, really hard. Because we all experience the forces pulling us the other way: possessions, relationships, and the four P’s: position, power, prominence and pride.<p>Saint Paul knew all about it. He knew from personal experience how these things work in our lives, pulling us away from God. Remember how he said, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do...” Paul knew how hard it was; he knew the downside; he knew the temptation, he knew about the powerlessness in the face of temptation: the wretchedness of knowing what is right but not being able to do it. But Paul also knew the upside! He knew that even if he couldn’t fight it on his own, God could. God could empty him of his sin, and fill him right back up to the brim with grace.<p>Paul knew that God could raise him up, even if it was God knocked him down in the first place. (Sometimes God puts those he loves through the wringer. Who did he love more than his Son?) And yet Paul laid it out in black and white: Jesus “was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.” “Handed over to death” — not just the cross, which is bad enough — but death upon it: that slow, painful death of hanging, nailed to a tree, for a tired, painful afternoon. Think of that: to die that way, hanging there, bleeding to death and suffocating — not an easy death. And God didn’t do any kind of last minute rescue on Jesus, as had happened with Isaac, when God stopped Abraham’s hand and let him spare Isaac’s life. He was the one promised in God’s covenant, the promise that Abraham would be the father of many nations, and Sarah would be the mother. Now, as you know, the only child this aged couple had was Isaac — yet God challenged Abraham to give up that child of the promise, testing his faithfulness, offering him up to death; testing him, but then rescuing Isaac at the last minute, and stopping Abraham’s hand — and that proved how faithful Abraham was: because he was willing to risk the promise.<p>But there was no rescue for Jesus, for God’s own Son. There was no army of angels to fly in and knock down the Romans, there was no one to deliver him from the cross. Instead there was that painful death, then after the death prying at the nails — think about that: pulling nails out of someone’s flesh to take him down from the cross, the clumsy lowering down to the ground, and the waiting, weeping mother raising a cry to split the heavens.<p>And yet, Paul assures us that even if this is how God treated his own son <i>for our sake</I> will he not do more for us, now that the cost has been paid? Yes, Jesus died. But Paul also assures us that he was raised from the dead — why? For us; <i>for our justification</I>. And with Jesus on our side, the risen Jesus who lives for ever, with him on our side who — or what— can keep us from God? That is Paul’s good news, that is his Gospel.<p>Yes, we suffer temptations; yes, we have desires we can’t control; yes, we fall and we fail. But the grace of God can restore us, can lift us back up again, can raise us up, even as he raised up Christ — “who was handed over to death for <i>our </i>trespasses and yet was raised for <i>our </i>justification.” God took an old man and woman, childless and comfortless, and made of them a multitude of nations, the parents of kings of peoples. God took the lifeless body of his own Son and worked upon it in the silence of the tomb, bringing life from the dead. And so too God will work on us, dead in our sins, or dead in the grave. Gaining the whole world will profit us nothing if we lose eternal life. But if we risk our lives — our lives in the here and now, and lose them for the sake of the gospel, not ashamed to name Jesus as Lord and savior, he will indeed save us, and raise us up on the last day. Nothing can stop the power of God at work in Christ, and in us, through him.<p>+ + +<p>Though we will never likely face death for our Lord, we will undergo those prosaic trials, those day-to-day temptations, but even — especially in them because that is what is before us — we can call upon the same faith and hope that raised the hearts of Abraham and Paul. That faith included several basic truths of which we sometimes lose sight.<p>First, everything we are, everything we have comes from God. When God asks for something back, he is only asking us to return something we have received from him. We say “All things come of thee, O God, and of thine own have we given thee” perhaps so often we forget how true it is! All things come from God and it is out of that we give back. And what a radical statement it is! Everything belongs to God! You, the clothes you are wearing now, your car, your Blu-Ray, even your Xbox, your shoes! Everything belongs to God.<p>Second, God doesn’t ask for <i>everything </i>back right now. He lets you keep the car, he lets you keep the XBox, keep the Blu-Ray. You can keep your shoes on. God doesn’t take it all back — until we die, and as the saying goes, you can’t take it with you. But in the meantime God accepts the part that we offer, even though God <i>could </i>ask for it all right now. Right now, the earth could open up and swallow this church and we’d all be dead and buried. That hasn’t happened in 150-some years; let’s hope it doesn’t happen in another 150! God could do that, right now. But God doesn’t. Instead God asks us to offer something, some part of what we have been given. What God wants is for our hearts to be free so that if we <i>were</I> asked to give everything we would be willing to give it; so that at the end, when in fact it all will fall away and we pass into death, we will be ready to let it all go — returning everything to God, including our selves, our souls and bodies as a reasonable and holy sacrifice given completely to him. What a wonderful feeling that will be, if we’ve learned in the meantime how to let go. This is like training wheels, my friends: learning to let go of part of things as we live, so that at the end, when we die, we will be ready to let go of all of it.<p>Remember those words from the hymn we sang at the Gospel: “The dearest idol I have known, whate’er that idol be: help me to tear it from thy throne and worship only thee.” When we put something else on God’s throne, we have lost sight of God. When we treasure anything more than God, well: he told us where you treasure is, there your heart will be also. And so God asks us for <i>something</I> back, some part of our treasure, just to show that we can let go, and give up, for him — for him, the one who gave us everything.<p>That is how God lets us see where our hearts are. For if we treasure anything more than God, the pain when we let go of it will let us know. Just as pain is the body’s way of letting us know something is wrong, so too that pinch, that regret when we let go of what we offer lets us know our heart-strings are still tied to it and we haven’t yet learned how to “let go and let God.” God wants us to be free, my friends, free from everything, even everything that he gave us, including our lives. And if we can learn to give up those <i>somethings </i>in the here and now, we will be ready to give up <i>everything</I> when the time comes for us to do so, at the end of our lives.<p>Everything belongs to God; and God wants it all, but in the mean time we honor God with what we give, when we offer the portion of our gift here at the altar, giving thanks to Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom we know, one day, we shall have to render a full account.+<p><HR>Tobias Stanislas Haller BSGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08047429477181560685noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9593839.post-78033484977473852692015-02-22T13:28:00.001-05:002015-02-22T13:31:36.154-05:00Through What Door?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-J_yh13DLeyo/VOogJJTMPoI/AAAAAAAACew/i0BzJrgu94Q/s1600/sjfnaveceiling.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-J_yh13DLeyo/VOogJJTMPoI/AAAAAAAACew/i0BzJrgu94Q/s1600/sjfnaveceiling.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>Each of us has come on board this ark of salvation, sometimes kicking and screaming, sometimes in search of answers.<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="20" scrolling="no" src="http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=Pdfbb797426ca9c78990b058d20a08766Y118SlREYGt3&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap21" width="246"> </iframe><p><blockquote>SJF • Lent 1b • Tobias S Haller BSG <br>God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you.</blockquote><p>My friend Peter — named for the saint, of course — entered into Christ through a little blue door. He came to Columbia University in the late sixties as a graduate student, with the usual doubts and hopes of young men of that age, and that time and that place. People were saying that God was dead — yet the church still seemed to have some utility. The civil rights struggle showed the church was still one of the few things still alive and kicking against a world whose heart it seems had grown cold.<p>Peter was an intelligent young man, with a passion for justice and civil rights, and a cultured taste in art and music — he was studying medieval literature. But he wanted to learn more about the church before he got too involved with this whole “religion” thing.<p>And so he called on his neighborhood parish church, which, if you know Columbia will know just happens to be the Cathedral Church of St John the Divine. Given his intellect, passion for civil rights, and his taste for art, the choice was natural: the Episcopal Church was considered “the thinking person’s church” and the Cathedral leaders had taken a strong stand for civil rights, at the cost of a few wealthy donors. And there was no denying the beauty of that building, even in its unfinished state — and it’s still unfinished fifty years later!<p>Peter called the and they connected him with Canon West, who, the receptionist thought, would be the best person to talk with him about religion. Peter found Canon West much too busy to see him that week, but West told him that if he would come to the little blue door he would find half-way up the cathedral on the southern side at about 10:45 next Sunday morning he might have some time to talk with him about religion.<p>Peter had come of age in a culture that had forgotten what it is that goes on in cathedrals on Sundays at about 10:45, so he was caught short went through that little blue door into that cavernous space and asked for Canon West. Before he knew what was happening, he was whisked into the sacristy; many helping hands vested and girded him and dressed him up in an acolyte’s outfit, then handed him a one of the massive crucifixes that they use there at the Cathedral — and they weigh about 70 pounds! — and pushed him towards the head of a procession, maintained in place by Canon West’s stern eye and finger-snaps, and the nods, gestures and elbows of more experienced servers at the altar.<p>Peter was confused, but also furious, but he dared not challenge the imposing Canon West — with his bald head, black goatee and long black cape, who knows what powers might be at his disposal? Even <i>had </i>he dared, before he could protest, he was swept up in the worship — right at the head of the procession, along with at least three more crosses behind him, along with the embroidered banners that emerged from clouds of incense, floating like the masts and sails of ancient dream-ships navigating the valleys of those towering rough-hewn rock columns and walls. The roar of the organ resounded in the caverns of that space, the waves and wash of breakers of sound resounded and echoed back and forth — after all, the Cathedral is an eighth of a mile long; ranks of choristers and clergy in vestments ancient and modern, gloriously colorful, gold and scarlet; and there was Peter right in front — just behind the man with the incense-pot swinging and twirling the prayers of the saints up and up into that now invisible dome — and the congregation bowing in waves as he passed with that cross, as if pressed down by the weight of glory<i> he </i>was carrying.<p>And all the while all he could think was, “I’ll kill him!”<p>When the worship ended, as he was hanging up the borrowed vestment, still quivering with rage and disorientation, Canon West came up behind him, and laid a bony hand on his shoulder. The old priest spun him around, fixed him with a stern look, out from underneath those bushy eyebrows, and said, “Now, my boy, I’m prepared to talk to you about our religion.”<p>+ + +<p>Lent is upon us, a time in the church year when we raise the intensity a notch in our efforts to think about our religion. I’m sure all of us here could tell a tale about how we got here — through what little blue door each of us passed to enter the ark of salvation. That’s what it is, you know, this church of ours. It was prefigured, as Saint Peter tells us, in the ark in which Noah and his family were kept safe amidst the waters of the flood. Our church is an ark. As I have pointed out before, churches are often built like upside-down boats: if you look up to our ceiling there, in that part of the church called the “nave” — which also betrays its <i>naval </i>origins — you’ll see that the ribs of a boat’s hull have become the ribs that hold up our roof.<p>Each of us could tell how we boarded this upside-down boat, through what little blue — or red — door — even if we were carried in kicking and screaming when we were just a few weeks old. And yet here we are, the company of the baptized, some of you baptized right here in this font — I know, because I was the one that did it! We are gathered here together in this boat, a boat that has no first or second class passengers, no steerage for the poor, nor staterooms for the rich — but just one big lifeboat!<p>+ + +<p>It may seem strange to start the season of Lent with Scriptures all of which refer to baptism either directly or figuratively — since by tradition Lent is the one time of the year during which baptisms are not performed! But Lent anciently was the time when people were prepared for baptism at Easter; it was during these weeks that they studied, and fasted, and prayed to be ready to be baptized at the Great Vigil of Easter. And so we begin our Lent reminded of baptism, and of the fact that the church — this church, not just the building, not just the upside-down boat, but we the people are the company of the baptized, and it is worth reflecting on what it means to be on board this boat — and to reflect on where this boat is heading.<p>So this year, I want to use our Lent together to focus on what it means to be the church — this gathering of people who have been through the little blue door, a little red door, who have been washed in the waters of baptism, and fed with the bread of heaven. For this is how it begins, my friends — in the church as the ark of salvation. Now, some might be tempted to ask, “Isn’t there salvation outside the church?” well, it is not for me to speculate on God’s grace, or to place limits upon it. God can and will save whomever and however God pleases to do so. Is there salvation outside the ark of the church, outside the lifeboat? I hope so — there may be some good swimmers out there! But I <i>know </i>that there is salvation<i> inside</I> the ark of the church, <i>inside </i>the lifeboat; and it is my calling and my task — as it is yours, my friends — to gather up people floating out there in life jackets before they freeze to death!<p>We will not do this merely by talking to them about religion — there is plenty of talk about religion out there, my friends, and much of it probably keeps people <i>away</I> from church rather than bringing them <i>to </i>it. No, the answer is to invite them here, through our little <i>red </i>door, into <i>this </i>lifeboat, the one we know, where we <i>can </i>hear words about religion — but more importantly be dressed in a new garment, given a cross to bear, hear the music and the song and join in it too, and be fed with the bread and nourished with the wine, and not just hear words about God but give thanks to the <i>Word </i>of God — Jesus the Christ.<p>This is the Gospel Cruise my friends: the ark of salvation right on the corner of Jerome Avenue and 190th St in the Beautiful Bronx — as unbelievable and specific as God being born in a stable, and as wonderful and as gracious as being pulled from freezing water into a lifeboat.<p>This is where it all starts my friends — there will be time to talk about it later; but those who want <i>assurance </i>of salvation will first come on board.<p>When they have gone through the little door, blue or red, been clothed anew with the garment of baptism, and have carried the cross while rows of their sisters and brothers bow in reverence to the powerful symbol of the unspoken and unspeakable Word above all words and worlds — then, as Canon West said, there will be time to talk about our religion.+<p><HR>Tobias Stanislas Haller BSGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08047429477181560685noreply@blogger.com2