Category: Sermons and Homilies

This is a transcript of a sermon preached on Sunday, August 25, 2024 at Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Sherman, Texas.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

A couple weeks ago, I was at my local gym changing out after a workout. And there was a song that was playing on the speakers in the locker room– it was also the song that was being played out on the floor where people were working out. It was a song by a contemporary female artist and it was about getting drunk and getting lucky and about what she was going to do on Friday night. And the music had a sort of seductive rhythm– the sort of thing you would dance to in a club. A very worldly song.

And I may sound prudish in saying this, but I was a little offended. I was like, You know, I’m just changing out here. I didn’t ask to hear this sort of song. The lyrics reminded me of a lifestyle that is very attractive to many young people and yet it’s a lifestyle that is ruinous and incompatible with the Christian life. If I’m being honest, it bummed me out a little, and I had to think of positive thoughts on the drive home to lift my mood.

It reminded me that we hear so many words in our daily life, a countless number of words. Some of them we have control over, some of them we don’t. There are words that we speak, words that are spoken to us, words we overhear. And there are words we read: news, media, books, emails, text messages. Our lives are just filled with words– and not all of them are good for us. That’s the thing about words: they are a spiritual reality. If we hear words, and we let those words become a part of us, and then we act on those words, that has an effect on our life, for good or ill.

So how do we know where we will find the words that will be good for us? Words that will feed and heal our souls– words that, if we truly let them become a part of us and we live according to them, that it will be for the salvation of our souls?

And the answer, of course, is in our Gospel reading for today. Our Lord Jesus has given one of his most difficult teachings, the Bread of Life discourse from John chapter 6. Jesus teaches about how he is the Bread of life that came down from heaven, and that in order to live, you must do the thing that you do with bread, that is, eat it. He says, “I am the bread that came down from heaven. I am the bread of life. And he who eats me will live because of me. And the food that I give is my flesh for the life of the world. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life.”

This is very intimate language, even shocking language. And St. John records that many were offended by this language, by this teaching, by these words. And several of his disciples no longer follow him anymore. So Jesus looks to his apostles and he asks, “Do you also wish to go away?” And Simon Peter gives the answer for all the apostles, indeed for all Christians: “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Peter speaks from the conviction that Jesus is the Holy One of God, the Son of God. And that, even when his teachings are difficult or hard to understand, there’s a recognition that Jesus comes from God and the words he speaks are the words of eternal life.

And so with all these words around us, we know that the words that give eternal life, the words that we know are good for us, come from our Lord Jesus Christ. Sometimes I think about what a blessing it must have been to be a part of the 12 apostles, to be with Jesus day in and day out, to hear all the words that he spoke. How many words did Jesus speak? How many conversations did they have with him? And what a blessing it would have been for us to have been there and to hear all these words Jesus spoke during his earthly life.

But we don’t get to do that. What we can do is study and meditate on the words that are recorded for us in the Holy Gospels– and indeed in all the scriptures, which point to Christ.

And so what I want to do this morning is to reflect on the Holy Scriptures as the words of eternal life, as the Word of God, and offer some practical suggestions on how we may read the Holy Scriptures for the benefit of our souls.

The Holy Scriptures are, as we say, the Word of God. And that’s what we say in the liturgy: “The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.” The Scriptures are inspired by God. It literally means they’re God-breathed. Every other human writing comes from human beings alone. But the Holy Scriptures are breathed by God. God works through human authors to give his message to humankind. The Scriptures are God-breathed. That what the word inspiration means–spiration meaning breath. So inspiration, breathing in, or expiration, breathing out.

(And so when we pray in the Collect for Purity, Cleanse our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, we’re asking the Holy Spirit to breathe into us so that we may love God.)

So the scriptures are inspired by God, they’re given by God who inspired the biblical authors to give us the words God would have us to hear. But while all the scripture is inspired, not all of it is equally important or equally useful to our life in Christ. And this may sound controversial to say that, that all the scriptures are inspired, but not all of them are equally useful. But this is the way the Church has always approached Scripture.

The Gospels hold pride of place because they give the words and deeds of our Lord Jesus Christ. Only the Gospels are in a special gilded book on the altar. In the Gospel procession, the priest or deacon kisses the words of the Gospel as a sign of his devotion to them. So in our scripture reading, we want to prioritize the reading of the gospels. Every disciple of Jesus should read one of the four Gospels every day of his life. There should never be a day that goes by that we shouldn’t read a little bit of the Gospel. This could be a chapter, it could even be a part of a chapter. But we want to remain in the Gospels so that we know our Lord Jesus Christ more and more through the words he spoke and the deeds he accomplished. So the Gospels are preeminent.

And then after that, there’s the Epistles, which make up the majority of the New Testament. But even here, not every part of them is to be prioritized equally. There’s many sections of the epistles that are of a more exhortatory character. They’re more about how we live the Christian life. They’re very practical.

And we should emphasize reading these over some of the more dense doctrinal parts of the epistles. We still should study those, but in practical terms, in the Christian life, it’s better to know what the fruits of the spirit are than who Melchizedek is. So we want to emphasize those moral and practical parts of the epistles of the New Testament.

And then thirdly, there’s the Old Testament. We want to prioritize reading and praying the Psalter, which is the hymnal of ancient Israel and have always had a central place in Christian worship. We want to pray the Psalms and read those parts of the Old Testament that are most well-known and most referenced in the New Testament. So the most famous and well-known Old Testament stories, the kind you learn in Sunday school: the stories from Genesis, from Exodus, some of the most well-known passages from the major prophets like Isaiah. These are the scriptures that we want to know very well. And it would, again, be more helpful to know the story of Jonah than to know some obscure incident that happened in 2 Kings.

So all of the Scripture is inspired, but we want to be judicious in what we give emphasis to, what is most helpful to our life in Christ. Firstly, the Gospels, then the epistles, especially the practical sections, and then the Old Testament, especially the Psalms and the most well-known passages from the major books.

But even with that, even just those emphases, that’s still a lot of scripture. So how do we read the scripture profitably? A lot of Christians stumble here, because they set out to read the Scriptures, firstly, without the Church, and secondly in a way that’s pretty arbitrary. There’s so many “read through the Bible in a year” plans: start with Genesis and just go through to the end. And if you do that, you’re likely to lose steam somewhere around Leviticus and not even make it out of the Torah.

But the Church gives us in our tradition a wonderful way of reading through the scriptures. It’s called the Daily Office: Morning and Evening Prayers, in which every morning and every evening we read from the Psalms and we read from the Old and the New Testament.

And if you’re already praying the Daily Office, God bless you in that and help you to continue. But if you’re not regularly praying morning and evening prayers, you should start modestly. If you’ve never prayed the Daily Office before, I would not suggest you start with the 1662 prayer book, the unabbreviated version. It would be better to start a little more modestly. In the morning, you pray the Lord’s Prayer, and then one Psalm, a reading from the Old Testament, and a reading from the Gospel. And then in the evening, again, you pray the Lord’s Prayer, and then a different Psalm, and then a reading from the Epistle, and then a reading from the Gospel. Very simple. But even if you do just that little bit, you will be reading through the Old Testament, and through the Epistles, and through the Gospels, at a good pace.

You’ll be feeding your soul with these words of life, so that, whatever other words you hear in your daily life, both good and harmful, you will know that you will be steeped in the words of eternal life. These are the words which are given to us in the scriptures, the written Word of God– which always direct us to the incarnate Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be all glory and honor, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and for ever, world without end. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Christ is born! Let us glorify him.

I greet you on this radiant Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Today we celebrate the mystery of the Incarnation— that God became a human being; the eternal Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

This mystery should be a source of continual wonder for us; it should never be something we become used to or take for granted. Because it is a wonder that God would become human. It is a paradox in so many ways.

  The One whom no one can see has become visible.

  The One who dwells in unapproachable light can now be approached.

  The Almighty has become weak.

  The Impervious One assumes vulnerable flesh.

  The One who holds all things in the palm of His hand is held today by a human mother.

When we look at our Gospel reading, everyone involved in the drama is gripped by amazement at this Great Paradox: the shepherds, the Holy Family, even the angels. And they’re angels— imagine the things they’ve seen, and even they seem surprised.

The Incarnation is so wonderful and miraculous and strange, the created world doesn’t seem to know what to do with it. But all offer what they can: the angels sing, the shepherds adore on bended knee, the ox and donkey bow their heads in reverence, the Holy Family ponders the Mystery in awed silence. And we too are invited to offer our wonder and praise to this awesome Event.

Christmas is the opportunity to recapture our sense of wonder, to celebrate the Paradox of the God-made-man… and to revel in how fantastical it all is.

The birth of Christ is a strange story, and our familiarity with it should not blind us to this. In this story, we find a Virgin Mother, a chorus of angels, the God who becomes an infant. The story of Christmas is indeed fantastical and all the better for it. What a shame if God was limited to what modern people thought possible or “reasonable.”

Yet the Nativity is not just wonderful and strange and joyous. The point of Christmas is not merely to generate feelings of warmth and goodwill. The birth of Christ means something decisive in the story that is traced throughout the Bible— that is, the story of our world.

J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings, wrote a lot about storytelling, and especially what he called the eucatastrophe, “eu” as in E-U, that is, the good catastrophe. It’s that point in the story where there is a sudden turn of events, a sudden reversal for the better. It is a catastrophic event which delivers the protagonist from certain doom.

The birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of history. It is the turning point in the story of our world.

And this becomes clear when we remember the dark backdrop of the Nativity. Ever since the Fall, the world has been shrouded more and more in sin and death. It has been a world filled with darkness. The Chosen People had suffered much: they had been enslaved and liberated, they were exiled and then they returned. But their future never seemed secure. And that was just the Chosen People. All the nations, who did not know the true God, were ensnared in pagan idolatry.

So the world was a dark place before the birth of Christ, and this is especially so in the decades before his birth. The Chosen People were under the thumb of the Roman Empire. Judaism had fractured into arguing factions. There had not been a prophet in 400 years. It seemed like God was not taking care of the Chosen People, that He had disappeared off the world stage.

And just when there seemed to be no hope, when many were asking whether God had abandoned the people of Israel and perhaps humanity, hope arrives in the form of a newborn child. “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light.” “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.”

Just when it seems God is no longer with us, God comes to be with us in the most intimate way possible: by becoming one of us.

This is not just that the story has taken a sharp turn, but that the Author of the story has become a part of the narrative. It’s like the Author of a novel becoming a character in his own book. Or the Director of a play stepping onto the stage and becoming a character, affecting the plot in the process.

The Good News of Christmas is that the true and living God is One who wants to be with us, who will not abandon us to the darkness of this world. The Word of God comes down from heaven to enter our story, to share our lot… to experience with us the joys and hardships of being human.

He too will know the love of family, the dignity and burden of work, the tedium of daily life, the limitations of being human in an imperfect world. He too will experience the depths of misery in His sacred Passion. He too will die. And this destiny is already foretold in the details of his birth: his swaddling bands look forward to the funeral cloths, the manger is like a little coffin, and the cave in which he is born prefigures the tomb in which he will be buried. The triumph of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection are only possible because he becomes human in the first place.

This is, I believe, the true reason for the joy and warmth we feel at Christmas. The joy of the season is not ultimately because of family, or the food, or the music, or the fun events. The real reason we feel joy at Christmastime, even if we can’t articulate it, is that we know instinctively that the birth of Christ is a great turning point in the Great Story.

Even in the midst of a very dark world, a world filled with cruelty and senseless evil, of tribulations both personal and communal, we still have hope that the story will turn out alright in the end.

We feel— we know in our depths— that ultimately the Villain of the story will be defeated. The Hero will be triumphant… and we will triumph with him.

And the turning point, that good catastrophe, occurred on that silent, cold night in the countryside of Bethlehem, when the almighty God entered the story to lead it to its glorious conclusion. Amen.

OT Reading: 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16

Gospel reading: Luke 1:26-38

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Mystery begins where words end.

There are some aspects of the Christian faith that cannot be expressed in words— they are mysteries to be intuitively felt, not propositions to be analyzed. The Blessed Virgin Mary, and her place in the story of salvation, belongs to this realm of mystery.

We do not preach Mary to the world. We preach Christ crucified and risen. That is our outward proclamation. But Mary remains a part of the inward memory of the Church, part of the inner tradition— “the secret joy” of the Church. Her presence is real, if elusive.

Mary is the one who says “yes” to God by saying yes to the Archangel Gabriel. He approaches her with the mission of being the Mother of the Messiah— of bearing God incarnate within her. And she accepts: “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to thy word.”

Mary says yes to Christ— another way we can put it is that she makes room for Christ. There has always been a space in the world for God to dwell. He dwelt in the Tabernacle while the Israelites wandered in the wilderness. He dwelt in the Temple in Jerusalem. And now He comes to dwell in a new temple— a temple made not of stone but of flesh and blood. A living temple. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” But where did he first become flesh? In the silence of her womb.

So Mary is the one who makes room for Christ, makes room for him in her body but also in her life. By accepting this calling to be the Mother of the Lord, her life will change forever. Her life will now revolve around him. Any new mother will tell you that since the birth of her child, her life has revolved around that child— bathing him and clothing him and feeding him and caring for him. And even as the child grows up and gains more independence, the identity as the Mother remains.

This life that Mary shares with her Son is a mystery. We have various stories in the Gospel about her and Jesus— the birth of Christ, the visit of the Magi, the finding in the Temple, the wedding at Cana. But the great majority of their life together is not recorded for us in the Gospels.

We know that she raised him, that he grew up with her. They spend years together, as Jesus grows from infant to toddler to child. She nurses him, she teaches him and plays with him. He becomes a teenager and grows into a man, and she sees the changes. Between them pass thousands of hours, thousands of conversations, countless little moments. That intimate relationship between Mother and Son is a mystery: unrecorded and undisclosed.

And so Mary is also the one who contemplates the Word-made-flesh in silence. Because the mystery of Christ is not revealed to her all at once. A book does not drop from heaven that explains the meaning of Christ and of his life and of her life. It becomes clear to her only gradually, in the quiet moments she spends with him in those hidden years in Nazareth. She ponders all these things in her heart, in silence. And so she gradually realizes who he is, and therefore the dignity of her own role as his Mother. The mystery is revealed to her in that luminous silence. And it is the silence of Mary, not her words, that distinguishes her in the Gospels.

Certainly, she speaks in the Gospel— she speaks with the Angel Gabriel, she magnifies the Lord in her song of praise, she intercedes with Jesus to help the family at the wedding in Cana. But mostly she keeps silent. At the foot of the Cross, she doesn’t utter a word. And on the Day of Pentecost, when the other disciples begin to speak in the Spirit and St. Peter gives his sermon to the crowds, her voice is not heard. We may even say that they were granted the gift of tongues, and she the gift of silence. Mary is the one who attends to the Mystery of the Word in prayerful silence.¹

By reflecting on Mary, we begin to see our own calling. Do we make room for Christ in our lives? Have we created that interior space where we can attend to Christ in silence? The world is so loud, so filled with noise and information. If we’re not careful, we can fill ourselves until there’s no room left in us for silence or mystery. Mary came to know her Son and her God not by mastering information, but by prayerful attention.

When we make space for Christ in our souls, he reveals himself to us. “Whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him” (John 14:21). Christ reveals himself to us, not in words but in silence; not in information but in personal communion. We must make room for this silence. For it is abiding in the peace of that silence that we gain the strength to speak and sing and celebrate the mystery of Christ.

As we prepare to celebrate Christmas this evening, and especially as we head into the New Year, let us remember that Marian silence. We too can say yes to Christ. We too can make room for Christ and contemplate him in that interior space in our souls beyond words. We too can ponder these things in our hearts… and like Mary bear God within us. Amen.

References

1. Zelinksy, Vladimir. “Mary in the Mystery of the Church: The Orthodox Search for Unity” in Mary: Co-Redemptrix, Mediatrix, Advocate: Theological Foundations II (Santa Barbara: Queenship Publishing 1997), page 188.

This homily was also inspired by the poetry of Karol Wojtyla, especially “Her amazement at her only child.”

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

“Becoming Good Soil”

Gospel text: Matthew 13:1-23

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In all the Gospels, the Parable of the Sower is the first parable of Christ. It is also, according to the Lord himself, the key to all the other parables.

As he asks his disciples, “Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables?” (Mark 4:13)

This is the one. If we understand what Jesus is saying here, the other mysteries of the Kingdom will open up for us. If we don’t understand it, they will remain opaque.

The parable concerns a sower (that is, a farmer), indiscriminately casting seed on the ground. He throws seed on the path, on shallow soil, among the thorns, and on good soil.

If taken literally, he does not seem like a very smart farmer…

• We are familiar with this parable, but of course the disciples are hearing it for the first time
• They don’t get it
• So they ask Jesus for an explanation, which he gives them privately:

The Sower is the Son of Man, Christ.

The Seed is the Word of God.

The Soil is different kinds of hearts, which receive the Word or not, for different reasons.

The Soil: The Heart (cf. Matthew 13:19a)

According to Scripture and teaching of the Fathers, the heart is the innermost self, the center of our being, where we will and love and know most deeply

Four kinds of soil: four kinds of hearts

First: The seed on the path

The Word never took root. They never understood or they never wanted to understand

Usually, persons who belong to this category are inattentive, scattered.

God is casting the Word onto the soil of their heart, but distractions and idle thoughts are snatching the seed away.

This is especially a problem for modern man. There are so many impressions that can be made on the mind. Countless distractions and entertainments— there’s the Internet, our iPhones, a constant news cycle. Many birds to snatch away the seed that is cast on our hearts.

If we are scattered, if we’re always going to the next thing, then we cannot be still and open to receiving the Word that God deigns to sow in us.

Second: The seed on the rocky ground

These receive the Word with gladness but the soil of their heart is not deep— they’ll accept the Good News of the Gospel and being a disciple of Jesus, as long as it’s not too hard. But when it gets too difficult, too challenging, they fall away.

They like the idea of being a Christian, they can accept it intellectually, but they have no root. The Gospel hasn’t gone from their mind to their heart, from the surface to the depths. And so when things get challenging, they fall away.

Third: The seed among the thorns

These have received the word and it has begun to take root and grow. The problem in this case is not that the soil is too shallow but that something else is growing alongside the plant— the thorns.

Worldly cares, anxieties, unsanctified ambitions, the desire for wealth and other worldly comforts

These thorns choke out the Word and prevent it from being fruitful

Finally: The seed sown on the good soil

This is soil that receives the seed, the soil is deep, the seed is allowed to take root, and nothing else grows up alongside it to choke it.

These are those who hear the Gospel, understand it, and respond to it in repentance and faith. They allow the Gospel and the demands of discipleship to take root in them. They nourish the life of God in them with prayer and rightly ordered Christian living. They don’t allow the things of this world to choke out the saving knowledge that has been planted in them.

And for these reasons their lives are fruitful to God and the world— they patiently bear fruit, thirty- or sixty- or a hundredfold. This is what we want to be.

Notice: In all four cases, the seed is the same. The soil is what makes the difference in whether the plant grows.

Now, this parable could become for us a source of anxiety. There are four kinds of soil, and three of them are bad, and only one is good. So it’s very important for us to know: How do we become the good soil?

The Good News, beloved, is that through Holy Baptism, through hearing the Word of God and through reading it in Scripture, through receiving the Body and Blood of Our Lord in Holy Communion, the good seed has been sown in your heart.

The question is, will you water it? Will you tend and preserve it, so that it grows?

And this is not a mystery as to how to do this, how to nourish the Word sown in our hearts.

There are spiritual practices, disciplines, that help us to tend the seed that has been planted in our hearts:

• Repentance
• Faith
• Prayer
• Fasting
• Thanksgiving
• Acts of mercy
• Service to others

When we do these things, we nourish what has been sown in us.

And so each of us must look at our lives to see what threatens to turn us from good soil into bad soil.

Perhaps you need to be more on guard against distractions.

Or maybe you need to clear away some worldly cares and anxieties that are threatening to choke out God’s life in you.

Maybe you haven’t watered the seed in a long time and need to make the effort to be more regular in prayer and other spiritual disciplines.

With God’s grace, each of us can become and remain good soil.

And this is not a question of just trying really hard, in our own power = God is with us, God helps us with His grace.

And ultimately it shouldn’t be too torturous, because the Word of God is natural to us. It is not alien or foreign to us. Sin is what’s unnatural, sin is alien to who we truly are.

The divine life of God is the most natural possession of the human soul. So the seed is not foreign to the soil. It is what the soil was made for.

And when the seed is truly sown in the good soil, the plant grows up, gradually, mysteriously— as the Lord says in another parable, “day and night, it springs and grows up, he knows not how” (Mark 4:27).

The Gospel will take root in your heart, and when you water it and tend it, it will bear fruit in ways that may even surprise you. You will change, from the inside out, and become a more loving, gentle, generous person— that is, more like Christ. More like God made you to be.

Things that would have sent you off the rails or stolen your peace won’t anymore. Where you used to be stingy, you’ll be giving. You’ll be more attentive to God and more attentive to others. The seed will grow into a beautiful plant. And the birds of the air will find shade under its branches. Glory to God. Amen.

A sermon outline

Reading: Genesis 24:34-67

“The Meeting of Isaac and Rebekah”

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In romantic comedies and sitcoms, the “meet cute” is the scene where the two romantic leads meet for the first time.

In any love story, the one thing that needs to happen for there to be a story is that the boy and the girl meet. But it can’t just be a normal first interaction— there has to be something interesting about it. As a character in a 1955 George Axelrod play explains,

“Dear boy, the beginning of a movie is childishly simple. The boy and girl meet. The only important thing to remember is that— in a movie— the boy and the girl must meet in some cute way. They cannot… meet like normal people at, perhaps, a cocktail party or some other social function. No. It is terribly important that they meet cute.”

So to be anachronistic, our Old Testament reading today features the “meet cute” between Isaac and Rebekah— it’s the first time these two biblical figures meet. And whether or not it’s cute, the way it came about is at least interesting. There are several moving parts.

To give some context for this story: Abraham is 140 years old. Isaac is 40 years old. The sacrifice of Isaac, which was thankfully halted by the angel from heaven, has already occurred. Sarah has already died. And Abraham is nearing the end of his life. He has constantly kept God’s promise in his heart that his descendants would be as countless as the stars and that they would inherit the land of Canaan. God has already provided a miracle by granting that Sarah conceive and give birth to Isaac even in her old age.

But the next step is for Isaac to start having children. For that, he needs a wife. Isaac is already 40, which is kind of old to be unmarried, even in our day, but especially so in that day. He’s waited a long time. He’s ready.

So Abraham summons one of his servants, who is not named in the text, but some rabbinic traditions hold that it was Eliezer of Damascus, who was the heir of Abraham’s estate before the birth of Isaac. Abraham makes him swear to find a wife for Isaac. And Eliezer is to find her among Abraham’s kindred, not from the various pagan tribes of Canaan. The servant vows to do so, and sets off on his mission.

Our reading from the lectionary doesn’t give the whole account. Genesis actually presents the story in the third person and then has the servant recount the entire story in the first person, which is what we have here (which is, by the way, the longest speech by a slave in the Hebrew Bible, at 238 words in the Hebrew).

The servant has been invited into the home of Rebekah and her brother Laban and he recounts his story:

“I am Abraham’s servant…”

“I came today to the spring… and I prayed…”

Asks for a sign: generosity

Rebekah passes the test

The servant recounts this story and everyone agrees that it was ordained by God. Of course, back then, marriages were most often arranged, so Rebekah doesn’t have much of a say in this, but they do ask her, “Will you go with this man?” And she says, “I will.”

“So they sent away their sister Rebekah and her nurse…”

This is it— this is the first time they’re going to meet. “Isaac went out in the evening…”

And of course, Isaac and Rebekah will become the parents of Jacob and Esau, who will have their own role to play in the sacred drama.

Learn from this story?

Three lessons

1. The providence of God
   a. The timing at the well
   b. Knew the sign the servant would ask for
   c. Knew Rebekah’s character
2. Purity of intention; single-mindedness of purpose

The servant: earnest, no ulterior motives

3. Being open to opportunities to be generous (Rebekah was generous, though it could have been easy to say no)

Three major actors in this story: God, the servant, and Rebekah. All played their parts.

When you wake up in the morning:

1. Know that God is overseeing all things…
2. Strive to be single-minded in your undertakings, to be simple and earnest in your dealings with others
3. As you go throughout your day, be open to opportunities for generosity

And then we too will find that God will make our ways straight and bring all loving His purposes for us to fulfillment. Amen.

A sermon outline/transcript

June 18, 2023 

Readings: Genesis 18, Romans 5, Matthew 9-10

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

“Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” 

So declares St. Paul in his magisterial letter to the Romans. What does it mean to have peace with God? 

This question has not been a theoretical one for many Christians throughout history. Some sensitive souls have been afflicted with what is called scrupulosity— an obsessive concern with displeasing God, a constant worry that they are not in the right with God, which leads to all manner of compulsive activities meant to alleviate these anxieties.  

St. Alphonsus Ligouri, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Therese the Little Flower, John Bunyan, and Martin Luther— all of them experienced obsessive thoughts about God being displeased with them. Luther in particular struggled with this. As an Augustinian monk, he felt that no matter what he did, he felt insecure in his relationship with God. He always felt uncertain as to where he stood with God. Every morning he’d wake up and feel like he was already in debt. God was displeased with him, and Luther had to work hard to get into God’s good graces— he would pray, he would fast, he would perform works of mercy and piety. But no matter how much he did, he never felt secure. He did not feel at peace with God. 

So the discovery that we are justified— that is, that we are restored to a right relationship with God— through faith and not through works, changed his life— and eventually the course of Western Christianity. 

Yet the subject of justification by faith, which is so central to our Epistle reading this morning, is by no means simple. Luther himself said that a preacher who could properly distinguish Law and Gospel deserves a doctor’s cap.  

Two extremes to be rejected: mere exhortation or antinomianism

This morning I want to look at what it means to have peace with God, according to St. Paul’s letters.

What it does not mean: 

Not about changing God (Romans 5): God is already “for” us, which he proves by sending His Son

The Gospel is not about affecting a change in God. We are the ones who need to change.

Still, some are not at peace with God (God is not at peace with their alienation from Him!) 

How are we restored to a right relationship with God? Paul’s argument in Romans: Not through works, but through faith 

Not through works (whether works of the law like circumcision, Sabbath observance, keeping kosher… or good works in general) but by faith 

What God wants most from us is faith—TRUST  

Cf. Genesis reading (Abraham, “reckoned to him as righteousness”, Sarah’s childbearing “is anything too wonderful for the Lord?”) 

We are restored to a right relationship with God not through our works but through faith. 

Effect on our spiritual life: Frees us up (anxiety to serenity) 

Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Peace, joy: Our relationship with God is not predicated on our performance, but on His goodness and love for us 

What, then, of the place of good works? The attitude of the antinomian described

Response: The faith that justifies us is a living faith (“faith without works is dead,” “faith working through love,” FAITH WORKS) 

If we truly have faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, we will demonstrate this faith in the way we live.  

Grace is not just something that covers us, but something that fills us and changes us from the inside out (“the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us”)  

Good works are the fruit of faith: the expression of a living, saving faith 

In this context, good works have been transformed— rather than our works emerging from anxiety and compulsion, they emerge from a grateful heart 

And in any case, they’re not really “our” works

Galatians 2: I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Christ lives in me, doing his work

1 Corinthians 15: I worked harder than any of them, yet not I, but the grace of God that is with me.

Key verse: Ephesians 2 [salvation is by grace through faith but necessarily includes good works]

“Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions…

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith— and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

St. Paul is clear that we are saved by grace through faith, but that believers are made for good works and indeed, that we are the handiwork of God. If you are a Christian, not only will you do good works, your life will become a good work, that is, the good work of God.

Good News:

God loves us, even though we were far from Him, even though we have all rebelled against Him in different ways, God loves us so much He gave His only begotten Son to live and die and rise for us. For you to be restored to a right relationship with God, what God requires of you is not to perform a series of works but to turn from your sin and trust in Christ. And trusting in Christ with all your heart, reaching out in faith and holding on to the hem of his robe, you receive forgiveness and healing. You will have peace with God.

And God will live in you through the Holy Spirit and change you from the inside out, and your faith in Christ will express itself in how you think and speak and act. Your faith will be a living faith that works through love, and your good works will be the expressions of a grateful and joyful heart. You will move through life, not with anxiety or compulsion, but with joy and peace and confident serenity. That is what God wants for you.

And not only will you do good works, your life will be a good work: God’s work, as He works in you and through you. This is Good News, beloved. Since we are justified by faith, we have with peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God. Amen. 

“Givenness and Gratitude”

Readings: Genesis 1, 2 Corinthians 13:11-13, Matthew 28

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today’s sermon is going to be about gratitude. Being grateful. Sometimes it’s good to give the answer at the beginning. That way you’re not searching for it the whole time. “Gratitude” is where we’re going to end up.

But what does gratitude have to do with Trinity Sunday?

Unique commemoration in the Church Year

Most feasts days are about Events in the life of Christ or his Mother or the saints

Trinity Sunday: not an event, but a teaching

Dogma of the Holy Trinity: One God in three Persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit)

Mystery, beyond human comprehension

The apostles did not come up with the dogma of the Trinity because they thought it was clever. It emerged out of sustained, prayerful reflection on their experience.

The God of Israel, Christ, Holy Spirit (e.g., Baptism of Christ)

They didn’t have an agenda; this dogma emerged out of their experience of the Incarnation and the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church

Not only experience, but Scripture (raw data)

Readings, aptly chosen

• Genesis: God creates through His Word and Spirit
• 2 Corinthians: Trinitarian benediction
• Matthew: Baptism in the Name…

The data is there, but how is it synthesized? How does the Church express the truth that there is only one God, but that this God exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

There’s a reason for the Prologue to John’s Gospel is written the way it is—as poetry

The apostles and their successors needed to find the language and the ritual to express this truth about God— and this was a process that took several centuries. They had to not only put forward what was true about God but reject what was false.

Heresies (opinions): Arianism, Modalism, Divinity of the Spirit denied

And after centuries of prayerful reflection on the Church’s experience of Christ and the Spirit, after centuries of wrestling with the teaching of sacred Scripture, the bishops and confessors of the faith assembled, took a deep breath, and formally confessed the belief of the Church:

“We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.

And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, begotten of the Father before all ages, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, being one in Essence with the Father, through whom all things were made.

And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified.”

Every Sunday, when we repeat the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, we confess the same faith that our forebears confessed. We are expressing our continuity with their understanding and experience of God the Holy Trinity.

Givenness of Christian doctrine

We don’t construct the faith anew every generation. We humbly receive what has been passed down to us. Because the identity of God is not something for us to construct anyway

God to Moses from the Burning Bush: “I am who I am”

God just is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Trinity is the eternal Verity, the truth beyond and behind and between all things. This is what and who God is, not because we came up with it, but because it is what has been revealed.

Throughout Christian history, there have been some speculations about why God is triune rather than a Monad. Some have even asked why are there Three Persons and not four or five? And perhaps there is insight to be found in such reflection, but the truth is that God has revealed Himself as three Persons, not two or four or five or whatever.

This is what has been revealed. This is what has been given.

There is a givenness to the Christian faith, a sense that our religion is not what we construct, but what we receive with gratitude and even a sense of responsibility.

But this givenness applies not only to the realm of doctrine. Everything that exists is a gift of the loving triune God. Ultimately, everything has a givenness to it.

Genesis 1: In the beginning, God created “the heavens and the earth” (Hebrew idiom for everything that is): God declared it good, very good

Everything we have, everything we are, God gave to us

Our existence, our time on this earth, our relationships, the food we eat and the clothes we wear, the gift of thought and expression and art– everything that is good and lovely in the lives of men and women– is a gift from a loving God.

So our fundamental posture as Christians should be gratitude— to receive God’s gifts in gratitude. And not only to receive, but to give it back in thanksgiving– Eucharistia

That is our vocation, to be priests of the New Creation, to offer back to God all that He has given to us:

“All things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine have we given thee.”

Or as the priest says in the Eucharistic prayer: “And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee.”

So on this Trinity Sunday, we remember that God’s identity is not something we construct, but something revealed and handed down to us. We remember that all things are the gift of the loving triune God, to be received in humble gratitude and offered back to God in thanksgiving and love. Givenness and Gratitude.

May the blessing of the Life-Giving Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, rest upon us evermore. Amen.

May 21, 2023

“Our Hero’s Journey”

Readings: Acts 1:6-14 / 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11 / John 17:1-11

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces is an influential book first published by Joseph Campbell in 1949. In it, he describes The Hero’s Journey, the archetypal story that Campbell claims is reflected in most legends, myths, and sacred narratives. His thesis is that basically all stories, from The Odyssey to The Lord of the Rings, have the same basic structure. In so many words, there’s really only one story. And it goes like this:

Our hero is living a more-or-less normal life when he receives a call to adventure. The hero leaves his familiar world and crosses a threshold into an unknown and challenging new world. The hero is helped by mentors and friends, opposed by foils and enemies. In pursuit of his goal, the hero struggles against increasingly greater obstacles until he enters the greatest challenge of his life— the abyss. Once there, the hero experiences death and rebirth and returns to his old world a changed person, with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

That’s the Hero’s Journey in brief. And of course, a lot has been written about it since Campbell first published his ideas, lots of discourse and critique, but the overall idea has remained relevant for storytellers the world over.

I’ve been thinking about this because the life of Christ is indeed a story, “the greatest story ever told,” as one film calls it. The earthly life of our Lord has a beginning, middle, and end.

So as we draw near to the end of the Eastertide season, we should be feeling a sense of narrative closure. There should be a feeling that the sacred events we have been commemorating since Holy Week have been progressing and have an end in sight.

Our Lord was betrayed, arrested, crucified— he died and was buried— he rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples for forty days… and then what? Have you ever thought about how the Resurrection story could end, if not with the Ascension? What if Jesus rose from the dead, and just stuck around? Just stayed on earth, never to die again? The Paschal Mystery would be a sort of open-ended story. But it was not meant to be that way.

The Ascension of Christ into the heavens after his Resurrection is an essential part of his hero’s journey. This is the way his earthly life was meant to conclude: by ascending into heaven to be seated at the right hand of the Father.

The reason for this is not arbitrary. There is a beautiful symmetry in the life of Christ. In the Incarnation, Christ descends to bring God to humanity. Now, in the Ascension, Christ ascends to bring humanity to God. He went forth from God and he returns to God. He unites humanity to himself, defeats our enemies, and then returns from whence he came.

The whole of the life of Christ is one grand movement downward and upward. The Word of God comes down from heaven, leaves his “familiar world,” we might call it, and becomes human in the womb of the Blessed Virgin. He is born into our world and experiences the full range of the human condition. He knows the joys and frustrations of family life; the diligence needed to learn a trade; moments of triumph and perplexity in his ministry. He tastes the bitterness of betrayal and the desolation of the Passion. Christ has experienced the depths of our common human experience.

And like the archetypal hero, he descends into the abyss of his Passion to do battle against the greatest Enemy of all— a battle to the death. And against all expectation, he triumphs over his enemies by rising from the dead and being exalted to the right hand of God, with the power to bestow gifts on his fellow man— above all, the Gift that contains all gifts: the Holy Spirit.

The most holy life of Christ is a story, and the Ascension is its fitting conclusion.

So what does this mean for our stories? For our own journeys? I would offer two thoughts. The first is that our stories have now been swept up into his. Our stories are unfolding in the light of his story. If we are truly in Christ, if we are united to Christ in the mysteries of the Church and the life of prayer, then we share in Christ’s victory, just as he shared in our struggles. If we remind ourselves that our stories participate in the victory of his story, we will be able to drive away despondency and despair.

Secondly, it means that, while his journey is completed, even though “the strife is o’er, the battle done,” we still have work to do. The disciples were given a mission right before the Ascension: “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” To the ends of the earth. Even to Sherman and Grayson County. We too are charged to take our witness to Jesus into our own time and place. Our witness is our testimony of who Christ is and what he means to our lives. That is what the local church is for: not primarily to meet the needs of members, but to reach out to those who have not yet heard the testimony about Jesus or who need to hear it afresh.

This mission is long-term. It is not accomplished overnight. And it requires certain commitments of us, which are mentioned in our readings. After the Ascension, the disciples “constantly devote themselves to prayer.” So if we want to bear witness to Jesus, we will pray. We will follow St. Peter’s exhortation to “discipline [ourselves], to keep alert.” We will humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, so that He may exalt us in due time. And in the midst of all this discipline and hard work, we will cast our anxiety on the Lord, because He cares for us.

Beloved: Our Lord has completed his journey on this earth. The Hero has triumphed, the Villain has been defeated. And all are our stories have participated in this victory. Take your part in the narrative. You too have a role in the Story. May God grant that your life be a powerful and beautiful witness to the Risen Lord, the Hero who triumphs over all. Amen.

May 14, 2023

“The Motherly Love of God”

Readings: Acts 17:22-31; John 14:15-21

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Hans Urs von Balthasar was a Swiss Catholic priest and theologian who was one of the most prolific authors in modern history. He wrote 85 books, over 500 articles and essays, and almost 100 translations of other people’s work.

Yet in all this prodigious output, all those thousands of pages he wrote, there is one insight of his that I find most memorable. And it’s simple but profound.

Von Balthasar writes that our first experience after birth is being placed in the arms of our mother and seeing her face… where the “I” encounters the “Thou” for the first time, and the “Thou” smiles in a relationship of love and sustenance.

Our mother is the first person who sees us, who knows us and loves us. Our mother is the first person we see, the first person we learn to love. We first learn what it means to love from our mother, as she cares for us and feeds us and holds us in her loving embrace.

(When one thinks of the birth of Christ and his relationship with his mother Mary, one begins to see why so many throughout Christian history have felt such affection for her).

Mothers teach us what it means to be in communion with another person, which is what Christian maturity is ultimately about: learning to become persons. Not atomized data points or statistics, not consumers, but persons.

And our relationship with our mothers is a reflection of the love which God has for us. God is the One who knows us first, who loves us first; “we love Him because He first loved us.” God is the One in “whom we live and move and have our being,” as St. Paul says, the One who is closer to us than we are to ourselves. God is the One who, more than any other, tenderly cares for us. Mothers have the dignity and privilege of reflecting the love of God in their own way.

The whole of the Christian life in the Church, in fact, is rightly seen as maternal. Because after all, what does a mother do for a newborn infant? A mother bathes her child, clothes him, feeds him. And that is what happens for us in the Church: We are helpless, lost in sin, unable to cleanse ourselves or care for ourselves. But God, who is merciful, cleanses us in the waters of baptism, clothes us with the righteousness of Christ, and feeds us with the holy nourishment of Word and Sacrament.

It is in the Church where we learn that life is not ultimately about things, whether material things like possessions or immaterial things like success or comfort. Life is not essentially about using things but about enjoying communion with other persons.

So it is personal language that Jesus uses in his farewell discourse: “The Spirit of truth will abide in you and will be in you. On that day, you will know that I am in my Father and you are in me, and I am in you.”

This is what the Christian life is truly about, this is what human life is about: union and communion with the One who loves us. He in us and we in Him. We receive the love of God made manifest to us in Jesus, and with God’s grace, we are empowered to love God in return.

And our love for God is demonstrated through keeping the commandments of Christ, as he says in our Gospel reading: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” If we love Christ, we will strive to do what he would have us do and avoid what he has forbidden.

Even here there is a parallel with human parenting. A mother tells her child, “Don’t stick your finger in the electrical socket!” not because she is capricious, but because it is for the child’s good. The commandments draw boundaries in the world, which we respect for our own good and disregard to our own detriment. And for that reason, obedience to the commandments of Christ is never a merely legal matter, never merely about keeping the rules or doing the “right” things. Keeping the commandments is the concrete way of abiding in that communion for which we are made, as Jesus says: “They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me, and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.” Obedience here is not primarily legal but relational.

Brothers and sisters: Remember the great love which God has for you. Remember that with motherly care, God has cleansed you and clothed you, taught you and corrected you, fed you and sheltered you within the haven of the Church. And remember that you were made for communion: communion with God and communion with other people.

I want to return to the image I used at the beginning: mother and child locking eyes for the first time. I spoke of the mother as the one who sees us first and loves us first, and I related that to God, who is truly the One who sees and loves us first. But the analogy does eventually break down.

For while it is true that one’s mother is the first person we get to know, the one who is present right from the moment of our birth, she is usually not someone who is present at our death. For most of us, our mothers die before we do, and so they are present at the beginning of our life, but not the end.

But it is not so with God. At the hour of our death, just as at the hour of our birth, God is present… as not only the One who loved us in the beginning, but as the One who loves us at our mortal end.

And beyond death, we will see God, not through a glass darkly, but face to face. And our eyes will find His, and we will see the Face of the One who has ever loved us and cared for us. We will see Him truly for the first time, and there will be… recognition. We will recognize Him as the One who has tenderly cared for us all this time. And that recognition will be the beginning of endless joy. Amen.