15 Pentecost

 Sept. 5, 2021

Isaiah 35.4-7a; Psalm 146; James 2:1-10,[11-13],14-17; Mark 7.24-37

 + So, I know you have been asked this question before:

  “What command do you suppose is the most repeated in the Bible?”

 Do you remember?

 If you don’t, don’t worry.

 I’m, not grading anyone. I promise.

 But think about it a bit.

 What command do you think is the most often repeated command in the Bible?

 No doubt, the first thought to come to you is probably one of the ten commandments, I’m sure. “Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy.” Or “You shall have no other gods.”

 If we look beyond the Ten Commandments, we might try to find a few others that sound good.

 Certainly, we might think about the command Jesus gave us,  “Love one another as I have loved you.”

 I can just imagine what people outside the Church might think when they are asked about what is about most repeated command.

 No doubt they will think of something that begins “Thou shalt not…” and includes some sort of shame.

 Or certainly with all the issues going on in the Church today, they’ll think of a commandment that has something to do with sex, since that’s all the church seems to be able to talk about oftentimes.

 But none of those are the most often repeated commands.

 The most often repeated commandment in both the Hebrew scriptures and New Testament is  “Do not be afraid.”

 Certainly it was, by far, the most often repeated commandment of Jesus in the Gospels.

 But we do encounter it quite often as well in the Hebrew scriptrures.

And sure enough, in our reading this morning from Isaiah, we do in fact find it here.

 “Do not fear,” God tells us through the prophet Isaiah.

 Those are soothing words to most of us, because, let’s face it: we all feel fear at times.

 We live in scary times.

 There is a pandemic still going on.

 There are neo-Nazis and white supremacists and people who have been deceived by lying and false science and conspiracy theories.

 There is still hatred it his world, there is still so much anger and bigotry and racism and homophobia and ableism and sexism in our world.

 And I’m not even going to get into what’s happening in Texas right now because I will be up here all day.

  There is illness, there are setbacks, there is frustration and there is a whole lot of hurt out there in the world and, and not just out there, but right here in our midst as well. 

 As much as we want to think the world is nice and happy and wonderful, it isn’t always.

 The world we live in is not always a pretty place.

 So, most of us are longing to hear God say to us , “Fear not.” We want God to command us to put aside our fears.

 The fact is, it sounds easier than it actually is.

 After all, when anyone usually says something like this to us, we shrug our shoulders and roll our eyes and think, “Right. Sure. Easier said than done.”

 We can tell ourselves all we want to not fear but the fact is the fear will probably remain.

 However, it is more than just a matter of saying it.

 We need to believe in our fearlessness and we need to live out in our lives.

 Those words—Fear not—need to be the “call words” for us throughout our entire lives.

 We need to be reminded of again and again in our lives. 

 No matter how much we claim our own braveness, we do feel real fear.

 And we’re not the only ones.

 Isaiah and the people he was prophesying to in our first scripture reading from today knew a few things about fear.

 Isaiah’s message for today  came in the midst of a message few people wanted to hear.

 He was telling those people that the world they knew and cherished was about to come to an end.

 Armies were amassing, ready to overtake the lands of Judea and Israel and send its people off into exile.

 Most people who heard Isaiah, of course, didn’t believe him.

 How could we—God’s chosen people—be driven out of this land that God led our ancestors to?

 As you can imagine, prophets were not always popular people.

 They were popular when the prophecies foretold good times.

 But those prophets of joy and happiness were few and far between.

 Most of the prophets were prophets because they were the vessels through which God wanted to warn people.

 More often than not, a prophet was one who had to stand up and say, “unless you repent, punishment will come upon you.”

 Let’s face it, none of us would want to hear that—especially from someone who claims that God told them to tell us that.

 And I’m sure none of us would want to be in the prophets place either.

 Imagine for a moment, having a prophecy of a future disaster that is about to befall an entire nation.

 Would you seriously want that responsibility?

 Would you want the responsibility of saying to people, “Listen, if you don’t turn away from your wayward habits, there is going to be some major destruction coming your way.”

 These poor prophets were not lucky. Yes, God chose them and spoke to them in a special way.

 But the words God spoke to them became yokes to them. They became weights on their shoulders.

 They had many years of toil ahead of them as prophets—struggling under the weight of God’s words in their life.

 And often the reward many of them received for their toil was exile and occasionally violent deaths.

 Isaiah, it is popularly believed, died after being put inside a hollow log and sawed in half for what God compelled him to speak.

 So, even Isaiah knew the power fear had over people.

 But in the face of these stark realities, in the face of the stark reality of the exile that awaited the people of Judah and Israel, God was still able to speak through Isaiah that somehow, despite all the bad things that were about to happen, ultimately, God would prevail.

 Even in the face of the invasion by foreign armies, God was still able to say to those people with real conviction, “fear not.”

 This call is not some “pep rally” cry. God isn’t telling them not to fear just so they rally and win the big game.

 The “fear not” from Isaiah is a command of real integrity.

 It is a command of true bravery and real spiritual strength.

 God is saying to them through Isaiah that, yes, terrible things are about to happen to you, but what is more important than these terrible things?

 God is.

 God is more powerful than anything that can possibly happen to you.

 So, even in the face of overwhelming defeat you can truly not be a slave to fear.

 Let’s face it: fear is crippling. It is a prison. Fear blocks us from carrying out what God calls each of us to do.

 If fear rules, we cannot live our lives with any sort of fullness.

 If fear rules, God becomes an afterthought.

 God loses out to fear if we let fear control our lives.

 Certainly, we all must face our hardships in life.

Now, maybe violence in not in our futures (I hope it isn’t in any of our futures), but we do all have much to face in our lives before our own journeys are over.

 We all have much to be afraid of at times.

 We still have to get through this pandemic.

 But in those moments, the words of God cut through those uncertain futures like a blinding light.

 “Fear not,” God is saying to us still.

 Nothing you suffer from this time forward will be hidden from your God, who loves you.

 Nothing you have suffered so far can be hidden from God. God knows what you’ve been through and what you will go through.

 God is not turning a blind eye to you in the face of these hardships.

 Why? Because you are valuable.

 Just as we hear throughout scripture that we should not fear, we also hear that we are valuable.

 We are precious in the eyes of God.

 Each and every one of us is important to God.

 In a sense, fear is an illusion.

 Fear is somewhat like a nightmare.

When we are actually going through the nightmare, it seems so real—so horrible. But when we awake, the nightmare just sort of fizzles in our memories.

 That is what fear is like.

 When we are afraid, there is nothing else like it.

 It dominates our lives.

 But when we are beyond the fear, we forget in many ways how terrible it was.

 God came to us and told us “Fear not.”

 God came to us and said to us in our uncertainty those words we  long to hear.

 “Fear not.”

 So, let us take to heart what God is saying to us in the prophecy of Isaiah and through the words of Jesus and through all of scripture: fear not.

 Rather, let us rejoice.

 Let us rejoice in God’s love and presence.

 And let us know that nothing can separate us from a God who longs to know us and to take our fear from us.

 Let us pray.

 Loving God, you command us to flee from fear and to trust in you; do not leave us disappointed. When we do so, come to us when we call, comfort us when we sorrow. Give us hope when all seems bleak. And let your Light shine through any darkness or dears that mat encroach upon us. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

  

 

 

 

12 Pentecost + St. Mary the Virgin

 

August 15, 2021

 Luke 1.46-55 

 + As you all know, I belong to a very strange, very mysterious sub-culture in the Church.

 Or maybe I should call it counter-culture.

 I am a very proud, very unapologetic follower of this strand of belief.

 And although there are some people who instantly look down their noses at it, or quickly stereotype anyone who claims this brand of Christianity, I proclaim it loudly and gladly.

 What I loudly and boldly profess is that yes, I am…Anglo-Catholic

 Actually, it’s not much of a secret.

 I’ve always been VERY open about that.

 And you can tell I’m Anglo-Catholic by the way I celebrate Mass or the things I say or the theology that I preach from this pulpit.

 I consider myself pretty Anglo-Catholic also because of the Virgin Mary.

 Which is why, today, although it is Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, I have chosen to preach about the Blessed Virgin Mary today.

 Because August 15 is also her feast day.

 And also because of the fact that I really love Mary!

 For us, today the Feast of St. Mary the Virgin.

 It is also called the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or, in the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Feast of the Dormition (or going to sleep) of the Theotokos, the God-bearer.

 This feast day has a long history in the Church, and it is one of my favorites.

 And today, on this feast, I choose to preach about Mary because she has a lot to teach all of us as Christians.

 But first, we do need to acknowledge a few things about Mary.

 One of the big things is the fact that Mary makes a lot of us non-Roman Catholics a little nervous.

 Let’s face it, when most of us non-Roman Catholics think of Mary, we think of how the Roman Catholics honor her.

 Visions of statues in backyards, or on dashboards of cars or on the side altars of churches no doubt go through our minds.

 After all, as my very Lutheran grandmother would say, those Catholic “worship” Mary.

 Every Roman Catholic I know vehemently denies that they worship Mary, though they certainly do not deny that they honor her greatly and place a quite a bit of importance in her intercession.

 But I think that stigma of Roman Catholics or Eastern Orthodox having the market cornered on the Virgin Mary is still very much a reality in the Christian church as a whole.

 So, what about us Episcopalians?

 Well, for Episcopalians such as myself we see a Church without due reverence for Mary to be a pretty bleak place.

 In many Episcopal churches I’ve visited, there are statues or paintings of Mary.

 As we do here at St. Stephen’s.

 I even know of many Episcopalians even here at St. Stephen’s who pray the Rosary on a regular basis.

 So, I am adamant in my view that we should reclaim Mary’s role in our life as Christians.

 We should not fear her, or let her be pigeon-holed in some dusty corner that we imagine belongs only to Roman Catholics; nor should we “worship” her or hold her any higher than she merits.

 Still, she is, without a doubt, a vital person in our Church and in who we are as Christians.

 Mary continues to speak to us, not in supernatural visions necessarily as she did to St. Bernadette, but in her words recorded in scripture.

 So, as you can see, we Episcopalians do honor Mary greatly and we love her dearly.

 The fact is, all of us who are Christians should honor her and should remember at times how important she is to our faith in Christ.

 It is a good thing to honor Mary and who she is.

 And certainly it’s nothing new in the Church as a whole.

 The honor paid to Mary goes back to the very earliest days of the Church.

 In fact, it goes back even further.

 In the Gospel of Luke, we hear Mary say, "From this time forth, all generations shall call me blessed."

 Certainly that prophecy she made on that very momentous day when the Angel Gabriel came to her and told her she would bear the Son of God has come true.

 As you know, each Wednesday at our 6:00 p.m. Mass, we usually commemorate a different saint, mostly those saints that we honor in the Episcopal Church, but sometimes a fun, obscure saint no one has ever heard of.

 Lately we have been honoring powerful women saints in the Church.

 And it has been wonderful.

 Because, let me tell you, there are many, many powerful women in the Church’s history!

 But all of them pale in comparison to Mary.

 Mary is by the far the most honored saint in the Christian Church.

 As she should be.

 By honoring her in such a way, we are helping to fulfill the prophesy of Scripture.

 And we should never forget the fact that she should be so honored.

 But who is Mary really?

 Well, when we meet Mary, she is a simple Jewish girl.

 It’s believed that she was about fourteen when she became pregnant and bore Jesus, which, at that time and in that place, would not have been by any means unusual.

 Outside of that, not a whole lot is known about her life.

 We know for certain of the words she spoke to the angel Gabriel, to her kinswoman, Elizabeth (which we have learned in our Wednesday night masses was probably Mary’s Aunt, sister to Mary’s mother Ann), when she visited her not long before she gave birth.

 But outside of the words we hear in the Gospels, there isn’t a whole lot we know she said.

 The only other instance in which her words are recorded are at the wedding feast at Cana, when she instructs the servants there, regarding Jesus, to do “whatever he ssys to you.”

 Which are pretty important words!

 But the story of Mary becomes very interesting in the years following the Gospels.

 It is here that we see the fulfilling of her prophecy.

 It is here that we find that she truly does become blessed for all generations.

 If we don’t believe that, then let’s take a look at the Creed which we will recite together in just a few moments.

 Besides Jesus, there are only two other people mentioned in it.

 The first is Pontius Pilate.

 The other is Mary.

 It specifically says, he was “born of the virgin Mary."

 That’s an important phrase.

 On one hand, what this phrase says to us is that Jesus was really a human being.

 He was born of a woman, just like all of us were born of a woman.

 He did not simply come down out of heaven like an angel, or like the gods of the Romans or Greeks.

 He was born, like any other human being.

 And he was born of a Jewish woman.

 To be Jewish, one has to have a Jewish mother.

 It is through the mother that one is a Jew.

 So, through Mary, we know and acknowledge the fact that this human Jesus was Jewish, which also is very important.

  On the other hand, the phrase tells us that although he was born like us of a woman, unlike us he wasn’t born in an ordinary way.

 He was born of a virgin.

 This virgin birth puts a whole new light on who Jesus was and who he claimed to be.

 He was like us.

 He was a human being, like us.

 But he also was not like us, because he was at the same time the divine Son of God.

 And that’s probably the most important aspect of all of this.

 Mary bore the Son of God, the Messiah, to the world.

 In an ordinary way.

 But in a very important way.   

 So, we can see how important Mary’s role is in our own views of what we believe.

 In a sense, she appears to us as a kind of “hinge” in our understanding of Jesus.

 Without her, Jesus would not have been able to come to us.

 She literally bore Jesus to us.

 And in this way she is the prime example for us.

 It is a good thing to honor Mary, but more importantly, we should imitate Mary.

 That “Yes” that Mary said to God when the Angel offered the opportunity to bear Christ was an important “Yes.”

 It was the most important “yes” for us who follow Jesus.

 Without that “Yes,” where would we be?

 And just as Mary said “Yes” to the angel when Gabriel brought her  good news, we too should be saying “yes” to God.

 And, in saying yes, we too can bear Jesus within us, as she did.

 We too can carry Jesus within us and bear Jesus to this world.

 Like Mary we can bring to those who need Jesus and long for Jesus.

 We too can carry Christ into the world and let him be known through us.

 Just as Jesus found in Mary his first earthly dwelling-place so, following Mary’s example, Jesus can continue to dwell on earth within each and every one of us as well.

 In this way, Mary continues to be so vital and meaningful to us.

 This powerful woman has taught us to be powerful as well, but to do so even in very humble ways.

 See.

 Mary really IS important.

 And we should be grateful for her and for example in our lives.

 So, let us do what Mary did.

 Let us bear Jesus to the world as she did.

 Let us carry him within us where us go.

 Let us say “Yes” again and again to God in this world, and in all that God asks of us, even if doing so is difficult.

 And when we do, we know this fact:

 When we say Yes to God, our Yes will allow God’s Light and presence to be known through us to everyone we encounter and serve.

  Let us pray.

 Holy God, when you call us, make us strong, like Mary, to say “Yes” to all you ask of us. Let our “Yes” by a powerful “Yes” in our lives and in the lives of those we are called to serve. And by saying “Yes,” let us bring Jesus into this world again and again, presenting him to those who long for him and need him; in whose name we pray. Amen.