13 Pentecost

 

September 4, 2022

Luke14.25-33

+ At each Wednesday night Mass here at St. Stephen’s, we always commemorate a saint of some sort in the Church.

And more often than not, these saints are amazing people who have fascinating things.

Well, this week we will be commemorating several fascinating people, in addition to also commemorating the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary (which is commemorated on Thursday, the 8^th)

Today, is the feast day of the person commemorated in our Peace and justice

window, Bishop Paul Jones.

Bishop Jones was the Bishop of Utah, and with the outbreak of World War I, he spoke out against the war, being a committed pacifist.

Making that statement set him apart from the rest of the Bishops in the Episcopal Church at that time, and he was forced out of the House of Bishops and forced to resign as Bishop.

But through it all, he never once recanted his statements or his belief that war was inherently evil and anti-Christian.

Also this week, on September 9 in the Episcopal Church’s Calendar of saints, we commemorate a group of truly remarkable people.

We will commemorate Blessed Constance and the so-called “Martyrs of Memphis.”

I have always been fascinated by these so-called “Martyrs.”

And since our own experience with a pandemic, their story takes on such deeper meaning.

The Martyrs of Memphis are a fascinating group of saints in the church.

Dr. Scott Morris summarizes the Martyrs of Memphis in this way:

In 1878, a yellow fever epidemic struck Memphis and killed 5,150 people in a brief period of time. The city’s rich fled to St. Louis, leaving the poor and middle class to fend for themselves. A notable exception was a group of Episcopal nuns known as the Sisterhood of St. Mary. They were led by a brave woman named Constance. Five women with little medical training cared for thousands of people because they believed that it was God's will for them to stay and comfort the sick and dying. In the end they, too, succumbed to yellow fever. Today, they are known as the Martyrs of Memphis. 

Constance and her companions were all Episcopal nuns—members of the Community of St. Mary.

Yes, of course, there are Episcopal nuns, as well as Episcopal monks in this world.

And some of them were quite extraordinary.

Like Constance and her companions.

Now, they might not be martyrs in the traditional sense of the word.

They didn’t get murdered for their faith.

But they did pay a price for their faith, and in service of their following of Jesus.

And the word Martyr simply means “witness.”

In this sense, they were truly witnesses for the faith in Christ.

And in that sense Bishop Jones himself could be considered a kind of martyr, for standing up and paying a price for his own witness in this world.

 But no matter how we might try to make sense of it, it’s a fascinating story.

And some of us might say, foolish, especially when we consider that at any time, those sisters could have left the city.

But they made the choice to stay and to serve, knowing full-well that staying would’ve meant almost certain death.

Bishop Jones could’ve just went along with his fellow bishops without saying a thing.

This is what sacrifice is all about.

In today’s Gospel, we find Jesus at his most blunt.

This is not the nice, sweet Jesus we have come to idealize.

This Jesus uses some harsh language to make clear that following him is not some pleasant, sweet, Sunday drive.

Following Jesus means sacrifice and the continued call to sacrifice.

Most of us don’t want to believe that following Jesus involves such sacrifice.

Many people think that following Jesus means going to church on Sunday and acting nice and maybe occasionally helping the homeless or the needy, which are all good things.

But following Jesus sometimes means following Jesus to the edge.

Following Jesus sometimes—in fact, more often than not—involves hefting that cross on our backs and trekking off after him, despite the fact that we are tired and drained.

This past week, I thought I had just about reached my own personal limit.

I have been dealing with several situations, both professionally and personally, that really pushed me to my limits recently.

And these situations have exhausted me to my core.

I have been feeling very weary lately.

But the fact is, as I preach all the time, sometimes this is what it means to follow Jesus.

It means sometimes that, while bearing a cross, we must also endure the gauntlet as well.

It means that although we are close to burning out, we must still go on.

We must shoulder our burdens, brace ourselves for the gauntlet and move on.

That doesn’t mean there weren’t moment when I, at least privately, pray: “I don’t now if I can keep on following Jesus.”

But somehow, even in those low, dark moments, we find the strength to go on.

We find the encouragement to put one more step in front of the other and we just do it.

One other insight in all of this: following Jesus does not mean we are slaves to Jesus.

We have free will through all of this.

As I look back on this past week and throughout my years of being a Christian and a priest, I realize there have been plenty of opportunities to simply turn away and say that I will not or cannot follow Jesus.

There have been opportunities to simply walk away and go along another path.

There is no sacrifice in following Jesus if there’s no free will.

For Bishop Jones, he could simply have remained quiet and not stirred the waters.

He could have chosen not to speak out and to make a stand.

And probably nothing would’ve happened.

He could’ve lived out his days quietly as just another Bishop in the Church.

But he spoke out, and stood up for what he knew what was right.

He knew that to do anything else was not following the way Jesus led for him.

For the martyrs of Memphis, they had the opportunity to leave.

The sisters could simply have left and went back to their convent in New York state and lived a full life of further service.

But they chose to stay, knowing full well what staying meant.

They knew that staying probably meant their own death.

But they also knew they were needed and this was where Jesus was leading.

For us, hopefully, Jesus isn’t leading us to quite that difficult of a sacrifice.

But still we are being led and often that place to which we are being led is a difficult and painful place.

It is probably not an actual cross.

However, Jesus is asking us a very important request today.

Give up your possessions, he says.

Don’t let anything come between you and God, he is saying, as difficult as it is to do.

Because those possessions—even those relationships—that get in the way are often things we cling and cherish more than anything else.

Following Jesus means putting the God of Jesus first and foremost.

It means making God the center of our lives and nothing else.

And it means following Jesus even when we would rather be doing something else.

It means sometimes even giving up relationships that hinder us in our following.

And that it very difficult.

But following Jesus, we know that ultimately all path lead to victory.

All the sacrifices we make in that following will be repaid to us in ways we can’t even fully fathom or imagine.

So, let us take up the cross we have been given—whatever it might be in our own lives—and let us follow Jesus wherever he might lead.

Let us take the cross and bear it with strength and dignity.

And let us shed ourselves of anything that might come between us and God who leads us along what seems at times like uncertain paths.

Let us follow Jesus.

Because we know he will not lead us on uncertain paths, nor will he lead us to a place of desolation.

Rather Jesus will lead, as we know in our heart of hearts, home to our true home.

 

Let us pray.

Loving God, give us strength to take up our cross and follow  Jesus your Son that we may go where he leads and do what he did, and in doing, so may we inherit what he gained and become your children today and always; in Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.

 I visited the Robert Bly Museum in Madison, Minnesota today. It was incredible! and deeply moving! 

11 Pentecost

August 20, 2022

Isaiah 58.9b-14; Hebrews 12.18-29

+ As we prepare for our new Baptism window, which will be installed within the next few weeks, and as we all prepare for yet another baptism on September 11th, it’s good to take a look at some things.

In anticipation of that window, we have been working hard at making our baptismal space in the narthex look good.

We now have those beautiful art pieces from Sue Morrissey there.

It has been eight years since we dedicated and blessed our new font.

I am so happy we did it.

It is a beautiful addition to our church.

And I hear so many compliments on the beautiful baptismal bowl  from people who visit.

In these either years, we’ve had a lot of people baptized already in that font.  

The baptismal font is a very important symbol for all of us  who live out our baptismal covenant on a daily basis.

As you all know, no doubt, one my personal heroes in the Church is one of the greatest  (no, I would say the GREATEST) Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey.  

One of my favorite stories about Ramsey is how, when, after he had become a Bishop in the Church, visited St. Andrew’s church in Horbling in England in which we was baptized in 1904.

There, he asked to see the baptismal font.

Standing there, he began to cry and was heard to murmur:

“O font, font, font, in which I was baptized!”

As Geoffrey Rowell wrote of that incident: “[Ramsey’s] deep sacramental sense and understanding of baptism as being plunged into the death and Resurrection of Christ, which was [and is] at the heart of the Church’s life, comes out in that moment of time.”

As you know, baptisms are one of those events in my life as a priest that I particularly rejoice in.

Last week in our Gospel reading, we heard Jesus talking about a baptism by fire, and how fire is a sign to us of God’s amazing and all-inclusive love for each and every one of us.   

In my sermon last week, I mentioned that when were baptized in those waters, we were also baptized in the fire of God’s spirit, into the fire of God’s all-consuming love.

And what do you know? Today, in the Letter to the Hebrews, we hear another fire reference to God. We hear,

“indeed our God is a consuming fire.”

In baptism, we realize how much of a consuming fire God actually is.

As paradoxical as it seems, we realize that in those waters, a fire was kindled in us. God’s fire was kindled in us.

And, to be a Christian, to be a follower of Jesus, means being aflame with the fires of our baptism.

But if we left it there, we might still not understand the true ramifications of our baptism.

One thing you all know I enjoy doing here at St. Stephan’s is inviting people to explore other areas of the Book of Common Prayer, other than just our section concerning Holy Communion.  

So, let’s do so again today.

Let’s take a look at the Catechism again.  

There we get the answer to the question:

“What is Holy Baptism?”

If you look on page 858—there you will find the somewhat definitive answer.  

On page 858, we find this answer:

"Holy Baptism is the sacrament [a sacrament is an outward sign of God’s inward grace—the outward grace in this sense being the water] by which God adopts us as his children and make us members of Christ’s Body, the Church, and inheritors of the kingdom of God.”

It’s a really great definition.

 Holy Baptism is not then just a sweet little service of sprinkling water on a baby’s head and dedicating them as we would a boat.  

 It is a service in which we are essentially re-born.  

 If anyone ever asks you, “Are you a born-again Christian?” you can tell them, in no uncertain terms, that yes you are.

 You were re-born in the waters of baptism.

 It is the service in which we recognize that we are truly children of a loving God—a God who truly loves us.  

 We have been washed in those waters and made alive in the fire of God’s love and made new—specifically we have become Christians in being baptized.

But, the one point I really want to drive home this morning is that last part of the definition from the Catechism. In baptism we become “inheritors of the kingdom of God.”

We are given a glimpse of this Kingdom of which we, the baptized, are inheritors in our readings from both Isaiah and Hebrews today.

In Isaiah, we hear the prophet saying to us:

“If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.”

Now, that’s some beautiful poetry, if you ask me.

“…your gloom [shall] be like the noonday.”

But more than that, it’s just so wonderfully practical.

When we follow Jesus—when we love God and love our neighbors—we are truly saying, “Yes, we are inheritors of the Kingdom of God.”

But, what does it mean to be an “inheritor of the kingdom of God?”

Being an inheritor of God’s kingdom means living out those promises we make in our baptismal covenant.

It means proclaiming by word and example the Good News of Christ—that good news being Love God/love others.

It means seeking and serving Christ in all persons and loving everyone as we desire to be loved.

And it means striving for justice and peace.

And it means respecting the dignity of the every human being.

And by doing those things, we are truly being the inheritors of that kingdom. This is what it means to be a Christian.

It is not just saying, “I accept Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior”

It is not just saying, “I belong to the one true Church, and that there is no salvation outside of this Church.”

It not denying people the Body and blood of Jesus in the Eucharist because they don’t believe what we believe.

It is not doing terrible things in this world over and over again, then thinking we can just say, “oooops, sorry” and then go back and do it again.

It does not mean just being nice and thinking good thoughts all the time.

Being a Christian means both believing and then acting like one.

Being a follower of Jesus means that we understand fully that something truly wonderful and amazing happened to us when we were baptized.

In that baptismal font in which we were baptized we were truly “buried with Christ in his death.”  

In those waters, we shared “in his resurrection.”

And through those waters—and that fire of God’s love that was kindled in us in those waters—we were “reborn by the Holy Spirit.”

This is not light and fluffy stuff we’re dealing with here in baptism.

It is not all about clouds and flowers and sweet little lambs romping in the meadow.

It is not just “feel good” spirituality.

It is the greatest event in our lives.

It was a life-changing moment in our lives.

And this God we encounter today and throughout all our lives as Christians, as inheritors of the God’s Kingdom is truly, as the author of the letter to the Hebrews tells us today, “a consuming fire.”

God doesn’t let us sit back and be complacent.  

God is not all right with us when we do bad things in this world, when we don’t respect the “worth and dignity” of others.

God is like a gnawing fire, kindled in that holy moment, deep within us.

God shakes us up and pushes us out into the world to serve others and to be the conduits through which God’s kingdom—God’s very fire of love—comes into this world.

Baptism is a radical thing.  

I don’t think we fully realize that sometimes.

It changes us and it transforms us.  

And it doesn’t just end when the water is dried on our foreheads and we leave the church.

It is something we live with forever.

In Baptism, we are marked as Christ’s own forever.

Forever.

For all eternity.

And nothing we can do can undo that.

That’s why I love baptism so much.

That’s why it’s so important to remember our baptism.

My hope is that when we look at the font here at St. Stephen’s (whether we were baptized in it or not) we will see it  with special appreciation and will be able to recognize, in some way, the beauty of the event that happens here on a regular basis.

My hope is that, when we dip our fingers into that bowl of water and bless ourselves with that blessed water, it will remind us of that incredible day in which we too were baptized.

I hope we can all look at that place in which baptism happens here at St. Stephen’s with a deep appreciation of how, we too, on the day of our baptism, were changed, how God’s consuming fire was kindled in us  and how we  became children of a loving, inclusive God and “inheritors of the kingdom of God.”

We are inheritors of that unshakable Kingdom of God. 

All of us are inheritors of that Kingdom.

No matter who we are.  

For that fact let us be truly thankful.

Let us, as the author of Hebrews says to us today, “give thanks, by which we offer to God, an acceptable worship with reverence and awe; for indeed our God is a consuming fire.”

And let us, in turn, share that consuming fire we have inherited from our God with others.

Let us pray.

Holy God, Consuming Fire, instill in us the fire of your love. Let us burn brightly in this world, emboldened by the fire you instilled in us at our baptism. Make us the equals of what we promised when were baptized, that we may set the world on fire with your love; in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.  

 

 

 This is what it's all about.

10 Pentecost

 August 14, 2022

 

Jeremiah 23.23-29; Hebrews 11:29-12.2; Luke 12.49-56

 

+ As most of you know, I have wanted to be a priest since I was 13 years old.

 The really amazing part of that is that I had no idea at 13 what it meant to be a priest.

 I don’t think I was particularly all that religious before that calling.

 I went to church and Sunday School because I had to.

 But it wasn’t always something that appealed to me.

 And I could never imagine actually “doing” church.

 And yet, somehow, into my life came this calling.

 And I will admit that I was pretty green about church when I first started to responding that calling.

 I guess, in some way, I thought, it was going to be blue skies and cool breezes all the time.

 And most naively of all, I truly believed that everyone in church got along with each other.

 Any of us who have been in the church for any period of time, know that is not quite the reality of the Church.

 I hate to break this news to you, but… Every day in the Church is definitely not a love feast.

 We don’t all sit around agreeing with each other on this and that.

 In fact, it’s almost never like that.

  Yes, there are divisions in the Church—the big Church

 And we have experienced those divisions here as a parish when we decided many years ago to be a place where all people are treated equally—including lesbian, gay, transgender and queer people.

 It was not a popular decision in the larger Church.

 But we did it.

 And because we did it, made a difference in countless lives.

 And I know there are many people who are members here because the Church has been a terrible place for them—a place of judgement and exclusion and meanness.

 And because it has been, we, as a parish, need to continue to do what we do and be what we are.

 As Steve Bolduc said today, people were coming up to him and others at Pride in the Park yesterday and saying that it is important that there are churches like ours, who welcome and include all people.

 Again, doing so means we will run up against a larger Church that does not support that.

 And because of that, the Church will still have its divisions.

 Issues of biblical interpretation and personal convictions continue to divide the Church.

 I get pretty firm about such things, as many of you know.

 Although I am patient when it comes to people telling me there are certain things about the Church they might not like personally—trust me there are many things I too personally don’t like about the Church and the way things are—even then, you have no doubt heard me say, “this is not an issue of any one of us.”

 We, as the Church, are a collective.

 And when one of us stiffens and crosses our arms and stands aloof off to the side, the divisions begin, and the breeches within the Church widen, and the love of God is not proclaimed.

 And the rest of us, in those moments, must simply go on.

 We must proclaim what needs to be proclaimed.

 We love what needs to be loved—fully and completely. .

 We move forward.  

 And when it happens to me—and it happens to me quite a lot—I will occasionally speak out.

 But for the most part, I realize: this is the Church.

 And we must plow forward together because that is what Jesus intends us to do as his followers.

 He makes this quite  clear.

 Jesus tells us today in our Gospel reading that he did not come to bring peace, but rather he came to bring division.

 What?

 What did he say?

 He didn’t come to bring peace?

 The Price of Peace didn’t bring peace??

 Not a nice thing to hear from Jesus.

 We want Jesus to bring peace, right?

 But the message of loving God and loving ALL people is a divisive one.

 It will, and trust me, has split families and societies and even the Church.

 Let’s be honest: his message, of loving God and loving one another, is a message that does divide.

 We, who inwardly stiffen at it, we rebel.

 We say, “no.”

 We freeze up.

 But, Jesus makes this very clear to us. It is not our job, as his followers, to freeze up.

 It not an option for us to let our blood harden into ice.

 For, he came to bring fire to the earth.

 To us, his followers.

 When we were baptized, we were baptized with water, yes.

 But we were also baptized with fire! With the fire of God’s Holy Spirit that came to us as we came out of those waters.

 And that fire burned away the ice within us that slows us down, that hardens us, that prevents us from loving fully.

 That fire that Jesus tells  us he is bringing to this earth, is the fire of his love.

 And it will burn.

 Now, for most of us, when we think of fire in relation to God, we think of the fires of hell.

 In fact, if I believed in an eternal hell, which I do not, I think it would be a place of ice, far removed from the fire of God’s love.

 Again and again in scripture, certainly for our scriptures for today,  fire in relation to God is seen as a purifying fire, a fire that burns away the chaff of our complacent selves.

 Fire from God is ultimately a good thing, although maybe not always a pleasant thing.

 The fire of God burns away our peripheral nature and presents us pure and spiritually naked before God.

 And that is how we are to go before God.

 But this fire, as we’ve made clear, is not a fire of anger or wrath.

 It is a fire of God’s love.

 God’s love for ALL people—not just those who we think God should love.

 It the fire that burns within God’s heart for each of us.

 And that fire is an all-consuming fire.

 When that consuming fire burns away our flimsy exteriors, when we stand pure and spiritually exposed before God, we realize who we really are.

 The fact remains, we are not, for the most part, completely at that point yet.

 That fire has not yet done its complete job in us.

 While we still have divisions, while we allow ourselves to stiffen in rebellion, when we allow our own personal tastes and beliefs to get in the way of the larger beliefs of the Church, we realize the fire has not completely done its job in us.

 The divisions will continue.

 The Church remains divided.

 For us, as followers of Jesus, we are not to be fire retardant, at least to the fire of love that blazes from our God.

 As unpleasant and uncomfortable it might seem at times, we need to let that fire burn away the chaff from us.

 And when we do, when we allow ourselves to be humbled by that fire of God’s love, then, we will see those divisions dying.

 We will see them slowly dying off.

 And will see that the Church is more than just us, who struggle on, here on this side of the veil.

 We will see that we are only a part of a much larger Church.

 We will see that we are a part of a Church that also makes up that “great cloud of witnesses” Paul speaks of in today’s Epistle.

 We will see, once our divisions are gone and we have been purified in that fire of God’s love, that that cloud of witnesses truly does surround us.

 And we will see that we truly are running a race as the Church.

 Paul is clear here too: that the only way to win the race is with perseverance.

 And perseverance of this sort if only tried and perfected in the fire of God’s love.

 Yes, this is the Church. This is what we are called to be here, and now, as followers of Jesus.

 This is what we, baptized in the fire of God’s love, are compelled to be in this world.

 So, let us be just that.  

 Let us be the Church, on fire with the love of God, fighting to erase the divisions that separate us.

 Let us be the prophets in whom God’s Word is like a fire, or a hammer that breaks a rock—or ice—in pieces.

 And when we are, finally and completely, those divisions will end, and we will be what the Church is on the other side of the veil.

 We will—in that glorious moment—be the home of God among God’s people.

 Let us pray.

 Holy and loving God, we thank you for this strange, jumbled, very human institution called the Church. We thank for its foibles and its attempts to do good, we thank for when it works well, and when it makes a difference in the world; and when it fails, we ask you to help us correct it and built it up. Be with us, your Church, as we attempt in our limited way, to live our faith, to be prophets of your Word, and to be on fire with your Spirit in our proclamation of your love; in Jesus’ name, we pray.