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Ash Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2015
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford, CT
Isaiah 58: 1-12 Psalm 103:8-14
2 Cor. 5:20b-6:10 Matt. 6:1-6, 16-21
The Rev. Bennett A. Brockman, Ph.D., Deputy Rector
The Grace of Ashes
If you’re here for this service (or bothering to read this sermon), chances are you already get it about Ash Wednesday and what the smudge of ashes imposed on your forehead means: that we are finite human beings—dust we are and to dust we shall return; that all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God; and that we must be mindful of how we practice our piety, not for public approval but from the impulse of the heart; and that a gracious God is ready to forgive us each time we recognize our sin, repent, and seek God’s mercy.
I think even those Christians who have time only for “ashes to go” on their way to work or in the midst of their busy work day, even those who want their ashes out of some dimly remembered sense of obligation, that that’s what one must do on Ash Wednesday, they also understand that there’s something deeply basic to Christianity about Ash Wednesday—even if they couldn’t quite put their finger on what it is.
I suspect that the something folks perhaps couldn’t name is, in fact, humility. Not the showy and superficial appearance of humility that Isaiah denounces, but something more deeply grounded, something that takes us near to the heart of God. So I want to take a few minutes and meditate about why it is that humility is rightly considered a primary Christian virtue. It is the first of the beatitudes; Jesus says that those who are “poor in spirit” are blessed, and heirs of God’s realm (Matthew 5:3).
Recall first that humility is paired against pride, the cardinal sin. Why? Because the proud person is self-sufficient, having little need for anyone else, especially not God. Humility is the opposite virtue precisely because it begins in the acknowledgement of insufficiency, and it longs for God’s presence and aid. That’s why it is easier for me at least to admire a searching agnostic than an overconfident believer.
Receiving the ashes implies humility, a willingness to be open to the operation of the divine power. Humility opens the door that pride closes, indeed slams shut. It is an active, not a passive virtue. Because humility resides in the longing for God its natural work is to clear away the false gods that stand between God and the believer—including even the ceremonies and rituals—like the imposition of ashes—that Isaiah decries for having become ends in themselves.
Humility opens the connection between our deep being and God. The more honest we can be about who we really are, the more fully we then access the grace that brings us more fully into being the person God created us to become, the deep self made wholly in God’s image.
Because of Sunday’s snowstorm, we omitted the usual ritual of burning last year’s palm crosses from Palm Sunday to create this year’s ashes for Ash Wednesday. And we discovered that we had plenty of ashes left over from previous years. There’s no shortage of ashes. A little goes a long way.
In the same way, there’s no shortage of grace, and humility opens the channel through which grace surges. And to dwell in humility is to be continually open to grace. Which is a good thing, because that’s how often we need grace. Continually. “Now is the acceptable day of salvation,” St Paul says. And now and today continually recur, and abounding grace never ceases.
And grace entering our lives through humility transfigures us human beings, just as Jesus was transfigured, just as St Paul also affirms in that great passage in II Cor. 4: “God has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” And the glory that shines within us is nothing less than an anticipation of “an eternal weight of glory” Paul continues, that is still to come.
Yet I suspect we fear this glory. At least I do. We are vividly aware that the light of the glory of God in Christ we carry in our hearts is held in what Paul describes as “clay jars,” our very limited human selves, the very selves we acknowledge with the imposition of ashes. That fear rightly constrains us; it reminds us that the grace and glory are rooted not in pride but in humility.
At the same time, that fear constrains us inappropriately. Because the ashes that are imposed on us today signify not only that we are dust and to dust we will return, they also signify that because we in humility walk the way of the Cross we are also the glory of God and empowered to manifest God’s glory in this world. St Irenaeus said, “the glory of God is the human being fully alive—and the life of human kind is the vision of God.” That balance of humble receptivity to the vision of God, alongside the confidence of God’s glory dwelling within, empowers us to become the person God created us to be, and so to confidently to BE God’s person in the world, and confidently to do the work Isaiah so magnificently describes as the fast that pleases God: to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless—work that this parish and so many people in it are so diligently devoted to. This of course is also the work that Jesus enjoined his followers to carry out, caring for the least of these his brothers and sisters.
The great blessing to reside humbly in that place, to be that Christian, to boldly do that work, is as Isaiah promised, to be the watered garden, the spring of never-failing water, the restorer of the streets we live in, and the homes wherein we dwell.
Amen.
Trinity Episcopal Church
Last Sunday of Epiphany
February 15, 2015
Today is the last Sunday after Epiphany – a season when we have been looking at the various ways Jesus was revealed to the world as the Messiah, starting with his birth in a manger in Bethlehem. This morning we have two of the more spectacular and amazing stories of the Judaeo-Christian scriptures: Chapter 2 of the 2nd book of Kings recounts the ascension of the prophet Elijah into the heavens – escorted by horses and chariots of fire. (Now that’s what I call a hot ride!) The Gospel of Mark recounts the mountaintop experience of the disciples Peter, James and John as they witness their friend Jesus transfigured before their very eyes and engaging in conversation with the same Elijah and Moses.
Both of these events are of enormous significance in our biblical faith. Both the passage from Kings and the passage from Mark remind us that God acts in the world but is not bound by it – that God acts IN time but is not time-bound – the events we read about this morning transcend both space and time. And when you think about it, that is one of the qualities that makes God God.
We, on the other hand, being both earth- and time-bound, live in a liminal time smack in the middle of a past which is closed to us and a future which is unknown. As St. Augustine notes in Chapter 11 of The Confessions, we are forced to act within a tiny window of time – the present – since the past is unrecoverable and the future is not yet available.
That is the situation Elisha finds himself in this morning. And I would like to suggest that despite all the pyrotechnics surrounding Elijah and Jesus in the passages we heard, the real story line this morning is around the changing of the guard -- passing the torch from one generation of leadership to the next. In the Second Book of Kings, we see the development of the young prophet Elisha – Elijah’s designated successor. He is facing the question, “How do I act in the present to remain faithful to an unfathomable God in the face of an unknowable future?” We see in Elisha this morning at least four qualities that give us some guidance here on picking up the mantel of leadership.
First, Elisha is assertive. Notice the term Assertive. I did not say pushy, rude, presumptuous, opinionated, self-righteous or overpowering. The word I used was assertive. You know, one of the first things our Stephen Minsters learned was how to be “assertive Christians.” The term means owning our faith, doing what we need to do to be spiritually fed and to be faithful to our Christian beliefs, seeking and obtaining the resources we need to do that consistent with the rest of the body of our Christian faith.
Elisha did that. Even though Elijah keeps telling him to stay put while he moves on, Elisha – in scenes that remind us of Ruth and Naomi in the Book of Ruth – Elisha firmly insists on accompanying his master. It also reminds us of Jacob wrestling with the angel in Genesis 32:26, where he says, “I won’t let you go until you bless me.” It cost him a broken hip but he got his blessing. Now this may seem a bit over the top for those among us are a little tentative about asking for “the hard thing” as Elisha does this morning when he asks Elijah for a “double portion” of Elijah’s spirit. How many times do we as Christians avoid or walk away from situations that invite us – challenge us, perhaps, or demand us – to affirm our faith because we either don’t trust ourselves enough – or perhaps it is that we don’t trust God enough. Elisha knew he needed to be with his master in order to get what he needed to serve as his successor – and he did it.
Second, Elisha and companies of prophets asked the questions. You know, I think so many times in life when we are struggling to find answers to seemingly insoluble challenges, the real problem is that we haven’t asked the right questions. And if you have haven’t asked the right question, you’re going to have a heck of a time finding the right answers. Not once but twice, two different companies of prophets approach Elisha to ask, “Do you know that today the lord will take your master away from you?” Under the text, Elisha is surely asking, “How will I fill this guy’s sandals?” “How will I live up to the stature of the man who braved storm and monarchs in the name of the Lord?”
Perhaps a still deeper question for Elisha is, “What do you do when the person associated with something larger than life is gone?” Elijah was an undisputed man of God – Elisha’s problem is how you go from understudy to lead actor – from apprentice to journeyman? And we as Christians have a similar challenge, don’t we? Since Jesus’ ascension, his disciples have been discerning what it means to take up his cross and follow him. Just as Elijah left Elisha his mantel, so Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit to guide us into that uncertain future. So stopping for a moment and asking the important questions is a second important quality of Elisha.
Third, Elisha listens. Every time the prophets ask him if he knows his master is going to be taken from him, he replies, “I know – be quiet already.” He tells them to be silent. And just as Elijah strained to hear the sound of God not in the fire or the wind but in the silence, so Elisha seeks God’s voice in the silence. How many times do we tend to act more like Peter in the Transfiguration scene? Terrified by what he is witnessing, he doesn’t know what to say but, in classical Peter style, he says something anyway. . . Oops. And you notice the first thing Peter tries to do is to take the transcendent experience of being in the presence of the transfigured Jesus and Elijah and Moses and breaking it down to human size – he wants to build three houses for the three of them to stay in. But God brings Peter back on track by revisiting words heard at Jesus’ baptism: “This is my beloved son, LISTEN TO HIM.” We need to listen to and for that still small voice of God, especially in the big transition times of our lives.
Fourth and finally, Elisha ACTS – he follows the lead that his assertiveness, his questioning and his listening direct him to. Having taken the time to ask the right questions, and patiently listened to God’s words of guidance, Elisha himself was empowered to take his own turn at spiritual leadership of his people.
Elijah ascended into the heavens, but it was young Elisha who experiences his own transfiguration in this morning’s lesson from Second Kings. Whereas Jesus is transfigured in blinding light, revealing his divine nature and his spiritual connection to the great prophets of Israel, the “figure” of Elisha is transformed – transfigured, if you will – from boy/assistant to man/leader. He will claim Elijah’s mantel and go on to do great things in his own right, even though for today, as the passage ends this morning, Elisha is left in the “in between” space between Elijah's greatness of the past and his own greatness of the future. He is alone and tearing his garments in two as he grieves the loss of his spiritual father – but two verses later he will be picking up the mantel that fell from Elijah’s shoulders as he ascended into heaven.
Elisha’s life, his “transfiguration” – can serve as a parable of our own transfiguration as individuals and as worshipping community of faith. But to do so, we need to watch what is going on before us and behind us, and ask the right questions. We need to silently reflect on what we are hearing. Then we have to have the willingness to act – take up that cross and follow Jesus. Only then will we be ready to accept the mantel that both Elisha and Jesus offer to us. AMEN.
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford
Epiphany 5 –February 8, 2015
Isaiah 40: 21-31
“Spiritual Amnesia”
Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. Isaiah 40:30-31.
Do you suffer from spiritual amnesia? Do you ever feel like you’ve lost your bearings? That you don’t know how or where you fit in? That you are unsure of what the future holds and you’re not sure about your ability to meet its demands? Do you sometimes where God is in the midst of everything going on in the world or in your life? Do you ever wonder if there really is a God out there? Then you may be suffering from spiritual amnesia.
I remember the fall of 1987, when I was just beginning my first political campaign as a candidate for the Board of Education in Glastonbury. Being a political neophyte, one of our senior Board members, Helen Stern, took me under her wing and the two of us went out campaigning door to door one Saturday morning. From about 9 a.m. to nearly 4 p.m. we walked, door to door, through the neighborhoods of hilly eastern Glastonbury. On Monday, I spoke to Helen, probably 20 years older than me, and told her that after our day’s journey on Saturday I was virtually in extremis with everything aching – I think even my hair ached. She told me that on Sunday she had gone hiking up Talcott Mountain. Clearly Helen was energized by our mission, not exhausted by it; just as clearly, I had a lot to learn.
This morning’s passage from Isaiah has always been one of my favorites, because it reminds me that God, the source of my very being, is also the source of my continued strength. It is also a good reminder of the importance of remembering from whence we come and whose we are. For when that memory fails, we forget our identity; and when a community of faith forgets its roots, and when it forgets those roots, the future of the community itself is threatened.
This passage, which comes from the second portion of the very long Book of the Prophet Isaiah, was written during the period of the Babylonian exile, when the Israelites were without a home, frightened of the present and despairing of their future. The people of Israel were doubting YHWHs promises about their future, and wondering about the power of YHWH to bring them into that promised future. Their feelings are summed up in verse 27: Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God”? They could have concluded that the gods of Babylon were stronger than their God, or that their God doesn’t exist at all. Instead, they believe that their God has simply lost interest in them and focused attention elsewhere.
This morning’s passage is comprised of two sections. The passage begins with Isaiah confronting his readers with the questions: Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? He goes on to remind them that it is YHWH that created everything they have; it is YHWH that is eternal and everlasting; YHWH’s creatures, by contrast, are temporary, fragile, and ultimately passes away. The second half of the passage, from verses 28-31, begins with those same questions. Then it goes on to remind Israel that the same God who created them and established them as God’s chosen people will sustain them in the present and lead them into a brighter future. Where the people of Israel question and doubt, the prophet reassures them that God is tireless, that God will not forget them or leave them helpless.
The chaos and the turbulence of the Babylonian exile have caused the people of Israel to forget their own story, the story of God’s faithfulness and attentiveness to his people. The problem does not lie with God; it lies with Israel itself.
The prophet Isaiah was writing to his people about the faithfulness of YHWH, in the context of God’s saving works for the people of Israel. As 21st century Christians, some 2600 years after Isaiah’s passage was written, we hear Isaiah’s words this morning filtered through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Isaiah asked his people, in verse 26, Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because he is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing. In John 17.12, Jesus says While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled.
Isaiah was writing to a people who were exiles in a foreign land. They were in the midst of a world that worshipped very different Gods. They had gone from having their own kingdom to having nothing. Nothing about their future was certain, and they were struggling to find a way forward.
So much around us in this 21st century world can make us feel like the Israelites of Isaiah’s time: confused by the events around us and facing an uncertain future. It is easy – perhaps it is even our human instinct – at times like these, to give up hope and to feel like God has forgotten us. We can sometimes even feel afraid of hoping for a better future lest we feel the pain of disappointment yet one more time. We can be less impressed by the grandeur of God’s creative power and focus more on all that is wrong in the world, all that is wrong in our society or closer to home, the pain in the depths of our own suffering.
I can tell you that during months of dealing with the whooping cough, I have experienced times like that. While I hoped that the worst of it would be over in a month or so, the doctor’s prediction that it might take 5 or 6 months or even longer to fully recover have turned out to be the case. At various times my emotions have swayed between anger and becoming depressed over my situation, from flickers of hope on days when I was beginning to feel good to days of having that hope evaporate as I reverted back to coughing and having no energy. And my prayers frequently included an impatient, “Okay, God, this has gone on long enough. Can you work with me here?” And you know, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that I have begun to realize how God has been working on me during this long illness. It has not yet been fully revealed and may not be for a while, but I do know God has been at work.
Like the Israelites, we all can begin to wonder if God has forgotten us. We might even wonder how powerful God is when we are confronted with so much that is not of God; we may occasionally even wonder if God really exists.
To such questions, Isaiah does not provide us an easy answer. In verse 28 the prophet writes that God’s understanding is unsearchable; we, as God’s finite, liminal creatures, can never fully understand how God works in the world, why war, suffering, poverty and injustice continue. Isaiah does call us to remember; he assures us that the God who created us, who counts each one of us and calls us each by name (v. 26) is faithful to us. Even more than the assurance of the prophet, we have the assurance that God has not forgotten us in the person and self-giving of Jesus Christ. When the way is unclear, we who wait upon the Lord can trust in the Lord’s faithfulness, and will have our strength renewed; God will indeed be with us to rise above our present obstacles into the hope of God’s promised future. With that divine promise, join me now in praying the reassuring words of Hymn #185 in the Lift Every Voice and Sing hymnal, Blessed Quietness:
Joys are flowing like a river, since the comforter has come;
He abides with us forever, makes the trusting heart His home.
Refrain:
Blessed quietness, holy quietness, what assurance in my soul,
On the stormy sea, Jesus speaks to me, and the billows cease to roll.
Bringing life an d health and gladness, all around the heavenly guest,
Banished unbelief and sadness, changed our weariness to rest.
Like the rain that falls from heaven, like the sunlight from the sky,
So the Holy Ghost is given, coming on us from on high.
See, a fruitful field is growing, blessed fruit of righteousness;
And the streams of life are flowing in the lonely wilderness.
What a wonderful salvation, when we always see His face,
What a perfect habitation, what a quiet resting place.
AMEN.
Epiphany IV B February 1, 2015
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford, CT
Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Psalm 111; I Corinthians 8: 1-13; Mark 1: 21-28
Theological Education Offering Sunday
Let us pray: “O God,Grant that your Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit may choose suitable persons for the ministry of Word and Sacrament and may uphold their work for the extension of your kingdom.” (p. 256, BCP) AMEN
As many of you know, I am the Executive Director of the Society for the Increase of the Ministry or S.I.M. You may also know that SIM and Trinity have a long history. SIM was founded in Hartford in 1857; Trinity, in Hartford in 1859. For much of our first 150 years, SIM’s operations were managed from shared space at Trinity. Your rector received a SIM scholarship when he was a seminary student at Berkeley Divinity School at Yale. Your warden, Percy Williamson, works three days a week at SIM doing six days of effort. Recently, SIM returned to her roots here as a rent paying tenant on the second floor of the parish house. We are very pleased with our close relationship with Trinity.
This is a special day for SIM because, decades ago, long before Super Bowl Sunday became that almost religious holiday in America, the first Sunday in February was established by the Church as “Theological Education Offering Sunday”—a day for focusing the Church’s attention on the importance of supporting education and formation of future priests. Providing scholarships to individuals called to become Episcopal priests is SIM’s ministry. So for SIM, this day could be considered our Super Bowl Sunday, but with a bit less media hype, fewer video interviews and no half-time performance.
In each of today’s readings there is a focus on the importance God calling leaders from their communities to serve and increase God’s ministry. In Deuteronomy, Moses toward the end of his life, said to the Israelite community, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people.” That was some 4000 years ago. Calling leaders was important to God then and it is today as well. In Corinthians, Paul writes of a critical attribute of a church leader— “Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; but anyone who loves God, is known by him.” In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus speaks with authority because he is called by God, loves God and is intimately known by God as His only Son.
All of us have a calling from God. Some are called to the ordained priesthood; others to positions, no less important as part of the body of Christ. We all have roles to play. During our almost 20 years of living in Boston, I would regularly visit with Neil, an older friend who unselfishly shared his wisdom about my career and direction in life. One of the many memorable maxims that Neil conveyed to me relates to the calling each of us has. I can hear his gravelly voice now, “You know, Tom, we are all put on this earth to figure out how we can help.” Neil lived out that belief. He shared generously, helping others to find and live into their own true callings. If he were alive today he would answer my phone call the way he always did, “Hello, Tom, how can I help?”
The author and Presbyterian minister Frederick Beuchner describes a woman’s response to his being called to ordination. She said: “I hear you are entering the ministry. Was it your own idea or were you poorly advised?” Beuchner didn’t have the words at that moment but later came to realize how he could have responded, “It was not an idea at all, neither my own or anyone else’s. It was a lump in the throat. It was a stirring in the blood at the sound of rain. It was a sickening of the heart at the sight of misery. It was a name which I knew was a name worth dying for, even if I was not brave enough to do the dying myself and could not, for sure, even name the name.”
I vividly recall the CALL unfolding to my wife, the Reverend Helen Moore as we drove down US 1 in Swampscott, MA some 30 years ago. At that time, with the demands of raising five children and me lessening, she had returned to school to earn her masters in counseling and consulting psychology at Harvard. Our faith had become central to our lives and had provided us with the courage to move our family from our lifelong home and family in Tennessee to a new adventure in Boston where we felt God had called us. Helen had been convinced for some time that I was called to the priesthood. “I don’t see why you don’t see that you are called,” she said for the umpteenth time. Feeling somewhat like what I imagine Moses was feeling when he said to God in this morning’s reading, “If I hear the voice of the Lord my God any more, …”, I responded to Helen, “It’s not me who’s called. It’s you!” It wasn’t long before her esteemed professor at Harvard’s School of Education said to her, “Surely you know that your true calling is at the Divinity School.” God was at work, her call was being confirmed, her journey to priesthood had begun.
What’s important about Helen’s story is that being attentive to her community’s various arms matching her inner stirrings brought about her Epiphany. I feel blessed to have played my part and answered my call to tell her – “not me, you.” One could say, along with others, I was “nudged” to say those prophetic words.
Some years later, when we were in Chicago, I did respond to my own call to the priesthood. All went well through parish sponsorship, the discernment committee and even acceptances at seminaries, but not by my bishop. Though all was very positive on paper, my bishop’s gut told him it was not the priesthood to which I was called. Begrudgingly this important arm of my community was speaking. Though I was very upset with my bishop, I now realize some ten years later that the bishop’s “nudging” me in another was right for the Church and a gift to me. My increasingly vital call as an Episcopal layman has led to finding joy, value, purpose and meaning in my ministry at SIM. Not all are called to the ordained ministry.
I think it is all of our responsibilities to “help” identify and affirm people finding their calls to their own church ministry. Last year, I almost missed an opportunity to practice what I preach. A teenage acolyte had served with me at Communion in a church in Florida. I was impressed with his presence and comfort around the altar, but had not thought about making any comment. Then, there came a moment after the service when the young man and I were alone in the vesting room. I felt a “nudge,” but thought surely a teenager wouldn’t welcome thoughts of his having a ministry. The “nudge” pushed me. “John, you seemed comfortable, respectful and reverent around the altar. Have you ever thought that maybe the ministry might be in your future?” I braced for his response. He shrugged, “Yeah, maybe.” I thought that was a success and would hear nothing further. But a couple of weeks later, SIM received a generous check and a comment from his grandmother who had learned of John’s and my brief encounter.
This is SIM’s calling today — to support, affirm and encourage. It dates back 157 years to our founding purpose words: “to find suitable individuals for the Episcopal ministry and aid them in acquiring a thorough education.”
And, what about your calls to ministry as members of the body of Christ? Affirming and encouraging each other’s calls will undoubtedly “increase the ministry” of this wonderful church. You might get a “Yeah maybe” response. You might get a “not me, you” answer. But who knows, your “nudge” might even be prophetic. May God bless each of your calls to increase the ministry of Trinity Sigourney Street.
AMEN.
January 25, 2015
Third Sunday After Epiphany, Year B
Trinity Hartford
The Rev. Dr. Frank G. Kirkpatrick
Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Psalm 62: 7-9
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Mark 1:14-20
Our three readings from Scripture this morning all deal with the issue of call, challenge, and change and our tendency to offer resistance to them because they will upset well-established patterns of living and thinking. In many ways this issue continues the lesson from last Sunday on which Don preached regarding Samuel’s call from God, a call which he also initially resisted or at least misunderstood, thinking it was Eli calling him.
At the heart of each story is a call either directly from God, in the case of Jonah, or from Jesus to the fishermen, or through the community Jesus left for us after his resurrection, as presented in Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth.
It takes Jonah two times to respond to God’s command that he warn the people of Nineveh; it took Samuel 3 times to get God’s call right; but the fishermen whom Jesus encounters along the shore of the Sea of Galilee took only an instant to cast their nets aside and followed him “immediately”. We don’t really know how readily the congregation at Corinth followed Paul’s injunction that those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who buy be as though they had no possessions, and those who deal with the world be as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away. The challenge in Paul’s words is extreme but it makes the same point that is made in the other readings, that radical and dramatic change is underway. Jesus also makes this clear in his very first words as he begins his public ministry: repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand.
In one way we don’t need much preparation to get into these stories because we live daily in a world that is undergoing constant change, challenge, and even catastrophe. We know what it is like to live in a world that is not secure or safe as we face the dangers of terrorism and random violence. Many in our minority communities are subject to the challenge of profiling and even brutality that undermines their security and hope of living the American dream so powerfully articulated by Martin Luther King, Jr. We remain awash in the proliferation of guns, on the sale of which some zealots continue to reject background checks as a threat to their freedom, a freedom which apparently trumps the need to keep innocent people, especially children, from being killed.
Internationally we see the refusal of national and ethnic entities to compromise on issues of territory, nuclear weaponry, the purity of their religion, and their autonomous authority to decide their own destinies.
We know change and fear and the challenge of being called to a new way of living and being in the world. But something keeps us back from embracing the challenge, from responding to the call of God to enter into a new way of life. And that something turns out to be the many things we carry through our lives and with which we are loath to part because they give us our identity and meaning in a world of ceaseless changes. The things we carry vary from person to person. But they often stand in the way of our hearing God’s call to us now in the midst of our lives. We carry them, despite their weight, because they promise to help us attain, however transiently, the glittering prizes offered to us by the world as it is, not the world as it might be if we respond to God, and not to the present and dominant ways of the world.
What are some of these things we carry? And which of them are we prepared to lay down and leave behind when God calls us? What are we so tied to that we can’t see God behind it?
What false idols of protection, security, and meaning do we cling to as a substitute for the secure rock which is God? And to what end?
I’ll only mention a few that might be true for many of us, if not all. One has to do with the tenacious hold many of us want to have on the indefinite prolongation of our lives. We have come to believe that the continuation of our biological life is more important in many instances than the quality of that life or how it is lived. We spend a far greater percentage of our medical dollars on the attempt to prolong life another few months or perhaps a year than we do early on in our lives on preventive and health-promoting care and practice. We often refuse to have open and candid discussions with our loved ones, even with ourselves, about how we want to live out the years that remain to us, living with increased dementia, or hooked up to machines or undergoing painful bouts of medical treatments that at best prolong our lives for a short period of time but with no increase in the quality of our lives. If we truly believe that God will never abandon us even at and beyond the moment of our earthly deaths, then why should we bankrupt ourselves and our families to extend for a short period of time a life which promises only decreasing quality and fulfillment? Surely the mere prolongation of biological life no matter what the cost is not the meaning of life which God intends for us. It is something we carry which only bears us down. The call and challenge for many of us is to face end-of-life decisions with courage and with honesty about what is really important to us.
Another weight we bear is the belief that we must be connected with everyone our Google searches and Facebook can deliver to us. But is it really important to the quality of our life that we know everything there is to know and to be friends on Facebook with everyone alive today? Is it just possible that knowing a little less and having fewer but closer real friends might enhance the meaning of our lives? Perhaps we are finding that the larger our Facebook community the fewer meaningful things we have to say and share with it. Less may be more.
These examples reveal something deeper about ourselves and the way we live. The things we carry are often forms of addiction or obsession that tie us too closely and uncritically to the world as it is. These addictions come to define us but also threaten to undo us unless we can confront them. I’m sure many of you have heard of the tragic case of the suffragan bishop in the diocese of Maryland who was supposedly in recovery for her addiction to alcohol. But having already been convicted once of a DUI offense, she was allegedly drinking, driving, and texting when she tragically hit and killed a cyclist after which she drove away. She is someone who carried her addiction and had not yet successfully confronted it and dealt with it. It was one of the things she carried which made it hard to hear God’s call to begin again with newness of life. We don’t know all the details of her case but there are questions being raised about whether her diocese knew of her addiction and the state of her recovery before it authorized her elevation to the episcopate. If so, it colluded in a practice that failed to meet the challenge of her addiction. Was her addiction to alcohol somehow related to an addiction to the power and prestige that came with being made a bishop? How often are our own addictions and obsessions based on a desire to attain the false and fleeting riches the world offers us?
How much are we addicted to desires to be seen as good and useful people occupying respected positions? How much are we addicted to the respect and honor that comes with a title, a position, a hallowed place in the eyes of our community? How much of this addiction can we free ourselves from and still function as contributing members of that community? Can we retire gracefully from the work that has given our life meaning over many years and still find ourselves valued by our community and even by ourselves? Can we stop to enjoy the world without always seeking to improve the world? How much is our addiction to our vocation or reputation a weight we carry unnecessarily and which hinders our entry into the community to which Jesus invites us?
Perhaps we should all be in recovery of a sort. Recovery means acknowledging our powerlessness over our addictions simply by individual will-power. We need to accept our condition and our need for help as we name and confront the things we carry.
In short, we need a faith that endures through the hard times. We need as the Psalm says this morning a rock that will not be broken or eroded away. A rock that if we cling to it will allow us to come out of the rushing water safely on the other side as Jonah came forth from the belly of the beast to do God’s will at last in Nineveh.
We need a faith that those in true recovery have: a faith that their strength is rooted in something beyond themselves and their own efforts. A faith that even in the face of fear is not overcome, a confidence that God will never test us beyond our limits, a firm belief that God will be there for us even when all human efforts seem hopeless. This faith will, if we embrace it, take us beyond the things we carry today, beyond our addictions to them, and into a world where God lives and embraces and surrounds us with true joy and everlasting love.
Let us therefore take the leap of faith and grab hold of the rock of security which is God and let go of our life-quenching addictions.
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford
Epiphany 2 – Martin Luther King, Jr. Weekend
January 18, 2015
1 Samuel 3: 1-20; John 1:43-51
I will give you as a light to the nations that my salvation shall reach to the end of the earth. Isaiah 40:6b (Opening Sentence for Morning Prayer in Epiphany).
Epiphanies. That’s what this season is about. Bringing light where there was darkness. Bringing clarity where there was confusion. In our Christian tradition, epiphanies are events that in one way or another make known to those witnessing them that God has entered into their space, that God is present and active in the world. More broadly, the word “epiphany” has come to mean any event or circumstance that draws us to understand something or someone in a new way.
Our passages from the Hebrew Bible and from the New Testament this morning each contain stories of epiphanies. In the first story, we find the young man, Samuel, a servant in the temple at Shiloh. Samuel was the son of Elkanah and Hannah, who, being childless, had prayed to the Lord that if she was ever to be blessed with a son she would dedicate him to the Lord’s service. When she bore a son – this was her own epiphany -- she named him Samuel, meaning name of God or God has heard. As soon as he was weaned, she brought him to the Temple, as promised, to be raised by Eli, the high priest. We find Eli, who by this time was quite old, in his room, while the boy Samuel is sleeping actually in the Temple, near the Ark of the Covenant. Suddenly Samuel hears a voice: Samuel! Samuel! Thinking it is his beloved teacher, he responds, Here I am, and runs to see what Eli wants. But Eli hasn’t called him, and he sends Samuel back into the Temple. Two more times this happens, and on the third time, Eli – who in his own way has forgotten how to hear the Lord -- realizes that it must be the Lord calling Samuel. So he instructs the young Samuel on what to say if it happens again. Sure enough, the Lord calls a fourth time: Samuel! Samuel! This time Samuel responds as Eli has instructed him, Speak, for your servant is listening. And what he hears, as the passage puts it, will make both ears of those who hear it tingle: That his beloved teacher, Eli, along with his two disreputable sons, will soon be dead – the two sons for their treachery, and Eli for failing to do anything about it. And yet, the importance of the announcement is not so much one of judgment as to send the message to Samuel that he will be the one charged with being the Lord’s agent in doing a new thing with God’s chosen people; and this will be a good thing because it will result in nothing less than the renewal of his nation. This is the first of many times that The Lord will speak directly to Samuel, and from this time on Samuel will understand himself and God’s purpose for that life in a totally new way.
Then we turn to our Gospel and the epiphanies of Philip and Nathanael. Jesus, for no apparent reason, has decided to go to Galilee on his way back from his baptism in the River Jordan. On his way he sees Philip, about whom we don’t a lot except that he was probably a disciple of John the Baptist. Jesus asks him to follow him – and lo and behold, he does. Then Philip goes and finds his friend, Nathanael who, being from Cana, wonders if anything good can ever come out of Nazareth. As it turns out, Nathanael had been sitting under a fig tree that very day, reading about the patriarch Jacob and his dream of the ladder going between heaven and earth and angels ascending and descending up and down the ladder. He had begun to wonder if this new teacher from Nazareth really could be the long-expected Messiah for whom he and Philip had been waiting. So when Philip says to him, Come and see, he goes along. And Jesus, reading Nathanael’s thoughts, speaks to him and reveals what Nathanael was thinking. Nathanael is so astonished that he blurts out, Rabbi, you are the son of God. You are the king of Israel. As author Joan Camay writes, it’s as though Jesus said to him, You are not believing in me because I saw you under the fig tree. You are believing because you have been wrestling with your doubts – you are a true son of Jacob. Jacob saw a ladder between earth and heaven and angels going up and down it. You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. Now you are looking at him of whom that ladder is just a picture. You are seeing Him who is the link between heaven and earth. The lives of Philip and Nathanael were forever changed, and they certainly did not get any easier. They found what they were seeking – the Messiah -- but that discovery would lead them to a very different destination than they had imagined.
On this weekend when we commemorate the work of the 20th century prophet Martin Luther King, Jr., we would do well to recall what Dr. King would later describe as his own epiphany. Well before the March on Washington or his “I have a Dream” speech, there was a defining moment for him that came past midnight, in a kitchen, at 309 South Jackson Street, in Montgomery, Alabama, which served as home to the King family from 1954 to 1960. The year was 1956, and King was 27 years old, two years into his service as pastor of Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Over the past month, King had been a leader in the Montgomery bus boycott, a decision that set off a series of death threats delivered via mail and phone to his residence — as many as 30 to 40 calls daily, often at night. Normally, King could put the phone down and go back to sleep. But one call, on the night of January 27, 1956, stood out. As King’s wife, Coretta, and 10-week-old daughter, Yolanda, slept in the bedroom nearby, the voice on the other end of the line said: “N, we’re tired of your mess. And if you aren’t out of this town in three days, we’re going to blow up your house and blow your brains out.” Shaken, King went to the kitchen and made himself a cup of coffee. But soon he buried his face in his hands and began to pray aloud: “Lord, I’m down here trying to do what’s right … But … I must confess … I’m losing my courage.” King later explained what happened next: “I could hear an inner voice saying to me, ‘Martin Luther, stand up for truth. Stand up for justice. Stand up for righteousness.’” And with that, his fears ceased. But the threats did not. Several days later, around 9 p.m., a bomb exploded on the front steps of his house. No one inside was hurt, but the marks of the shrapnel can still be seen on the side of the house.
That moment of decision for Dr. King — of whether to continue with the Montgomery bus boycott that had just gotten underway — can tell us a lot about the nature of epiphanies. Today, Shirley Cherry keeps the story of Dr. King’s epiphany alive as tour manager of what has now become Dexter Parsonage Museum. “People need to keep in mind, Martin Luther King didn’t ride buses,” Cherry says. “He never had to ride buses; he didn’t come from that kind of background. But he cared about people who did … What happened that night, in the kitchen, was a lesson for all of us. It’s a lesson in commitment and obedience.”
Real epiphanies are not always clear; they often require discernment. Real epiphanies are also frequently not easy; even when they are “good news” they may complicate or add a burden to our lives instead of making them easier. Sometimes, they hand us the moral duty to take up someone else’s burden in order that God’s purposes may be achieved. What can we learn from the stories of Samuel, Philip, Nathanael and Martin Luther King, Jr? I think there at least three important lessons we can draw:
- An epiphany first of all involves expecting that God does indeed speak to us and then listening for God’s voice or looking for God at work. If we’re not paying attention, then we’re not going to be aware of god’s presence or what God is saying. And once aware, we need to actively discern what God is saying or doing. If we are not listening – to God, to ourselves, and to each other – we have little chance of picking up on that new thing that God is trying to do.
- An epiphany almost always involves taking that information and then coming to a new understanding of ourselves, who we are in relation to other people and the world around us, and who we are in relation to our God.
- An epiphany demands a response to the call. In Samuel’s case, he went from being the child servant of Eli to being a prophet for the people of Israel, who would usher in a new leadership for Israel. For Philip and Nathanael, they went from being faithful Jews waiting for the Messiah to being at the forefront of a movement that would see a radical re-interpretation of their Jewish belief system. For Dr. King, it meant taking the step from being a leader of a local protest to being the face of a national movement that would mark the beginning – and only a beginning – of moving the people of the United States toward a more complete understanding of the term “equality.”
What we learn from today’s lessons is what Shirley Cherry called a lesson in commitment and obedience. It is not enough to hear God’s call and believe. The God who engaged the world in the person of Jesus Christ summons each of us – as God did with Samuel, Philip, Nathanael and Martin – to believe in that call, to believe that it is authentic, and to act upon it in a way that makes a difference in God’s kingdom.
Each of us received our call at our baptism, which was, for most of us, before we could discern the sound of God’s voice. Any of us made a mature affirmation of that faith in confirmation. This morning’s lessons challenge us to look in the mirror and examine our lives: Do we really believe that God is still speaking and acting? Are we listening for God? Where in our lives have we discerned God’s voice? What has God been saying to us? What have we done with that call? Have we been a game changer for God? Or have we turned and walked the other way when we had a chance to make a difference?
My prayer for each of us, for us as the gathered community of God, and for us as citizens of this nation, is that we expect God to speak to us; that we be attentive to God’s voice, that we approach without fear that new thing towards which God is nudging us; and that we follow with courage where God leads.
And may all of God’s people say: AMEN!
The Rt. Rev. Andrew "Drew" Smith
Trinity Church, Hartford
First Sunday after the Epiphany, January 11, 2015
Year B Mark 1:4-11
So it was that John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. For John proclaimed a new time that would bring a new way of life, a new presence of God, “There is one who is more powerful than I, coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."
From Scripture, and from evidence of what we think is the site of John’s ministry, this was no portable tent meeting, no one- or two-day revival. Rather, it was a substantial movement, rooted at the river Jordan, which saw and prepared as many as would come to hear, for a whole new reality and life with God. Preparation for the new era of justice and peace. That was good news because in that ago and in this age, we can get it so wrong.
John had three requirements for the new time: 1. admitting, coming clean, so to speak, about past living, actions, attitudes contrary to God’s will and the order of things as God created them to be; 2. walking into the river Jordan not for a usual ritual washing but for a thorough cleansing of one’s whole life and soul, a cleansing so complete that Paul called it drowning, dying to what has been; and then, 3. rising from the water to live from that moment on in a deeply rooted different way, with changed behavior, what we call “newness of life”—(from Luke):
People often asked him, “What would this mean for me?” And the Baptizer said, “Care now for the poor. If you have two coats, give one to someone who has need. The same with food: give to the hungry.”
Tax collectors, imagine, even came, and they asked, “What about us? How should we live?” “Collect only taxes you are charged to collect; not a penny more, nothing for yourself.”
Soldiers, pagans from the Roman Empire, came to the Jordan. “And we, what about our lives?” “Be satisfied with your wages; never use your position or power to extort money from any one; never intimidate by threats or false accusations.”
The new life would begin with each and every person, whoever, admitting, confessing, to living contrary to God’s will and contrary to the well-being of others; their passing under the water, in a thorough immersion, to die from the old; and then rising from the water to the new life, seeking to live and act in ways that are right, pleasing, to God.
Into that scene in those days along with all the others Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and he too was baptized by John in the Jordan, to enter into his new life.
I wonder what Jesus confessed. I wonder if he knew what the new life would mean for him. Like others, he too went under, and just as he was coming up out of the water, something more than John’s baptism was given: he saw the heavens above torn apart and the Spirit which John had foretold descending like a dove on him.
And a voice from heaven, God’s voice like a storm powerful to break cedar trees, shaking the wilderness, oaks writhing, forests stripped bare, wind rushing across land, the thundering glory of God, the voice: ”You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
There was “newness of life,” breaking upon Jesus as it had never broken on anyone else before.
And so with Baptism and the Holy Spirit, in Jesus, the new era that day began in a whole new way. What has come into being in him was life and that life is the light of all people. He was the true light coming into the world that enlightens everyone, everyone.
Carter Bake Ellis is here in our midst today, brought by his family, so he too can enter that new era, the newness of life. Even though he is young, still, how can we withhold the best gift we —God —can give him, right at the start of his earthly life.
For in this world we still get it so wrong. From the petty things of everyday living, to the accumulation of wealth and power at the cost of others ’impoverishment or enslavement, to devastation of wars and destruction of the earth. Every time we treat a people as less, or ridiculed, or kept apart, or groups are identified or are self-identified as aliens, the light in Christ is threatened by darkness. France. Why? I believe the satirical writers and cartoonists got it wrong in their meanness, and the Islamist extremists got it wrong in their response; and they, and more, are now dead, and God’s intention was smashed by both.
And yet, and yet. Just as “the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, and a wind from God swept over the face of the waters, God then said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw it was good;
so in Christ Jesus, in his birth at Bethlehem, the Epiphany stories such as today’s in which we celebrate his becoming known as the Son, in his death on the cross and in his glorious resurrection, God has caused light to shine in a new way in and for the world.
And whenever darkness threatens, those who live in the light, in the gift of the Holy Spirit, are called to persevere clearly and steadfastly, consistently serving God and the world in hope.
So perhaps like those askers at the Jordan, we, you and I, who bear the Name and mark of Christ, we would do well to ask again, on this day of Carter’s Baptism, “And we, what does this mean for us, for our lives, what should we do?” What does it mean for you?? Some answers will come clear, from Scripture. Some will be given by the leading of the Spirit. Some will come with more difficulty, and we can have to help each other discern and discover what it takes to more nearly get it right, pleasing to God.
To the youth and adults of Heads Up Hartford: we are so glad you are here with us today —for with the inclusion of all in your program and your work for the good of the community, you “get it right.” And to this parish: let us continue to strive in Christ, never to separate or isolate others, but to build among ourselves here and for others what is right and pleasing to God.
Carter, you do not understand what is happening for you this morning. Truth to tell, none of us completely understands all that happens for us in God. But we do know that —thanks be —God has come to us in Christ Jesus, so that we who can get it so wrong, can be born anew, become partners with God to speak and work for getting it right. Welcome to your journey through the water; we rejoice with all the saints this your baptism day.
Homily for the first Sunday of Christmas, Dec. 28, 2014
Trinity Church, Hartford, CT
The Rev. Bennett A. Brockman
What do you give to someone who has everything?
I have always admired people who could give the perfect gift--watching the face of the recipient light up with real delight. It is a talent I envy, not possess.
This was less of a challenge when I was growing up, when every kid I knew had a very long list of things we wanted. Same when we were young and newly married and raising children. We always needed, or certainly wanted, all sorts of stuff, and we knew our friends did too. Older now, the challenge has returned. Our peers have about everything they really need, so we make contributions in each other’s names to various charities, including the church, which of course is more than a charity. There are plenty of people locally and around the world who need the basics of everyday life, so we now help in a way we couldn’t when younger.
But what if there is a special person on your list who would like to receive some gift as a sign of your appreciation of your relationship, and that person really does have everything?
What if that person told you something like this when you got ready to go shopping:
I will take no bull-calf from your stalls, *
nor he-goats out of your pens;
For all the beasts of the forest are mine, *
the herds in their thousands upon the hills.
I know every bird in the sky, *
and the creatures of the fields are in my sight.
If I were hungry, I would not tell you, *
for the whole world is mine and all that is in it.
[Psalm 50, Book of Common Prayer]
That really limits the possibilities, doesn’t it? God really does have everything already.
There is in fact only one gift you can give God that God doesn’t already have. And that is your choice to be God’s person. The God-given reality is that always and everywhere 2 + 2 = 4. Likewise, the God-given reality is that human beings have the freedom to choose to follow God, to follow the Way of the Cross—or not. It’s your choice. That’s the way human beings are made, always and everywhere.
When I was a boy I grew up in a religious tradition that insisted that once you made the decision to be Christ’s own, that decision was good forever more. I’m sure that in a way that’s true, just as in our Episcopal tradition, in the words the priest pronounces in anointing a person being baptized with holy oil, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”
Nevertheless, in my own life, I have discovered that over and over again, even many times a day, I need to make anew the decision to follow Christ’s Way and to reject the reactive choices that the culture we inhabit make almost automatic. For example, making the choice to answer an angry person with gentleness and understanding rather than responding in kind, or in choosing to forgive someone for a slight rather than look for pay-back of some kind. To consume less rather than more. To appreciate beauty rather than take it for granted. To express gratitude for someone’s effort. It’s always a choice.
And I’ve found that whenever I do make the choice to be God’s person, to follow the Way of the Cross, to choose to try to live the Beatitudes, the spiritual reward for doing so is, usually, instantaneous. The choice becomes blessed, as Jesus promised in those beautiful words of Matthew 5.
In the words of the amazing Prologue to John’s Gospel that we just heard read, every time we make those blessed choices we become, in our limited human ways, the light of Christ in our time and place. And I am persuaded that every time we make that choice God is delighted with the gift. Because it is, every time, over and over, the one gift that God cannot otherwise obtain and doesn’t have already: the gift of yourself, freely given to the Way of the Cross.
In the beautiful words of Isaiah heard a moment ago, by choosing to give ourselves we become a crown of beauty, a royal diadem for God [Isaiah 62:3].
It is one gift that for sure keeps on giving, and that gift, offered by Christians countless times every day, is the best hope for the world this Christmas morning, and every moment yet to come, just as it always has been.
For that light and that hope, thanks be to God.
Amen.
Homily for Christmas Morning
Dec. 25, 2014
Trinity Episcopal Church
Hartford, CT
The Rev. Bennett A. Brockman
What an amazing gift, light. Biologists suppose that it was the attraction of light that drew the earliest life forms out of the ocean depths and onto dry land. We human beings need light to orient ourselves in space. Total darkness is very disconcerting, and disablingly so when prolonged.
When we get an idea, we say the light turns on. When we really like someone, they light up our life.
And we say about someone who has been converted from a disastrous life to a constructive and productive one, that they’ve seen the light.
An old word for seeing the light, one that occurs over and over in the translations of Scripture that we use, is ‘salvation.’ It literally means ‘health, wholeness.’ Down through the centuries, though, we’ve taken ‘salvation’ to mean ‘saving from’ something. Being saved came to mean mostly saved from eternal death, or in our most conservative traditions, from the punishment of hell. Even when we thought of salvation as giving us eternal life, we imagined that as life with the blessed in heaven.
Following Bishop N. T. Wright, I want to suggest this Christmas morning that when Jesus as God Incarnate entered our world bearing light and life, God became King of all creation with a completeness God had not asserted before. The result is that in the reign of Christ his followers are empowered to engage in creative, constructive ways to make the whole creation new, as the book of Revelation says. In Christ, this world we inhabit now becomes God’s world and all creation rings out that truth with joy.
The result is that salvation means more accurately that we are saved TO something, not from something. “All the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God,” Isaiah declares. Now, to be sure, even the great prophets like Isaiah sometimes did not see clearly enough just what God’s salvation looks like. They mixed up in it promises about the doom and destruction of other nations, as if salvation involved payback and the very human satisfaction that payback seem—unless we look at it more closely and notice the cycle of revenge that payback always guarantees.
Instead, seeing the light of Christ and living in the Way of the Cross delivers us precisely from the way of bondage to the default attitudes of our culture—power imposed, the threat of retaliation as the guarantee of peace—and liberates us to a new life as agents of God’s reconciling grace.
The new king, God incarnate in the infant Jesus, delivers us from bondage to our culture’s assumptions about power. What appears weakest is in fact the creative power of the universe. What appears fragile and doomed is in fact the ultimate gift of love that is transforming creation and creatures.
Because we can see the light in the message of Jesus’ living and dying and rising again, we have grace to be saved to a new way of life, as instruments of the Messiah’s grace and truth in our time and place. We make the reign of God visible.
Amen.
Christmas Eve 2014
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford, CT
The Rev. Bennett A. Brockman
Telling all the Truth
Merry Christmas! We can say it at last. Advent is over, it’s Christmas and Christmas is merry, because Christmas plain and simple is Good News: Jesus is Emmanuel, God with Us. Christ is born. God is indeed with us. And that’s the happy truth.
But it’s not a very obvious truth. I don’t need to remind you just how troubled our city and our nation and our world are, or how far from perfect each of our lives are. It certainly was the same way, only worse, 2000 years ago when those shepherds beheld that glorious angelic choir. They were likely watching sheep they were too poor to own themselves. It was cold and dark, and they were probably complaining that their chapped hands hurt. They probably spoke bitterly about landlords who gouge tenants and powerful people who exploit weaker ones. They had every reason to complain about taxes. Like then, like now.
So if all that’s the same, what difference does the story make? Why keep on telling it? What makes the difference is what happens after the shepherds hear the angels. They honor the possibilities in what they have heard. Maybe, just maybe there’s something to this vision they’ve just seen. That hope inspires them to set their fear aside and get moving. They trudge off to Bethlehem and show that they have taken to heart the angels’ words by worshipping the newborn child as just what the angels said he was, God’s own son. That was an astonishing act of brave faith.
Now look around you, at all of us gathered here tonight. We are here because we also have—or someone close to us has--bravely taken to heart the angels’ song: “Glory to God, and peace to God’s people on earth.” Our hands may be chapped; the pain of old hurts may linger; injustice, exploitation, and violence disfigure our society; our aches and illness and fears are real.
But like those long-ago shepherds we have taken to heart the vision of peace. In this parish, last fall, we joined the campaign against Ebola. Then, Advent focused on our year-round ministries of hope and reconciliation: Church by the Pond and Feeding in the Park; Loaves and Fishes and Food Share and Church Street Eats; gifts offered through Covenant to Care; and our on-going involvement with our Asylum Hill neighborhood and sister churches, especially through Trinity Academy and our Choir School. We open our door to musical performances by more and more school and professional groups from the city and region. My list could go on and on.
When we open our heart to the angels’ message, we live it out like this; and we thus become a small-scale edition of the Good News that is Jesus Christ. In the great poet Emily Dickinson’s phrase, we become “slanted truth”—slanted because we cannot completely BE God’s Truth. We cannot leave our humanity behind any more than Jesus could leave his divinity behind. Jesus merged the human and divine with perfection—and at a cost—that we cannot match. Indeed, we can be grateful that we are not able, much less required, to pay that price.
As Emily Dickinson said, we have to “tell all the truth,” but we have to tell it slant. “Truth must dazzle gradually, or very man be blind,” she said. Like looking at the sun. It’s just too dazzling to hold in mind the whole truth of God incarnate in Jesus. The little child of Bethlehem did not retain the innocence of infancy, but rather lived into the full Truth of God’s own Self. It was not the innocent child who got himself nailed to a cross, but God’s Truth who confronted the worst that the world could inflict and showed that God’s Truth triumphs over the most powerful evil the human imagination can construct.
Even the saints among us don’t get beyond being a slanted version of God’s truth. Every Christian makes mistakes. We get it wrong. We hurt each other. We fail to intervene when we should. But holding this Christ-vision in our hearts empowers us to live the God’s truth with a deeper measure of wisdom, forbearance, patience, urgency, hopefulness, tenacity, and resilience when we meet all those situations that need the peace, and justice, and love that are the hallmarks of God’s truth.
Writing to Christians who had only just begun to follow the Way of Christ, Saint Paul described the God’s Truth revealed in Jesus as God’s way of reconciling people to God and to each other. Living that reconciliation, and inviting others to join us, makes us ambassadors of Christ, he said.
So we’re not afraid to keep on trying to get better at it. That’s the angels’ first message, remember? “Don’t be afraid!” Don’t be afraid to behold the God’s Truth. And don’t be afraid to live that Truth, slanting though it must be. And don’t be afraid to live it a little more upright, day by day.
Hands may still be chapped. Shoulders still sore. Scars still creating painful memories. Wounds still healing, hearts still longing for a world where the content of one’s character always matters more than the color of one’s skin.
But honoring the possibilities in the angels’ message empowers us to receive the gift of the Christ Child, and that makes us, one and all, ambassadors for Christ, ministers of reconciliation. We become Christmas presents to a world that needs the gift of God’s reconciling Truth so much. Even when we’re at best Truth told slant.
We care for the households we live in, and the community around. We feed the hungry and we provide shelter and clothing for the homeless and provide lotion for their chapped hands. We confront and engage the institutions that make mistreatment part of the culture, and try to change them. In Sunday worship and in daily prayer, we return to the source, this vision of peace, and draw strength and courage anew, encouraging one another, and inviting others to share this ministry of reconciliation.
Embracing the hope. Committing to the vision of peace, being ambassadors of reconciliation. That is the gift of the Christ Child. Taking it to heart, living it, makes us, one and all, Christmas presents to a world that needs the gift of God’s reconciling Truth so much, even when we’re Truth told slant.
Amen.
