The Pulpit and the Altar

“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.

Outline/transcript

May 7, 2023

“Keeping Our Eyes on Jesus”

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

Our reading today from the Acts of the Apostles is beautifully depicted in the stain-glass window in the back of the sanctuary.

Stephen, the first deacon of the Church, looks to heaven as his persecutors lift stones to stone him. His gaze is steady, his expression unafraid. He sees the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. Usually, Jesus is spoken of us as sitting at the right hand of God, but now he stands, perhaps as a way of respecting Stephen’s courage.

And after commending his spirit to the Lord Jesus, and asking forgiveness for his killers, Stephen dies, becoming the Church’s first martyr.

This reading reminds us, now that we are deep into the Easter season, that the Resurrection of Christ was not only a message of surprising joy…

It was a message for which the followers of Jesus were willing to die.

Testimony before the authorities (Jesus is the Messiah…)

Detail in St. Luke’s account of the martyrdom of Stephen whose significance it is easy for us to miss:

“Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

Allusion to Psalm 31

Into your hands I commend my spirit (trust—asleep, death)

Jesus’ dying words (gives up his spirit and dies on the Cross)

Jesus commended his spirit to God, and now Stephen is commending his spirit to Jesus.

To say, “Into your hands, I commend my spirit” or “receive my spirit” is something you would only say to God.

And here is Stephen, looking into heaven, his eyes fixed on Jesus, addressing Jesus in prayer and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!

This is truly revolutionary! Addressing Jesus in the same way one would address God. Of course, for us, this is not so surprising, but we have twenty centuries of Christian history in the rear view. This is just a few years after the Resurrection of Christ.

Addressing Jesus in prayer and commending one’s spirit to him like you would commend your spirit to God

These early disciples of Jesus are addressing him as if he was God.

We already see evidence of this in the life of Christ—forgives sins, accepts worship, he refers to himself using divine titles…

Gospel reading (Last Supper) …

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes… If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father…”

“Have I been with you so long, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”

Jesus speaks of himself here as the Image of God, the one in whom the glory of God is perfectly reflected, so that, if you see Jesus, you have seen God in the flesh.

Rowan Williams, the former ABC, reflects on this stunning claim in his book Tokens of Trust. He writes, “Here is a human life so shot through with the purposes of God, so transparent to the action of God, that people speak of it as God’s life ‘translated’ into another medium. Here [in the life of Jesus] God is supremely and uniquely at work…

“[And so] Christians approach Jesus now as though he were completely with God, associated with God, able to do what God does, and so correctly addressed as if he were God.” (end quote)

Jesus is saying to his disciples, I am the perfect Image of who God is. What I am doing is what God is doing. What I am about is what God is about. If you want to know God, get to know me… for I am the way to Him, and the truth about Him, and the life that He gives to the fallen world.”

It is a stunning claim for a 1^st century rabbi from a backwater town to make. But the Resurrection of Christ vindicates Jesus’ claims and life. God vindicates Jesus by raising him from the dead, triumphant over death, his enemies, and all those who would malign him.

What does this mean for us? If Jesus is indeed the one shows us the Father, if he is the way to God, the truth about God, the life of God made manifest to us, how does this affect how we live our daily lives?

I would suggest that if we know that Jesus is the way, and the truth, and the life, then that means we would be appropriately discerning about what we encounter in this world. There are indeed many ways, many “truths”, and many ways of life to choose from. Many people are consumed by politics—whether conservative or liberal doesn’t matter—politics and “being right” is the way and truth and life for them. For others, it’s entertainment, or comfort, or ideology. There are so many different things calling out to us, saying “This is the way! This is the truth! This is what life is about!”

There are so many things in this multitudinous, jostling, busy world that call out to us, vying for our attention and energy. Some of them are worthwhile. There are some things that are worth thinking about, and worth talking about, and worth doing. And there are many things that are not. And the way we know the difference is by keeping our eyes on Jesus.

He is the way and the truth and the life. And if we keep our eyes on Jesus, like St. Stephen, and look at the world in light of Jesus, then we will know what is worthwhile and what is not. If we keep our eyes and minds and hearts on Jesus, then our lives will be balanced, healthful— everything in its proper place. And after a lifetime of keeping our eyes on Jesus, we will be prepared, in the hour of our death, to commend our spirits to him, as to the faithful God. Amen.

March 12, 2023

“Thirst and the Bottomless Well”

Readings: Exodus 17:1-7, Psalm 95, John 4:5-42

Today’s Gospel reading is one of the longest in the Church Year. Like last Sunday’s Gospel, it is an extended conversation between Jesus and a minor character.

Unlike last week, I won’t go through the conversation line by line. That would be too severe an ordeal, even for Lent.

Since the reading is so long, I can only touch on a few points, so I wanted to look at the primary motif of our readings this week: Thirst.

• In our reading from Exodus, the Israelites thirst in the desert wilderness and ask Moses to give them water.

• In the Gospel, the Lord Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that those who drink the water from Jacob’s Well will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water he gives them will never thirst.

• And in Psalm 42, which we’ll later sing at the Offertory, the Psalmist declares that he thirsts for God “like as the deer thirsts for cool streams.”

Almost every human activity, every subject under the sun, has been utilized in Holy Scripture to illustrate glorious truths about God and the life in Christ. Food, drink, clothing, music, journeying— name a subject or an activity, and it probably appears in Scripture as part of a vast interconnected web of concepts and symbols.

So if we want to understand how thirst functions in Scripture, we have to consider what it is. What does it mean to be thirsty? It means to desire water. To feel the need for hydration.

Thirst is related to hunger, obviously, but there are a few key differences. Hunger cues us that we need to eat food, which provides energy and sustenance. When we go without eating, we feel tired or faint. Water is less about providing energy and more about providing what the body needs to function. The human body is 55 to 70% water. The body needs water for the brain to function and for organs to work, which is why when people become severely dehydrated, their body systems begin to shut down. Whereas a person can go without food for several weeks, one cannot go without water for more than three days.

Have you ever thought about why God has created human beings this way? Conceivably, God could have created humans so that they never had to eat or drink. Maybe they would just have an inner process that continually refreshed and replenished them, without having to take in something external to their bodies. Why did God create us this way?

I’m not saying I have the answer, but there must be a higher reason why humans must eat and drink. The human body, with all its needs and processes, with all its functions, from eating to drinking to sex, is sacramental of something greater. The body is a site of grace; it’s where we encounter God and each other.

(This is, by the way, the main thesis of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, which theologians are still unpacking.)

The point is, thirst is basically the desire for water, the thing that we need to survive and function properly. Without water, we can’t think straight, our body can’t function internally, and everything shuts down. If you’ve ever been really dehydrated, you know how unpleasant it is, and we can begin to see the complaining of the Israelites more sympathetically. Had we been in their shoes, we probably wouldn’t have fared much better.

So to thirst for God is to desire God, and not just in a general sort of way, but in an intense way, in a way that recognizes that without God, we cannot function. When we separate ourselves from God, our minds cannot work correctly; our bodies are estranged from their source of life; our spirits dry up. Of course, a person can never truly be totally separate from God. He is “everywhere present and filling all things”—the only way to be totally estranged from God would be to just cease to exist. But a person can refuse to drink of the life-giving Fount that is God. A person can become spiritually dehydrated by ignoring God and not seeking out communion with Him. And when that happens, the effects on our spirits are devastating.

So one of the main points that Jesus is making to the Samaritan woman is that the deep thirst that human beings feel within themselves cannot be quenched by the things of this world. “Whoever drinks of this water will be thirsty again.” He doesn’t just mean this literally, that a person who drinks water from that well will be thirsty again. He means whoever seeks to be satisfied from the wells of this world will never be satisfied. The goods of this world cannot quench our desire, our thirst, because we were not made for the goods of this world but for God.

This is a harder truth for us to grasp in the modern era, since there is so much we could use to try to fill ourselves up. Food and drink are so abundantly available. So is entertainment, news, games, books and articles to read, places to go, things to do. A person with even a middle-class income and a connection to the Internet can keep themselves occupied for months, without prayer or silence or any of the deeper life that comes from living in the Spirit. Their bodies and minds are constantly filled and constantly moving, but their spirits are dying of dehydration and slowing to a halt.

Jesus comes to give to us the Life that He draws from the Father. It is hydration not from this world but from above. He draws from a deeper well, the deepest of all wells: the fathomless depths of God. The inmost life of God, which cannot be obtained through worldly activities, no matter how noble or exalted, is conveyed to us through our Lord Jesus Christ. “The eternal life that was with the Father was made manifest to us” (1 John 1:2).

And not only does Jesus satisfy our thirsts, but he does so in a way that is re-newing and replenishing. “The water that I give him will become in him a spring welling up to eternal life.” The Samaritan woman had to trek to the well, and lower the bucket, and then take the water back into town. It was a laborious process, and they had to do it every day. But the gift that Jesus gives is self-renewing, like a spring that bubbles up of its own accord. Such is the life of the Holy Spirit in our souls.

One of the great tasks of the spiritual life, especially for us in the West, is to not lose our thirst for God. Do you desire God? Is your need for God’s presence in your life such that, without it, you feel like you’re dying of thirst? A good measure of this is how long you can go without praying. Someone who is earnest in the spiritual life can’t go days on end without praying. It feels wrong. You feel like you’re isolated from your Source of Life.

And that’s part of where fasting comes in. We eat less food, so we can feel hungry for God. We cut down on frivolous activities, so we can attend to what is truly worthwhile. We fill up less on the world so we can be filled up with God.

This week, as you go throughout your daily activities, see what it is you go to when you feel stressed or empty or restless. What is it you reach for to satisfy that inner thirst? Then consider reaching for God instead. Read Scripture. Chant some psalms. Pray with your own words, if you can find them. And if not, then pray the Jesus Prayer or some other short prayer, like “Lord, have mercy.”

God is our Fountain of life, the bottomless well that we can draw from over and over. He is our Life, and without Him, we can’t function. And despite her misunderstandings of much of what Jesus had to say, the Samaritan woman recognized this.

May we say, with her, “Sir, give me this water, that I may no longer thirst.” Amen.

June 13, 2021

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Denton, Texas

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

Today is the Feast of St. Barnabas, the day in which we as a congregation remember and celebrate our parish’s patron saint, from whom our church gets its name.

Barnabas is not the most well-known saint or biblical figure a church can be named after. He is not as prominent as Mary or Peter, John or Luke. And maybe this is a blessing. In thinking about Barnabas we cannot simply rely on larger-than-life caricatures or dubious legends. Separating fact from speculation in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, for example, has proven a perennial challenge for the Church. Because Barnabas is more obscure than say, Peter or Mary, because he has less “baggage,” so to speak, and his life is not overlaid with so many connotations and traditions, we are able to see him more clearly. To get a sense of who he was as an historical figure.

There are several references to Barnabas scattered throughout the Acts of the Apostles and in some of Paul’s letters, and if one were to arrange them chronologically, a portrait emerges. Today I’d like to give you a biography of our patron, then explore what his life and witness mean for us today.

Barnabas was born Joseph. He was a Jew and a Levite from Cyprus. At some point, he heard the Gospel and believed in the Messiah Jesus, becoming a prominent disciple in Jerusalem. He is first mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles as a disciple who sold some land that he owned and gave the proceeds to the community. For this act of kindness, the apostles gave Joseph a new name: Barnabas, which means “son of encouragement.” Already we see that one of his characteristic qualities is generosity. Acts 11:24 describes Barnabas as “a good man, and full of the Holy Spirit and of faith.”

After Paul’s conversion experience on the road to Damascus, Paul returned to Jerusalem. But the apostles and disciples there were suspicious, not convinced that the former persecutor of the Church had become a believer. It was Barnabas who introduced Paul to the apostles and vouched for the sincerity of Paul’s conversion.

The next chapter is Barnabas’ life centers on Antioch, in modern-day Turkey. Jewish believers there began preaching the Gospel, not only to fellow Jews, but to Gentile pagans as well. These Gentile believers joined the community of Jewish Christians there.

The leadership at Jerusalem was concerned about this development, so they sent Barnabas to investigate. As we read in our readings from Acts: “When Barnabas came and saw the grace of God, he rejoiced, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast devotion.” Rather than being suspicious, Barnabas rejoiced to see Gentiles faithful to the Lord. Barnabas was tasked with seeing the newly diversified church at Antioch. He found the work so extensive that he realized he needed a helper, so he went to Tarsus to get Paul. Paul and Barnabas labored in Antioch for a whole year, making many converts.

From this point on, Barnabas becomes known as a steadfast companion of Paul on his missionary journeys. Barnabas was among Paul’s best friends and colleagues in the ministry. And it is in this capacity as a missionary and companion of Paul that Barnabas is called an “apostle” in Acts 14:14.
Paul mentions in his first letter to the Corinthians that he and Barnabas funded their missions by working side jobs and implied that both of them chose not to marry so they could devote their time and energy to the Gospel.

Barnabas and Paul became well-known for their commitment to including Gentiles in the life of the church. Still, Barnabas was not spotless in upholding this commitment. Paul mentions in his letter to the Galatians, “When Kephas [Peter] came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he clearly was wrong. For, until some people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he began to draw back and separated himself, because he was afraid of the circumcised. And the rest of the Jews also acted hypocritically along with him, with the result that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy.”

The last reference to Barnabas we get in Acts is in chapter 15:
“Some time later Paul said to Barnabas, “Let us go back and visit the believers in all the towns where we preached the word of the Lord and see how they are doing.” Barnabas wanted to take John, also called Mark, with them, but Paul did not think it wise to take him, because he had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not continued with them in the work. They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company. Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas and left… he went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches” (Acts 15:36-41).

Barnabas continued his ministry in Cyprus to the end of his life. His death is not recorded in the Bible, but Tradition holds that he was martyred at Cyprus, by being tortured then stoned to death. Today, he is venerated as an apostle, a martyr, and the founder of the Church of Cyprus.

So that’s the biography. What does it mean for us today? Sure, that is interesting historical data, but what does it mean for us as Christians today, and especially as members of St. Barnabas Church?

I would like to speak about only one major insight we can glean from the life of our patron saint. And that is generosity.

Barnabas was a man who gave generously of his time, energy, and resources. He lived out the word of the Lord in our Gospel reading: “Freely you received, freely you shall give.” From the first mention of him in Acts, Barnabas is someone lauded for his liberality in giving. It’s no wonder that he and Paul were entrusted with the collection for the poor in Jerusalem.

Yet it was not only a matter of financial generosity. He settled into a community, whether Antioch or Cyprus, and got to work. Like Paul, he could say, “I am willing to spend and be spent for you.” He gave much of his time and energy to the hard work of building up a community, of encouraging its members—a ministry in which there are no shortcuts or easy fixes.

Finally, Barnabas consistently demonstrated a generosity of spirit. He was generous in his willingness to see the good in others. He vouched for Paul, even when he had been a persecutor. He rejoiced to see the conversion of the Gentiles in Antioch, despite their idolatrous past. He wanted to give John Mark a second chance, even though he had deserted them when things got rough in Pamphylia.

Barnabas was someone who wanted to see the good in others, who was willing to believe that people could change, even if they had failed spectacularly in the past. The opposite of generosity is being stingy—which is much easier for us to do. We can be stingy with our money, with our time, with our willingness to put up with others or to demonstrate charity. Or we can be generous.

When we look at St. Barnabas, we see a life touched by grace—a life lived for Jesus. On the one hand, a life of faith, hard work, and generosity. A life which the Holy Spirit set apart for itself and used mightily. On the other hand, a life that was imperfect, not exempt from sharp disagreements, occasionally carried away by the bad influence of others. A life that was incomplete in itself, but part of something much grander and lovelier.

We remember and celebrate the saints, not because they are so good in themselves, but because they reflect the goodness of Jesus. It is Jesus who is the exemplar of generosity—who multiplied the loaves and fishes so abundantly that there were twelve wicker baskets full of leftovers. The one who gave the most generous gift the world has ever known—his body and blood, his very life, for the life of the world.

May we, like Barnabas, live generously, and give thanks for the blessed generosity of his savior and ours. Amen.

Homily for the First Sunday in Lent

February 21, 2021

Year B, RCL

Collect of the Day: Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan: Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Old Testament: Genesis 9:8-17

Gradual: Psalm 25:1-9

Epistle: 1 Peter 3:18-22

Gospel: Mark 1:9-15

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

There is a Peanuts comic strip starring Lucy and Linus that has always stuck with me, and it goes like this: Lucy is in her house, at the window, looking at the pouring rain outside. She turns to her brother Linus and says, “Boy, look at it rain. What if it floods the whole world?” Linus responds, “It will never do that. In the ninth chapter of Genesis, God promised Noah that would never happen again, and the sign of the promise is the rainbow.” Relieved, Lucy says, “You’ve taken great a load off my mind.” And Linus replies, “Sound theology has a way of doing that!”¹

Linus is right. Sound theology, or sound ways of talking about God, really does take a load off our mind. It reassures us that God is good. To be sure, God’s goodness is not an invitation to try to take advantage of Him. God is not to be challenged, mocked, or trifled with. He is capable of—for example—wiping out the known world with a destructive flood. Yet alongside the seriousness of falling into the hands of the living God, there is the relief of being in the hands of the merciful God.

Good theology assures us that God is trustworthy, that He keeps His promises. Unlike human beings, who can go back on their word, if God makes a promise, He keeps it.

But sometimes it’s difficult for us to believe that. We may know it intellectually, but we would like a little more reassurance. So God helps us out. He gives us a sign of his promise—a sign of the covenant, as it’s called in our reading from Genesis. The rainbow is one of the first times in Scripture that God gives a sign to confirm his promise.

God continues to give us signs of His promises, even now. As members of the family of God, God makes promises to us—that He will love us, be with us, and never abandon us. Then to confirm those promises, he gives us wonderful signs—like baptism. I can look at my baptism and remember, “God has washed away my sins with the blood of Christ. God has claimed me as his own and I belong to Him. Nothing will ever separate me from the love of God in Jesus Christ.”

The rainbow, baptism, the Eucharist, the life of Christ itself—all these are signs that God is trustworthy. It has been said that human history is the story of God convincing His creatures that He can be trusted.² And so the life of faith is a gradual learning to trust God more and more. All of us have room to grow in that trust—and all of us face the temptation to abandon that trust.

We speak often of temptation in Lent, and we usually mention it in reference to the temptation to commit particular sins: sexual temptation, temptation to break one’s vows, temptation to indulge in vice rather than practice self-constraint. But I think the most insidious temptation of all is the temptation to doubt the trustworthiness of God. The temptation to finally conclude, “God isn’t actually good. He won’t uphold His promises. He will abandon me eventually. In the final analysis, God can’t be trusted.”

Satan tried to tempt Jesus to think this way in the wilderness. His mission was to get Jesus to doubt his relationship with God and to doubt the validity of his mission as the Messiah. Jesus didn’t give into this temptation, or any of the other tests Satan threw his way. For Jesus too, faithfulness means trust rather than despair.

Given what we’ve endured over the past year—over the past week, even—it can be tempting to give up on the hope that there really is any coherent meaning to everything going on in the world. “Maybe the world really is as chaotic as it seems. Maybe God isn’t watching over us after all.” If there is one grand temptation we all face this Lent, it is the temptation to resign ourselves to this sort of despair—to give up hope.

My invitation for us all this Lent is to keep in mind the trustworthiness of God. Do all the things you usually would—fast, keep your Lenten discipline, pray, give alms. But behind these things and between these things, remember that God is trustworthy. Even when it doesn’t appear so, God is for us, God is with us, and God always keeps His promises. It is our faith that empowers us to trust in spite of everything, to hope against hope, as we await the Day when God finally delivers us from all temptations… and makes good on all his many promises. Amen.

Notes

1 https://www.pinterest.com/pin/540854236472479245/

2 Rowan Williams, Tokens of Trust