A Sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on Easter Sunday, April 12, 2009 at the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Medical Center, Huntington, WV.
Welcome to our Easter Celebration – the time when we recognize the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. This is a glorious day for the church and the world. It’s the day when God turned the world’s religious thoughts and ideas on their heads by fulfilling what He said He was going to do all along – namely redeeming a people for Himself by defeating the power of sin and death.
This is the most important day of the year for Christians because without the Resurrection, we have no faith – only a failed Charismatic leader and his ragtag movement. This is the day when everybody was surprised because nobody actually could imagine somebody coming back from the dead the way Jesus did.
Let my explain by relating an argument advanced by NT Wright in his book “Surprised by Hope”: Wright says that amongst the Jewish people in Jesus’ day there was an understanding that there would be a general resurrection at the consummation of all things. Everybody would be resurrected at once. Martha the sister of Lazarus referred to this when she said to Jesus, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” (Jn 11:24). Most Jews, except the Sadducees, believed in this view.
In contrast, the Greeks and Romans of Jesus’ day mostly believed in life after death, but they did not believe in a bodily resurrection. Nobody, including the disciples, thought that one person would be resurrected ahead of everyone else. They simply had no categories for believing that.
When Jesus was crucified then, all hope for the disciples effectively ended. They didn’t say, “Oh, that’s alright, he’ll be back in three days”. They didn’t say, “Oh, that’s alright, he’s in heaven with God.” Nope. They thought the Romans had won again and that all was lost.
So when Jesus rose on the morning of the third day and then began appearing to the disciples, they had a real hard time understanding exactly what was going on. One thing they did get pretty quickly was that Jesus was not a spirit or a spook. He wasn’t an ectoplasm or an esoteric energy field. He was real. He could be touched. He talked to them in their own language, and after a little squinting he could be recognized as “the Master”. But he had a different sort of body than the disciples - one that could appear and disappear at will or walk through walls without trouble. It was a Resurrected body, one that was alive again but Transformed.
Now if you had never heard this story, your initial reaction to it might be: “No Way!”, or “I’ll be…”, or “Cool!” Your response might be the same as when we recently heard about a St. Albans woman who died at CAMC and then some hours came back to life. It was a neat story, and it lifted our spirits. I understand some people even got saved out of it… but in the big scheme of things, the event didn’t really lay any Claim upon us. We just heard it and went on.
Not so with the resurrection of Jesus. With Christ’s rising on the third day, his earlier statements and predictions about himself come crashing in on us. When he said, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up (John 2:13-25), he wasn’t just speaking in metaphor. The Resurrection means that he was speaking literally. When he said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father but through Me” (Jn. 14:6), the Resurrection provides hard physical evidence as to the veracity of that statement. And when we think about the formerly defeated disciples suddenly becoming globe-trotting evangelists willing to die for their newfound faith, the Resurrection of Christ provides the only sensible motive for such a shocking abandonment of every worldly comfort.
In a word, the Resurrection makes demands of us. It demands that we recognize that everything has changed, that Jesus’ rising is not just a very strange event within the present world, but ‘the defining event of the new creation.’ (Wright, pg. 73.) – it is the Kingdom of God breaking into our world and beginning to make all things new.
What we are talking about is not ‘pie in the sky by and by”. This is very much a here and now message. The Second Person of the Godhead died a criminal’s death in payment for our sins. He beat death. He was resurrected and is now the Ruler of All. In this position he now desires to bring the blessings of resurrection first to his people, and then to all of the cosmos. Having dealt with the rebellion that defaced and distorted the world, He now desires to enlist us in this project as co-laborers, and to begin remaking the entire creation, In short, He desires to bring the Future into the Present.
What is this future? …That we will go to heaven to be with God when we die and live there with him as disembodied spirits, happily playing our harps while lounging on puffy white clouds? No, the Future for Christians is living in the New Jerusalem which comes down out of heaven and in which we live as Resurrected people with the same sort of resurrected body as Jesus has.
This notion of bodily resurrection implies that the present moment has something to do with the future, that what we do here on earth has a recognizable continuity with what will come.
As most of you know, my father, Walt Counts died on the morning of March 27. His was a good life, a life of unbroken faithful worship and service to his world. I think my father was ‘good’ enough simply to have engaged in works of service because it was the right thing to do. But I also believe strongly that all those hours he spent working in the church, volunteering at Helping Hand, or with the Roane General Hospital Auxiliary, or giving to many individuals secretly will not be lost. These acts of love and service to the world are not in vain (I Cor 15:58). They have continuity with the world to be created, the sort of continuity that allows us to recognize the Resurrected Christ as the same Jesus that walked this earth. If this is the case, we will also recognize the works done on earth now in the future Resurrected world.
Translation: What you do now for God endures forever.
But through our good works, we are not simply making our world a little better “every day in every way” by political and social means. It’s that we are incarnating Christ, carrying His Presence to our world and helping to redeem it. Our work here on earth is sacramental, showing outwardly an inward and spiritual reality and serving as a means of grace to those affected by our works. These works are stored up as jewels in God’s treasure chest and preserved into the coming world. The future reality is brought into the present through our works of love and service.
But there is even something better. God doesn’t value us just for the hired labor he gets from us. No, we get to be family. We get to sit down at the table with God every Sunday and enjoy his Presence. Isaiah foresaw this when he prophesied that “the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples, a feast of rich food”… I think Peter alluded to this also when he said that Jesus appeared to those “who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.” He was speaking there about Christ appearing to the disciples, but if you think about it, we are also those who eat and drink with Christ after he rose from the dead. In fact, this feasting is what sustains us and nourishes us in this world.
It’s like when my wife was growing up. Every Sunday after church the whole crew would pile into the family sedan and trundle back ‘home’ to Grandma Marthy’s house in Three Mile Bluecreek near Clendenin. “Marthy” would always cook a big meal and other family members would come over and everyone would sit down to this big family meal. There at the table, they would eat together and renew their family ties, becoming again what they had always been – family. And if some of the family members didn’t come home often enough, they would be scolded for not coming in. Being a part of the family meant that you came home to eat Sunday dinner.
That’s an illustration of Resurrection Life for us here and now as Christians. Each Sunday, at the Lord’s Table, we Lift up our hearts to Heaven. We “seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God” (Col. 3:1). We go up to Heaven and we sit down to eat and drink with God and the whole family of believers from all generations. We renew our Covenant with God, we catch a glimpse of the Marriage Feast of the Lamb to come, and we receive refreshment for our work of service in the world.
This Eucharistic Worship is the center of one of four basic Christian “practices’ we have identified to enable us to live out our Resurrection Life here on earth– life lived in the new 8th Day of Creation. The other three practices are: Spiritual Formation, Community and Mission.
For Christians, these Four Practices are the four points of our Spiritual Compass. We call them practices, but having said this we do not mean ‘works of the law’. Rather, we mean that these four areas are functions of the Body of Christ that both Make the body what it is and Build it up at the same time. God uses these Four basic practices to form us into the image of the Resurrected Christ.
Easter challenges us to live out that New Life. In the ancient church Lent was devoted to teaching believers more about the faith and Easter was set aside for Baptisms. This year, we have imitated this pattern as we met together and studied the 39 Articles of religion and considered how to walk out the Four Practices as our Rule of Life.
At this time, we will now ask you to pledge yourselves to walking out this Resurrection 8th Day life by publicly committing to the Four Practices for 8th Day Life. Each of you has been given a copy of the Liturgy of Public commitment and a Flow Chart representing the ‘Spiritual DNA of All Saints Anglican Church. As a sign of your desire to renew your Baptismal vow to follow Christ as a disciple, I ask you now to stand and affirm your intention in the Liturgy of Public Commitment.
Celebrant Do you trust Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?
Candidate I do, by God’s help.
Celebrant Have you been baptized in water in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit?
Candidate I have.
Celebrant Do you believe the Christian faith as revealed in Holy Scripture and as set forth and summarized in the Apostles Creed?
Candidate I do, by God’s help.
Celebrant Do you take up your cross daily and follow Jesus Christ as his disciple?
Candidate I do, with God’s help
Celebrant Do you desire to embrace the 4 Practices of Worship, Community, Formation and
Mission as your Rule of Life?
Candidate I do, with God’s help
Celebrant Will you practice Worship; committing yourself to participate well in the public worship of All Saints Anglican Church?
Candidate I will, with God’s help
Celebrant Will you practice Community: intending to know, serve and love other participants in
All Saints Anglican Church?
Candidate I will, with God’s help
Celebrant Will you practice Formation; intending to use spiritual disciplines to cooperate with the
Holy Spirit in order to grow into Christ-like character.
Candidate I will, with God’s help
Celebrant Will you practice Mission; committing yourself to love and serve God’s world in word
and deed.
Candidate I will, with God’s help
Celebrant As rector of All Saints Anglican Church and on behalf of our whole worshipping
community, I receive your affirmations and declare that they are a sign of hope to all the
Church. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Let us pray
Almighty and everlasting God, by whose Spirit the whole body of your faithful people is governed and sanctified: Receive our supplications and prayers, which we offer before you for all members of your holy Church, and especially for these who have committed themselves here today, that in their vocation and ministry they may truly and devoutly serve you; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Friday, April 10, 2009
Good Friday 2009
A Sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on Good Friday evening at Hope House, 1410 Charleston Ave., Huntington, WV.
At this hour of the evening, Christ would have already been taken down off the cross and laid in the tomb, so that his body would not have remained on the cross on the Sabbath, which started at 6pm in the evening by the Jewish reckoning of time.
At the request of the Jewish leaders Pilate’s soldiers had broken the legs of the two criminals so that they would die quickly. But Jesus was already found to be dead, so they pierced his side with a spear just to make sure. At that moment, when blood and water came out of Jesus’ side, the Church was born.
You see, God the Father had it in his mind from the very beginning to create a people for himself – a people that would live in close community with Him and who would delight in obedience to their Lord. We read in Genesis about the Creation of Adam and Eve, and how they fell away from their high calling by virtue of their disobedience. We witness God promising them a Savior and then calling Abraham into covenant with Him in order to be a blessing to all the world. We see the covenant renewed in God’s dealings with Jacob (Israel). And in the Exodus, Moses leads the people out of Egypt after the various plagues which culminated in the Passover.
As the people of Israel leave Egypt and make their way into the desert, they are given the Law and the sign of the circumcision to mark their covenant with God. And while the Law demanded sacrifices in order to cover the sin of the people, yet God’s heart was not so much interested in sacrifice as He was in finding a people with whom he could fellowship – a covenant people.
Now according to something called ‘The Standard Canonical Narrative’, biblical history should be understood in terms of a linear ‘creation –fall-redemption-consummation narrative. In other words, “The Fall disrupted God’s original purpose, while the work of Christ is to redeem the fallen creation and bring to final consummation God’s original purpose in creation.” (Simon Chan, Liturgical Theology, pg. 21.)
Author Simon Chan calls this an ‘instrumentalist’ view of the church – the church is only an ‘instrument of God’s will”. Within this view the church is a means to an end and our value as Church is the extent to which we fulfill or mission. You meet your quota and God likes you, miss the quota, and you’re in trouble.
However, there is another way to understand the Bible’s narrative, and that is to start with the realization that “The church precedes Creation…” (Chan pg. 23). Creation forms the backdrop for God’s elective grace and covenant relationship rather than vice versa.:” (Chan pg. 22). In this view…”The church does not exist in order to fix a broken creation; rather, creation exists to realize the church” (Chan pg. 23).
“God’s highest intention for the world should be seen as [being] the means by which God’s grace of election could be realized. (pg. 22). Alexander Schmemann says it this way: “The Church is not for the world, the world is for the church.”(For the Life of the World). “God made the world in order to make the church. (Chan pg. 23). This means that our basic identity as the church is to be found not in what we do, but in what we are.
So think with me now about Heb. 10:5,6:
“… when Christ came into the world, he said, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.”
This body that is mentioned is usually understood as Christ’s Human body, but I can’t also help but think of the church. Jesus is called the Head and the Church his Body; we are held together by the work of the Holy Spirit. There is an organic unity between head and body and this unity is designated by the term totus Christus- the total Christ.
The total Christ is not something external to God, but internal. It is a ‘divine-humanity’. The church precedes Creation because it is the body of Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity. The historical existence of the church begins with the Passion of Christ, but again, God is not so much interested in the sacrifice as sacrifice, but in Christ’s willing obedience. As Christ dies in his liturgy of Passover Lamb, His obedience creates the promised Covenant People of God, who are the Body of Christ, and the Temple of the Holy Spirit – what God had in mind all along.
Simon Chan again: “We are not saved as individual first and then incorporated into the church; rather to be a Christian is to be incorporated into the church by baptism and nourished with the spiritual food of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist. Failure to understand this fact has led to a reduction of the church’s role to a largely sociological one of a service provider catering to individual believer’s spiritual needs.” (pg. 24.)
Application
Going back to our text in Hebrews: Since we are the covenant people of God, we are admonished to … draw near with a true heart …to hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, to stir up one another to love and good works, and to encourage one another …
The Four Practices
This past fall, I introduced the Four Practices, which were based on Acts 2:42: “And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” Now we can also tie this in with our scripture for today: Hebrews 10: 22-25: The Four Practices were: Worship, Formation, Mission and Community.
Again, it’s important to remember that it is because we are organically linked to Christ that these practices are not ‘works of the law’, but functions of the body –activities which both make the body and build it up.
I’d like to hand out a (see attached) chart that shows how all this links together in our life as All Saints Anglican Church.
At the bottom of the page we show Company of Jesus, meaning that the monastic spirituality of Benedict and Francis are the wellsprings of spiritual vitality for Anglicanism in general and this congregation in particular.
Our Formation as disciples is based on the Apostle’s teaching as guided by the wisdom of generations of monastics, and over the next several months, we will be studying this more in depth.
We have talked previously about Hope House becoming the center of an Urban Third Order ‘mother House” of the CoJ, in which Company members would move into the immediate area and gather at Hope House for prayer and spiritual friendship (Anam Chara). Our small groups will come to function as ‘priories’ as it were, small communities devoted to encouragement, intercessory and healing prayer, fellowship and Mission.
Worship in this Community centers around the Eucharist, the breaking of the bread in which we ‘draw near’ to God and ‘become what we are” – the body of Christ in our public worship services. The Offices of prayer will also be held at Hope House daily and our Memorial Services reach out to the community to heal the wounds of violence and oppression.
That of course, is Mission. We don’t normally think of it this way, but our Worship is Mission. But Hope House is the focus of our outreach. The Neighboring Initiative is centered here and our outreach to the young people of our community and Victims’ families will take place from this location.
This is the Spiritual DNA of All Saints Anglican Church.
And it’s all because of what happened on Good Friday, some 2000 years ago at Calvary, when Jesus bled and died for us, His body.
I said at the beginning of Lent that on Easter we would ask ourselves to stand and make a Public Commitment to these Four Practices. I do apologize to everyone as I was overly optimistic about visiting with you all individually and developing your own Rule of Life. But that can come in the days ahead. For now, let’s review what it is we are asking you to commit to. Here are the questions I will ask you on Sunday:
Liturgy of Public Commitment
Do you trust Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?
Have you been baptized in water in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit?
Do you believe the Christian faith as revealed in Holy Scripture and as set forth and summarized in the Apostles Creed?
Do you take up your cross daily and follow Jesus Christ as his disciple?
Do you desire to embrace the 4 Practices of Worship, Community, Formation and Mission as your Rule of Life?
Will you practice Mission; committing yourself to love and serve God’s world in word
and deed.
Will you practice Community: intending to know, serve and love other participants in
All Saints Anglican Church?
Will you practice Formation; intending to use spiritual disciplines to cooperate with the
Holy Spirit in order to grow into Christ-like character?
Will you practice Worship; committing yourself to participate well in the public worship of All Saints Anglican Church?
As we voice our commitment to these practices, may God confirm and strengthen us as His body, His very presence here on earth, born through his blood and nourished at His Table. May he renew His covenant with Him, and may we be found faithful stewards of the Grace of life found within us. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN.
At this hour of the evening, Christ would have already been taken down off the cross and laid in the tomb, so that his body would not have remained on the cross on the Sabbath, which started at 6pm in the evening by the Jewish reckoning of time.
At the request of the Jewish leaders Pilate’s soldiers had broken the legs of the two criminals so that they would die quickly. But Jesus was already found to be dead, so they pierced his side with a spear just to make sure. At that moment, when blood and water came out of Jesus’ side, the Church was born.
You see, God the Father had it in his mind from the very beginning to create a people for himself – a people that would live in close community with Him and who would delight in obedience to their Lord. We read in Genesis about the Creation of Adam and Eve, and how they fell away from their high calling by virtue of their disobedience. We witness God promising them a Savior and then calling Abraham into covenant with Him in order to be a blessing to all the world. We see the covenant renewed in God’s dealings with Jacob (Israel). And in the Exodus, Moses leads the people out of Egypt after the various plagues which culminated in the Passover.
As the people of Israel leave Egypt and make their way into the desert, they are given the Law and the sign of the circumcision to mark their covenant with God. And while the Law demanded sacrifices in order to cover the sin of the people, yet God’s heart was not so much interested in sacrifice as He was in finding a people with whom he could fellowship – a covenant people.
Now according to something called ‘The Standard Canonical Narrative’, biblical history should be understood in terms of a linear ‘creation –fall-redemption-consummation narrative. In other words, “The Fall disrupted God’s original purpose, while the work of Christ is to redeem the fallen creation and bring to final consummation God’s original purpose in creation.” (Simon Chan, Liturgical Theology, pg. 21.)
Author Simon Chan calls this an ‘instrumentalist’ view of the church – the church is only an ‘instrument of God’s will”. Within this view the church is a means to an end and our value as Church is the extent to which we fulfill or mission. You meet your quota and God likes you, miss the quota, and you’re in trouble.
However, there is another way to understand the Bible’s narrative, and that is to start with the realization that “The church precedes Creation…” (Chan pg. 23). Creation forms the backdrop for God’s elective grace and covenant relationship rather than vice versa.:” (Chan pg. 22). In this view…”The church does not exist in order to fix a broken creation; rather, creation exists to realize the church” (Chan pg. 23).
“God’s highest intention for the world should be seen as [being] the means by which God’s grace of election could be realized. (pg. 22). Alexander Schmemann says it this way: “The Church is not for the world, the world is for the church.”(For the Life of the World). “God made the world in order to make the church. (Chan pg. 23). This means that our basic identity as the church is to be found not in what we do, but in what we are.
So think with me now about Heb. 10:5,6:
“… when Christ came into the world, he said, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.”
This body that is mentioned is usually understood as Christ’s Human body, but I can’t also help but think of the church. Jesus is called the Head and the Church his Body; we are held together by the work of the Holy Spirit. There is an organic unity between head and body and this unity is designated by the term totus Christus- the total Christ.
The total Christ is not something external to God, but internal. It is a ‘divine-humanity’. The church precedes Creation because it is the body of Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity. The historical existence of the church begins with the Passion of Christ, but again, God is not so much interested in the sacrifice as sacrifice, but in Christ’s willing obedience. As Christ dies in his liturgy of Passover Lamb, His obedience creates the promised Covenant People of God, who are the Body of Christ, and the Temple of the Holy Spirit – what God had in mind all along.
Simon Chan again: “We are not saved as individual first and then incorporated into the church; rather to be a Christian is to be incorporated into the church by baptism and nourished with the spiritual food of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist. Failure to understand this fact has led to a reduction of the church’s role to a largely sociological one of a service provider catering to individual believer’s spiritual needs.” (pg. 24.)
Application
Going back to our text in Hebrews: Since we are the covenant people of God, we are admonished to … draw near with a true heart …to hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, to stir up one another to love and good works, and to encourage one another …
The Four Practices
This past fall, I introduced the Four Practices, which were based on Acts 2:42: “And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” Now we can also tie this in with our scripture for today: Hebrews 10: 22-25: The Four Practices were: Worship, Formation, Mission and Community.
Again, it’s important to remember that it is because we are organically linked to Christ that these practices are not ‘works of the law’, but functions of the body –activities which both make the body and build it up.
I’d like to hand out a (see attached) chart that shows how all this links together in our life as All Saints Anglican Church.
At the bottom of the page we show Company of Jesus, meaning that the monastic spirituality of Benedict and Francis are the wellsprings of spiritual vitality for Anglicanism in general and this congregation in particular.
Our Formation as disciples is based on the Apostle’s teaching as guided by the wisdom of generations of monastics, and over the next several months, we will be studying this more in depth.
We have talked previously about Hope House becoming the center of an Urban Third Order ‘mother House” of the CoJ, in which Company members would move into the immediate area and gather at Hope House for prayer and spiritual friendship (Anam Chara). Our small groups will come to function as ‘priories’ as it were, small communities devoted to encouragement, intercessory and healing prayer, fellowship and Mission.
Worship in this Community centers around the Eucharist, the breaking of the bread in which we ‘draw near’ to God and ‘become what we are” – the body of Christ in our public worship services. The Offices of prayer will also be held at Hope House daily and our Memorial Services reach out to the community to heal the wounds of violence and oppression.
That of course, is Mission. We don’t normally think of it this way, but our Worship is Mission. But Hope House is the focus of our outreach. The Neighboring Initiative is centered here and our outreach to the young people of our community and Victims’ families will take place from this location.
This is the Spiritual DNA of All Saints Anglican Church.
And it’s all because of what happened on Good Friday, some 2000 years ago at Calvary, when Jesus bled and died for us, His body.
I said at the beginning of Lent that on Easter we would ask ourselves to stand and make a Public Commitment to these Four Practices. I do apologize to everyone as I was overly optimistic about visiting with you all individually and developing your own Rule of Life. But that can come in the days ahead. For now, let’s review what it is we are asking you to commit to. Here are the questions I will ask you on Sunday:
Liturgy of Public Commitment
Do you trust Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?
Have you been baptized in water in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit?
Do you believe the Christian faith as revealed in Holy Scripture and as set forth and summarized in the Apostles Creed?
Do you take up your cross daily and follow Jesus Christ as his disciple?
Do you desire to embrace the 4 Practices of Worship, Community, Formation and Mission as your Rule of Life?
Will you practice Mission; committing yourself to love and serve God’s world in word
and deed.
Will you practice Community: intending to know, serve and love other participants in
All Saints Anglican Church?
Will you practice Formation; intending to use spiritual disciplines to cooperate with the
Holy Spirit in order to grow into Christ-like character?
Will you practice Worship; committing yourself to participate well in the public worship of All Saints Anglican Church?
As we voice our commitment to these practices, may God confirm and strengthen us as His body, His very presence here on earth, born through his blood and nourished at His Table. May he renew His covenant with Him, and may we be found faithful stewards of the Grace of life found within us. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)