Sunday, August 31, 2008

Present Your Bodies

A Sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church at the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center, Huntington, WV, on the occassion of the Baptism of Margot Caroline Schoew, based on Romans 12:1-8.

Today, we have the great privilege to perform a Baptism! And I think it’s very nice of the Lord to work it out in such a way that it coincides with our Scripture reading from Romans. What we have is a literal demonstration of what it means to ‘present your bodies to God as a living sacrifice’…

As we will see in a few minutes, the parents and grandparents of Margot Caroline Schoew will come forward and present her for Baptism. This is obviously being done on her behalf, on the faith of her parents. Because they are Christians who acknowledge God as their Creator, Savior and Lord, they want to bring this child into the household of faith – so that Margot may be raised in the Family of God, in the “nurture and admonition of the Lord”.

One of the Key things that happens as we perform a Sacrament is that it creates a family relationship where none existed before. Through Baptism, Margot is being welcomed into the family of God; she will become God’s child in a way that she previously was not. She herself will not likely feel any different, nor will her parent’s love change because of Baptism; that love will remain as deep and as intense as ever. And indeed, Baptism is not meant to change our feelings, so much as it meant to demonstrate our obedience to our Creator and Redeemer God.

Jesus’ Example
When Jesus went to John at the Jordan River, he presented himself to God as a living, Holy Sacrifice – acceptable to His Father. This was evidenced by the voice that thundered from Heaven (Mt.3:17) “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased.” The seal of this pleasure was the descent of the Holy Spirit – who came to rest upon Jesus in the form of a dove. Today we symbolize this very action by the use of Holy Oil to anoint or ‘seal’ the Baptized person in the Holy Spirit and to indicate that a new dimension of familial relationship has been created.

Death and Resurrection
Now the simple medium of Baptism is, of course, water. If we were at the Jordan River we would have some depth of water and we could really see the reality of what Paul means when he says that in Baptism, we go down into the water of death, and are raised to walk in newness of life. (Thankfully we do have some water from the real Jordan to add to our Baptismal font, so it is indeed as if we were in the Jordan…)

In Baptism, we ‘reckon’ or count ourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God; dead to the Kingdom of this world and its ‘gift’: Death, but alive to the free gift of God, eternal life, just as Romans 6:23 tells us: “the wages of Sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” You see, God has beaten the Devil at his own game. The wages of Sin, death, has become the entry, or portal, into Life eternal! Jesus, through his death on the cross, ‘broke Hell wide open’ rising into newness of life. Baptism unites us with him in resurrection, setting us free from the bondage to sin and death.

This is all Objective – outside of ourselves, regardless of how we feel about it. Theologians use the Latin phrase, “ex opera operato” to describe this: It means “by the work done”. In other words, through this outward sign, God does a work of grace inside of us.

Our Response
However, the decision to pursue Baptism is presumed to issue from Faith – faith that God saves us, not water, not priestly actions. And even after Baptism we all still face a daily choice: Will we walk in the newness of life or not? Will we present our bodies to God as a living sacrifice, our spiritual and reasonable worship of God? Will we live as slaves of righteousness or slaves of sin? When Margot is older, she will be asked to make this choice for herself by going through Confirmation – receiving instruction in the Faith and making a public affirmation that she chooses to walk in this newness of life. This is proper, for God has no grandchildren, and he expects us all to walk with him as His faithful children.

Jesus dramatically demonstrated this expectation when he excoriated the Pharisees for pursuing outward signs without having a living inner faith. In Matthew 12:34 and ff he cries out:
“You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. 35 The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. 36 I tell you, on the Day of Judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, 37 for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned. 38 Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.” 39 But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah…”

This world is schizophrenic. It wants to see a visible sign of God’s reality and yet it is constructed around a sort of atheism that assumes man can exist autonomously apart from God. Man’s desire for autonomy bred death, and we breathe in the stench of death every day, but the World tells us this stench is Life. There is both an implicit and explicit demand from the world system to conform ourselves to it, not to God. This world system tries to convince us we can live and move and have our being in it, not God. This is the first and most seductive temptation we face - the temptation to be Self-Sufficient. But the effort is doomed because, as Meister Eckhart has said, “For God to be is to give being and for man to be is to receive being.”(Quoted in Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, by James Finley, pg. 73)

Receiving Gifts from God
In God we live and move and have our being. Our job is to consciously and joyfully receive our being from Him. Our very Life is a gift to be received. And as we receive our lives, or ourselves, from God, we then in turn offer them back to God for His use. In this we find our freedom, the freedom to be what we were created to be.

Now here is another aspect of Life that is symbolized in Baptism: We as a congregation participate in receiving this new life, so full of potential. When a friend of mine had a baby, some years ago, I wrote a little song for her son. One of the lines asked the musical question, “…what’s your purpose in this life to be? Will you travel afar or follow the law?...” etc.
We recognize that Margot carries within herself certain gifts to be discovered. Some of these are evident already; most will become evident over time.

As the Church, the family of God, we want to recognize and receive the gifts that Margot brings to us. As she grows, she and we will discover how her gifts can help to build up the body of Christ. She may grow up to prophecy, or to serve, or to teach, to exhort, to give generously, or to lead in some way; perhaps to do works of mercy, or to serve on a prayer team, just as we will participate in that ministry here today. In any case, her gifts will be for the building up of the Body of Christ, not for her own glorification.

A gift is a gift, something we receive. We all need to keep this in mind in order to have a proper estimation of ourselves. We must not fall prey to the temptation of believing that “I am God’s gift to humanity.” – And yet- we are! The very phrase that we use to indicate pride and arrogance is exactly true. We are God’s gift to one another. As people, and as members of the Body of Christ, we are not just containers of gifts: healing, teaching, miracles, etc. We ourselves are gifts from God to one another, and ultimately for God Himself. This is our great joy – to receive the Gifts of God, and then to offer them back to Him in joyful service.

So today, we receive Margot Caroline Schoew. We acknowledge her as one of God’s children, created in His image, and we present her to God to possess as His own creation. We receive her as a gift from God and we are eager to see all that she will become. We call her sister and acknowledge our responsibility to help her grow into all that God intends for her to be. And we rejoice in the opportunity we have to re-commit ourselves to our God, and to walk in newness of Life to the Glory of God the Father. Amen.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Humility and Br. Andre

A Chapter Talk given to the Company of Jesus on August 24, 2008:

Recently, friends from our church traveled to Montreal, Canada and brought back a book about Brother Andre, The Wonder Man of Mount Royal, written by his friend Fr. Henri-Pual Bergeron, CSC. The back cover informs us that “This book tells the story of a young rural worker who became a Religious and then doorkeeper of Notre Dame College and who spent his entire life spreading the devotion to St. Joseph whom he called ‘his friend’. In 1904…he founded St. Joseph’s Oratory of Mount Royal, living and working there until his death in 1937 at age 91.”

Pilgrims flocked to Br. Andre and thousands received comfort, counsel and healings through his intercession. Always self-effacing, Br. Andre attributed healings and miracles to his patron St. Joseph and to Divine Providence. His method of praying for people often consisted of rubbing an afflicted limb with a medal of St. Joseph and then simply declaring “Stand up now, you are cured.” Sure enough, thousands were healed this way.

Humility seemed to attract this Divine favor. On page 89 of the book, we read that “once and Apostolic Delegate deemed it his duty to give him [Andre] a little sermon on the subject [of humility]; but he was told by the bishop accompanying him: “Do not trouble him, for he would not comprehend your great precepts. Humility is his very life; he lives the virtue.”

‘Another time, a canon was giving the Brother a long exhortation on the dangers of pride. A man who was waiting impatiently to ask a favor interrupted the dissertation: ‘Will you tell me which of you two is Br. Andre? I came from a long distance and I would like to be cured.’ The dignitary, startled at the indignity of being mistaken for a simple lay-Brother, retired, meditating on the vanity of dignities and the silliness of his own sermon.

Br. Andre was indeed a lay-Brother, not a priest. He was not even literate when he entered the service of the College. His health was frail, and he served as porter for many years, literally answering the door and running errands for the students.

But Br. Andre spent hours upon hours praying. Sometimes he wore out his confreres with his praying. And by this manner of life he was able to minister healing to many thousands of pilgrims and build a magnificent place of prayer dedicated to St. Joseph.

Now, I don’t know about you, but my prayer life is nowhere near as intense as Br. Andre’s; neither is my humility. I wish it were, but I’m just not there. But I am inspired, and I do seek to grow in God’s grace. And if Br. Andre could be successful in his devotions and life work, perhaps there is hope for me – and you too.

This is why we devote ourselves to following a rule of life, to increase our holiness and to become progressively more like Jesus.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

God's Demands

A sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on August 10, 2008 at teh convent chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center in Huntington, WV, and based on:

Romans 9:1-5 - with reference through chapter 10

9:1 I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit— 2 that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, [1] my kinsmen according to the flesh. 4 They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. 5 To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.

So far in our study of Romans, we have been looking at Paul’s very closely reasoned exposition of the Righteousness of God. We have seen that the overall theme of the book is found in chapter 1 vv 16 and 17: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power (Grk. Dunamis= “dynamite”) of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
Paul has traced out for us how we human beings are bound up in sinfulness and cannot produce our own righteousness before God. Faith is shown to be the necessary ingredient to enter into God’s kingdom. Abraham is the paradigm of faith – one who believed God first, and whose faith was ‘reckoned’ to him Righteousness.

Works of the law cannot save us because all they do is highlight how far short we fall. Exercising faith in Christ brings us new life and the Holy Spirit takes up residence within us, giving us hope and power to live the Christian life. Although we still struggle with sin, the role of the Holy Spirit is to intercede for us and to help us in our struggle.

Finally, we see that God loved us before the world began and has an eternal plan for us to become conformed to the image of Christ, thus providing us with a great sense of security before God. So we have had 8 chapters of Gospel if you will.

Now Paul turns his attention to the Jewish people. The bridge for this new topic seems to be the idea of God’s election. In chapter 8 we have had a long discussion of God’s sovereign choice of those who are in Christ. This seems to lead naturally to the question, “Well, then what of the Jews, God’s ‘Covenant people” who were chosen, but now seem to have been set aside?

Paul’s answer
Paul’s answer is very personal” …” I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.” In other words, he knows that his own kinsmen as a whole have not accepted Christ and he worries over them, just as we do over our unsaved relatives and friends. And he responds to an implicit question, “If the Jews have not accepted Christ, and God has set them aside, is there any advantage in being Jewish at all?” The decisive answer is Yes! – and here are the blessings:


The Joy of Being Jewish
First, they are Israelites, sons of Israel – and because of it, to them belong eight specific blessings:

The Adoption: being taken in by God to be his special people.
The Glory: the Shekinah Glory of God, divine splendor.
The Covenants: God’s binding of Himself to his people.
The Giving of the Law: both the ceremonial and the moral law.
The Worship: the ritual of the Tabernacle and the Temple.
The Promises: The Great things God had planned for them.
The Patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
The Christ: the kinsman redeemer. Messiah born of the Jews.

These blessings are very great indeed!

God’s Sovereign Choice

Yet despite all these blessings God set aside the people of Israel because they didn’t fulfill their mission to be a blessing to all the nations of the earth, and they didn’t accept Christ, their kinsman redeemer. At this point, God passes over them, and give the Good News to the Gentiles –by His sovereign choice.

We can identify this as the theme for the next two chapters. The tone shifts from one of confidence in God’s graceful choice, to the sad consequences of God’s sovereign choosing. As I have contemplated these two chapters, I can’t help but think that they are deeply offensive to our contemporary post-modern mindset. Over and over we are reminded that God has chosen some and rejected others. “Jacob I have loved and Esau I hated” (9:13) …”the older will serve the younger” (v.12). Why? Because God chose to do it that way. That’s it. That’s all the explanation we get. “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy and compassion on whom I will have compassion(9:15). Period. End of sentence. Paul raises the question: Is God not unjust then?

There’s a book being sold right now with the title: “God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer. By Bart Ehrman. The title of the book reveals the attitude_ God has a problem. Well, I‘ve got news for Mr. Ehrman; God does not offer explanations to his creatures. There is no court of appeals where God must give an accounting of Himself. Job found this out the hard way.
God uses whom He will for His own purposes. Pharaoh is an example (9:17): God hardened his heart against the Egyptians because he was looking for an opportunity against them.

In our essential narcissism, we are like clay pots who say, “Why did you make me like this?” We can’t understand and we don’t like God’s choices.

Even among the ‘chosen’ people of Israel, not all the physical offspring of Abraham are his chosen spiritual decedents. Way before Christ, there were apostate Jews, people who were born Jews, but did not believe their own heritage and so were not true children of the promise. So much so, that God speaks of choosing a remnant from the people (vv. 27,28) those who did not bow the knee to Baal, even as far back as Isaiah’s time.

God’s overall purpose is to have a people for Himself, culled even from his ‘chosen’ people. And so He chooses freely, sovereignly, and without need for explanation. And even though he chooses, He still expects us to exercise faith in order to become one of His children.

The Jewish people as a group have been set aside for the time being because they didn’t excercie faith and believe in Christ. They tried to do things on their own – to develop a system of religion based on law, not faith. They were trying to be self-made religionists. This is what caused them to be set aside so the gospel could go to the Gentiles.

But not all were set aside. Some believed. God has always maintained a remnant people for himself. This People is composed of those who had the same faith as Abraham , who believe God, who recognize Jesus as Lord. They believe in Him in their hearts, and confess with their mouths that Jesus is Lord, and they are saved (10:8).

Brothers and sisters, we will never be able to figure out why God chose Jacob over Esau, or why He chose us to be His covenant people. What we can know, however, is that somehow God expects us to believe and that he has given grace to some of us to believe. He knows who belongs to him and who doesn’t - and He’s perfectly justified in choosing whomever He will.

What we need to keep in mind is that God doesn’t kowtow to us. Rather, He demands things from us. One doesn’t trifle with God. All attempts at bargaining with God are foolish babbling.

Our culture desperately needs to hear this message. We constantly operate in a spirit of Hubris, thinking that God owes us something. Bottom line is: He doesn’t. We are indebted to Him and we need to remember it.

This week, as you are going about your daily life, ask yourself the question, “What does the Sovereign God demand of me? What is He calling me to do?”

Respond to this call in Humility and you will be blessed. You will be a person of faith, a true child of Abraham. If you haven’t come to faith, do so quickly. Make the choice to do it. God demands it. Faith is not an optional choice for anyone who wants to live eternally, It’s the only choice.

The people of Israel were set aside for a time. But God seeks to make them jealous by sending the Gospel to the Gentiles. As we will see later, his plan is to eventually bring his ‘chosen people’ back into the fold. He won’t forget them. But he does discipline them for his own purposes.

God loves his chosen ones – the ones who choose to believe in His Christ. Let us pray that God gives us the grace to be faithful. AMEN.

Sunday, August 03, 2008

Begin with the End in Mind

A Sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on August 3 2008 at the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center in Huntington, WV, and based on Romans 8: 28-39


In 1989 Steven Covey published his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective people. One of those seven habits was to “Begin with the End in Mind.” Apparently God must have been operating on the same principle when he created human beings. For in Romans 8: 29,30 we read:

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son….

God started with the end in mind. He knew us before hand when he said “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness… (Gen1:26).

Actually, the word foreknew can be understood as “fore loved”. It’s not just that He knew something ahead of time. No. In saying “Let us make man …” it is evident that God had preconceived us in His mind. He loved us before He made us, and designed us to end up like Christ. Again, …”those whom he foreknew he also predestined (designed) to be conformed to the image of his Son”.

He did this, fully aware that there would be this little issue of Sin to overcome. Notice this from 8:30:

…And those whom he predestined he also called, (we are called out of Sin. We are God’s ekklesia, those who have been “called out”)… and those whom he called he also justified,(we are made just or righteous before God by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on our behalf) and those whom he justified he also glorified.

This last word is especially important because glorification is something that happens in the Resurrection, after death in the “Life after life after death” We are finally glorified when we receive that resurrection body, just like Jesus has. In other words, it hasn’t happened to any of us sitting here – yet.

But because God began with the end in mind, Paul can say that God glorified us – past tense. In God’s mind, the future is a done deal. When he looks at us, he sees the end, and he is pleased by it, just as he said when he finished creating man, “…it was very good (Gen. 1: 31). God said that it was very good because He had also made provision to take care of the freedom/sin problem by providing Christ as the Lamb of God “sacrificed before the foundation of the world (Rev. 13: 8), so that he could write the names of all His own in the Lamb’s book of life (Rev. 21:27).

Boomerangs
In the great arc of creation, our trajectory is rather like that of a boomerang. We start out in God’s hand, and we are flung out from God through our free choice to Sin, but God calls us back to Himself and He provides a way reconcile us to Himself through Jesus, so that the One who was offended by our freely-chosen separation has now provided the means needed for him to go from Judge of our souls to Lover of our souls. We end up back in God’s loving hand, firmly gripped by his Grace.

Our Security in God.
So in Rom 8:31, Paul can say, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” And of course, he is referring to our enemy the devil, the ‘accuser of the brethren” (Rev.12:10), the one who stands before the throne of God throwing up our sins to God and daring Him to accept us. Paul is defiant: “Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn?” Paul knows that God … did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, (32) and this same son, who has every right not judge us does not – rather He stand at God’s right hand interceding for us (v.34).

The result of this knowledge is great confidence before God, Satan, and the World. We are confident before God, knowing that He has already given us the very best he had to give. …”as a result how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (v.32). We are like the secure child who defies the bully, confident that her father will stand up for her and protect her.

And Satan is the bully, the adversary. He is the one who brings the accusation. He is the one who plays on our fears and insecurities, trying in every way to undermine our faith and to abandon our relationship with God – even I fit were possible to get God to turn away from us because of our wickedness and disobedience.

Then finally, we have the world system, replete with all manner of tribulation, distress, persecution, famine nakedness danger and sword. If our Savior doesn’t judge us and Satan’s accusations cannot sway God against us, then nothing the world has to offer can separate us from the love of Christ, even when it seems that the world beats up on us and leads us like sheep to the slaughter. No, says Paul, in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.

Now we come to the poetic and passionately eloquent conclusion: “38 For I am sure (convinced) that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers (principalities), nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Because God began with the end in mind, there is nothing is nothing that can come between Him and his plan for us.

A word about Height and Depth: (v.39)

Many people today follow their horoscopes in the daily paper. It’s usually right underneath the funnies – and most of us read it in the same spirit we chuckle at the comics. But in the ancient world people were very serious about the stars and their effects upon people’s daily lives. The star you were born under could control your destiny. And the daily movement of the planets was considered auspicious or inauspicious for various activities: starting a business, planting crops etc. Even Jesus’ birth was accompanied by great fanfare and the appearance of a new star.

In the astrologer’s parlance, the term “height” meant the zenith or highest point of a star’s progression through the sky, while the term ‘depth’ referred to the lowest point in the night sky. The star was thought to have greater of lesser impact in your life depending upon its height or depth. Often people lived under great fear of these astrological influences – still do in some cases!

But here Paul is saying, “I don’t’ care what your horoscope says, nothing can separate you from the Love of God!” No doubt this was a very reassuring message to his readers as it should be to us.

Again, the result is that we should have great confidence and reassurance because of God’s great and constant love for us.

An Insane Man?...
During the 19th century, a man was placed in an insane asylum. He was there for many years living out his days in a small cell. Upon his death the attendants set about to clean his room. On the wall these beautiful words were written in pencil:

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.

Whatever insanity this man struggled with, it was not about the love of God. He was entirely sane on that score. The words he had written were the words of a Jewish poem composed in 1050 by Meier Ben Isaac Nehorai, a cantor in Worms, Germany and have been translated into at least 18 languages. Later, in 1917, Frederick M Lehman, of Pasadena, California would add two verses and a refrain, giving us the Hymn we know as “The Love of God.

I’d like us to look at the words to this wonderful tribute to God’s love. As we do so, let’s make this a prayer of praise to our Loving God, a tribute to his unimaginably immense Love.

The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
And reaches to the lowest hell;

The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave his Son to win;
His erring child he reconciled,
And pardoned from his sin.

Refrain:

O love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure
The saints’ and angels’ song.

When years of time shall pass away,
And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall,
When men, who here refuse to pray,
On rocks and hills and mountains call,
God’s love so sure, shall still endure,
All measureless and strong;
Redeeming grace to Adam’s race—
The saints’ and angels’ song

Refrain

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky
Amen.