CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH

SERMONS

Fr. McNab provides his sermons in written form after each Sunday, and we put them up here. We keep the last few on this page and some older ones in the Archives.. Click this link (archives) or at the bottom of this page for Sermon Archives. Feel free to give us your feedback!

From Fr. Bruce's Easter sermon in 2005, 'We are defined by our experience of the Resurrection':

"As I drove back to my parents’ house after church, I was still thinking about that gospel... about how much it resonated with my recent experience. I was sitting in the car at a red light, just feeling happy and peaceful, when suddenly it happened —I heard the Voice again. Only this time it was laughing, like someone suppressing a chuckle as he spoke. He said, 'Yes. It's true. My Gospel is true. And, behold, I am alive forever more!'"

How can we live with all these ‘weeds’?

10th Sunday after Pentecost. Proper 11, Year A. July 20, 2008. (Text: Matthew 13:24-30)

It’s “high summer.” Drive east across country from Denver, and you’ll see mile after mile of green fields. Wheat and corn and soybeans are growing towards the harvest. Walk around the West End of Aspen, where we live, and flower gardens are flourishing. It’s the perfect time of year to hear again Jesus’ story about the weeds and the wheat – another one of his parables about seeds.

Jesus knew his audience. When he wanted to make a point, he used stories out of real life, stories that would make sense to his usual audience of Galilean and Judean peasants who planted and harvested wheat and barley, tended small flocks of sheep and goats, looked after a few olive and fig trees, and cultivated a couple of grape vines.

We don’t know exactly what circumstances prompted Jesus to tell this story about weed seeds that got planted in with the wheat. Maybe it was his personal declaration against efforts of some to establish a totally “pure” religious community, excluding everybody who would not or could not take part in a strict observance of all the sacred traditions of Israel.

In this case, the parable could be Jesus’ way of saying that the Kingdom of God is God’s business, and its ultimate perfection won’t be settled until the Day of Final Judgment. Human beings are incapable of making themselves or their environment “perfect” – and all that this kind of perfectionism does is create factions and destroy relationships which might otherwise be peaceful and productive. Until the harvest is ripe and the difference between the good and the bad, the right and the wrong, the holy and the unholy, is obvious, both should be allowed to grow in the field of the kingdom. It’s God’s kingdom, after all, and he is capable of governing it without our interference.

Whatever local situation might have led Jesus to tell this story, like all his parables it still has power to speak to us about circumstances in our own life and our own times. We can apply it to our country and the world in general; we can apply it to our church and all religious groups; and we can apply it to ourselves.

Let’s take the country first. If we go all the way back to 1776, we’ll see movements to root out and expel from our country people whom self-designated, self-righteous vigilantes regarded as dangerous. Atrocious things have been done – or threatened – in the name of purifying the nation, making it “100% American” (whatever that means), and safe for us “good” people.

These “purifying” movements have focused at various times on the Indians (who were here long before us), or the Africans (whom our ancestors forcibly transported to these shores), or Irish and Italian immigrants in the late 19th century, or Japanese people during World War II, and now on people who have come across our southern borders without proper documents, looking for jobs. Nationalistic purity movements, intended to eliminate those who are “not our kind,” are rarely the work of God.

The situation has been similar with the churches — going back hundreds of years. Recognition that every church is made up of people who are not all equally virtuous or equally careful in observing church rules has led to “Puritan” movements. People were expelled or excommunicated from churches —or even burned at the stake— when they refused to conform to the official dogma or rules of behavior of their church.

In other cases dissenters have broken away from their churches to form new, separate bodies because they couldn’t agree with the leaders of their original communities on particular points of discipline, doctrine, or interpretation of the Bible. That’s why there are 33,820 different denominations of Protestants, world-wide (according to the World Christian Encyclopedia). And most of these 33,820 groups think of themselves as having The Whole Truth, while everyone else is a heretic – or worse.

Dissenters separate from others because they want a pure, homogeneous, error-free, perfect church. Billy Graham used to tell people at his Crusades, after they had come forward to give their lives to Christ, “Now you need to find a local church family do join. And don’t go looking for a perfect church. There is no such thing. And, even if there were, it would no longer be perfect after you joined it!”

Usually, after some time has passed, Puritan groups will split again (and again and again), as the purest of the pure find themselves no longer able to tolerate the company of the impure. — We’ve all heard the old line, “Everybody’s wrong except you and me… and I’m not so sure about you.” — This process is still going on, and it’s happening today in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion world-wide.

In all of these cases, people regard those who disagree with them as “weeds” whose presence will spoil an otherwise perfect harvest. They don’t hear Jesus telling us in today’s little parable that God is the judge, and at the Final Harvest, he’ll do all the sorting out that’s called for.

Fixation with rooting out the weeds can sometimes take possession of people with active consciences, who know that they’re supposed to “be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Such perfectionists can become obsessed with their own failures and preoccupied with striving to exhibit undeniable virtue.

Look, all of us are mixed characters. All of us. We have good qualities and gifts. We also have bad qualities and weaknesses. We are imperfect; we are sinners. Of course, we should uproot obvious vices and work to overcome bad habits. But there is much about ourselves we can’t fully understand right now. Sitting in continuous judgment on ourselves is usurping God’s prerogative, and it prevents us from making the most of the qualities in our lives that have the greatest potential to yield a harvest of good.

The truth is that we live in a world, a nation, and a church where good and evil are all jumbled up together. And we discover the same mixture of virtues and faults in our own lives. Jesus’ parable of the weeds growing amid the wheat gets us off the hook of imagining that we have to take responsibility for purifying the world, the nation, the church, or even ourselves. We are not even responsible for our own perfection, much less anybody else’s. That’s God’s business. —And we have not been appointed agents of God’s judgment.

When we take upon ourselves the task of sorting out the weeds from the wheat as they’re growing together we threaten the destruction of the good along with the bad, because we can’t tell them apart. So what shall we do? How are we to live in a mixed society, a mixed church, and a confusing world, where good and evil, right and wrong, truth and falsehood, orthodoxy and heresy are existing side-by-side?

I believe that we live by reminding ourselves that God’s standard of judgment is not the degree of our perfection, but the degree of our fruitfulness. In another parable Jesus said to judge between a “good tree” and a “bad tree” by their fruits: “By their fruits you will know them.”

The right response to the mixture of good and evil around us is not to waste energy trying to eradicate every possible evil, but rather to nurture the good, the true, and the beautiful wherever we see it. A familiar old saying goes, “It’s better to light one little candle than to curse the darkness.” St. Paul said, “If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. …Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Jesus is telling us to be patient and live in hope. The harvest of good that comes from the faithful lives of faithful people is a sign of God’s triumph over evil. And you can see this harvest already, right here in the ordinary lives of this congregation. It’s visible in simple, unspectacular, daily acts of mercy and kindness.

How wonderful it is that some of you give your time to work with Feed My Sheep, to feed the hungry and house the homeless. How wonderful that some of you deliver meals to shut-ins, visit the home-bound, or take your neighbors to the doctor or the grocery store when they can’t drive themselves. How wonderful that some of you give your free time to teach people to read, or teach English as a second language, or coach and love other people’s children as well as your own.

These and many other simple deeds of servant love are the harvest of the government of God among us, and in the end God’s ways will prevail over every evil.

The Seeds of the Kingdom

9th Sunday after Pentecost. Proper 10, Year A. July 13, 2008 (Text: Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23)

There's a proverb that goes like this: “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” How many of you have heard it? This ancient proverb sometimes gets ascribed to Buddha, or to the rabbis, or to Chinese philosophers. Some people even think it’s in the Bible, but it’s not. Nobody really knows who first said it, but what it means is obvious: When a person is finally prepared to learn and benefit from the truth, then someone to impart truth will be there. In fact, when a student is truly ready to learn, that student will learn a great deal, even from an unexceptional teacher.

As a preacher and teacher I can vouch for the truth of the saying, and for the exposition of it in Jesus’ parable about the good seed that gets scattered on different kinds of ground. Every Sunday I stand in a pulpit I know very well that in the church there are going to be some whose minds on that particular morning (for whatever reason) will be like the path in Jesus’ story – like concrete pavement, like hard-packed clay. Unreceptive. Nothing is going to get below the surface, not that day. Others’ minds will be like thin soil over gravel, enthusiastic about new ideas but with no capacity for making a commitment. Others will be like weed-choked ground where so many other things are already growing that nothing else can thrive. But some – some! – are going to be like cultivated, fertile, well-watered soil, just waiting for seeds to be planted in it. These are the students who’re ready to learn; and their “teacher” on that morning could be me or anybody else with seeds to scatter.

The following Sunday the same four kinds of soil will be represented among the members of the worshiping congregation, but now the person whose mind was closed and unreceptive last week might be open to listen and learn, while the eager student from before might be preoccupied with things that happened during the week and unable to pay attention. —Isn’t that the way life is? So it’s vital to plant the seed of God’s truth and life-giving power week in and week out, year in and year out. Sometimes many students will be ready to learn, other times only a few. But – if we seed-planters keep at it – if even a single student is ready, that one receptive soul might be one who changes the world for God and for good.

You see, it’s all about the seed. The main point of Jesus’ parable is the miraculous power of the seed, which Jesus calls “the word of the kingdom.” You may remember that when Jesus started his ministry he went from place to place saying, “The kingdom of God is near; repent, and believe the Good News.” That message is the “seed” he’s talking about in this parable.

When the truth about the kingdom of God gets planted in the best soil – that is to say, when it takes root in eager, receptive minds, in the hearts of people ready to learn and understand – then it’s going to produce a harvest beyond all imagination. That vast harvest will make up for all the seed that was scattered on unproductive soil, because out of the rich harvest of a single life can come enough seed for many more plantings. Today we heard a parable about the successful propagation of what Jesus called “the Good News of the kingdom of God.”

I want us to be clear on what the “kingdom of God” is. One way we can do that is to think about what’s happening in America right now. We’re in the middle of a presidential election year, right? John McCain and Barack Obama are each asking for the privilege of guiding the government of the United States for the next four years. Each man wants to persuade us that we’ll have better government, be happier, more secure, peaceful, and prosperous if we elect him rather than his opponent. In a sense “the kingdom of God” is the practical working out of what we might call God’s “government,” God’s leadership in the lives of those who are citizens of his kingdom.

The “kingdom of God” is not an obscure idea that can only be mastered by experts. The kingdom of God is practical and down-to-earth. People like us can enter that kingdom right now, which is what makes it “good news,” even though it might take a lifetime to comprehend fully all the kingdom really means. If I identify with and submit to the “government” of God, then I commit myself to live according to what God has revealed about himself, his will, and his ways. And we Christians believe that God’s will and God’s ways, even God’s self, have been revealed to the world in his Son, Jesus Christ.

Good things come to those who put themselves under God’s good government. Citizens of the kingdom implement ways of thinking and living that enable them to be a blessing to other people. They internalize the Golden Rule. (That means the Golden Rule becomes as instinctive to citizens of the kingdom as driving a car is to someone my age who has been driving since he was sixteen.) They receive, and they learn how to give away what they have received. Those who live in the kingdom understand themselves to be part of a vast and diverse family of redeemed sisters and brothers, children of the king. And they learn how to handle the pain and adversity that come to everyone sooner or later, since bad things can and do happen to good people. Through spiritual discipline and daily practice, they learn how to discern good from evil – even in difficult situations. Citizens of God’s kingdom aren’t afraid of what the future might bring, because they have learned to trust the king.

Jesus came to sow the seeds of the kingdom: practical truth about how people can experience the government of God in daily life. But that truth has to be planted like a seed; it has to strike root and grow, not wither; and then it has to reach maturity before it can produce a harvest. Some days we’re receptive; some days we’re distracted. Some days we’re like a cultivated garden plot, ready for planting. Other days we’re as hard as a sidewalk. If we knew just what to do to make ourselves ready for the seed of the kingdom to grow in our lives, wouldn’t we do it?

I don’t know a lot about gardening. My role in the gardening department at the McNab household has always been as the gardener’s occasional helper. But I have picked up a few things over the years. For example: if the area where we want to make a garden is clay, much too hard to plant in, we need to dig it up, break the clods, and mix in loam and other good things before planting. If it’s thin and rocky, we have to be patient enough to pick out the rocks; then we must add bags of topsoil. When there’s already a garden patch but it has become weedy and overgrown, we have to be willing to kneel there for hours and dig up the weeds.

The kingdom seed of God’s truth will bear an incredibly rich harvest when it’s planted in soil that has been made ready to receive it. If we want to be students who are ready for the teacher, if we want to be people in whose lives the seeds of God’s kingdom truth can be planted, germinate, grow, and bear fruit – no matter who plants them – then there are steps we can take to make ourselves ready.

If our lives are hard, like clay, the first step is to break it up and make it soft. We can do that by reading and meditating on Scripture and staying alert to hear the Voice of God in the Bible. If we’re like thin, rocky soil, we can benefit from practicing repentance, confessing our sins to God. Max Lucado says, “Confession does for the soul what preparing the land does for the farmer’s field.” Confession takes the rocks – big ones and little ones alike – out of the soil and creates depth where kingdom seed can grow strong roots. If we’re like a garden overgrown with grass and weeds, we’ve become occupied with many things other than knowing God and doing his will. When our life is a weed patch, we need outside help. A spiritual friend can help us discern God’s priorities, and if we’ll follow that up by spending time on our knees sorting through these things with Jesus, we’ll sooner or later get rid of the dandelions and crabgrass.

“When the student is ready the teacher will appear.” Being ready for the teacher means becoming “good soil,” where the seeds of God’s kingdom can grow, and reproduce. This demands patience and a willingness to persevere in listening. It requires humility and a readiness to reorder our priorities and eliminate distractions from our lives. Being ready for the Teacher means understanding that God’s word will always accomplish the purpose for which he spoke it.

I have just preached a sermon, and you have just heard it. I have scattered some seeds. What happens next will depend on the readiness of our hearts. May God be pleased with the harvest!

The Magnetism of Holiness

7th Sunday after Pentecost. Proper 8, Year A. June 29, 2008. (Text: Genesis 22:1-14)

When I was living in the Florida panhandle in the early years of my ministry, I often had to drive a couple of hours over to our diocesan camp and conference center in Alabama for meetings. About half-way there, out in the country off the old two-lane beach highway, not the Interstate, was a side road marked at the turn-off by a sign that read: Glorious Holy Church, 3 miles. Nothing more, just “Glorious Holy Church, 3 miles” —with an arrow painted below, pointing the way.

I was often tempted, but I never felt like I had the time to turn aside and go down that little road to see the Glorious Holy Church. I was pretty sure it was not going to be an architectural gem. I was not going to find a replica of Westminster Abbey or even a small version of the Crystal Cathedral out there in the north Florida countryside. It would look like a thousand other little churches I’d seen all through the rural South: a white-painted wooden building with a little steeple, surrounded by palmetto bushes, pines, and live oak trees. There’d be a parking area out front, paved only with pine straw.

I didn’t need to drive down that narrow asphalt track to check it out. Intuitively, I knew that the glory and holiness of this little church would have everything to do with the congregation and its sense of identity, and nothing to do with the architecture of its building. The “Glorious Holy Church” had to be a church whose glory was the faithful, consecrated life of its people.

Have you ever known a truly holy person? (If you haven’t, you haven’t been hanging out with the right crowd.) The holiness I’m talking about isn’t something decreed by organized religion and certified by a parchment document on the wall, with lots of official seals and signatures at the bottom. Those of us who have been ordained by the church are defined by our churchly vocations and authorized to perform “holy” acts, but that in itself doesn’t make any of us holy people. The Church decided a long time ago that unworthy, even unholy ministers could be used by the Lord to accomplish his works. That’s why the validity of this Eucharist over which I’m presiding today depends, not on any virtue I might have, but on the promise and the power of a Holy God who has chosen to use unworthy human beings like me to be his instruments and humble elements like bread and wine to be the sacrament of his presence.

Holy people are people who live a consecrated life, a life of tested faith. They’re the people among us whose lives are marked by a passion for God. They’re people whom our Pentecostal friends would describe as “sold out to Jesus.” Their ears are attuned, not to the latest Gallup Poll or the latest policy handed down from the hierarchy, but to the whispers of heaven. They’re listening to God, and the main thing they want to do in life is the will of God. Holy people typically have a marvelous knack for unabashedly telling us the painful truths we need to hear – even if we didn’t know we needed to hear them ‘til we heard them! Holy people can be aggravating, because they usually see through our put-ons and pretenses and speak directly to the reality of who we are. They have the kind of courage only found in a single-minded person, a person who’s serving just one Master and who feels answerable only to Him.

Every culture, every age, and every religion has had its holy men and holy women. And we’re no exception. I’m not talking about “Sanctimonious Suzie” or “Holier-than-Thou Harry,” the kind of characters that populate novels written to skewer religious hypocrisy. We all know people like them. And I’m not talking about “professional holy men” or “professional holy women,” who cultivate a national following and have their own TV shows or even their own networks. That’s show biz. I’m talking about men and women who will never be on a TV show and never write a best-seller, but whose holiness shines from their lives and exerts a powerful attraction on those who meet them. Hypocrisy is repulsive; holiness is magnetic. It seems to me that individuals who truly have a desire to know God, and have a relationship with God, and draw close to God are equipped with a natural, built-in “spiritual depth-finder” that allows them to recognize holy people... and to recognize a holy church.

Holiness is not the by-product of ascetic discipline, like fasting three days a week. It doesn’t come from never missing a church service either, or from achieving mastery of the New Testament in the original Greek. Nor is holiness the same thing as the perfect practice of every virtue. Holiness grows out of being tested by God, and passing the test. When that has happened to people, it shows in their lives.

Today we hear again about Abraham. And the passage we hear begins with these three words, “God tested Abraham.” It could easily have said, “God decided to test Abraham again,” because this wasn’t the first time he was tested. The first time was about forty years earlier when a hitherto unknown God spoke to a seventy-five year old, childless, moon-worshiping, middle eastern urbanite and told him to take his wife and adopted nephew and all his possessions and to become a homeless nomad for the rest of his life, journeying by divine directives to an unknown land which this hitherto unknown God promised to give him as an inheritance. (Lots of “unknowns” there!) And, yes, he and his wife would even have a son – although he and the missus were way beyond the age when a little one might be expected to come along. —We talked about Abraham’s great adventure in faith a couple of weeks ago. Some of you were here.

The first test was challenging, but the new test was terrifying. God, who was no longer unknown, but intimately known and trusted by Abraham after these forty years said: “Now take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” And Abraham chose to obey God, awful as God’s will seemed.

God tested Abraham. God tested his own Son. And it’s likely – in fact, it’s certain – that God is going to test you and me. And God is going to test this church. What will we do when God puts us to the test? Let’s hope that, when our time of testing comes, we’ll have already learned this from Father Abraham and from the Lord Jesus: “No matter what happens... no matter what... keep trusting God!”

Abraham took his only son, the delight of his life, his source of joy and the only assurance that his name would be remembered on earth, and he set out to go to the place of sacrifice. Genesis doesn’t tell us, can’t tell us, what Abraham was feeling. But we can guess. (Oh, my!) What was he thinking? We can’t know that for sure either, but we’re told what he answered when Isaac – who knew what sacrifices called for – said, “Papa, here is the fire, the wood, and the knife. But where is the lamb for the offering?” Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb, my son.” That’s the message of this story, perhaps the central message of the Bible itself: God will provide. Abraham trusted God, but God tested that trust in a way that Abraham could never have imagined in advance.

If we aspire to holiness, if we want to be holy men and holy women – members of a “Glorious Holy Church” – demonstrating the magnetism and courage that goes along with true holiness, we can expect to be tested. You never know how much faith you have until that faith is tested. You will never know whether you’re just a fair weather Christian or a year-round, in season and out of season, for better, for worse Christian…until your time of testing comes. If it should be that God brings you to the test – as he brought Abraham, as he brought his only Son, Jesus our Master – will you put your faith in this God and trust him, no matter what happens?...No matter what?

How big is your God? What claim does God have on your trust? My friends, worshiping God is not a pastime, not just one more thing to do on the weekend. We’re here to drink from the River of Life and feed on the Bread of Life so we’ll be strong enough to pass the next test that’s coming. And that test will come because God has a high goal for us: to be holy people in a Glorious Holy Church!

Pledging our Allegiance

5th Sunday after Pentecost. Proper 7, Year A. June 22, 2008. (Texts: Jeremiah 20:7-13; Matthew 10:24-39)

I want to tell you something about preachers and preaching, something you probably already know intuitively. Every minister like me who steps into a pulpit on Sunday wants people to listen attentively and then tell us later, “I felt really inspired by what you said,” or “That was a great sermon!” or something else indicating approval or agreement. If one of my sermons elicits compliments like that, a week later when it’s time to write another sermon I say to myself, “How can I duplicate last week’s success? That was a winner!” You see, there’s a big temptation for every preacher to regard a sermon as “successful” if it earns praise from the congregation. —And that’s dangerous. Very dangerous. It’s a truism of psychology that people like to hear messages that affirm what they already believe or think – especially about themselves. Everybody likes to hear warm, positive affirmations: “You’re great people, and you’re doing everything so well. I’m proud of you!” And people get irritated when they hear too much criticism or warnings to “shape up.”

That was the prophet Jeremiah’s problem. Jeremiah spoke a message from God to the people of Jerusalem nearly six centuries before Christ, in the years just before the Babylonians came up and destroyed the city and the temple and carried tens of thousands of Jews away to seventy years of captivity. He didn’t just preach once a week like I do. Jeremiah did nothing else but preach, every day, and he went everywhere, year after year – the Temple, the king’s palace, the streets and market squares of the City – voicing the same criticisms and warnings over and over until he made everybody mad. There were no opinion polls then, but Jeremiah knew how people felt. People hated him because he never told them the nice, positive, affirmative things they wanted to hear. And he had the gall to insist that he was merely the mouthpiece of the Almighty. The negative things they didn’t like were not from him; they came straight from the mouth of God. God was going to let the Babylonians come and destroy Jerusalem and take its people away if they didn’t change; and the royal family, the priests, and the aristocrats were all going to be punished for their unfaithfulness to God.

Everybody grew tired of Jeremiah. All they ever heard from him was doom and gloom. He didn’t seem to approve of anything. He was rejected by his own family; he was mocked by strangers in the streets; he was beat up; he was put in the stocks and pelted with garbage; and the king’s council ordered him to keep quiet, or else. Jeremiah wanted to quit preaching. In today’s reading we hear him crying out in anger to God, because although he was doing what God commanded, all it ever brought him was heartbreak and pain. He decided to try keeping his thoughts to himself, so he could maybe live out the rest of his life in peace, regain approval from his family, and make some friends. But he couldn’t do it. —He couldn’t not preach!

Jeremiah was under the most powerful inspiration anybody can feel: a divine compulsion. He said, “The word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and derision all day long. But if I say, ‘I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,’ then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.” Poor old Jeremiah. He was driven to preach continuously, on every street corner in town, and nobody ever enjoyed a single one of his sermons. But history records that everything he predicted came to pass. All of it.

I’m no Jeremiah. He was a lot braver than I am. But the words of Jesus in the gospel for today made an impression on me like the “burning fire shut up in his bones” that Jeremiah spoke about. I cannot not repeat Jesus’ words to you, even if they all seem “oh so familiar.” These were words addressed by Jesus, not to the crowds in the streets, but to the people who’d already made a commitment to follow him. Therefore, we read this as a warning to professing Christians: “Everyone who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.” “Acknowledge” is a weak word here; so is “deny.” I think we can better understand what Jesus meant if we speak of “pledging loyalty” and “disowning.” Let’s read the verse this way: To everyone who pledges their loyalty to me before others, will I pledge my loyalty before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will also disown before my father in heaven.

When we take off our hats and put our hands over our hearts and say the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America or sing the national anthem, we do so as a sign of loyalty to our country. These symbolic gestures are important. They make a statement about what matters to us, about what we value. It aggravates me when people at a baseball game don’t take civic rituals seriously. But it’s even more important for us to demonstrate loyalty, day-by-day, to the values, principles, laws, and ideals of our country: “liberty and justice for all.” —Isn’t that right?— Citizens can wear an American flag pin, say the pledge and sing the national anthem, even spout a lot of patriotic rhetoric, and still betray the high ideals and values America stands for. We call that hypocrisy, and we see it every day.

How do we pledge our loyalty to Christ? We come to church on Sunday, participate in the service, and receive Holy Communion. This is another kind of symbolic behavior that makes a statement about what matters to us. Sure, Christians can wear crosses and sing hymns on Sunday, and yet disown Christ in their daily living. That’s religious hypocrisy, and we’re familiar with it. We can’t merely pledge our loyalty to Jesus, we need to demonstrate that loyalty during the 166 hours and 45 minutes of every week that we’re not here in church. That means believing his promises and being attentive to his word, praying and seeking his will for our lives, discovering and making use of the spiritual gifts he has given us, practicing godly management of the wealth that he’s put in our hands, and never forgetting to say “thank you” to the Lord for his blessings. And most of all it means loving other people in the ways Jesus taught, no matter the cost.

We need civic symbols and rituals, and we need spiritual symbols and rituals. They show where a person’s heart is. We need personal and familial rituals too. If I didn’t remember Joan on our wedding anniversary, what message would that send to her? What would a wife think whose husband said, “Well, honey, I am still married to you, isn’t that enough? Besides, cards and flowers are just empty gestures.” Sure, maybe a card and a bouquet of flowers or a dinner at a nice restaurant are just gestures, just symbols. But such symbols and gestures are not “empty,” they matter. They’re signs of loyalty. They show where our heart is.

There’s a sense in which we “disown” Christ when we casually let other things take precedence over coming to church on Sunday. It’s so easy to say, “We have company this weekend, so we’re staying home with them,” or “Our grandchildren are here, so we can’t come to church.” (Why not? Guests are always welcome here!) Or, worse, “I’m in a golf tournament, and it starts on Sunday.” Symbols, rituals, and gestures all proclaim our priorities to anyone who’s watching. And when these rituals and gestures are neglected or deliberately discarded – for any reason – the very act of putting them aside conveys a message, and that message is clear: other things matter to us more.

Have you ever been in a sophisticated crowd where people were putting down Christianity or the church and been tempted to join ranks with the “cultured despisers of religion” rather than standing up for Jesus? That’s sort of like being overseas among foreigners who are bashing the United States and being tempted to pass yourself off as a Canadian. Our loyalties are always being tested – in ways large and small.

Therefore, I pass along to you again words of our Master that I know you’ve heard before – words addressed to men and women who have claimed to be his disciples: “Everyone who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.”

Pray with me: “Lord Jesus, we want to renew our allegiance to you – not just in words, but in actions. Let our presence here today as we worship and our life in the world day-by-day give evidence of our commitment to you. Make us willing to pay the cost of discipleship and so inherit your promises. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.”

What shall we do about ‘the Lost Sheep’?

5th Sunday after Pentecost. Proper 6, Year A. June 15, 2008. (Text: Matthew 9:35-10:8)

About three hundred years before Jesus, a man named Isaiah was praying in the Temple in Jerusalem and had a mystical experience —a vision. Isaiah was a prince of Judah, a cousin of the king. He knew all the important people in the land; and the land was in turmoil. The rich were exploiting the poor, the leaders were playing political games with foreigners, and nobody was keeping faith, either with God or each another. In addition, the fierce Assyrians from the north were threatening to take over all the little countries, like Judah, that bordered their empire. It was a frightening time. As Isaiah prayed for his people, this was his vision:

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphim were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. 3And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the whole house was filled with smoke.

And I said: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” Then one of the seraphim flew to me, holding a live coal taken from the altar. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has been taken away and your sin is blotted out.”

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!”

Times were bad. People were scared; they needed help. God asked, “Whom shall I send?” And Isaiah answered, “Here am I. Send me!”

Holding this dramatic picture in your mind, let’s go forward three hundred years. The Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks have all come and gone. Now Romans are the foreign occupiers of the little province of Judea. Political, economic, and religious circumstances are tense as ever. Jesus of Nazareth is going among the towns and villages, spending time with the ordinary people, talking to them, teaching them, and touching them with the power of God. He sees that they’re harassed and helpless. He calls them “sheep without a shepherd.”

Domesticated creatures don’t do well on their own, without human support. The wild Rocky Mountain sheep we have out here in Colorado are able to live on the slopes year-round and be fine; but an ordinary sheep, your next year’s sweater on the hoof, won’t survive without a human care-taker. They need a shepherd to look after their health and their diet, to care about whether they stay with the flock or wander off and fall in a gulley.

Jesus looked at the crowds and said, “Nobody cares about these people!” So he went to them himself, and he sent out his twelve disciples, as we read about this morning. He said to them, “Go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.”

The “lost sheep of the house of Israel” were people about whom the Jewish religious leaders did not seem to care very much. —I wonder who we’d say are “the lost sheep” in our society. We live in a time when many individuals and groups seem to profit from positioning themselves as “victims.” We hear from them all the time. You can probably name several groups of co-called “victims”. But who are our “lost sheep”?

Here’s a way we might identify the “lost sheep” among us. America is the most religious of the Western democracies, but there are millions of people here who were baptized in infancy and taken to church and Sunday School as children, but who – for different reasons – either never came to personal faith, or at some point lost their faith. These people haven’t been in a church for years, and – if you were to ask them – most might tell you that they have no interest in ever coming back. These are our “lost sheep.” There are lost Episcopalian sheep as well as lost Methodist, Lutheran, Catholic, and even Baptist sheep —people about whom we might re-phrase a verse of Amazing Grace: “they once were found, but now they’re lost.”

The question is: Are we willing to let it go at that, or do we feel called to do something for them? When his people were in peril, God revealed himself to Isaiah and asked him, “Whom shall I send?” Isaiah answered, “Send me.” And God sent him.

I think Jesus is saying, “My lost sheep are out there walking the streets of Aspen. They’re getting off planes at the airport every day. They’re on the mountains; they’re at the Music Festival; they’re attending conferences at the Institute, eating in the nice restaurants, and shopping in the fancy boutiques. They’re also waiting tables, re-stocking grocery shelves, making beds in hotels, and driving limos back and forth to the airport. They’re mowing your lawns and building your houses. Some of them are working on your new church building. Lost sheep are everywhere I look in this town! …Sheep without shepherds. —Whom shall I send to bring them back to Me?”

How do we answer him? How do we pray? Do we pray like this: “Oh, Lord, please send somebody to them, send laborers into the harvest. Send somebody to love them, somebody to connect with them, somebody to show these lost sheep how to find their way back to the flock, back to the fold of God. —Send somebody. But, Lord, please don’t send me!”

If we’re serious about our faith, we can’t pray that way. We can’t pray any kind of prayer unless we’re truly willing for God to use us as part of his answer to that prayer. If we’re not just a “holy club” of people who like to get together once a week and sing some traditional hymns, hear a sermon and receive Communion, we can’t just let somebody else worry about the lost sheep! When Jesus says, “Whom shall I send,” our answer has to be, “Here we are, Lord. Send us!”

Rick Warren, the famous Southern California pastor whose books The Purpose Driven Church and The Purpose Driven Life have sold millions of copies, says that every church should have a target group it wants to reach. A church that wants to reach “lost sheep” should first try to reach the ones with whom they already have something in common, because they’re the ones with whom they’re likely to have some success.

I’ve told you that I believe God wants to “remodel” us this year, at the same time we’re remodeling the physical structure of our church building. One renovation I think God intends for us is a refocusing of our sense of mission. To whom are we sent? Who are the “lost sheep” the Lord wants us to round up and bring home to him? I’d venture to guess that almost every adult here this morning already knows at least one “lost sheep,” one “church dropout.” This might be your neighbor, or your sister, or your golf buddy. Maybe even your own child. I challenge you: connect with that person this week. Find out what he or she needs. Listen with compassion and sensitivity. Don’t offer pat answers; just show you care. Be a shepherd. When the time is right, share your own faith. When it seems appropriate, invite that lost sheep to rejoin the flock.

Today the Lord is asking, “Whom shall I send?” Let our answer be explicit: “Here we are, Lord. Send us!”

Living the Adventure of Abraham

4th Sun. after Pentecost, Proper 5, Yr. A. June 8, 2008. (Text: Genesis 12:1-8)

This morning we heard the oldest story told in our culture; we might even call it the defining story. History as we know it began about four thousand years ago, maybe more, when a man called Abram heard what he believed was a call from God – a God he had not known before. This unknown God said, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

The story of the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham has dominated world history because it’s sacred to two billion Christians, more than a billion Muslims, and millions of Jews. That means about half the people in the world believe that God’s promise to Abraham is the great lever of human history – and that proportion is growing, not shrinking. In addition, there are millions of secularists today who’ve never read the Bible but still are unconsciously shaped by the Abraham saga. —And why? Because it’s the story of what can happen when a human being hears the divine voice speaking in his soul and is willing to obey what that voice tells him to do, no matter the uncertainty, the hazards, or the costs.

We call this “The Adventure of Abraham,” the classic account of leaving the known behind and venturing off into the unknown – trusting the promise of the Unseen God who says that this risky adventure in faith will ultimately result in greatness and blessing, not just for the adventurer but for the whole world.

People probably sat around campfires beside the Jordan River telling the story of Abraham for five hundred years before anybody knew how to write. They told about a patriarch, an old man, who took his equally elderly, childless wife, Sarai, and his dependent nephew, Lot, and all his servants and household goods and livestock and set out from the city of his ancestors to go . . . somewhere! . . . because he believed that he had heard the voice of God —a God who told him to go to Canaan, a place he’d never been before, but which God said he’d point out when he got there.

The journey of Abraham defies all the inclinations of human nature and the reflexes of cultural conformity. These inclinations and reflexes teach us to do the opposite of what Abraham did: to travel from the unknown to the known, from the unpredictable to the predictable, from the unsafe to the safe. Abraham acted whole-heartedly, but without certainty. There were no guarantees; he had to load his camels every morning and press on in faith. Our nature is to be careful and demand certainty. If we can’t have certainty, at least we want to have insurance!

Dan Clendenin, whose Journey with Jesus website is well worth your attention, says Abraham’s departure from his ancestral home is a story about more than just one man’s need for a change of scenery.

“In leaving home for Canaan, Abraham left all that was familiar – custom and comfort, family and friends, all the regularity and rhythms of his life. …He journeyed from present clarity into a future of profound ignorance… from what he had to what he did not have… from everything familiar to all things strange.

“In his journey into the unknown, Abraham embraced ignorance, relinquished control, and chose to live with confidence in God’s promise to bless him in a new and strange place. But that required a second choice on his part. He had to leave not only his geographic place. He had to leave behind his small-minded, parochial vision.” …his sense of limited possibilities.

Abraham had to believe God could do the impossible.

The rabbis tell a story about Abraham – or Abram, his childhood name, when he was little boy. As the story goes, his father Terah was an idol-maker. This was a good business in Ur. People there worshiped many gods, but especially the moon-god Sin – whose sacred cities Ur and Haran are the two that figure in the early life of Abraham. One day Terah left young Abram in charge of the idol-making shop. While his father was away, Abram destroyed all the idols with a hammer, both the ones that were finished and the ones that were still works in progress. When Terah returned and saw the wreckage he was furious, and demanded to know what had happened. Abram told him the idols had fought with each other. His father was angry and said, “That’s ridiculous, idols can’t move!” Abram answered, “If they can’t move, then why do you worship them?” Abraham broke with his father and his neighbors and their traditions and took the risk of putting his faith in a God he could not see, but who could move – and would move, along with Abraham, all the rest of his life.

Well, friends, here we are, we children of Abraham! We’ve heard the call; we’ve left our ancestral home behind, and we’re a couple of weeks down the road to Canaan. Anybody who’s been back to 536 W. North Street in the past few days knows it’s too late to say, “Hey, let’s forget about this and go back home. Let’s settle back into our comfortable life, our predictable routines, and business as usual.” The demolition crew has done its work, and “home” doesn’t look quite like it did two Sundays back.

I believe it’s at least a divine coincidence, if not an act of providence, that we’ve been given Abraham to ponder as the church gathers today. God commanded Abraham to take a huge risk. Why, it was a risk for Abraham even to listen to the Voice that spoke in his soul, that Voice he’d never heard before. Faith and risk go hand in hand. If there’s no risk, there’s no need for faith!

We’re taking big risks as a church. We’re taking a financial risk: investing millions of dollars in a building project – millions of dollars, most of which still consists of promises and possibilities—not cash in the bank. We’re taking an institutional risk: dispersing our resources, meeting for worship here, for education there, and for social activities and ministries somewhere else. And we’re taking a spiritual risk: assuming that God has called us to this journey in faith, and that He will provide a happy outcome for us, believing that we – like Abraham – have been “blessed to be a blessing.”

Risk-taking is the only road to success. I read this week that when people over the age of 95 were asked in a survey what changes they would make if they could live their lives over again, one of the top three responses was that they would take more risks! Taking risks compels us to face our fears: fear of change, fear of failure, and fear of the unknown. But, you know what? The past is past, and it’s impossible to hang on to the present for more than a moment. The future is what’s out there waiting for us.

A couple of weeks ago Joan and I went to a retirement party for Jack Harris, our postman. Jack delivered the West End mail for 32 years. We chatted about the changes he’s seen in the neighborhood. He said that when he took over the route back in 1976, about 90 per cent of the houses in the West End were occupied year-round by local families. Now, many of those houses are gone and the percentage of the present houses occupied year-round is down to maybe 30 per cent. —What will it be like thirty years from now, or even ten? We don’t know. But we do know this: we want to leave to those who come after us in Christ Church the same legacy Abraham left to Isaac and Isaac left to Jacob, the same legacy Peter left to John Mark and Paul left to Timothy, and which they in turn left to the saints who brought their world to Christ —the legacy of faith.

To have faith is to journey with the Lord —moving on, not always sure of where we’ll sleep tonight or of what the final cost of our journey will be. This faith offers us assurance of just one thing: the One who has called us to the journey walks beside us. The future is in His hands.

You Can’t Serve God and Anything Else

3rd Sunday after Pentecost. Proper 4, Yr. A. June 1, 2008. (Deuteronomy 11:18-21; Matthew 6:24-34)

When I was in first or second grade in Sunday School, we did a craft activity imitating what Moses told the Israelites to do before they came into the Promised Land. First we took pencils and laboriously copied out on lined paper these words that the teacher had written on a blackboard: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your might.” Then we folded our paper up really small and put it into a matchbox we’d already decorated with construction paper and strung on a long piece of ribbon. Our teacher tied these little boxes onto our foreheads, telling us that this was to remind us to love God more than anything else. Then we went into the church with our parents.

We were a bunch of little Christian children imitating what our Jewish friends do in obedience to the Law when they wear tefillin (phylacteries) – black leather boxes on straps not only around their heads but around one arm. We just read about this in Deuteronomy: “You shall put these words of mine in your heart and soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and fix them as an emblem on your forehead. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.”

This is what Moses told God’s people to put in their heart and soul, bind on their hands and foreheads, nail to the gateposts of their houses, and teach to their children: “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” Moses warned them that if they turned away from loving God more than anything else, there would be sad consequences. And we know Moses told the truth: keep your focus on God.

In the Sermon on the Mount, from which we heard last Sunday and now again today, Jesus is speaking just to his disciples – not to the crowds, not to humanity in general. This is wisdom directed to a group of people who’ve already made what I would call the most important choice in life – the decision to follow Jesus. He says: “No one can serve two masters. For a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

This may sound to you like a quaint saying, maybe appropriate to people in the first century but not to us. After all, we live in the age of multitasking. Many of us have worked two or even three jobs at the same time, had two or three bosses, and we’ve done fine. We liked them all, and working for several employers provided interesting diversity. If that’s what you’re thinking, let me offer you a different way of hearing what Jesus is saying.

First off, what he’s really telling us in effect is: “You’re not as independent as you think you are, or as you wish you were. You’re not ‘the master of your fate and the captain of your soul.’” He’s saying, “The truth is that you are going to ‘serve’ some thing or some one. You’re going to be under the influence, the guidance, maybe even the orders of somebody or some force or some values that will shape your life. You’re free to choose this person or power or value system, so be very careful.”

“You cannot serve God and wealth” was not a caution directed just to wealthy people – or even mainly to wealthy people. After all, Jesus was talking to his disciples, and as far as we can tell he didn’t have many rich disciples. (There were a few, but very few.) Most of the people who heard the Sermon on the Mount were small businessmen, humble craftsmen, fishermen, farmers, and housewives. There were no plutocrats among them, but there were many only got by from day to day, living hand to mouth.

Jesus is warning about the disease of materialism, an affliction that has more to do with our attitudes than our affluence. It’s counsel for all of us who live in this world of material necessities – whether we have enough money to indulge our whims or have to pinch pennies, whether we drive a Ferrari or a Ford. It’s about getting our priorities in order. This applies to the rock star and the grocery clerk in equal measure. Materialism isn’t only the rock star’s insatiable craving for more and more toys – another yacht, another jet plane, another villa on the Riviera. It’s also the grocery clerk’s pervasive fear of never having enough – enough to pay the rent, enough to pay the dentist, enough to put gas in the Ford. Materialism is a distortion of values and a reversal of priorities. It is myopic and “this world” centered, ignoring the place of God in the universe and our mission as servants of God.

You can’t serve God and anything else. You can’t serve God and the accumulation of more toys —or even God and the bare necessities. You can’t serve God and your own ego. You can’t serve God and the pursuit of power …or entertainment …or even a better job. Be careful about what worries you, consumes your energy, and is the subject of your nightmares, because – whatever that is – it can quickly become your master. And “No one can serve two masters.”

Write this on your heart, on your arm, on the gatepost of your house: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your might.” Love the Lord, serve only him, and “Do not worry about tomorrow.” A friend of mine says that people who worry think they’re doing something useful: “Don’t bother me, I’m busy worrying!” Jesus doesn’t say not to think and plan for the future. He doesn’t say not to be prudent. What he does say is not to worry. When we worry, we obsess about things that are beyond our control. We lose sleep over potential problems and possible disasters. And we forget that Jesus has promised to be with us always, even to the end of the ages.

If you find yourself consumed by worries, listen to what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount.

First: Get your priorities right. “Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.” One author I read this week said, Jesus didn’t say to “strive only for the kingdom of God” but to work for God’s kingdom first. When you put God first, other things that should rightfully concern you will fall into their proper places.

The second is related to the first: Invest your effort where you can really make a difference. “Can any of you by worrying add a single day to your span of life?” Worrying drains your energy. That’s why people who worry think they’re actually accomplishing something – they’re tired all the time! There’s only so much you can accomplish in a day or a year or a lifetime. You have a finite amount of energy, and you need to direct your energy into projects that have the potential to bear fruit, projects chosen according to God’s priorities.

Third: Live one day at a time. “Today’s trouble is enough for today.” In the real world, bad things do happen to God’s people. Christians lose their jobs, contract diseases, and have problems in their marriages at about the same rate as everybody else. But Christians know that “in all things God works for good for those who love him.” So we face today’s troubles today, sleep peacefully tonight, and expect that the Lord will be there for us when we have to face whatever tomorrow may bring.

Let the Work Begin!

2nd Sunday after Pentecost, Year A. May 25, 2008. Last Sunday of worship in the building before renovations begin.

Because this is a special Sunday for Christ Church – our last Sunday in this building before we move out for a year of renovation and rebuilding – I didn’t want to use the assigned Bible readings for the church year. Instead I put together my own set of readings for the occasion. Now, this is something you can do with the Bishop’s permission. But I didn’t get around to that, so please don’t tell on me!

The fun thing for a preacher about getting to pick your own readings is that you can create a set that has a single theme. I enjoyed that. The downside for you is that, having hand-picked all three readings, I want to say something about each one. That means you could be in for a 45 minute sermon. —No, don’t worry. I am going to say something about each reading, but I promise to keep it short and simple.

When I was a kid going to church camp, one of the songs we sang was “We are climbing Jacob’s ladder; We are climbing Jacob’s ladder… Every round goes higher, higher… Soldiers of the cross.” You probably sang that one too. We read from Genesis today about Jacob’s dream of a ladder that went up to heaven. Without getting into unnecessary details about Jacob, let me say that the future father of the Twelve Patriarchs of Israel was on his way to a far-off land when he had his dream.

In his dream Jacob saw a ladder reaching from earth to heaven, and angels were going up and down the ladder. This told him he was sleeping in a sacred place, at a spiritual junction between this world and the next. In the dream, God told Jacob he was going to inherit the promises God had made to his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac: that all the families of the earth would be blessed through him. Then the Lord said these words, and this is what I want us to remember: Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

As a congregation, we’re about to take a journey. We’re not going to a far country; we’re going less than a mile down the street. But our church has never done anything like this before. In fact, it’s something 99% of churches never do: move out of their building, out of their “home,” out of their familiar surroundings, and spend a year as guests – so to speak – in another congregation’s house.

But I believe God’s promise to Jacob applies to us, too: Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. (We might change “this land” to “this place.”) For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.

We’re going to sojourn with the Methodists for a year, but God will bring us back to this place where we are right now. God has put us here – at the corner of 5th and North Streets – for his own purposes. This is where he wants us to be. Just as Jacob said, when he awakened from his dream: Surely the Lord is in this place. This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. —“Surely, the Lord is in this place.” Many of us would say that about this place.