Chapter Talk # 211, addressed to the Company of Jesus
January 18, 2009
Grace to you on this second Sunday of Epiphany, the season of the Glory of God being made manifest by shining through Jesus.
As I reported to you previously, All Saints Anglican Church is participating in something we call the Divine Experiment. In other words, we’re asking the question, “What would happen if we met together morning and evening for 21 days to pray and humble ourselves before God? Would he indeed hear our prayer and bless us and our land, as it says in 2 Chronicles 7:14?
Well, today is day seven of the ‘Experiment’. We’ve been doing a graduated fast, in which we are gradually cutting things out. Now we’re down to fruits and vegetables. We’re praying from 7-9 in the morning and 7-9 in the evening. Since there are seven churches involved, each church is responsible to lead the prayer sessions one day of the week.
It’s been a real exercise in forbearance as there has been a wild variance of musical styles and proficiency, as well as in prayer styles. Our first kickoff service was quite powerful, with all seven church’s ministers participating and some 400 or 450 in attendance.
I and Br. Mark Goldman had the privilege of leading the Eucharistic prayer and serving the other ministers, then giving them the bread and the ‘wine’ (grape juice for our protestant brethren) and watching as the people came down for communion. We had three medium size pita loaves and somehow God made enough bread for all the people to eat – and for there to be about one quarter of a loaf left over for Mark and I to consume! It was really quite remarkable.
But probably equally remarkable was what happened right before the communion. I had not planned to bring a lavabo to wash my hands, but one of the ministers piped up and said that if we were going to distribute the bread, that the people would want to see that we had washed our hands. I was very pleasantly surprised and immediately affirmed that we had a way to deal with this… So as the ministers gathered around the altar, I poured water over their hands and Mark caught the excess with one towel and offered another towel for them to dry their hands.
My wife, Cindy, said that something powerful began to happen during this time. And indeed, by the time I got to the third minister, his face was wet with tears streaming down. Then, during the prayer, Mark instructed them on how to ‘concelebrate’. One of our retired Episcopal priests in the congregation said that when he saw this, he started jumping up and down, and then started weeping with joy!
It was a great privilege to bring the Eucharist to these mostly Pentecostal folks. They seemed to like it and I think we are scheduled to have communion again at our wrap-up service on February 1 – smack dab in the middle of the Super Bowl! (We’ll see what kind of turnout we get. I noticed in a restaurant the other day that they were closing early in order for the employees to spend the time with their families! Isn’t it nice that we have another secular holiday to celebrate now?)
At any rate, we’ve been going to most of the meetings – at least one per day and sometimes two. We’re very tired, but gratified that God’s people have gathered to pray. We take it as an opportunity to practice our monastic discipline and I have been wearing my habit to the meetings – mostly as a prophetic act to remind me that God wants to build a house of prayer – and that he wants to do it with poor, ragged, sinful people like me and the 20-30 others who meet for these prayers.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Transformation, Wilderness and Baptism
A portion of my Chapter Talk to the Company of Jesus, January 11, 2009, the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus.
Mark 1: 7-11: 7 And he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. 8 I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
Divine Experiment Begins
Back in October, I a group of pastors from Huntington began regular Friday morning prayer meetings at a location just two blocks from our home. Today will be the beginning of something called the “Divine Experiment”. Seven local churches have come together to seek God’s face for 21 days. During this time, there will be morning and evening prayer meetings at the Douglass center and a ‘Daniel Fast”, the focus of which will be to get ourselves right with God and get the worldliness out of the church. As a result of this experiment, we hope to attract a more tangible Presence of God to our churches and community.
Friday evening and Saturday, we attended a seminar in which the speaker, Rhonda Hughey, talked about Transformations that are happening around the world in places like Fiji and the Canadian Arctic Circle. In these communities, the people have come together and recognized their need for God, turning to Him in prayer and repentance. Many remarkable healings and manifestations are taking place, and there is often a sense of the “Manifest Presence” of God in these places.
Significantly, part of the process of getting to that place is becoming dissatisfied with the status quo in our lives and leaving ‘Egypt’ to seek the ‘Promised Land’. Rhonda reported that in Fiji, it usually takes about three weeks for a community to go from desperation, through the Divine Experiment and into Transformation of the people and the very land itself. In America and other European places, however, there have been NO Transformations, even though some communities have done this Divine Experiment several times. That’s not to say that the results of the prayer have not been remarkable.
In many cases, marriages have been restored, finances have miraculous appeared, and churches have developed wonderful friendships across denominational lines. But the hoped- for community-wide Transformation has not as yet taken place. Instead, some communities have found themselves in the ‘Wilderness’, in which God seems to be purging out of them more and more worldliness.
This has been distressing to some, but it should also be expected. We know that Purgation is part of the process of Spiritual Growth, and that when one decides to pray more, to fast and to ‘go into the desert’, God begins to transform us from the inside out. And this of course is often painful. But the result of the process is an increased sensitivity to God and a purer life. The experience of monastics through the ages has born this out, starting with the Desert Fathers especially, and also noticed through the Benedictine cenobitic tradition, the Celtic love of ‘disserth’ places and the Franciscan experience of seeking God with abandon. Our Gospel reading today reminds us that the culmination of the desert experience for Jesus was being Baptized in the Jordan – in the Holy Spirit – in order to begin His earthly ministry.
I would seek your prayers for myself, my church and the six other Churches that are participating in the Divine Experiment over the next 21 days. I pray God may grant you all the blessings of the desert as you go about your daily asceticism of marriage, family, work and life and ministry.
Mark 1: 7-11: 7 And he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. 8 I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
Divine Experiment Begins
Back in October, I a group of pastors from Huntington began regular Friday morning prayer meetings at a location just two blocks from our home. Today will be the beginning of something called the “Divine Experiment”. Seven local churches have come together to seek God’s face for 21 days. During this time, there will be morning and evening prayer meetings at the Douglass center and a ‘Daniel Fast”, the focus of which will be to get ourselves right with God and get the worldliness out of the church. As a result of this experiment, we hope to attract a more tangible Presence of God to our churches and community.
Friday evening and Saturday, we attended a seminar in which the speaker, Rhonda Hughey, talked about Transformations that are happening around the world in places like Fiji and the Canadian Arctic Circle. In these communities, the people have come together and recognized their need for God, turning to Him in prayer and repentance. Many remarkable healings and manifestations are taking place, and there is often a sense of the “Manifest Presence” of God in these places.
Significantly, part of the process of getting to that place is becoming dissatisfied with the status quo in our lives and leaving ‘Egypt’ to seek the ‘Promised Land’. Rhonda reported that in Fiji, it usually takes about three weeks for a community to go from desperation, through the Divine Experiment and into Transformation of the people and the very land itself. In America and other European places, however, there have been NO Transformations, even though some communities have done this Divine Experiment several times. That’s not to say that the results of the prayer have not been remarkable.
In many cases, marriages have been restored, finances have miraculous appeared, and churches have developed wonderful friendships across denominational lines. But the hoped- for community-wide Transformation has not as yet taken place. Instead, some communities have found themselves in the ‘Wilderness’, in which God seems to be purging out of them more and more worldliness.
This has been distressing to some, but it should also be expected. We know that Purgation is part of the process of Spiritual Growth, and that when one decides to pray more, to fast and to ‘go into the desert’, God begins to transform us from the inside out. And this of course is often painful. But the result of the process is an increased sensitivity to God and a purer life. The experience of monastics through the ages has born this out, starting with the Desert Fathers especially, and also noticed through the Benedictine cenobitic tradition, the Celtic love of ‘disserth’ places and the Franciscan experience of seeking God with abandon. Our Gospel reading today reminds us that the culmination of the desert experience for Jesus was being Baptized in the Jordan – in the Holy Spirit – in order to begin His earthly ministry.
I would seek your prayers for myself, my church and the six other Churches that are participating in the Divine Experiment over the next 21 days. I pray God may grant you all the blessings of the desert as you go about your daily asceticism of marriage, family, work and life and ministry.
Sunday, January 04, 2009
Kingdom People
a Sermon Delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on January 4, 2009 at St. Mary's Medical Center, based on Matthew 2:1-12.
Someone once facetiously suggested that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those that don’t.
Today we want to align ourselves with the first group and say that we believe that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who believe in God’s Kingdom and those who don’t.
“Kingdom People” believe in the Kingdom of God. They know that there is a God who has eternal power and a divine nature. They know that He is a mighty King, who has made the world and everything in it. They know that the Creator King made us and they know WHY we were created – to have communion with the King. Those who believe in the Kingdom know that every created thing in the world exists as “food’ to be eaten in order to sustain us in our lives; to enable and facilitate communion with God.
They also know that when Adam and Eve chose to eat the fruit of the tree of The Knowledge of God and Evil, that they upset this God-ordained order and that as a result all things have been marred by the effects of their choices.
Kingdom People know that because all things have been marred by sin, all things must be restored – saved, or made whole. Since no human being has the requisite power or righteousness to do this restoration, we need a Savior – someone to come into our marred world system and save us.
It’s like the story of a little girl and her friends who were misbehaving at a party, much to the consternation of their parents. When confronted, this little wise soul said, “We’re being bad – and we don’t know how to quit.” (Quoted in “Acedia and Me”, by Kathleen Norris).
Kingdom people, or “Christians”, know that God helps us to quit being bad by saving us from ourselves. They know that the Bible records God’s righteous dealings with His people, in which He creates lopsided favorable Covenants with them, but that these same people fail to keep their end of the Covenant with God. We can actually think about Adam and Eve living under the first Covenant until they broke it through their gustatory rebellion. They had a perfect world with perfect freedom and they still ruined it!
After the Fall, God reiterates one Basic Covenant many times with our first parents and their successors: I will be your God and you will be my People. He says it to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to the Children of Israel wandering in the desert, to David and his house – and finally to us Christians. The history God’s Covenant-making recorded in the Bible shows us that God wants to create a Kingdom People for Himself; a people who will Worship Him as King, and who will enjoy His favor, protection and Love – on earth as it is in Heaven. He makes Covenants with us in order to woo us into a Love relationship with Him.
But over and over we demonstrate the sad truths that:
He likes to make Covenants - and we like to break them.
He wants “Kingdom People” - and we want our own little fiefdoms instead.
He wants our Love, and we give him Lip Service instead.
In our Gospel reading today, we meet the inscrutable Magi, the ‘three’ Wise men, who were “Kingdom People”. Even though they were not Jews, but astrologers, practitioners of magic and divination - most likely from Babylon - they were people who held a real Kingdom Mindset. The Magi had been trained to perceive, penetrate and interpret the mysteries of God’s dealings with man. Their worldview said, “We take for granted there is a God – or ‘gods’… and that God communicates with Man via the natural world.”
So when they saw a new star arise, they connected it with the Prophecy they had heard or read in the Hebrew Scriptures, that a Child would be born a King. The star obviously pointed to the birth of the King in the prophecy. This is completely normal and not to be seen as ‘breaking the laws of Nature”, but rather as the Sovereign King communicating with the Universe through the Stars – Star Mail if you will.
The Magi realized what the star meant and they took Gifts for the newborn King - much in the same spirit in which Cindy and I and Father Peter attended the inauguration of our new Mayor on Friday evening – or in the way people will attend the inauguration of the New President on January 20. You hear the news, you want to be part of the event and so you go – just like that.
The Wise men are wise in that they understood and accepted the interaction between God and the World. The creatures of the King respond to the Will and Communication of the King. That’s what we do. Since man is made to worship, the Wise Men went to worship the King. Nothing could be more natural.
Now Herod, on other hand represents the group of people in our second group – those who are not Kingdom People, those who are rather building their own kingdoms here on earth. We could call them ‘secular humanists’, or ‘Worldlings’. Worldlings know there are Religious people out there and that there is a Religious Establishment to be reckoned with. But the Worldling ignores the reality of God, choosing to respond to God’s followers as a political constituency. Herod the Worldling knew there was power in religion – but since he perceived it as political and not Personal and Divine, he did not go to worship the Baby along with the Magi. His desire to find out from the Wise men where the Christ child was born was only a ploy in order to do the exact opposite, to kill the Christ.
Herod represents the ‘secular’ or autonomous man, who may recognize and utilize religion, but who does not give heed to the personal claims that the King makes upon Him. He is a Realist, who makes a split between religion and politics; religion and “Life”. His worldview says:
“It’s fine for people to have their religious ideas, but don’t become fanatical about it; don’t even begin to think about living your life in view of religious ideals. And whatever you do, don’t let religion diminish your personal and political power. Lets’ keep those two things separate!”
Herod is ruthless and not to be trusted. As James Taylor sings in his song “Home by Another Way”, “…a king that will slaughter the innocents will not cut a deal for you…” He is a man hell-bent on building his own kingdom – and he’s nasty to boot!
We look at Herod and we may not identify with him. He’s too evil; we just can’t relate. But what about Herod’s essential secular outlook? … his defacto acceptance of the ‘natural’ world as the ‘real’ world? What about our own tendency to be blindly pushed along by this world without ever really questioning it?
I got a neat gadget for Christmas, a digital photo frame, and I spent a fair amount of time the other day trying to figure it out. First I had to ponder the slogan on the cover of the User Manual: “Technical Achievement Pleasure”. Then, I opened the manual read the following: “Settle a space in a twinkling at your happy time! Need not a computer, need not to hurdle to print, re-appear fascinating appearance at any time!” When the instructions went on to advise me to read the Product Usage Manual as soon as possible, I knew I was in trouble. After a good deal of juggling, I did get some pictures to appear, but could not for the life of me figure out how to prevent the picture from rotating 90 degrees when I pushed the advance button…
On Friday, I tried to install a printer on my wife’s Macintosh IBook, only to find out that the operating system was too old to accommodate the newer printer software. I called the customer punishment hotline and the chirpy young lady helped me realize I had entered Terminal Digital Darkness and that I should buy a new computer! AAUGH!
My daughter sent me her husband’s perfectly good cell phone because he got an upgraded model – I took one look at it and through up my hand's in despair!
Isn’t it just so easy to be swept along by the demands of our technologically-driven culture and allow ourselves to become droids or pawns of our culture rather than speaking into the culture? I know it is for me. I suspect it’s so for you too.
Although we may not see ourselves aligned with Herod’s evil scheming, don’t we often act as Worldlings when it comes to obeying our technology in our daily lives?
The danger is that by living closely aligned with the kingdom of this world, we become fleshly, or ‘carnal’ in nature and we become spiritually dense, unable to discern the things of the Lord. This is not a contemporary problem per se. The apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians ( I Cor. 3:1) “Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.”…
To turn around a phrase, we can become so worldly minded that we’re no heavenly good. Really, we’re not even any earthly good at that point either.
In the second letter to the Corinthians (6:16), Paul challenges believers in this way:
“What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: "I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people."
To bring it over into our terms, Paul is challenging the Corinthians to become “Kingdom People” - those who have a vision for the Kingdom of God to come and for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” In a Word, to be Transformed.
Transformation is not an option, it’s a command. “Do not be conformed to this World, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind….”, says Paul in Romans 12:2.”
The Divine Experiment.
In order to obey this command, we as a church will participate with six other churches in the Divine Experiment January 11 through February 1. We’ll have a pre-experiment seminar with Rhonda Hughey, Friday January 9 and 10 in which she gives us an overview and specific suggestions about how to make the most of this Divine Experiment.
During this time, we’ll observe what’s known as a “Daniel Fast” – that is, a time of limiting our diet and our engagement with certain aspects of ‘the World System” – notably our addiction to materialism, busyness and entertainment.
Each one of you will receive today a booklet subtitled, “Stepping over the EDGE for God. The acronym EDGE stands for the statement: “We covenant to EARNESTLY seek the face of God, trusting in His DIVINE GUIDANCE to carry us where He wants us to go, continuing with EXPECTANCY that God will bring transformation.”
Included with the booklet is a card you can sign and date, stating before God your commitment to the Divine Experiment, which will serve as a reminder to you during these three weeks.
Next Sunday, you’ll be receiving a Divine Experiment prayer guide that contains themes for each week and each day of the Experiment.
Fr. Peter will preach next week, further preparing our hearts for what God might do during this experiment.
St. Brendan’s and St. Barnabas Eighth Day Life groups have already heard Peter and Betty talk about their personal experiences with Transformation in Hampton Roads, Virginia. They’ll be visiting with our remaining group this coming Wednesday evening and I’m positive you will be encouraged and inspired by their testimony. Don’t miss it!
Finally, let me issue you this challenge: God wants us to be Kingdom People, like the Magi, not Worldlings Herod. He LIKES us and wants to enjoy our company – and He’s eager to meet us and pour Himself out to us in ways that we cannot even imagine!
Between now and January 9, begin to open yourself up to the possibility that God might actually do something in our midst that will surprise and delight us. Who knows, He might even cause a New Star to arise – this time in our hearts, not just in the sky. AMEN.
Someone once facetiously suggested that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those that don’t.
Today we want to align ourselves with the first group and say that we believe that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who believe in God’s Kingdom and those who don’t.
“Kingdom People” believe in the Kingdom of God. They know that there is a God who has eternal power and a divine nature. They know that He is a mighty King, who has made the world and everything in it. They know that the Creator King made us and they know WHY we were created – to have communion with the King. Those who believe in the Kingdom know that every created thing in the world exists as “food’ to be eaten in order to sustain us in our lives; to enable and facilitate communion with God.
They also know that when Adam and Eve chose to eat the fruit of the tree of The Knowledge of God and Evil, that they upset this God-ordained order and that as a result all things have been marred by the effects of their choices.
Kingdom People know that because all things have been marred by sin, all things must be restored – saved, or made whole. Since no human being has the requisite power or righteousness to do this restoration, we need a Savior – someone to come into our marred world system and save us.
It’s like the story of a little girl and her friends who were misbehaving at a party, much to the consternation of their parents. When confronted, this little wise soul said, “We’re being bad – and we don’t know how to quit.” (Quoted in “Acedia and Me”, by Kathleen Norris).
Kingdom people, or “Christians”, know that God helps us to quit being bad by saving us from ourselves. They know that the Bible records God’s righteous dealings with His people, in which He creates lopsided favorable Covenants with them, but that these same people fail to keep their end of the Covenant with God. We can actually think about Adam and Eve living under the first Covenant until they broke it through their gustatory rebellion. They had a perfect world with perfect freedom and they still ruined it!
After the Fall, God reiterates one Basic Covenant many times with our first parents and their successors: I will be your God and you will be my People. He says it to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to the Children of Israel wandering in the desert, to David and his house – and finally to us Christians. The history God’s Covenant-making recorded in the Bible shows us that God wants to create a Kingdom People for Himself; a people who will Worship Him as King, and who will enjoy His favor, protection and Love – on earth as it is in Heaven. He makes Covenants with us in order to woo us into a Love relationship with Him.
But over and over we demonstrate the sad truths that:
He likes to make Covenants - and we like to break them.
He wants “Kingdom People” - and we want our own little fiefdoms instead.
He wants our Love, and we give him Lip Service instead.
In our Gospel reading today, we meet the inscrutable Magi, the ‘three’ Wise men, who were “Kingdom People”. Even though they were not Jews, but astrologers, practitioners of magic and divination - most likely from Babylon - they were people who held a real Kingdom Mindset. The Magi had been trained to perceive, penetrate and interpret the mysteries of God’s dealings with man. Their worldview said, “We take for granted there is a God – or ‘gods’… and that God communicates with Man via the natural world.”
So when they saw a new star arise, they connected it with the Prophecy they had heard or read in the Hebrew Scriptures, that a Child would be born a King. The star obviously pointed to the birth of the King in the prophecy. This is completely normal and not to be seen as ‘breaking the laws of Nature”, but rather as the Sovereign King communicating with the Universe through the Stars – Star Mail if you will.
The Magi realized what the star meant and they took Gifts for the newborn King - much in the same spirit in which Cindy and I and Father Peter attended the inauguration of our new Mayor on Friday evening – or in the way people will attend the inauguration of the New President on January 20. You hear the news, you want to be part of the event and so you go – just like that.
The Wise men are wise in that they understood and accepted the interaction between God and the World. The creatures of the King respond to the Will and Communication of the King. That’s what we do. Since man is made to worship, the Wise Men went to worship the King. Nothing could be more natural.
Now Herod, on other hand represents the group of people in our second group – those who are not Kingdom People, those who are rather building their own kingdoms here on earth. We could call them ‘secular humanists’, or ‘Worldlings’. Worldlings know there are Religious people out there and that there is a Religious Establishment to be reckoned with. But the Worldling ignores the reality of God, choosing to respond to God’s followers as a political constituency. Herod the Worldling knew there was power in religion – but since he perceived it as political and not Personal and Divine, he did not go to worship the Baby along with the Magi. His desire to find out from the Wise men where the Christ child was born was only a ploy in order to do the exact opposite, to kill the Christ.
Herod represents the ‘secular’ or autonomous man, who may recognize and utilize religion, but who does not give heed to the personal claims that the King makes upon Him. He is a Realist, who makes a split between religion and politics; religion and “Life”. His worldview says:
“It’s fine for people to have their religious ideas, but don’t become fanatical about it; don’t even begin to think about living your life in view of religious ideals. And whatever you do, don’t let religion diminish your personal and political power. Lets’ keep those two things separate!”
Herod is ruthless and not to be trusted. As James Taylor sings in his song “Home by Another Way”, “…a king that will slaughter the innocents will not cut a deal for you…” He is a man hell-bent on building his own kingdom – and he’s nasty to boot!
We look at Herod and we may not identify with him. He’s too evil; we just can’t relate. But what about Herod’s essential secular outlook? … his defacto acceptance of the ‘natural’ world as the ‘real’ world? What about our own tendency to be blindly pushed along by this world without ever really questioning it?
I got a neat gadget for Christmas, a digital photo frame, and I spent a fair amount of time the other day trying to figure it out. First I had to ponder the slogan on the cover of the User Manual: “Technical Achievement Pleasure”. Then, I opened the manual read the following: “Settle a space in a twinkling at your happy time! Need not a computer, need not to hurdle to print, re-appear fascinating appearance at any time!” When the instructions went on to advise me to read the Product Usage Manual as soon as possible, I knew I was in trouble. After a good deal of juggling, I did get some pictures to appear, but could not for the life of me figure out how to prevent the picture from rotating 90 degrees when I pushed the advance button…
On Friday, I tried to install a printer on my wife’s Macintosh IBook, only to find out that the operating system was too old to accommodate the newer printer software. I called the customer punishment hotline and the chirpy young lady helped me realize I had entered Terminal Digital Darkness and that I should buy a new computer! AAUGH!
My daughter sent me her husband’s perfectly good cell phone because he got an upgraded model – I took one look at it and through up my hand's in despair!
Isn’t it just so easy to be swept along by the demands of our technologically-driven culture and allow ourselves to become droids or pawns of our culture rather than speaking into the culture? I know it is for me. I suspect it’s so for you too.
Although we may not see ourselves aligned with Herod’s evil scheming, don’t we often act as Worldlings when it comes to obeying our technology in our daily lives?
The danger is that by living closely aligned with the kingdom of this world, we become fleshly, or ‘carnal’ in nature and we become spiritually dense, unable to discern the things of the Lord. This is not a contemporary problem per se. The apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians ( I Cor. 3:1) “Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.”…
To turn around a phrase, we can become so worldly minded that we’re no heavenly good. Really, we’re not even any earthly good at that point either.
In the second letter to the Corinthians (6:16), Paul challenges believers in this way:
“What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: "I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people."
To bring it over into our terms, Paul is challenging the Corinthians to become “Kingdom People” - those who have a vision for the Kingdom of God to come and for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” In a Word, to be Transformed.
Transformation is not an option, it’s a command. “Do not be conformed to this World, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind….”, says Paul in Romans 12:2.”
The Divine Experiment.
In order to obey this command, we as a church will participate with six other churches in the Divine Experiment January 11 through February 1. We’ll have a pre-experiment seminar with Rhonda Hughey, Friday January 9 and 10 in which she gives us an overview and specific suggestions about how to make the most of this Divine Experiment.
During this time, we’ll observe what’s known as a “Daniel Fast” – that is, a time of limiting our diet and our engagement with certain aspects of ‘the World System” – notably our addiction to materialism, busyness and entertainment.
Each one of you will receive today a booklet subtitled, “Stepping over the EDGE for God. The acronym EDGE stands for the statement: “We covenant to EARNESTLY seek the face of God, trusting in His DIVINE GUIDANCE to carry us where He wants us to go, continuing with EXPECTANCY that God will bring transformation.”
Included with the booklet is a card you can sign and date, stating before God your commitment to the Divine Experiment, which will serve as a reminder to you during these three weeks.
Next Sunday, you’ll be receiving a Divine Experiment prayer guide that contains themes for each week and each day of the Experiment.
Fr. Peter will preach next week, further preparing our hearts for what God might do during this experiment.
St. Brendan’s and St. Barnabas Eighth Day Life groups have already heard Peter and Betty talk about their personal experiences with Transformation in Hampton Roads, Virginia. They’ll be visiting with our remaining group this coming Wednesday evening and I’m positive you will be encouraged and inspired by their testimony. Don’t miss it!
Finally, let me issue you this challenge: God wants us to be Kingdom People, like the Magi, not Worldlings Herod. He LIKES us and wants to enjoy our company – and He’s eager to meet us and pour Himself out to us in ways that we cannot even imagine!
Between now and January 9, begin to open yourself up to the possibility that God might actually do something in our midst that will surprise and delight us. Who knows, He might even cause a New Star to arise – this time in our hearts, not just in the sky. AMEN.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
What Can I Give Him?
A Sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church at our Chrimas Eve Service, December 24, 2008, St. Mary's Medical Center, Huntington, WV., based on Luke 2:1-14.
Welcome to our service tonight and thank you for coming. Tonight we are re-enacting that night so long ago when Jesus was born. The Scriptures tell us that there were shepherds keeping watch over their flock by night, when an angel of the Lord appeared to them and announced the birth of the Savior, proclaiming good news of great joy which shall be for all the people.
A multitude of the heavenly host appeared with the angel and sang “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among men, with whom he is pleased.” (Lk. 2:14) – ( just like we do every week when we sing the Gloria in our liturgy.) The shepherds took heed of the message and went to see the baby.
Tonight it is as if we all were shepherds keeping watch – that is, you have been observing a time of preparation during Advent. You have fasted and prayed, confessed your sins and asked God to renew a right spirit within you so that you might be ready for the coming of the King. Having heard the message that Jesus is come into the world to save sinners, you have left your homes and traveled through the cold night, coming, as it were, to the cave behind the inn to see the newborn baby and to worship Him.
Our story this night is full of hiddenness – the hiddenness of God partnering with an obscure Jewish teenaged girl to bring His Son into the world, the hiddenness of the Christ being formed in the womb of a hidden woman and protected by a hidden man, Joseph; the hiddenness of the Christ child being born into the world in the midst of darkness in a hidden cave, in a hidden town. Later, Christ would go on to live 30 years in obscurity until his ministry began in earnest. Hidden. Hidden. Hidden…
However, in this story of Jesus’ birth we have a curious paradox. God did not send out an advance team of marketers to advertise that Jesus, the Son of the Living God was being born. He didn’t do what someone did back the early 1980’s, and take out full page ads in world newspapers, saying that the “Lord Maitraya” had arrived. …I never did hear what happened to that guy. Maybe the announcement was premature…Who knows? At any rate:
God did choose to announce the news to the Shepherds, who were the functional equivalent of Internet bloggers of that time. They went and saw the child, and afterwards they became the first evangelists. They went out and made known to everyone what had been told to them and what they had seen. “And all who heard it wondered at the things which were told them by the shepherds.” And you can be sure that this news spread throughout the region.
And yet, it was ultimately a small region in a small country, amidst a small people.
There is the sense that Jesus has been brought into the world in the darkness, in the hidden place, in order to be hidden - in order for God to manifest himself as DEUS ABSCONDITUS, the hidden God. It’s amazing beyond comprehension that the Lord of the Universe, the Word, the Logos, by whom and in whom and with whom all things came into being was born into the world to be our Savior – and yet He was hidden from the World. Why did God do this?
Perhaps because He wants us to look for him…
The shepherds in the fields that night were watching. They were alert for predators, so they were watchful. They were available to hear the angels’ message when everybody else was asleep. Like them, we need to be awake to God and alert to his call. This is what Advent has been all about – encouraging us to be awake and alert, and to listen for His announcement of the birth of Christ.
When the Angel announced, “Today is born to you in the city of David, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord, the Shepherds’ response was, “Let us go see this thing that God has done.” Like Mary, they said, “Yes, Lord”. Not: “No Way!” Not: “That’s nice…” Not: “I’ll think about it.” But, “Let us go see this thing that God has done.”
This is an implicit acknowledgement of God’s existence, recognition of God’s Sovereign action in human affairs, and a response of Faith that puts legs to belief. The Shepherds responded correctly to God’s revelation by going to worship the babe laid in the manger. They looked with the eyes of their heart, with eyes of faith, - not upon the superficial appearance of a baby in a manger, but rather upon the Savior of the World, Emmanuel, God with Us.
In the purity of their hearts, they believed the angel’s message and they saw God - just as Jesus would later proclaim in the Sermon on the Mount.
In that same Sermon Jesus also said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
In Jesus’ day, Shepherds were certainly the poorest of the poor. Often they lived in the open with only the clothes on their backs and they were frequently shunned because they smelled bad and were uncouth. They may have taken a lamb to offer the newborn King, but it’s certain they had nothing else of value to take with them.
In this way, they represent our essential position before God: Poverty. We are all poor as we approach our God. We have nothing to bring to him that he could possibly want or need. It’s the old story of trying to find something to buy for your father…What are gonna get for someone who literally has everything?
The song “In the Bleak Midwinter” has a wonderful last verse:
“What can I give him? poor as I am. If I were a shepherd I would bring a lamb. If I were a wise man I would do my part, Yet what I can, I give him, give him my heart.”
Tonight we commemorate the birth of the Savior of the world, come to us hidden in the form of a baby, born to a hidden woman and a hidden man, in a hidden town, in a hidden cave behind a hidden inn. You have come here to worship – to give your time and to praise God for sending Jesus into the world. Tonight, don’t so much come with your physical gifts, rather be like the person in the hymn saying, I don’t know what to give, I don’t have anything to give but I’ll give Him myself.
God the Father wants you to come to the manger, to see what He has done in giving us Jesus to be our Savior. But he also wants something from you - yourself. Not Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh, but Yourself, the essence of who you are, you - to be available to God for relationship, for friendship. That’s what God wants – You.
Give him yourself. Do it tonight. Do it now.
Let’s recite together the last verse of In the Bleak Midwinter again, and as we do so, make these words your own: “Yet what I can, I give him, give Him my heart” If you do so, it will be the most wonderful Christmas ever. I Promise.
Saying together:
“What can I give him? poor as I am. If I were a shepherd I would bring a lamb. If I were a wise man I would do my part, Yet what I can, I give him, give him my heart.” AMEN.
Post Scipt: During this service, Tony Breece gave his heart to the Lord. Here he is with me and Cindy.
Welcome to our service tonight and thank you for coming. Tonight we are re-enacting that night so long ago when Jesus was born. The Scriptures tell us that there were shepherds keeping watch over their flock by night, when an angel of the Lord appeared to them and announced the birth of the Savior, proclaiming good news of great joy which shall be for all the people.
A multitude of the heavenly host appeared with the angel and sang “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among men, with whom he is pleased.” (Lk. 2:14) – ( just like we do every week when we sing the Gloria in our liturgy.) The shepherds took heed of the message and went to see the baby.
Tonight it is as if we all were shepherds keeping watch – that is, you have been observing a time of preparation during Advent. You have fasted and prayed, confessed your sins and asked God to renew a right spirit within you so that you might be ready for the coming of the King. Having heard the message that Jesus is come into the world to save sinners, you have left your homes and traveled through the cold night, coming, as it were, to the cave behind the inn to see the newborn baby and to worship Him.
Our story this night is full of hiddenness – the hiddenness of God partnering with an obscure Jewish teenaged girl to bring His Son into the world, the hiddenness of the Christ being formed in the womb of a hidden woman and protected by a hidden man, Joseph; the hiddenness of the Christ child being born into the world in the midst of darkness in a hidden cave, in a hidden town. Later, Christ would go on to live 30 years in obscurity until his ministry began in earnest. Hidden. Hidden. Hidden…
However, in this story of Jesus’ birth we have a curious paradox. God did not send out an advance team of marketers to advertise that Jesus, the Son of the Living God was being born. He didn’t do what someone did back the early 1980’s, and take out full page ads in world newspapers, saying that the “Lord Maitraya” had arrived. …I never did hear what happened to that guy. Maybe the announcement was premature…Who knows? At any rate:
God did choose to announce the news to the Shepherds, who were the functional equivalent of Internet bloggers of that time. They went and saw the child, and afterwards they became the first evangelists. They went out and made known to everyone what had been told to them and what they had seen. “And all who heard it wondered at the things which were told them by the shepherds.” And you can be sure that this news spread throughout the region.
And yet, it was ultimately a small region in a small country, amidst a small people.
There is the sense that Jesus has been brought into the world in the darkness, in the hidden place, in order to be hidden - in order for God to manifest himself as DEUS ABSCONDITUS, the hidden God. It’s amazing beyond comprehension that the Lord of the Universe, the Word, the Logos, by whom and in whom and with whom all things came into being was born into the world to be our Savior – and yet He was hidden from the World. Why did God do this?
Perhaps because He wants us to look for him…
The shepherds in the fields that night were watching. They were alert for predators, so they were watchful. They were available to hear the angels’ message when everybody else was asleep. Like them, we need to be awake to God and alert to his call. This is what Advent has been all about – encouraging us to be awake and alert, and to listen for His announcement of the birth of Christ.
When the Angel announced, “Today is born to you in the city of David, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord, the Shepherds’ response was, “Let us go see this thing that God has done.” Like Mary, they said, “Yes, Lord”. Not: “No Way!” Not: “That’s nice…” Not: “I’ll think about it.” But, “Let us go see this thing that God has done.”
This is an implicit acknowledgement of God’s existence, recognition of God’s Sovereign action in human affairs, and a response of Faith that puts legs to belief. The Shepherds responded correctly to God’s revelation by going to worship the babe laid in the manger. They looked with the eyes of their heart, with eyes of faith, - not upon the superficial appearance of a baby in a manger, but rather upon the Savior of the World, Emmanuel, God with Us.
In the purity of their hearts, they believed the angel’s message and they saw God - just as Jesus would later proclaim in the Sermon on the Mount.
In that same Sermon Jesus also said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
In Jesus’ day, Shepherds were certainly the poorest of the poor. Often they lived in the open with only the clothes on their backs and they were frequently shunned because they smelled bad and were uncouth. They may have taken a lamb to offer the newborn King, but it’s certain they had nothing else of value to take with them.
In this way, they represent our essential position before God: Poverty. We are all poor as we approach our God. We have nothing to bring to him that he could possibly want or need. It’s the old story of trying to find something to buy for your father…What are gonna get for someone who literally has everything?
The song “In the Bleak Midwinter” has a wonderful last verse:
“What can I give him? poor as I am. If I were a shepherd I would bring a lamb. If I were a wise man I would do my part, Yet what I can, I give him, give him my heart.”
Tonight we commemorate the birth of the Savior of the world, come to us hidden in the form of a baby, born to a hidden woman and a hidden man, in a hidden town, in a hidden cave behind a hidden inn. You have come here to worship – to give your time and to praise God for sending Jesus into the world. Tonight, don’t so much come with your physical gifts, rather be like the person in the hymn saying, I don’t know what to give, I don’t have anything to give but I’ll give Him myself.
God the Father wants you to come to the manger, to see what He has done in giving us Jesus to be our Savior. But he also wants something from you - yourself. Not Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh, but Yourself, the essence of who you are, you - to be available to God for relationship, for friendship. That’s what God wants – You.
Give him yourself. Do it tonight. Do it now.
Let’s recite together the last verse of In the Bleak Midwinter again, and as we do so, make these words your own: “Yet what I can, I give him, give Him my heart” If you do so, it will be the most wonderful Christmas ever. I Promise.
Saying together:
“What can I give him? poor as I am. If I were a shepherd I would bring a lamb. If I were a wise man I would do my part, Yet what I can, I give him, give him my heart.” AMEN.
Post Scipt: During this service, Tony Breece gave his heart to the Lord. Here he is with me and Cindy.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
The Seven Joys of Mary
A sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on the Third Sunday of Advent, December 14, 2008, at the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center, Huntington, WV. based on
I Thessalonians 5:16-28
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you! (You may be seated.)
As Father Mark explained to us last week, today is the Rose Sunday, when our emphasis in on Joy. Our reading from I Thessalonians touches on this theme: Rejoice always…
During this season of Advent, I’ve been pondering Joy with the help of an old, medieval song called ‘The Seven Joys of Mary’. It’s found on a Christmas album by singer Loreena McKennitt. Cindy brought it home one day at the beginning of Advent and we’ve been enjoying it ever since. The tune is the traditional ‘Star of the County Down’, which we usually sing with different words. Let me read you the lyrics.
The first good joy that Mary had, it was the joy of one.
The first rejoice that Mary had Was to see her new born son.
To see her new born Son good man, and blessed may he be.
Sing Father, Son and Holy Ghost, to all eternity.
2. The next good joy that Mary had it was the joy of two.
To see her son, Jesus, Make the lame to go.
The next rejoice that Mary had, it was the joy of three.
To see her own son Jesus, to make the blind to see.
To make the blind to see good man, and blessed may he be.
Sing Father, Son and Holy Ghost, to all eternity.
The next good joy our lady had, it was the joy of four.
It was the rejoice of her dear son, when he read the bible o'er.
The next good joy that Mary had, it was the joy of five.
To see her own son Jesus, to make the dead alive.
To make the dead alive good man, and blessed may he be.
Sing Father, Son and Holy Ghost, to all eternity.
The next rejoice our lady had, it was the rejoice of six.To see her own son Jesus, to bear the crucifix….
Whoops. Stop the song. I thought this was about joyful things!
Watching her son bear the cross doesn’t seem like something a mother would rejoice in, does it?
This one kind of threw me for a loop – until I began to tie it in with some reading I’ve been doing during this Advent season - Gustaf Aulen’s book, ‘Christus Victor”.
As you may recall, two weeks ago, I sent out a Chapter Talk to the Company of Jesus, and to you all, about this very topic. The context was that one of the CoJ brothers, Dale Brown, had developed a Rule of Life that he called “Christus Victor”. He had used this Rule during an especially difficult time in his marriage this past year, and when he shared it with me, I thought it might be well to put it out to the Company as a special Advent intention.
It also occurred to me at the time that I had a book on my shelf by the same title. I had purchased this book for 79 cents at the Glen Flora Used Book Exchange back in about 1986, when we lived in Waukegan, Illinois. But unlike the other books I buy, I had never been able to get into this one. It was just too difficult and I didn’t have a compelling enough reason to finish it – until now, when I’m actually thinking about the topic and trying to relate it to my Christian life.
Gustaf Aulen was a Swedish theologian who lived during the first half of the 20th century. His book, “Christus Victor” is actually a series of collected lectures published in 1930, and is subtitled “An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of the Atonement”. I think you can see from the title why I had some trouble getting into it…
But it’s been a good Advent discipline and its theme actually connects with our theme of Joy today.
As I said in my Chapter Talk, we normally think of Advent as being primarily about the Incarnation and the Atonement as dealing with the Easter events. Aulen ties the two together by quoting Irenaeus, the earliest of the Fathers to deal with the topic of the Atonement.
In his book ‘Against Heresies’ (II, 14.7), Irenaeus asks the question, “For what purpose did Christ come down from heaven?” The answer he gives is: ‘That He might destroy sin, overcome death, and give life to man’ (AH III,18.7). …”
‘In Irenaeus’ thought, Jesus came down from Heaven and was incarnated because, although Man had been created by God that he might have life, through the Fall we became helpless and held in bondage by the power of sin, death and the devil. Only God has the power to overcome these powers, and He Himself, in His mercy, took on the job of delivering us by sending Jesus, the Logos, the Word of God, to take on human flesh in order that He might destroy death, bind and spoil the Strong Man – the Devil - and bring man new life. Therefore, the Incarnation is the necessary preliminary to the Atonement – God’s decisive victory over sin, death and the devil. There is even the thought that the Devil was deceived in a way. Because Jesus was clothed in humility, Satan didn’t recognize who He really was and therefore overextended himself by attacking Him. Satan was like a fish that takes the bait and gets caught because of his own greed.
These thoughts reflect the ‘Classic” view of the Atonement, a view which is both “dualistic” and “dramatic” – that is, the forces of Evil are arrayed against God, and the Atonement is seen as a Divine conflict and victory. Christ – Christus Victor – fights against and triumphs over the evil powers of the world, the ‘tyrants’ under which mankind is in bondage and suffering, and in Him God reconciles the world to Himself. “…the victory over the hostile powers brings to pass a new relation, a relation of reconciliation, between God and the world.” (CV :pgs 4, 5).
Gustaf Aulen asserts that ‘Christus Victor’ was the primary view of the Atonement for the first thousand years of the Christian Church. Over against this view is the “Latin” type, promulgated by Anselm of Canterbury, who is actually the first theologian to attempt a thoroughly thought-out doctrine of the Atonement.
Anselm’s “Satisfaction” Theory became synonymous with the Roman Catholic view and held dominance until the Reformation. This view teaches a deliverance from the guilt of sin, and an ‘objective’ Atonement in which God is the object of Christ’s atoning work, and is reconciled through the satisfaction made to His justice.” Christ as MAN offers up satisfaction to GOD and because Christ is Divine, his sacrifice is applied by God to the whole of humanity.
The differences between these two views may seem esoteric, but the practical effects are huge. While the religion of ‘Christus Victor’ centers around the Mysteries of Redemption and the Sacraments, the ‘Satisfaction’ view leads to a System of Christianity in which “man’s way to God was interpreted as a way of justification by works and by human merit.” (CV, Translator’s note pg. xxv).
In other words, either God Himself initiates the Victory over Sin, Death and the Devil, resulting in Life and Freedom - or the Death of Christ is an act of sacrifice which opens the way for Man to make Satisfaction to God for his many crimes. One way is freedom, the other bondage to a System of works righteousness.
Martin Luther protested against abuses engendered by this System of works righteousness when he posted his 95 Theses on the cathedral door at Wittenberg, sparking reformation that effected all the Christian world. Ironically, Aulen claims that Phillip Melancthon, Luther’s successor actually went back to the Satisfaction view, leading to as much legalistic bondage for Orthodox Protestants as mediaeval scholasticism did for Roman Catholics.
This is one of the reasons why people get so messed up in their faith. They see Christianity as a set of Laws to be perfectly obeyed, rather than as a Celebration of our deliverance from Bondage.
One hears Paul saying to the Galatians, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal.5:1). Jesus came into this world as a baby so that he could die for us as the God-Man and set us Free!!
Now we can understand why Mary can be said to rejoice in seeing her Son nailed to the Tree. It was, as Hebrews 12:2 says, that Jesus endured the cross, despising the shame, because of the Joy that was set before him – to be seated at the right hand of God as Christus Victor, Lord over All.
Mary then, models for us Paul’s admonition to:
Rejoice always,
pray without ceasing,
give thanks in all circumstances…
This is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you – because we triumph with Christ in His victory over sin, death and the devil. Even if you’re going through rough times like Brother Dale was – perhaps because you’re going through some tough time, God’s will for us is that we Rejoice, Pray, and give thanks in all circumstances. We don’t necessarily thank God for the circumstances themselves, but we give thanks in the circumstances, knowing that Christ is our Victory and that even now He sits on the throne in Heaven as Lord of all Creation, or Kyrie Pantocrator.
The icon of Christ Pantocrator shows Jesus as a rather severe and powerful Lord, not as ever-suffering victim. It reflects a”Christus Victor understanding
I Thessalonians 5:16-28
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you! (You may be seated.)
As Father Mark explained to us last week, today is the Rose Sunday, when our emphasis in on Joy. Our reading from I Thessalonians touches on this theme: Rejoice always…
During this season of Advent, I’ve been pondering Joy with the help of an old, medieval song called ‘The Seven Joys of Mary’. It’s found on a Christmas album by singer Loreena McKennitt. Cindy brought it home one day at the beginning of Advent and we’ve been enjoying it ever since. The tune is the traditional ‘Star of the County Down’, which we usually sing with different words. Let me read you the lyrics.
The first good joy that Mary had, it was the joy of one.
The first rejoice that Mary had Was to see her new born son.
To see her new born Son good man, and blessed may he be.
Sing Father, Son and Holy Ghost, to all eternity.
2. The next good joy that Mary had it was the joy of two.
To see her son, Jesus, Make the lame to go.
The next rejoice that Mary had, it was the joy of three.
To see her own son Jesus, to make the blind to see.
To make the blind to see good man, and blessed may he be.
Sing Father, Son and Holy Ghost, to all eternity.
The next good joy our lady had, it was the joy of four.
It was the rejoice of her dear son, when he read the bible o'er.
The next good joy that Mary had, it was the joy of five.
To see her own son Jesus, to make the dead alive.
To make the dead alive good man, and blessed may he be.
Sing Father, Son and Holy Ghost, to all eternity.
The next rejoice our lady had, it was the rejoice of six.To see her own son Jesus, to bear the crucifix….
Whoops. Stop the song. I thought this was about joyful things!
Watching her son bear the cross doesn’t seem like something a mother would rejoice in, does it?
This one kind of threw me for a loop – until I began to tie it in with some reading I’ve been doing during this Advent season - Gustaf Aulen’s book, ‘Christus Victor”.
As you may recall, two weeks ago, I sent out a Chapter Talk to the Company of Jesus, and to you all, about this very topic. The context was that one of the CoJ brothers, Dale Brown, had developed a Rule of Life that he called “Christus Victor”. He had used this Rule during an especially difficult time in his marriage this past year, and when he shared it with me, I thought it might be well to put it out to the Company as a special Advent intention.
It also occurred to me at the time that I had a book on my shelf by the same title. I had purchased this book for 79 cents at the Glen Flora Used Book Exchange back in about 1986, when we lived in Waukegan, Illinois. But unlike the other books I buy, I had never been able to get into this one. It was just too difficult and I didn’t have a compelling enough reason to finish it – until now, when I’m actually thinking about the topic and trying to relate it to my Christian life.
Gustaf Aulen was a Swedish theologian who lived during the first half of the 20th century. His book, “Christus Victor” is actually a series of collected lectures published in 1930, and is subtitled “An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of the Atonement”. I think you can see from the title why I had some trouble getting into it…
But it’s been a good Advent discipline and its theme actually connects with our theme of Joy today.
As I said in my Chapter Talk, we normally think of Advent as being primarily about the Incarnation and the Atonement as dealing with the Easter events. Aulen ties the two together by quoting Irenaeus, the earliest of the Fathers to deal with the topic of the Atonement.
In his book ‘Against Heresies’ (II, 14.7), Irenaeus asks the question, “For what purpose did Christ come down from heaven?” The answer he gives is: ‘That He might destroy sin, overcome death, and give life to man’ (AH III,18.7). …”
‘In Irenaeus’ thought, Jesus came down from Heaven and was incarnated because, although Man had been created by God that he might have life, through the Fall we became helpless and held in bondage by the power of sin, death and the devil. Only God has the power to overcome these powers, and He Himself, in His mercy, took on the job of delivering us by sending Jesus, the Logos, the Word of God, to take on human flesh in order that He might destroy death, bind and spoil the Strong Man – the Devil - and bring man new life. Therefore, the Incarnation is the necessary preliminary to the Atonement – God’s decisive victory over sin, death and the devil. There is even the thought that the Devil was deceived in a way. Because Jesus was clothed in humility, Satan didn’t recognize who He really was and therefore overextended himself by attacking Him. Satan was like a fish that takes the bait and gets caught because of his own greed.
These thoughts reflect the ‘Classic” view of the Atonement, a view which is both “dualistic” and “dramatic” – that is, the forces of Evil are arrayed against God, and the Atonement is seen as a Divine conflict and victory. Christ – Christus Victor – fights against and triumphs over the evil powers of the world, the ‘tyrants’ under which mankind is in bondage and suffering, and in Him God reconciles the world to Himself. “…the victory over the hostile powers brings to pass a new relation, a relation of reconciliation, between God and the world.” (CV :pgs 4, 5).
Gustaf Aulen asserts that ‘Christus Victor’ was the primary view of the Atonement for the first thousand years of the Christian Church. Over against this view is the “Latin” type, promulgated by Anselm of Canterbury, who is actually the first theologian to attempt a thoroughly thought-out doctrine of the Atonement.
Anselm’s “Satisfaction” Theory became synonymous with the Roman Catholic view and held dominance until the Reformation. This view teaches a deliverance from the guilt of sin, and an ‘objective’ Atonement in which God is the object of Christ’s atoning work, and is reconciled through the satisfaction made to His justice.” Christ as MAN offers up satisfaction to GOD and because Christ is Divine, his sacrifice is applied by God to the whole of humanity.
The differences between these two views may seem esoteric, but the practical effects are huge. While the religion of ‘Christus Victor’ centers around the Mysteries of Redemption and the Sacraments, the ‘Satisfaction’ view leads to a System of Christianity in which “man’s way to God was interpreted as a way of justification by works and by human merit.” (CV, Translator’s note pg. xxv).
In other words, either God Himself initiates the Victory over Sin, Death and the Devil, resulting in Life and Freedom - or the Death of Christ is an act of sacrifice which opens the way for Man to make Satisfaction to God for his many crimes. One way is freedom, the other bondage to a System of works righteousness.
Martin Luther protested against abuses engendered by this System of works righteousness when he posted his 95 Theses on the cathedral door at Wittenberg, sparking reformation that effected all the Christian world. Ironically, Aulen claims that Phillip Melancthon, Luther’s successor actually went back to the Satisfaction view, leading to as much legalistic bondage for Orthodox Protestants as mediaeval scholasticism did for Roman Catholics.
This is one of the reasons why people get so messed up in their faith. They see Christianity as a set of Laws to be perfectly obeyed, rather than as a Celebration of our deliverance from Bondage.
One hears Paul saying to the Galatians, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal.5:1). Jesus came into this world as a baby so that he could die for us as the God-Man and set us Free!!
Now we can understand why Mary can be said to rejoice in seeing her Son nailed to the Tree. It was, as Hebrews 12:2 says, that Jesus endured the cross, despising the shame, because of the Joy that was set before him – to be seated at the right hand of God as Christus Victor, Lord over All.
Mary then, models for us Paul’s admonition to:
Rejoice always,
pray without ceasing,
give thanks in all circumstances…
This is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you – because we triumph with Christ in His victory over sin, death and the devil. Even if you’re going through rough times like Brother Dale was – perhaps because you’re going through some tough time, God’s will for us is that we Rejoice, Pray, and give thanks in all circumstances. We don’t necessarily thank God for the circumstances themselves, but we give thanks in the circumstances, knowing that Christ is our Victory and that even now He sits on the throne in Heaven as Lord of all Creation, or Kyrie Pantocrator.
The icon of Christ Pantocrator shows Jesus as a rather severe and powerful Lord, not as ever-suffering victim. It reflects a”Christus Victor understanding
of the Lordship of Christ. The logo of our church, the Risen Lord, reflects the same understanding: Christ is now enthroned as Lord and reigns from Heaven, having overcoming the powers arrayed against us.
Mary’s last joy then, must be understood in this light:
“The next good joy that Mary had, it was the joy of seven.
To see her own son Jesus, to wear the crown of heaven.
To wear the crown of heaven good man, and blessed may he be.
Sing Father, Son and Holy Ghost, to all eternity.
This teaching should comfort and reassure us in our Christian walk.
God Himself initiated the battle on our behalf. Jesus decisively won the battle for us, and He reigns from Heaven as Lord. He has sent his Spirit to live inside of us to empower us to fight our enemies and conquer them in his power. But this power is only exercised through power and thanksgiving. In Him, we have the victory, - but only – and I repeat only, if we pray! Prayer is the weapon we wield in this spiritual fight and we must use it on behalf of ourselves and our families, our neighbors and our community.
I don’t know about you, but I feel this need keenly. In the last three years, there have been at least four shootings within one block of my house on Euclid Place. Five people have died and two have been wounded. True, they are all drug related, but I don’t even need an alarm clock any more, I just wake up to the sound of gunfire.
So recently, I’ve taken to doing prayer walks in the mornings. I’ve included in your bulletin A Christus Victor Prayer-Walk Rosary. I use this as I walk and pray through my neighborhood. You may not have as many shootings on your block as we have had on ours, but I know your neighbors need prayer – and I know they need you to pray for them.
Therefore, PRAY! ALWAYS! AND DON’T GIVE UP UNTIL CHRIST COMES BACK OR HE CALLS FOR YOU!
Friends, this is serious business and these are serious times -
But be comforted by this concluding blessing that Paul gives us in his letter to the Thessalonians:
“Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.” AMEN.
Mary’s last joy then, must be understood in this light:
“The next good joy that Mary had, it was the joy of seven.
To see her own son Jesus, to wear the crown of heaven.
To wear the crown of heaven good man, and blessed may he be.
Sing Father, Son and Holy Ghost, to all eternity.
This teaching should comfort and reassure us in our Christian walk.
God Himself initiated the battle on our behalf. Jesus decisively won the battle for us, and He reigns from Heaven as Lord. He has sent his Spirit to live inside of us to empower us to fight our enemies and conquer them in his power. But this power is only exercised through power and thanksgiving. In Him, we have the victory, - but only – and I repeat only, if we pray! Prayer is the weapon we wield in this spiritual fight and we must use it on behalf of ourselves and our families, our neighbors and our community.
I don’t know about you, but I feel this need keenly. In the last three years, there have been at least four shootings within one block of my house on Euclid Place. Five people have died and two have been wounded. True, they are all drug related, but I don’t even need an alarm clock any more, I just wake up to the sound of gunfire.
So recently, I’ve taken to doing prayer walks in the mornings. I’ve included in your bulletin A Christus Victor Prayer-Walk Rosary. I use this as I walk and pray through my neighborhood. You may not have as many shootings on your block as we have had on ours, but I know your neighbors need prayer – and I know they need you to pray for them.
Therefore, PRAY! ALWAYS! AND DON’T GIVE UP UNTIL CHRIST COMES BACK OR HE CALLS FOR YOU!
Friends, this is serious business and these are serious times -
But be comforted by this concluding blessing that Paul gives us in his letter to the Thessalonians:
“Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.” AMEN.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
A Christus Victor Prayer-Walk Rosary
Our neighborhood has been the center of a number of shootings over the past few years. Recently, I have been walking through our neighborhood and praying prayers of intercession over the families in an eight square block area. This prayer is based on the Anglican Rosary prayer bead format.
On the Cross:
Blessed be the Kingdom of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, both now and ever and unto the ages of ages AMEN.
Invitatory Bead: Psalm 3
How many are my foes O Lord,
How many are rising up against me.
How many are saying about me,
There is no help for him in God.
But you Lord are a shield about me,
My Glory who lift up my head,
I cry aloud to the Lord,
He answers from His Holy Mountain.
I lie down to rest and I sleep,
I wake for the Lord upholds me
I will not fear even thousands of people,
Who are ranged on every side about me.
Arise Lord, save me my God,
You who strike all my foes on the mouth,
You who break the teeth of the wicked,
O Lord of salvation, bless Your people.
Cruciform Beads:
The Lord’s Prayer (emphasis on: ‘deliver us from evil’)
Alternate with this blessing prayer (especially appropriate for prayer over specific places.)
Visit this place, O Lord, and drive far from it all snares of the enemy; let your holy angels dwell with us to preserve us in peace; and let your blessing be upon us always; through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN.
On the Weeks Beads:
Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God,
Have mercy on all these families, and
Deliver us from evil.
Concluding Prayer:
Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal,
Have mercy on us, and on the whole world (x3).
A Collect for Peace:
O God, the author of peace and lover of concord, to know you is eternal life and to serve you is perfect freedom. Defend us, your humble servants, in all assaults of our enemies; that we, surely trusting in your defense, may not fear the power of any adversaries, through the might of Jesus Christ our Lord and Victor. AMEN.
On the Cross:
Blessed be the Kingdom of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, both now and ever and unto the ages of ages AMEN.
Invitatory Bead: Psalm 3
How many are my foes O Lord,
How many are rising up against me.
How many are saying about me,
There is no help for him in God.
But you Lord are a shield about me,
My Glory who lift up my head,
I cry aloud to the Lord,
He answers from His Holy Mountain.
I lie down to rest and I sleep,
I wake for the Lord upholds me
I will not fear even thousands of people,
Who are ranged on every side about me.
Arise Lord, save me my God,
You who strike all my foes on the mouth,
You who break the teeth of the wicked,
O Lord of salvation, bless Your people.
Cruciform Beads:
The Lord’s Prayer (emphasis on: ‘deliver us from evil’)
Alternate with this blessing prayer (especially appropriate for prayer over specific places.)
Visit this place, O Lord, and drive far from it all snares of the enemy; let your holy angels dwell with us to preserve us in peace; and let your blessing be upon us always; through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN.
On the Weeks Beads:
Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God,
Have mercy on all these families, and
Deliver us from evil.
Concluding Prayer:
Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal,
Have mercy on us, and on the whole world (x3).
A Collect for Peace:
O God, the author of peace and lover of concord, to know you is eternal life and to serve you is perfect freedom. Defend us, your humble servants, in all assaults of our enemies; that we, surely trusting in your defense, may not fear the power of any adversaries, through the might of Jesus Christ our Lord and Victor. AMEN.
Sunday, December 07, 2008
Wheaton
December 7, 2008
This past week, I and my wife, Cindy, along with three other folks from our church, were privileged to attend the Common Cause Worship Celebration in Wheaton Illinois, at which the Jerusalem Declaration was signed and the Provincial Draft Constitution for a new 39th Province of the Anglican Communion was offered. It was truly a joyful and historic occasion. Some 700 Anglican Churches in North America were represented by a passel of bishops and at least 1200 lay people.
“His Grace” Bob Duncan, Bishop of Pittsburgh, ‘Archbishop in waiting’ of the Anglican Church of North America was the preacher and celebrant. During his sermon he reported on the amazing fact that the assembled bishops were unanimous in their acceptance of the draft constitution. “This must be a Sovereign work of God,” he gushed…”Just look at us – we don’t even get along that well!”
Reminds me of Psalm 133:
Behold, how good and pleasant it is
This past week, I and my wife, Cindy, along with three other folks from our church, were privileged to attend the Common Cause Worship Celebration in Wheaton Illinois, at which the Jerusalem Declaration was signed and the Provincial Draft Constitution for a new 39th Province of the Anglican Communion was offered. It was truly a joyful and historic occasion. Some 700 Anglican Churches in North America were represented by a passel of bishops and at least 1200 lay people.
“His Grace” Bob Duncan, Bishop of Pittsburgh, ‘Archbishop in waiting’ of the Anglican Church of North America was the preacher and celebrant. During his sermon he reported on the amazing fact that the assembled bishops were unanimous in their acceptance of the draft constitution. “This must be a Sovereign work of God,” he gushed…”Just look at us – we don’t even get along that well!”
Reminds me of Psalm 133:
Behold, how good and pleasant it is
when brothers dwell in unity!
It is like the precious oil on the head,
running down on the beard,
on the beard of Aaron,
running down on the collar of his robes!
It is like the dew of Hermon,
which falls on the mountains of Zion!
For there the Lord has commanded the blessing,
life forevermore.
At any rate, we were watching a once-in 500 years event and we were truly excited. The mood in the room that night was positively giddy! I’d say it’s the closest thing to Fun I’ve ever experienced in an Anglican worship service. You too can experience Archbishop Duncan’s sermon at http://anglicantv.org/
Afterwards, I went forward to speak to the new Primate, and I think I was the second clergyman to receive his Blessing.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Advent 1 Comments on Christus Victor
A Chapter Talk sent to the Company of Jesus on November 30, 2008.
Grace to all on this first Sunday of Advent!
Since we have talked about using the Rule of Christus Victor for a special Advent intention, I thought it might be well to pass along some quotes each week from a famous book by Swedish theologian Gustaf Aulen. His “Christus Victor” is actually a series of collected lectures and is “An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of the Atonement”.
Normally we think of Advent as being primarily about the Incarnation and the Atonement as dealing with the Easter events, but we shall see as we proceed that the two stand in the closest possible relation to one another. Chapter Two of Christus Victor (CV) deals with the thought of Irenaeus, the earliest of the Fathers to deal with the topic of the Atonement. We’ll start with his question about the Incarnation and then work backwards.
“Ut quid enim descendebat?” (Against Heresies, II, 14.7), asks Irenaeus. For what purpose did Christ come down from heaven? (CV pg. 18) …Answer: ‘That He might destroy sin, overcome death, and give life to man’ (AH III,18.7). …”Man had been created by God that he might have life. …through the Second Man He bound the strong one, and spoiled his goods, and annihilated death, bringing life to man who had become subject to death.” (CV pg. 19)
‘In Irenaeus’ thought the Incarnation is the necessary preliminary to the atoning work, because only God is able to overcome the powers which hold man in bondage, and man is helpless. The work of man’s deliverance is accomplished by God Himself, in Christ…The Word of God was made flesh in order that He might destroy death and bring man to life; for we were tied and bound in sin, we were born in sin and live under the dominion of death.”’… the Word is God Himself, who has entered into this world of sin and death… to accomplish victory over both. (CV, pgs 20, 21).
These thoughts reflect the ‘Classic” view of the Atonement, explains Aulen, which is both “dualistic” and “dramatic” - the forces of Evil are arrayed against God, and the Atonement is seen as a “Divine conflict and victory; Christ – Christus Victor – fights against and triumphs over the evil powers of the world, the ‘tyrants’ under which mankind is in bondage and suffering, and in Him God reconciles the world to Himself. …the victory over the hostile powers brings to pass a new relation, a relation of reconciliation, between God and the world.” (CV :pgs 4, 5).
Aulen asserts that ‘Christus Victor’ was the primary view of the Atonement for the first thousand years of the Christian Church. Over against this view is the “Latin” type, promulgated by Anselm of Canterbury, who is actually the first theologian to attempt a thoroughly thought-out doctrine of the Atonement. His “Satisfaction” Theory became synonymous with the Roman Catholic view and held dominance until the Reformation. This view teaches a deliverance from the guilt of sin, and an ‘objective’ Atonement in which God is the object of Christ’s atoning work, and is reconciled through the satisfaction made to His justice.”
While the differences between these two views may seem those of relative emphasis, the practical effects are huge. While the religion of Christus Victor centers around the Mysteries of Redemption and the Sacraments, The Satisfaction view leads to a System of Christianity in which “man’s way to God was interpreted as a way of justification by works and by human merit.” (CV, Translator’s note pg. xxv).
Luther’s protest against abuses engendered by this System of works righteousness “was an endeavor to deliver the Christendom of the West from the domination of a system, which had entangled the gospel of salvation in a rationalized theology and a moralistic ethic.” (op cit).
Ironically, Aulen claims that Phillip Melancthon actually went back to the Satisfaction view leading to as much legalistic bondage as did mediaeval scholasticism. One hears Paul saying to the Galatians, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. (Gal.5:1).
Ideas have consequences; sometimes huge consequences. I’ll stop here with this gloss on Aulen’s magnificent work. I’m sure I’ve done enough damage to it by now. (But that won’t stop me from trying again over the next few weeks.) Thanks for your patience.
Grace to all on this first Sunday of Advent!
Since we have talked about using the Rule of Christus Victor for a special Advent intention, I thought it might be well to pass along some quotes each week from a famous book by Swedish theologian Gustaf Aulen. His “Christus Victor” is actually a series of collected lectures and is “An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of the Atonement”.
Normally we think of Advent as being primarily about the Incarnation and the Atonement as dealing with the Easter events, but we shall see as we proceed that the two stand in the closest possible relation to one another. Chapter Two of Christus Victor (CV) deals with the thought of Irenaeus, the earliest of the Fathers to deal with the topic of the Atonement. We’ll start with his question about the Incarnation and then work backwards.
“Ut quid enim descendebat?” (Against Heresies, II, 14.7), asks Irenaeus. For what purpose did Christ come down from heaven? (CV pg. 18) …Answer: ‘That He might destroy sin, overcome death, and give life to man’ (AH III,18.7). …”Man had been created by God that he might have life. …through the Second Man He bound the strong one, and spoiled his goods, and annihilated death, bringing life to man who had become subject to death.” (CV pg. 19)
‘In Irenaeus’ thought the Incarnation is the necessary preliminary to the atoning work, because only God is able to overcome the powers which hold man in bondage, and man is helpless. The work of man’s deliverance is accomplished by God Himself, in Christ…The Word of God was made flesh in order that He might destroy death and bring man to life; for we were tied and bound in sin, we were born in sin and live under the dominion of death.”’… the Word is God Himself, who has entered into this world of sin and death… to accomplish victory over both. (CV, pgs 20, 21).
These thoughts reflect the ‘Classic” view of the Atonement, explains Aulen, which is both “dualistic” and “dramatic” - the forces of Evil are arrayed against God, and the Atonement is seen as a “Divine conflict and victory; Christ – Christus Victor – fights against and triumphs over the evil powers of the world, the ‘tyrants’ under which mankind is in bondage and suffering, and in Him God reconciles the world to Himself. …the victory over the hostile powers brings to pass a new relation, a relation of reconciliation, between God and the world.” (CV :pgs 4, 5).
Aulen asserts that ‘Christus Victor’ was the primary view of the Atonement for the first thousand years of the Christian Church. Over against this view is the “Latin” type, promulgated by Anselm of Canterbury, who is actually the first theologian to attempt a thoroughly thought-out doctrine of the Atonement. His “Satisfaction” Theory became synonymous with the Roman Catholic view and held dominance until the Reformation. This view teaches a deliverance from the guilt of sin, and an ‘objective’ Atonement in which God is the object of Christ’s atoning work, and is reconciled through the satisfaction made to His justice.”
While the differences between these two views may seem those of relative emphasis, the practical effects are huge. While the religion of Christus Victor centers around the Mysteries of Redemption and the Sacraments, The Satisfaction view leads to a System of Christianity in which “man’s way to God was interpreted as a way of justification by works and by human merit.” (CV, Translator’s note pg. xxv).
Luther’s protest against abuses engendered by this System of works righteousness “was an endeavor to deliver the Christendom of the West from the domination of a system, which had entangled the gospel of salvation in a rationalized theology and a moralistic ethic.” (op cit).
Ironically, Aulen claims that Phillip Melancthon actually went back to the Satisfaction view leading to as much legalistic bondage as did mediaeval scholasticism. One hears Paul saying to the Galatians, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. (Gal.5:1).
Ideas have consequences; sometimes huge consequences. I’ll stop here with this gloss on Aulen’s magnificent work. I’m sure I’ve done enough damage to it by now. (But that won’t stop me from trying again over the next few weeks.) Thanks for your patience.
Oh that You Would Rend the Heavens
A Sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on the First Sunday of Advent, November, 30, 2008 @ The Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center, Hungtington, WV and based on Isaiah 64:1-9
Isaiah and the Contemporary Experience
Sometimes we read a portion of Scripture and it just jumps out at us. The language is so contemporary and so vivid it grabs us and captures our imagination. I think that's the case with today's reading from Isaiah. When we compare what is happening in the world with the situation that Isaiah was speaking into, we can easily relate. Basically, we're in trouble. The world economy looks as if it's headed into serious crisis. The world political situation is unstable. The attempts that people are making to fix things seem as if they're getting us in deeper and all the while, the world seems to be moving farther and farther from God. As Christians, we long for God to intervene.
So when Isaiah cries out, “Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down...we can relate. We say “Yes, Lord! Come Down! Just like you did at Mt. Sinai when your presence caused the mountain to quake. Make your Name known to your adversaries. Cause the nations to tremble at your presence! Come and reveal yourself! We are desperate for you! Reveal yourself; Just like at Sinai...
Yes...that was when God told Moses to bring the people to the foot of the mountain to meet Him. God descended on the mountain in fire and smoke. He spoke to the people in thunder, flashes of lightening and with the sound of a trumpet. He gave Moses the Ten Commandments. ...And the people thought they were all going to die! They said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.” (Ex. 20:19).
Moses tries to comfort the people by telling them not to be afraid, and tells them that “God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin. (v.20). But in spite of his attempts to calm them, “the people stood far off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.”
...Well, maybe on second thought that wasn't such a good idea... Sounds pretty scary. God seems to be pretty serious about this Sin thing.
Grief over Sin
Just as the people of Israel were aware of the danger of approaching a Holy God face to face, so too the passage from Isaiah reflects an awareness of not measuring up. While God is happy to meet the righteous person who obeys Him in all His ways (Is. 64:5), yet he is angry with sin...'Speaking for the people, Isaiah continues, “and in our sins we have been a long time, and shall we be saved? Acknowledging their woeful condition. Isaiah says, “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities.” (vv.6,7).
Sounds pretty contemporary doesn't it? As we apply this to the situation in our nation right now, we don't have to look much farther than the newspaper- or Internet headlines to see that we're pretty much in the same boat.
Our entire financial system is on the verge of collapse because of the desire to get something for nothing. Politicians have set us up for failure in order to get power. Financial brokers have milked the system for fat commissions, and people have tried to buy properties they could not afford – all the while thinking that the laws of nature have been suspended, that gravity had somehow taken a holiday. Greed has driven the system and now we're about to commit idolatry on top of it by looking to government to be God and deliver us from our travail.
If this weren't bad enough, we are a promiscuous people who demand to have unfettered sex, and we have the blood of millions of innocent unborn children on our hands – our pathetic attempt to get rid of the inconvenient limits to our own freedom. All this and more... and shall we be saved?
Fasting and Preparation for the Coming of Christ
But Isaiah recognizes there is a basis for mercy: “O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay and you are our potter. We are all the work of your hand. Be not so terribly angry, O Lord, and remember not iniquity forever. Behold, please look, we are all your people.” (vv. 8,9).
If the people of Israel had a basis for mercy in the Fatherhood of God, how much more should we as Christians, who have been redeemed with the blood of the Lamb, trust in God's mercy and plead with him for deliverance?
Each Sunday we come to this table, confessing our sins and partaking of the body and blood of our Lord in the confident expectation that our sins have been forgiven and that God does indeed feed us with the spiritual food of the body and blood of His own dear Son. But that does not let us off the hook completely as a people. We are still in need of God's grace in regard to our own personal struggles with sin, as well as our corporate sins as a nation, and even as a global community. We are no where near ready for God to rend the heavens and come down to this sinful world of ours. We would be just like the Israelites – quaking in our boots for fear of the righteous God and His judgment on our sins.
That's why, during Advent and Lent, we make time to prepare ourselves for His coming, to fast and to pray, to rend our hearts, so that when He does come, we may be ready. It's also possible for us, as God's people, to avert disaster in our nation through our prayers and intercessions. The much quoted verses from II Chronicles chapter 7 still apply today: “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (vv. 13,14).
Keep in mind that these verses were spoken in the context of Solomon consecrating the finished Temple for the worship of God. The prayer referred to in the passage is the prayer offered in the Temple; prayer that God promises to see and hear.
By extension, that means that we, as the worshiping people of God, have a particular responsibility to intercede, not only for ourselves, but for our neighbors and our nation.
Mission and Evangelism:
“If MY people, who are called by MY name...shall pray... The responsibility rests upon us who pray! Therefore we should pray!
We should pray for our own cleansing, and to become increasingly more like Christ. We should pray for our national, state and local leaders. And we should pray for our families, our friends, and for those of our acquaintances who do not know the Lord. After all, you know people whom I will never meet, and vice versa. Those people are your mission field, the ones for whom God expects us to pray and to whom He expects us to witness.
An excellent adjunct to our prayers of Advent preparation is fasting. Though we as Christians are not required to fast as the Old Testament believers were, yet it seems clear that Jesus expected his disciples to fast (Mt. 6:16). Fasting is a discipline that builds our character and our faith. By not eating for a specified time, we are telling God that we seek His kingdom and his righteousness first, ( Mt. 6:33) putting our bodily needs second. ( After this past week, our bodies can well afford to be put second for a time!)
In this way, we show God we are serious about our prayer intentions.
In the Western tradition, Wednesdays are a day of fasting and Fridays are a day of abstinence from meat. I suggest that we include some fasting in our Advent discipline this year, either according to this traditional formulation, or one that might work better for you personally. Perhaps you would also want to abstain from some aspect of the World during this time, such as not watching a TV program you enjoy, or cutting short your sleep so that you can get up earlier and pray. Any of these things fulfill the spirit of Fasting.
By leaving off something, we make room for Jesus and for the prayer to which we are called as God's people. It's not too much to suggest that this prayer is the basis for our Evangelism program. Join me in this discipline and let us know how it goes for you. I'm sure that if observe a fast as unto the Lord, that you will be blessed. Also let us know how it goes as you pray for those around you. Let's make this a time of not only making room for Jesus ourselves, but for helping others to do so as well. AMEN.
Isaiah and the Contemporary Experience
Sometimes we read a portion of Scripture and it just jumps out at us. The language is so contemporary and so vivid it grabs us and captures our imagination. I think that's the case with today's reading from Isaiah. When we compare what is happening in the world with the situation that Isaiah was speaking into, we can easily relate. Basically, we're in trouble. The world economy looks as if it's headed into serious crisis. The world political situation is unstable. The attempts that people are making to fix things seem as if they're getting us in deeper and all the while, the world seems to be moving farther and farther from God. As Christians, we long for God to intervene.
So when Isaiah cries out, “Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down...we can relate. We say “Yes, Lord! Come Down! Just like you did at Mt. Sinai when your presence caused the mountain to quake. Make your Name known to your adversaries. Cause the nations to tremble at your presence! Come and reveal yourself! We are desperate for you! Reveal yourself; Just like at Sinai...
Yes...that was when God told Moses to bring the people to the foot of the mountain to meet Him. God descended on the mountain in fire and smoke. He spoke to the people in thunder, flashes of lightening and with the sound of a trumpet. He gave Moses the Ten Commandments. ...And the people thought they were all going to die! They said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.” (Ex. 20:19).
Moses tries to comfort the people by telling them not to be afraid, and tells them that “God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin. (v.20). But in spite of his attempts to calm them, “the people stood far off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.”
...Well, maybe on second thought that wasn't such a good idea... Sounds pretty scary. God seems to be pretty serious about this Sin thing.
Grief over Sin
Just as the people of Israel were aware of the danger of approaching a Holy God face to face, so too the passage from Isaiah reflects an awareness of not measuring up. While God is happy to meet the righteous person who obeys Him in all His ways (Is. 64:5), yet he is angry with sin...'Speaking for the people, Isaiah continues, “and in our sins we have been a long time, and shall we be saved? Acknowledging their woeful condition. Isaiah says, “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities.” (vv.6,7).
Sounds pretty contemporary doesn't it? As we apply this to the situation in our nation right now, we don't have to look much farther than the newspaper- or Internet headlines to see that we're pretty much in the same boat.
Our entire financial system is on the verge of collapse because of the desire to get something for nothing. Politicians have set us up for failure in order to get power. Financial brokers have milked the system for fat commissions, and people have tried to buy properties they could not afford – all the while thinking that the laws of nature have been suspended, that gravity had somehow taken a holiday. Greed has driven the system and now we're about to commit idolatry on top of it by looking to government to be God and deliver us from our travail.
If this weren't bad enough, we are a promiscuous people who demand to have unfettered sex, and we have the blood of millions of innocent unborn children on our hands – our pathetic attempt to get rid of the inconvenient limits to our own freedom. All this and more... and shall we be saved?
Fasting and Preparation for the Coming of Christ
But Isaiah recognizes there is a basis for mercy: “O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay and you are our potter. We are all the work of your hand. Be not so terribly angry, O Lord, and remember not iniquity forever. Behold, please look, we are all your people.” (vv. 8,9).
If the people of Israel had a basis for mercy in the Fatherhood of God, how much more should we as Christians, who have been redeemed with the blood of the Lamb, trust in God's mercy and plead with him for deliverance?
Each Sunday we come to this table, confessing our sins and partaking of the body and blood of our Lord in the confident expectation that our sins have been forgiven and that God does indeed feed us with the spiritual food of the body and blood of His own dear Son. But that does not let us off the hook completely as a people. We are still in need of God's grace in regard to our own personal struggles with sin, as well as our corporate sins as a nation, and even as a global community. We are no where near ready for God to rend the heavens and come down to this sinful world of ours. We would be just like the Israelites – quaking in our boots for fear of the righteous God and His judgment on our sins.
That's why, during Advent and Lent, we make time to prepare ourselves for His coming, to fast and to pray, to rend our hearts, so that when He does come, we may be ready. It's also possible for us, as God's people, to avert disaster in our nation through our prayers and intercessions. The much quoted verses from II Chronicles chapter 7 still apply today: “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (vv. 13,14).
Keep in mind that these verses were spoken in the context of Solomon consecrating the finished Temple for the worship of God. The prayer referred to in the passage is the prayer offered in the Temple; prayer that God promises to see and hear.
By extension, that means that we, as the worshiping people of God, have a particular responsibility to intercede, not only for ourselves, but for our neighbors and our nation.
Mission and Evangelism:
“If MY people, who are called by MY name...shall pray... The responsibility rests upon us who pray! Therefore we should pray!
We should pray for our own cleansing, and to become increasingly more like Christ. We should pray for our national, state and local leaders. And we should pray for our families, our friends, and for those of our acquaintances who do not know the Lord. After all, you know people whom I will never meet, and vice versa. Those people are your mission field, the ones for whom God expects us to pray and to whom He expects us to witness.
An excellent adjunct to our prayers of Advent preparation is fasting. Though we as Christians are not required to fast as the Old Testament believers were, yet it seems clear that Jesus expected his disciples to fast (Mt. 6:16). Fasting is a discipline that builds our character and our faith. By not eating for a specified time, we are telling God that we seek His kingdom and his righteousness first, ( Mt. 6:33) putting our bodily needs second. ( After this past week, our bodies can well afford to be put second for a time!)
In this way, we show God we are serious about our prayer intentions.
In the Western tradition, Wednesdays are a day of fasting and Fridays are a day of abstinence from meat. I suggest that we include some fasting in our Advent discipline this year, either according to this traditional formulation, or one that might work better for you personally. Perhaps you would also want to abstain from some aspect of the World during this time, such as not watching a TV program you enjoy, or cutting short your sleep so that you can get up earlier and pray. Any of these things fulfill the spirit of Fasting.
By leaving off something, we make room for Jesus and for the prayer to which we are called as God's people. It's not too much to suggest that this prayer is the basis for our Evangelism program. Join me in this discipline and let us know how it goes for you. I'm sure that if observe a fast as unto the Lord, that you will be blessed. Also let us know how it goes as you pray for those around you. Let's make this a time of not only making room for Jesus ourselves, but for helping others to do so as well. AMEN.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Thanksgiving, Our Reason for Being
A sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church at the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center on November 23, 2008, based on Matthew 25:31-46
Coming up this week on Thursday is Thanksgiving Day – just in case you might not have heard… We’re very happy and excited to have our daughter Leah and her husband Scott, along with Lewis and Benjamin and Abigail with us for the whole week. We get to be face-to-face grandparents for 7 days and then we send ‘em right back to Texas. It’s just great! …well that didn’t come out just right…but you know what I mean. It’s wonderful to be able to gather as a family to celebrate the Holiday.
Today, I would like to talk about Thanksgiving as our Reason for Being, and then tie this in with our Scripture readings for the day.
So, I’d like to start off by saying that I think Thanksgiving is the single most instructive national Holiday when it comes to understanding ourselves as Christians. Thanksgiving is not just a day, but our Life. It represents what we as Christians should be doing day by day, that is: giving thanks, or as the Greeks would say, making ‘Eucharist’.
On Thanksgiving, we gather as family to Thank God for the Harvest. Psalm 67 says it quite well: “The earth has yielded its fruit, for God, our God, blesses us….” We receive the Good gifts of Creation and offer Him Thanks for the increase of our labor. This theme is reflected during our worship service in our Offertory. Together we say, “All things come of Thee O Lord, and of Thine own have we given Thee.” The hymn says it this way: We give Thee but Thine own, whatever the gift may be…” But we bring our Labor to God as well, and this is seen visually as we bring the bread and the wine forward along with our gifts of money.
God gives us the gift of wheat and grapes, and we add our labor and they become bread and wine. When these gifts are brought forward we see the visible representation of our vocation as a nation of priests. That is to say, a priest takes the gifts and offers them to God with thanksgiving, just like Jesus did when he took bread and gave thanks…
This priestly action is seen as we offer our gifts to God in Thanks. As the Priest prays the Eucharistic prayer, the great AMEN at the end of the prayer signals that All the people are in one accord and that we are all praying together. The Priest says the words but we all work together in Giving Thanks.
Now this is a picture of Life. This is what Life is all about. When we come together to Worship God and give Thanks, we are doing what we were created to do. Worship (especially the Eucharist) is not something we just do on Sunday, it IS our life. We were created for Communion with God. And so as we bring our gifts to God, our thought should be that we bring Him all we have and all we are. This sacrifice of ourselves – the offering of all that we are – is symbolized by the offering of a tenth of our income to God. The offering is meant to be a TOTAL offering, and we show our devotion to God as we bring the Tithe – which Scripture insists belongs to the Lord.
So when you sit down to write your check for the offering , you must always keep in mind that the first 10 percent does not belong to you. It belongs to God. You may say, “Well, my finances are tight right now, the economy is in the tank, and God knows I can’t afford to Tithe…” But keep in mind that Everything you have comes from God and belongs to Him, especially the tithe. We give him but His own…
And as it pertains to Worship itself, the Lord’s Day belongs to the Lord. He bought it by virtue of the Resurrection. Our “bounden duty” is to Worship Him on His day. If we say that we are too tired or have too many other things going on, we are really saying to God that we don’t really belong to Him, we own ourselves and worship is an optional weekend activity that we fit in if we’re not too busy.
But God gave the best He had, His own Son Jesus, in order to redeem us as his people. Christ emptied himself of His divine prerogatives to buy a People for God the Father. Indeed, we can say that Christ was slain before the foundation of the world in order for God to have a people for Himself.
God had us in mind from the beginning, and then He created the universe so that he could actualize the Church. The created world and everything in it are meant to be a vehicle for us to have communion with Him. When we Commune with God on Sunday, we are doing what we were made to do!
The act of leaving our homes and coming to this chapel is a Proclamation to the World System - a political act of defiance. It says, “This world system is not all there is. Our primary allegiance is to God and all of our Lives and all our Labor is meant to support us in our relationship with God. When we Give Thanks, we are saying to the world system, “You don’t own me, God does.” I am a pilgrim on my way to my resurrection home in Christ. I am fulfilling my purpose as a Human being when I come to Worship God and offer Him back my Life and Labor as a Thank Offering.
Now when we sit down as family at our Thanksgiving meal, we renew our family bonds and we ‘become what we are already’ – Family. Sometimes we also invite others to join us at the table – especially the lonely person and the stranger in our midst. We extend an invitation to that person to come and be a part of our family – at least for a day. The invitation is to come and join us at the table, to feed on food that will sustain and encourage them, to forge ties of friendship and family and then to be sent out with full hearts – and tummies.
This is the pattern of our worship as well. We as the Church come to the Communion Table every Sunday. It’s a Thanksgiving meal - a family reunion in which we are fed with the Body and Blood of our dear Savior. In eating this meal we become what we are – the Church, the Body of Christ, held together by the power of the Holy Spirit. We fulfill our destiny by becoming the total Christ – the Head joined together with His body by the Spirit, to fulfill our destiny – Communion with god.
At the Thanksgiving Table, God feeds us, nourishing and strengthening us for our task in the world – to bless the World through our Giving, by being the body of Christ to the world – the Presence of Christ in the world.
The task of embodying Christ means that we also seek to minister to Christ in every person we meet. Our task is not to be a Social Service agency, but to minister to Christ in the poor person, the sick person, the widow, the orphan and the prisoner. It is required of us to do this - to take the Blessing we are given at the Table into our World and minister to Christ.
So Thanksgiving should be a pattern for our whole life, not just something we do one day a year. Thanksgiving is what we do on Sunday, but is that which sustains our very lives.
People can ignore God, they can worship their Stuff and keep all they have for their own pleasure, but they will miss the very reason they exist! Folks, don’t let this happen to you! Be truly alive. Be what you were meant to be. Receive all that you have with gratefulness. Offer it back to God with Thanksgiving. Be strengthened for the journey and be sent out in power to be the Presence of Christ in the world. Don’t just celebrate Thanksgiving Day, Live Thanksgiving! AMEN.
Coming up this week on Thursday is Thanksgiving Day – just in case you might not have heard… We’re very happy and excited to have our daughter Leah and her husband Scott, along with Lewis and Benjamin and Abigail with us for the whole week. We get to be face-to-face grandparents for 7 days and then we send ‘em right back to Texas. It’s just great! …well that didn’t come out just right…but you know what I mean. It’s wonderful to be able to gather as a family to celebrate the Holiday.
Today, I would like to talk about Thanksgiving as our Reason for Being, and then tie this in with our Scripture readings for the day.
So, I’d like to start off by saying that I think Thanksgiving is the single most instructive national Holiday when it comes to understanding ourselves as Christians. Thanksgiving is not just a day, but our Life. It represents what we as Christians should be doing day by day, that is: giving thanks, or as the Greeks would say, making ‘Eucharist’.
On Thanksgiving, we gather as family to Thank God for the Harvest. Psalm 67 says it quite well: “The earth has yielded its fruit, for God, our God, blesses us….” We receive the Good gifts of Creation and offer Him Thanks for the increase of our labor. This theme is reflected during our worship service in our Offertory. Together we say, “All things come of Thee O Lord, and of Thine own have we given Thee.” The hymn says it this way: We give Thee but Thine own, whatever the gift may be…” But we bring our Labor to God as well, and this is seen visually as we bring the bread and the wine forward along with our gifts of money.
God gives us the gift of wheat and grapes, and we add our labor and they become bread and wine. When these gifts are brought forward we see the visible representation of our vocation as a nation of priests. That is to say, a priest takes the gifts and offers them to God with thanksgiving, just like Jesus did when he took bread and gave thanks…
This priestly action is seen as we offer our gifts to God in Thanks. As the Priest prays the Eucharistic prayer, the great AMEN at the end of the prayer signals that All the people are in one accord and that we are all praying together. The Priest says the words but we all work together in Giving Thanks.
Now this is a picture of Life. This is what Life is all about. When we come together to Worship God and give Thanks, we are doing what we were created to do. Worship (especially the Eucharist) is not something we just do on Sunday, it IS our life. We were created for Communion with God. And so as we bring our gifts to God, our thought should be that we bring Him all we have and all we are. This sacrifice of ourselves – the offering of all that we are – is symbolized by the offering of a tenth of our income to God. The offering is meant to be a TOTAL offering, and we show our devotion to God as we bring the Tithe – which Scripture insists belongs to the Lord.
So when you sit down to write your check for the offering , you must always keep in mind that the first 10 percent does not belong to you. It belongs to God. You may say, “Well, my finances are tight right now, the economy is in the tank, and God knows I can’t afford to Tithe…” But keep in mind that Everything you have comes from God and belongs to Him, especially the tithe. We give him but His own…
And as it pertains to Worship itself, the Lord’s Day belongs to the Lord. He bought it by virtue of the Resurrection. Our “bounden duty” is to Worship Him on His day. If we say that we are too tired or have too many other things going on, we are really saying to God that we don’t really belong to Him, we own ourselves and worship is an optional weekend activity that we fit in if we’re not too busy.
But God gave the best He had, His own Son Jesus, in order to redeem us as his people. Christ emptied himself of His divine prerogatives to buy a People for God the Father. Indeed, we can say that Christ was slain before the foundation of the world in order for God to have a people for Himself.
God had us in mind from the beginning, and then He created the universe so that he could actualize the Church. The created world and everything in it are meant to be a vehicle for us to have communion with Him. When we Commune with God on Sunday, we are doing what we were made to do!
The act of leaving our homes and coming to this chapel is a Proclamation to the World System - a political act of defiance. It says, “This world system is not all there is. Our primary allegiance is to God and all of our Lives and all our Labor is meant to support us in our relationship with God. When we Give Thanks, we are saying to the world system, “You don’t own me, God does.” I am a pilgrim on my way to my resurrection home in Christ. I am fulfilling my purpose as a Human being when I come to Worship God and offer Him back my Life and Labor as a Thank Offering.
Now when we sit down as family at our Thanksgiving meal, we renew our family bonds and we ‘become what we are already’ – Family. Sometimes we also invite others to join us at the table – especially the lonely person and the stranger in our midst. We extend an invitation to that person to come and be a part of our family – at least for a day. The invitation is to come and join us at the table, to feed on food that will sustain and encourage them, to forge ties of friendship and family and then to be sent out with full hearts – and tummies.
This is the pattern of our worship as well. We as the Church come to the Communion Table every Sunday. It’s a Thanksgiving meal - a family reunion in which we are fed with the Body and Blood of our dear Savior. In eating this meal we become what we are – the Church, the Body of Christ, held together by the power of the Holy Spirit. We fulfill our destiny by becoming the total Christ – the Head joined together with His body by the Spirit, to fulfill our destiny – Communion with god.
At the Thanksgiving Table, God feeds us, nourishing and strengthening us for our task in the world – to bless the World through our Giving, by being the body of Christ to the world – the Presence of Christ in the world.
The task of embodying Christ means that we also seek to minister to Christ in every person we meet. Our task is not to be a Social Service agency, but to minister to Christ in the poor person, the sick person, the widow, the orphan and the prisoner. It is required of us to do this - to take the Blessing we are given at the Table into our World and minister to Christ.
So Thanksgiving should be a pattern for our whole life, not just something we do one day a year. Thanksgiving is what we do on Sunday, but is that which sustains our very lives.
People can ignore God, they can worship their Stuff and keep all they have for their own pleasure, but they will miss the very reason they exist! Folks, don’t let this happen to you! Be truly alive. Be what you were meant to be. Receive all that you have with gratefulness. Offer it back to God with Thanksgiving. Be strengthened for the journey and be sent out in power to be the Presence of Christ in the world. Don’t just celebrate Thanksgiving Day, Live Thanksgiving! AMEN.
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Be Ready
A sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on November 9, 2008 at the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center, Huntington, WV, based on Matthew 25:1-13.
Ten Virgins
25:1 “Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps [1] and went to meet the bridegroom. [2] 2 Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. 3 For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, 4 but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. 5 As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. 6 But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ 7 Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. 8 And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ 9 But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.’ 10 And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. 11 Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ 12 But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ 13 Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.
As most of you know, we’re thinking about a wedding at our house. Our daughter Leslie will be getting married in July of next year and we’ve been talking about all the preparations and choices that a couple makes – where to have the wedding, what to serve at the reception, paper or plastic plates….
In our text today, Jesus tells the story of ten virgins who are part of a wedding. In Jesus’ day, a Jewish wedding had two parts: first the bridegroom went to the bride’s home to obtain the bride and to have the religious ceremony, and then the whole party would go to the groom’s house for the wedding feast. The ten virgins in the story may have been charged with going ahead to the groom’s home and lighting the way for the party as they approached or it may simply have been that like everyone else in a middle-eastern town, they had to have lamps to light their way in very dark streets.
At any rate this is a parable.
And a parable, by definition is a story with one main point. So we have to be a little careful about attributing too much meaning to each of the details of the story. In general, we can say that the main point is “Be Ready”. Beyond this, the challenge is to interpret the meaning of the details.
The most precise meaning of this story probably applies to the Jewish people in the Tribulation. After all, Jesus was a Jew, talking to a Jewish audience about a Jewish wedding. The Ten Virgins were waiting on the “bridegroom and his bride” so this is not really a story about the Christian Church, the bride of Christ, waiting for her bridegroom, the Christ.
Rather, our attention is drawn to the young women, who likely symbolize Jews who believe in Christ during the Tribulation and who wait for Christ to return from Heaven to earth, with his bride, the Church, after the Tribulation. In the so-called, Pre-Millennial, Pre-tribulation rapture understanding, the Church is taken out of the world before the Tribulation and stays with Jesus in heaven before returning with him at his Second Coming.
But again, the main theme of this parable is to ‘Be Ready”, “Be Watchful”. Jesus draws a contrast between the five foolish women, who “took no oil with them, and the ten wise women, who took “flasks of oil with their lamps” to carry them through their wait.
In both the Old Testament and the New, oil is symbolic of the Holy Spirit. The most common symbolic use of oil in the Old Testament was to anoint Kings, so that they might have the power of God, the Holy Spirit, to guide them in their leadership. The Holy Spirit came upon people individually and for specific purposes, such as to prophecy or to know how to build the Temple. And it would lift off the individual if the job were done, or the person was unfaithful – such as King Saul, who lost God’s Spirit when he disobeyed a specific command to destroy an entire town and didn’t do so.
In the New Testament, we understand from Romans 8:9, that Oil also represents regeneration and infilling with the Holy Spirit: “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.” The Spirit of God regenerates a person so that he or she may believe, then “infills’ them. The Spirit does not leave believers, but we can be more or less full of the Spirit, more or less obedient, more or less guided by the Spirit.
Some scholars cite Zechariah 12:10 as a verse that pertains to the regeneration of Israel in preparation for the return of Christ:
10 “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.”
The spirit of grace, is the Holy Spirit, who brings about conviction of sin, and grace to repent. It is represented in our parable by the Oil in the lamps. The basic message is that one cannot make it through the dark times without the Holy Spirit to light the way. Jesus faults the foolish Virgins for not ensuring that they had enough oil - Holy Spirit - to see them through until the return of the Bridal party.
An odd detail of this story is that after the foolish gals return from buying more oil, they are not allowed access into the wedding feast. This is a signal that there is something strange going on.
“If this were an actual wedding party”… the host would simply welcome them in with some pleasantry such as …”We missed you, where were you? Come on in…”
But here the other virgins return to the party saying, “‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ 12 But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’” This is reminiscent of the Lords’ teaching that blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is unpardonable. If you don’t believe in Jesus, you don’t get the infilling of the Holy Spirit. If you don’t have the ‘oil’ of the Holy Spirit, you don’t get admitted to the wedding feast – that is Heaven.”
So Jesus’ message to the Jewish people of his time was to accept the Messiah - Himself - and to be filled with the Holy Spirit so that they could be empowered to wait for his return during the dark times. Again, the basic message is “Be Ready”.
Now having said that the message is primarily directed to the Jewish people, we also know that Gospels were written by Jewish Christians, for a Christian audience, and that all the stories of the Gospels have a specific message for us. I think that message has something to do with ‘trimming our lamps”
Looking at this parable from a Christian standpoint, we are like the Virgins, waiting in the darkness for the return of the Bridegroom.
While it’s true that we live in the ‘8th Day of Creation, the Day of Christ’s resurrection, and “… we are God's children now, [yet]… what we will be has not yet appeared ;
… when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. (I John 3:2).
That is, when he appears… Until then, we wait. And while we are waiting, we would do well to practice what the believers did after the day of Pentecost:
“…[they] were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayers…the believers were selling their possessions and sharing with one another, taking meals together in each others’ homes, worshipping together in unity at the temple, and rejoicing as the Lord was adding to their number day by day, those who were being saved…” (Acts 2:42-47).
In other words, they were practicing a disciplined corporate and individual spiritual life in four basic areas: Worship, Community, Formation and Mission. For convenience sake, we have dubbed these The Four Practices for 8th Day Life.
The 4 Practices are based on answering yes to four foundational questions about the Christian Faith:
1. Do I trust in God’s grace revealed in Jesus Christ?
2. Do I believe the tenets of the Apostle’s Creed?
3. Have I been baptized in water in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit?
4. Do I seek to pick up the cross and follow Christ daily?
All who answer yes are called to be disciples of Jesus Christ. Throughout the history of the church, believers have followed Christ as disciples by developing a Spiritual Plan, or “Rule of Life” that incorporates spiritual disciplines from these four practice areas.
The purpose of these practices is to allow ourselves to be formed into the image of Christ and to do what He himself did, and even greater works…John. 14:12: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.”
But again, if we come back to our parable and the admonishment to ‘Be Ready’, the first thing to do is to Believe in the Lordship of Jesus Christ and to follow Him, allowing God to direct and control us by having our lamps filled with the oil of the Holy Spirit.
The next thing to do is to ‘work the plan’ and do it daily until He returns. Participate actively in weekly public worship. Spend time with God daily in prayer, Bible reading and Study, Participate in our 8th Day Life Groups. Take on a discipline of spiritual formation such meeting with an Anam Cara, or spiritual friend, to help you develop your faith. Get involved in an outreach, such as Mission Tri-State and plan to participate in the Divine Experiment coming up January 11-Feb 1, in which we join together with believers from other churches to observe a ‘Daniel Fast, and pray for a Transformational Revival. We’ll have more on this later…
These are examples of how you demonstrate that you are a ‘wise virgin’, a faithful follower of Jesus Christ, one who does not let the lamp of faith go out. Jesus wondered whether or not He would find Faith on the earth when he came back (Luke 18:8). I urge you to be found among the wise and the faithful who are prepared with a full measure of God’s spirit to carry you through the tough times.
If you haven’t done it already, get a copy of the 4 Practices for 8th Day Life, work through it and develop your own spiritual plan.
Father Mark and I are both available if you would like help with this.
Following the pattern of the early church in which instruction, or Catechesis was given to ‘Catechumens’ during Lent, we will be focusing on these plans during our Lenten observance next year, and we will culminate our instruction with a voluntary “Liturgy of Public Commitment” on Easter Sunday, similar to the ancient practice of baptizing new converts on Resurrection Day. In this way, we hope to bring ourselves in line with the historic traditions of the church universal and to make known to all that we have our lamps trimmed and are prepared for the return of the Lord Jesus.
AMEN.
Ten Virgins
25:1 “Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps [1] and went to meet the bridegroom. [2] 2 Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. 3 For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, 4 but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. 5 As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. 6 But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ 7 Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. 8 And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ 9 But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.’ 10 And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. 11 Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ 12 But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ 13 Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.
As most of you know, we’re thinking about a wedding at our house. Our daughter Leslie will be getting married in July of next year and we’ve been talking about all the preparations and choices that a couple makes – where to have the wedding, what to serve at the reception, paper or plastic plates….
In our text today, Jesus tells the story of ten virgins who are part of a wedding. In Jesus’ day, a Jewish wedding had two parts: first the bridegroom went to the bride’s home to obtain the bride and to have the religious ceremony, and then the whole party would go to the groom’s house for the wedding feast. The ten virgins in the story may have been charged with going ahead to the groom’s home and lighting the way for the party as they approached or it may simply have been that like everyone else in a middle-eastern town, they had to have lamps to light their way in very dark streets.
At any rate this is a parable.
And a parable, by definition is a story with one main point. So we have to be a little careful about attributing too much meaning to each of the details of the story. In general, we can say that the main point is “Be Ready”. Beyond this, the challenge is to interpret the meaning of the details.
The most precise meaning of this story probably applies to the Jewish people in the Tribulation. After all, Jesus was a Jew, talking to a Jewish audience about a Jewish wedding. The Ten Virgins were waiting on the “bridegroom and his bride” so this is not really a story about the Christian Church, the bride of Christ, waiting for her bridegroom, the Christ.
Rather, our attention is drawn to the young women, who likely symbolize Jews who believe in Christ during the Tribulation and who wait for Christ to return from Heaven to earth, with his bride, the Church, after the Tribulation. In the so-called, Pre-Millennial, Pre-tribulation rapture understanding, the Church is taken out of the world before the Tribulation and stays with Jesus in heaven before returning with him at his Second Coming.
But again, the main theme of this parable is to ‘Be Ready”, “Be Watchful”. Jesus draws a contrast between the five foolish women, who “took no oil with them, and the ten wise women, who took “flasks of oil with their lamps” to carry them through their wait.
In both the Old Testament and the New, oil is symbolic of the Holy Spirit. The most common symbolic use of oil in the Old Testament was to anoint Kings, so that they might have the power of God, the Holy Spirit, to guide them in their leadership. The Holy Spirit came upon people individually and for specific purposes, such as to prophecy or to know how to build the Temple. And it would lift off the individual if the job were done, or the person was unfaithful – such as King Saul, who lost God’s Spirit when he disobeyed a specific command to destroy an entire town and didn’t do so.
In the New Testament, we understand from Romans 8:9, that Oil also represents regeneration and infilling with the Holy Spirit: “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.” The Spirit of God regenerates a person so that he or she may believe, then “infills’ them. The Spirit does not leave believers, but we can be more or less full of the Spirit, more or less obedient, more or less guided by the Spirit.
Some scholars cite Zechariah 12:10 as a verse that pertains to the regeneration of Israel in preparation for the return of Christ:
10 “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.”
The spirit of grace, is the Holy Spirit, who brings about conviction of sin, and grace to repent. It is represented in our parable by the Oil in the lamps. The basic message is that one cannot make it through the dark times without the Holy Spirit to light the way. Jesus faults the foolish Virgins for not ensuring that they had enough oil - Holy Spirit - to see them through until the return of the Bridal party.
An odd detail of this story is that after the foolish gals return from buying more oil, they are not allowed access into the wedding feast. This is a signal that there is something strange going on.
“If this were an actual wedding party”… the host would simply welcome them in with some pleasantry such as …”We missed you, where were you? Come on in…”
But here the other virgins return to the party saying, “‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ 12 But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’” This is reminiscent of the Lords’ teaching that blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is unpardonable. If you don’t believe in Jesus, you don’t get the infilling of the Holy Spirit. If you don’t have the ‘oil’ of the Holy Spirit, you don’t get admitted to the wedding feast – that is Heaven.”
So Jesus’ message to the Jewish people of his time was to accept the Messiah - Himself - and to be filled with the Holy Spirit so that they could be empowered to wait for his return during the dark times. Again, the basic message is “Be Ready”.
Now having said that the message is primarily directed to the Jewish people, we also know that Gospels were written by Jewish Christians, for a Christian audience, and that all the stories of the Gospels have a specific message for us. I think that message has something to do with ‘trimming our lamps”
Looking at this parable from a Christian standpoint, we are like the Virgins, waiting in the darkness for the return of the Bridegroom.
While it’s true that we live in the ‘8th Day of Creation, the Day of Christ’s resurrection, and “… we are God's children now, [yet]… what we will be has not yet appeared ;
… when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. (I John 3:2).
That is, when he appears… Until then, we wait. And while we are waiting, we would do well to practice what the believers did after the day of Pentecost:
“…[they] were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayers…the believers were selling their possessions and sharing with one another, taking meals together in each others’ homes, worshipping together in unity at the temple, and rejoicing as the Lord was adding to their number day by day, those who were being saved…” (Acts 2:42-47).
In other words, they were practicing a disciplined corporate and individual spiritual life in four basic areas: Worship, Community, Formation and Mission. For convenience sake, we have dubbed these The Four Practices for 8th Day Life.
The 4 Practices are based on answering yes to four foundational questions about the Christian Faith:
1. Do I trust in God’s grace revealed in Jesus Christ?
2. Do I believe the tenets of the Apostle’s Creed?
3. Have I been baptized in water in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit?
4. Do I seek to pick up the cross and follow Christ daily?
All who answer yes are called to be disciples of Jesus Christ. Throughout the history of the church, believers have followed Christ as disciples by developing a Spiritual Plan, or “Rule of Life” that incorporates spiritual disciplines from these four practice areas.
The purpose of these practices is to allow ourselves to be formed into the image of Christ and to do what He himself did, and even greater works…John. 14:12: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.”
But again, if we come back to our parable and the admonishment to ‘Be Ready’, the first thing to do is to Believe in the Lordship of Jesus Christ and to follow Him, allowing God to direct and control us by having our lamps filled with the oil of the Holy Spirit.
The next thing to do is to ‘work the plan’ and do it daily until He returns. Participate actively in weekly public worship. Spend time with God daily in prayer, Bible reading and Study, Participate in our 8th Day Life Groups. Take on a discipline of spiritual formation such meeting with an Anam Cara, or spiritual friend, to help you develop your faith. Get involved in an outreach, such as Mission Tri-State and plan to participate in the Divine Experiment coming up January 11-Feb 1, in which we join together with believers from other churches to observe a ‘Daniel Fast, and pray for a Transformational Revival. We’ll have more on this later…
These are examples of how you demonstrate that you are a ‘wise virgin’, a faithful follower of Jesus Christ, one who does not let the lamp of faith go out. Jesus wondered whether or not He would find Faith on the earth when he came back (Luke 18:8). I urge you to be found among the wise and the faithful who are prepared with a full measure of God’s spirit to carry you through the tough times.
If you haven’t done it already, get a copy of the 4 Practices for 8th Day Life, work through it and develop your own spiritual plan.
Father Mark and I are both available if you would like help with this.
Following the pattern of the early church in which instruction, or Catechesis was given to ‘Catechumens’ during Lent, we will be focusing on these plans during our Lenten observance next year, and we will culminate our instruction with a voluntary “Liturgy of Public Commitment” on Easter Sunday, similar to the ancient practice of baptizing new converts on Resurrection Day. In this way, we hope to bring ourselves in line with the historic traditions of the church universal and to make known to all that we have our lamps trimmed and are prepared for the return of the Lord Jesus.
AMEN.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Humility
A Sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on November 2, 2008, at the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center in Huntington, WV, based on Matthew 23:1-12.
How many people attended the largest funeral you have ever attended?
1,000?
20,000?
100,000
What do you think your family might say if, after you had received your last rights lying on your death bed, thousands of people trooped through your hospital room touching your hands and feet with religious articles and asking you to remember them when you get to heaven?
Or how about if after you died they laid your body out in the church and a million people came to see it. Sick people were getting healed, sinners getting saved and there were so many people milling around that not even an archbishop could get close to the coffin?
What would it take to receive the following accolade during your funeral homily: “No prince of the Church or of the State could have a funeral such as this…” (Cardinal Villeneuve, speaking about Br. Andre. Pg. 135 in God’s Doorkeepers).
The person we are talking about, Br. Andre of Montreal, Canada, was neither a prince of the Church nor of the State, but a lowly doorkeeper at the College of Notre-Dame, someone who was so sickly, and had such modest gifts that when he tried to enter the Congregation of Holy Cross, which operated the college, all the brothers could think to do with him was to make him a doorkeeper and messenger boy – someone to go find the brothers or the students when they had visitors, someone to sort the mail, someone to run errands – and someone to pray.
And pray he did! This man of humble origins and gifts was a ‘prayin’ fool’. He would get up at 4:45 am to pray and stay up half the night praying after his chores were done late at night. He would become so engrossed in prayer, that he lost total awareness of his surroundings and the students at the school would make fun of him for being so oblivious.
His piety took the form of devotion to St. Joseph and he was largely responsible for the construction of a multi-million dollar Basilica dedicated to St. Joseph – yet this Br. Andre owned nothing. He lived in such simple surroundings that if he were around today someone would call Adult Protective Services on the school to get him better provisions.
And this same person of such humble circumstances became known for his piety and began to receive an amazing number of visitors, who would tell him their darkest secrets and ask him to pray for their sicknesses. Hundreds of them did in fact recover – often at a rate of more than one miraculous healing per day – to such an extent that crutches littered the walls and corridors of the basilica where Br. Andre prayed.
If he were alive today, somebody would surely try to hook him up with a television show, a multi-book publishing contract, a line of best-selling videos entitled, “Your Most Humble Self Now”, T-Shirts emblazoned with his picture and jeans pre-worn at the knees in imitation of the great man of prayer.
I hope, in this little bit of foolishness, that you can see what we’re up against when we compare ourselves to someone who is truly humble. I don’t know about you but when I think about God’s standard of Greatness, I think about someone like Br. Andre – or his contemporaries, the Italian Franciscan, Padre Pio of stigmata fame, or Solanus Casey, another doorkeeper/ healer similar to Br. Andre, whose academic gifts for theological study were so slight that the Roman Catholic church would not even allow him to preach full sermons or pronounce absolutions after hearing a confession. And of course, there is Mother Teresa, of blessed memory, who for many of us seemed to embody and personify Christ in her humility and faith.
These are examples of people that God says are truly Great. In God’s kingdom the truly Great are never loved for their great knowledge , fund-raising or administrative skills. No, they are known for the depth of their devotion to Christ and their absolute commitment to serving their fellow men. Jesus says it in our Gospel text today, “The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”
St. Benedict’s Ladder of Humility.
St. Benedict used the example of Jacob’s Ladder to describe this phenomenon. …”if we wish to reach the highest peak of humility,” says Benedict, “we must, by our good deeds, set up a ladder like Jacob’s, upon which he saw angels climbing up and down. Without doubt, we should understand that climbing as showing us that we go up by humbling ourselves and down by praising ourselves.” RB. Chapter 7. “The Ladder represents our life in the temporal wolrd; the Lord has erected if for those of us possessing humility.” And the practice of humility demands discipline: “We may think of the sides of the ladder as our body and soul, the rungs as the steps of humility and discipline we must climb in our religious vocation.”
Benedict goes on to create the first Twelve-Step program. See what you think:
1) Obey all the commandments – never ignoring them, and fearing God in your heart.
2) Forget your own self-will; Do not please yourself, but follow the Lord’s example: “I came not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me”: (Jn. 6:38).
3) Love God and obediently submit to a superior in imitation of the Lord.
4) In obedience, patiently and quietly put up with everything inflicted on you.
5) Humbly confess and disclose to a superior (or Anam Cara) all the evil thoughts in your heart and evil acts you have carried out.
6) Accept all that is crude and harsh and consider yourself poor and worthless in it all.
7) Not only confess that you are inferior and a common wretch, but believe it deep in the depths of your heart.
8) Only do that which your superiors command.
9) Practice silence, only speaking when asked a question.
10) Restrain yourself from laughter and frivolity.
11) Speak gently, without jests, simply, seriously, tersely, rationally, and softly.
12) Show humility in your heart and your appearance and actions. Think of your sins, keep your head down, eyes on the ground and imagine you are on trial before God.
Benedict concludes this daunting list by saying, “When you have climbed all twelve steps, you will find that perfect love of God which casts out fear, by means of which everything you have observed anxiously before will now appear simple and natural. You will no longer act out of the fear of Hell, but for the love of Christ, out of good habits and with a pleasure derived of virtue. The Lord through the Holy Spirit will show this to you, cleansed of sin and vice.
I don’t know aobut you, but I’m not there. I’m nowhere near fulfilling this list. In fact, just the opposite. In the AMIA application questionnaire I recently completed, one of the questions was:
“Provide an honest evaluation of your life and character …:
I answered in part, “Before I became a Christian, my character could accurately be described in terms almost as stark as Romans chapter one; I was arrogant, boastful, self-centered, disobedient to parents and to all authority, self-willed, promiscuous, intemperate and ambitious, militant against God and disdainful of Christians.”
After becoming a Christian, God burned away my grosser sinfulness immediately, but you know what? Even after 30 years of submitting myself to God’s transforming process I still struggle with pride and self-centeredness – and there are times when I almost despair of ever overcoming these flaws. I’m very glad it is God who is at work in me, because if were only up to me, I would make very slight progress indeed.
Of course, Jesus is our great exemplar of humility. Consider the lyrics of this song, The Servant King by Graham Kendrick:
Verse 1
From heav'n You came helpless babe
Enter'd our world Your glory veil'd
Not to be served but to serve
And give Your life that we might live
Verse 2
There in the garden of tears
My heavy load He chose to bear
His heart with sorrow was torn
Yet not my will but Yours He said
Verse 3
Come see His hands and His feet
The scars that speak of sacrifice
Hands that flung stars into space
To cruel nails surrendered
Verse 4
So let us learn how to serve
And in our lives enthrone Him
Each other's needs to prefer
For it is Christ we're serving
Chorus:
This is our God the Servant King
He calls us now to follow Him
To bring our lives as a daily offering
Of worship to the Servant King
This is a picture of true Humility. Not to be served but to serve. Not to call upon legions of angels in the time of dire struggle, but take the sins of the world; submitting to the cross for our sake, surrendering the same hands to cruel nails that flung starts into space. This is what it means to be truly humble.
The chorus of this song gives us the right response to Jesus’ gift of himself to us: to follow him, to bring our lives and all that we have - not just the tithe - but all to God as a daily offering of worship.
This is our high calling; the calling to lowly humility that imitates the Master, our Savior Jesus Christ.
And here’s The Acid Test: Forgiving our Enemies
Bishop John Rucyahana lost many family members during the genocide in Rwanda. When he returned to the country after the genocide, he was asked to serve as the chairman of Prison Fellowship and was invited to preach at one of the prisons that house some 110, 000 genocide related inmates nationwide. As a Christian and an evangelist he knew that the perpetrators of the crimes were guilty of great sin before the Lord and that they needed to repent of their sins or perish in the flames of hell.
He was in the middle of proclaiming this message at one of the prisons and the inmates started to cry aloud under conviction. At that moment he had a terrible crisis of faith himself. When he realized that the Holy Spirit was bringing people to faith in Christ, he was stopped cold in his tracks and could not bring himself to go on with the message.
Like Jonah, he knew that if they repented, the Lord would save them. He relates how he literally ran out of the meeting room where he was preaching, out of the prison and up onto the hill overlooking the prison.
“Tears were streaming down my face,” he says. “Pain was gripping my heart. I couldn’t believe the depth of anger I felt against them. It shocked me. It overwhelmed me.”
“They killed my niece, Madu,… and her mother, and her brother also. What was I doing preaching to their killers?”
“I tell you the pain was too great for me. I fell on my knees and wept. I thought I wanted those men to know Jesus, but it’s not true. I wanted them to pay. I opposed them, and I opposed the Lord. Whey was He reaching out to save those men? How could He forgive them for what they did to me and my family?”
“I could not stop the crying. I didn’t understand it. But I knew this truth: The confusion and pain was coming from within me. Bitterness had taken root. The desire for revenge was choking me. If anybody needed to run to Jesus and repent, it was me. I needed Jesus. I needed Him to forgive me. I was no different than the prisoners. I was locked behind bars of resentment and unforgiveness and I knew it.”
He goes on to tell how the Lord gave him the grace to forgive the killers of his family, realizing that the Lord forgave his enemies while he was still on the cross, while he was still in pain.
After this excruciating wrestling match with himself and with the Lord, John forgave his enemies and went back into the prison to finish preaching the message of salvation. Although it was terribly difficult and he still struggles with bitterness, yet his face lights up when he says, ‘You can’t believe it! The Lord is performing miracles in the prisons. We are seeing men and women cry out to the Lord like never before. They are coming to saving faith in Jesus Christ and then they’re becoming evangelists! They are winning fellow prisoners to Jesus. We are seeing repentance catch fire from prison to prison. It is true. It is miraculous. It is the glory of God. The Lord Jesus Christ is healing Rwanda from inside the prisons of the killers! Who would ever imagine that?” (Quoted in Never Silent by Thaddeus Barnum)
Friends, this is the picture of Humility par excellence – being able to forgive those who sinned against you – while you are still in pain!
Last week, when we were at the Anglican Awakening conference in Akron it became clear again to me that there is still much pain among us over the divisions that have torn us from our long time church homes, from our family members and our friends. We are angry at what has been done to us. I am angry at the heresy that has been tolerated and promulgated. But I also know that we have a huge challenge still remaining – to forgive those who have hurt us and despitefully used us.
You may be sitting there this morning thinking that you’re OK, that you don’t have that issue bothering you – and you may be right. But one thing I’m sure of is that someone somewhere has hurt you and that hurt still plagues you at some level.
Right now, I’d like to challenge us to humble ourselves like John Rucyhana did, to bring our hurts, bitterness and resentments before the Lord and let Him heal us. There are thousands of people in our Tri-State region that need God, just as the murders of Rwanda do, but we can’t really effectively take the gospel out to them unless we are well ourselves.
It’s also very important spiritually for us to be as well as we can be before we go to stand before God. Make it your goal to be so well – so known for your humility and Christlikeness, that when you die people will flock to your funeral and not even be able to get close to the casket for the crush of the crowd.
In order to give God some time to heal us, I’m going to ask you to take some moments and just be quiet now, asking the Lord to bring to mind any lingering hurt, pain or bitterness that you may be holding on to. I urge you to humble yourself and let it go right now. Let the Lord heal you so that you may be free…AMEN.
How many people attended the largest funeral you have ever attended?
1,000?
20,000?
100,000
What do you think your family might say if, after you had received your last rights lying on your death bed, thousands of people trooped through your hospital room touching your hands and feet with religious articles and asking you to remember them when you get to heaven?
Or how about if after you died they laid your body out in the church and a million people came to see it. Sick people were getting healed, sinners getting saved and there were so many people milling around that not even an archbishop could get close to the coffin?
What would it take to receive the following accolade during your funeral homily: “No prince of the Church or of the State could have a funeral such as this…” (Cardinal Villeneuve, speaking about Br. Andre. Pg. 135 in God’s Doorkeepers).
The person we are talking about, Br. Andre of Montreal, Canada, was neither a prince of the Church nor of the State, but a lowly doorkeeper at the College of Notre-Dame, someone who was so sickly, and had such modest gifts that when he tried to enter the Congregation of Holy Cross, which operated the college, all the brothers could think to do with him was to make him a doorkeeper and messenger boy – someone to go find the brothers or the students when they had visitors, someone to sort the mail, someone to run errands – and someone to pray.
And pray he did! This man of humble origins and gifts was a ‘prayin’ fool’. He would get up at 4:45 am to pray and stay up half the night praying after his chores were done late at night. He would become so engrossed in prayer, that he lost total awareness of his surroundings and the students at the school would make fun of him for being so oblivious.
His piety took the form of devotion to St. Joseph and he was largely responsible for the construction of a multi-million dollar Basilica dedicated to St. Joseph – yet this Br. Andre owned nothing. He lived in such simple surroundings that if he were around today someone would call Adult Protective Services on the school to get him better provisions.
And this same person of such humble circumstances became known for his piety and began to receive an amazing number of visitors, who would tell him their darkest secrets and ask him to pray for their sicknesses. Hundreds of them did in fact recover – often at a rate of more than one miraculous healing per day – to such an extent that crutches littered the walls and corridors of the basilica where Br. Andre prayed.
If he were alive today, somebody would surely try to hook him up with a television show, a multi-book publishing contract, a line of best-selling videos entitled, “Your Most Humble Self Now”, T-Shirts emblazoned with his picture and jeans pre-worn at the knees in imitation of the great man of prayer.
I hope, in this little bit of foolishness, that you can see what we’re up against when we compare ourselves to someone who is truly humble. I don’t know about you but when I think about God’s standard of Greatness, I think about someone like Br. Andre – or his contemporaries, the Italian Franciscan, Padre Pio of stigmata fame, or Solanus Casey, another doorkeeper/ healer similar to Br. Andre, whose academic gifts for theological study were so slight that the Roman Catholic church would not even allow him to preach full sermons or pronounce absolutions after hearing a confession. And of course, there is Mother Teresa, of blessed memory, who for many of us seemed to embody and personify Christ in her humility and faith.
These are examples of people that God says are truly Great. In God’s kingdom the truly Great are never loved for their great knowledge , fund-raising or administrative skills. No, they are known for the depth of their devotion to Christ and their absolute commitment to serving their fellow men. Jesus says it in our Gospel text today, “The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”
St. Benedict’s Ladder of Humility.
St. Benedict used the example of Jacob’s Ladder to describe this phenomenon. …”if we wish to reach the highest peak of humility,” says Benedict, “we must, by our good deeds, set up a ladder like Jacob’s, upon which he saw angels climbing up and down. Without doubt, we should understand that climbing as showing us that we go up by humbling ourselves and down by praising ourselves.” RB. Chapter 7. “The Ladder represents our life in the temporal wolrd; the Lord has erected if for those of us possessing humility.” And the practice of humility demands discipline: “We may think of the sides of the ladder as our body and soul, the rungs as the steps of humility and discipline we must climb in our religious vocation.”
Benedict goes on to create the first Twelve-Step program. See what you think:
1) Obey all the commandments – never ignoring them, and fearing God in your heart.
2) Forget your own self-will; Do not please yourself, but follow the Lord’s example: “I came not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me”: (Jn. 6:38).
3) Love God and obediently submit to a superior in imitation of the Lord.
4) In obedience, patiently and quietly put up with everything inflicted on you.
5) Humbly confess and disclose to a superior (or Anam Cara) all the evil thoughts in your heart and evil acts you have carried out.
6) Accept all that is crude and harsh and consider yourself poor and worthless in it all.
7) Not only confess that you are inferior and a common wretch, but believe it deep in the depths of your heart.
8) Only do that which your superiors command.
9) Practice silence, only speaking when asked a question.
10) Restrain yourself from laughter and frivolity.
11) Speak gently, without jests, simply, seriously, tersely, rationally, and softly.
12) Show humility in your heart and your appearance and actions. Think of your sins, keep your head down, eyes on the ground and imagine you are on trial before God.
Benedict concludes this daunting list by saying, “When you have climbed all twelve steps, you will find that perfect love of God which casts out fear, by means of which everything you have observed anxiously before will now appear simple and natural. You will no longer act out of the fear of Hell, but for the love of Christ, out of good habits and with a pleasure derived of virtue. The Lord through the Holy Spirit will show this to you, cleansed of sin and vice.
I don’t know aobut you, but I’m not there. I’m nowhere near fulfilling this list. In fact, just the opposite. In the AMIA application questionnaire I recently completed, one of the questions was:
“Provide an honest evaluation of your life and character …:
I answered in part, “Before I became a Christian, my character could accurately be described in terms almost as stark as Romans chapter one; I was arrogant, boastful, self-centered, disobedient to parents and to all authority, self-willed, promiscuous, intemperate and ambitious, militant against God and disdainful of Christians.”
After becoming a Christian, God burned away my grosser sinfulness immediately, but you know what? Even after 30 years of submitting myself to God’s transforming process I still struggle with pride and self-centeredness – and there are times when I almost despair of ever overcoming these flaws. I’m very glad it is God who is at work in me, because if were only up to me, I would make very slight progress indeed.
Of course, Jesus is our great exemplar of humility. Consider the lyrics of this song, The Servant King by Graham Kendrick:
Verse 1
From heav'n You came helpless babe
Enter'd our world Your glory veil'd
Not to be served but to serve
And give Your life that we might live
Verse 2
There in the garden of tears
My heavy load He chose to bear
His heart with sorrow was torn
Yet not my will but Yours He said
Verse 3
Come see His hands and His feet
The scars that speak of sacrifice
Hands that flung stars into space
To cruel nails surrendered
Verse 4
So let us learn how to serve
And in our lives enthrone Him
Each other's needs to prefer
For it is Christ we're serving
Chorus:
This is our God the Servant King
He calls us now to follow Him
To bring our lives as a daily offering
Of worship to the Servant King
This is a picture of true Humility. Not to be served but to serve. Not to call upon legions of angels in the time of dire struggle, but take the sins of the world; submitting to the cross for our sake, surrendering the same hands to cruel nails that flung starts into space. This is what it means to be truly humble.
The chorus of this song gives us the right response to Jesus’ gift of himself to us: to follow him, to bring our lives and all that we have - not just the tithe - but all to God as a daily offering of worship.
This is our high calling; the calling to lowly humility that imitates the Master, our Savior Jesus Christ.
And here’s The Acid Test: Forgiving our Enemies
Bishop John Rucyahana lost many family members during the genocide in Rwanda. When he returned to the country after the genocide, he was asked to serve as the chairman of Prison Fellowship and was invited to preach at one of the prisons that house some 110, 000 genocide related inmates nationwide. As a Christian and an evangelist he knew that the perpetrators of the crimes were guilty of great sin before the Lord and that they needed to repent of their sins or perish in the flames of hell.
He was in the middle of proclaiming this message at one of the prisons and the inmates started to cry aloud under conviction. At that moment he had a terrible crisis of faith himself. When he realized that the Holy Spirit was bringing people to faith in Christ, he was stopped cold in his tracks and could not bring himself to go on with the message.
Like Jonah, he knew that if they repented, the Lord would save them. He relates how he literally ran out of the meeting room where he was preaching, out of the prison and up onto the hill overlooking the prison.
“Tears were streaming down my face,” he says. “Pain was gripping my heart. I couldn’t believe the depth of anger I felt against them. It shocked me. It overwhelmed me.”
“They killed my niece, Madu,… and her mother, and her brother also. What was I doing preaching to their killers?”
“I tell you the pain was too great for me. I fell on my knees and wept. I thought I wanted those men to know Jesus, but it’s not true. I wanted them to pay. I opposed them, and I opposed the Lord. Whey was He reaching out to save those men? How could He forgive them for what they did to me and my family?”
“I could not stop the crying. I didn’t understand it. But I knew this truth: The confusion and pain was coming from within me. Bitterness had taken root. The desire for revenge was choking me. If anybody needed to run to Jesus and repent, it was me. I needed Jesus. I needed Him to forgive me. I was no different than the prisoners. I was locked behind bars of resentment and unforgiveness and I knew it.”
He goes on to tell how the Lord gave him the grace to forgive the killers of his family, realizing that the Lord forgave his enemies while he was still on the cross, while he was still in pain.
After this excruciating wrestling match with himself and with the Lord, John forgave his enemies and went back into the prison to finish preaching the message of salvation. Although it was terribly difficult and he still struggles with bitterness, yet his face lights up when he says, ‘You can’t believe it! The Lord is performing miracles in the prisons. We are seeing men and women cry out to the Lord like never before. They are coming to saving faith in Jesus Christ and then they’re becoming evangelists! They are winning fellow prisoners to Jesus. We are seeing repentance catch fire from prison to prison. It is true. It is miraculous. It is the glory of God. The Lord Jesus Christ is healing Rwanda from inside the prisons of the killers! Who would ever imagine that?” (Quoted in Never Silent by Thaddeus Barnum)
Friends, this is the picture of Humility par excellence – being able to forgive those who sinned against you – while you are still in pain!
Last week, when we were at the Anglican Awakening conference in Akron it became clear again to me that there is still much pain among us over the divisions that have torn us from our long time church homes, from our family members and our friends. We are angry at what has been done to us. I am angry at the heresy that has been tolerated and promulgated. But I also know that we have a huge challenge still remaining – to forgive those who have hurt us and despitefully used us.
You may be sitting there this morning thinking that you’re OK, that you don’t have that issue bothering you – and you may be right. But one thing I’m sure of is that someone somewhere has hurt you and that hurt still plagues you at some level.
Right now, I’d like to challenge us to humble ourselves like John Rucyhana did, to bring our hurts, bitterness and resentments before the Lord and let Him heal us. There are thousands of people in our Tri-State region that need God, just as the murders of Rwanda do, but we can’t really effectively take the gospel out to them unless we are well ourselves.
It’s also very important spiritually for us to be as well as we can be before we go to stand before God. Make it your goal to be so well – so known for your humility and Christlikeness, that when you die people will flock to your funeral and not even be able to get close to the casket for the crush of the crowd.
In order to give God some time to heal us, I’m going to ask you to take some moments and just be quiet now, asking the Lord to bring to mind any lingering hurt, pain or bitterness that you may be holding on to. I urge you to humble yourself and let it go right now. Let the Lord heal you so that you may be free…AMEN.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Community and Eighth Day LifeTransformation
A sermon given during the Profession Eucharist of the Company of Jesus, October 11, 2008 at the Davis-Cain Cabin, Lexington, VA. Third of a series of three talks.
Tonight we come to receive two new vocations into the Company of Jesus. We describe ourselves as a Third Order Franciscan and Benedictine Community. We come from many different places and from many different backgrounds. Because we are so spread out, we are mostly a ‘virtual’ community. Our emails and phone calls go a long way towards helping us know each other, but it’s not and can never be the same as living together in a cloister, or even in the same town or attending the same church. These profession retreats and services are a partial attempt to mitigate the distance that separates us, helping us to continue to forge relationships ‘electronically’ between our face to face meetings.
Our calling in the Company of Jesus is monastic – essentially alone, even if we are married and have families. Because there are not many of us in any one place, we have to walk out our calling mostly alone. That’s how it was when I first became a Benedictine. There wasn’t another CoJ member within 400 miles of me. But it didn’t matter because I knew what God had built into my spirit and what he was calling me to, regardless of what anyone else did.
But after a while, a funny thing began to happen. God brought Mark Goldman alongside me and we started walking out this life together. Mark and Brenda and Cindy and I began to meet for dinner, conversation and prayer on a monthly basis. We began to have a sense of Community together, and this was tremendously encouraging. Later, God also brought a Franciscan, Sr. Connie Mershon, and another Benedictine, Ryan Connor to walk with us – Ryan and his wife Shannon joined our monthly dinners and things were going swimmingly for us as a CoJ ‘Chapter” - until October 1, 2006 - when we started All Saints – and soon afterward bought Hope House - and that’s when our schedules began to get really complicated and our monthly meetings became quarterly, and if it keeps up, probably semi-annually! Our sense of community has taken a hit.
We live in a paradoxical world. Because of the Internet and phone service, I know some of you who live 400 miles away better than my next door neighbor. Because we live so close to each other in cities, we put distance between ourselves emotionally. We know intimate details about each other via Facebook, but not that our next door neighbor is having major personal problems. When it comes to our church life, it’s sometimes not a whole lot better. Unless we have a small group structure where we can come to know one another, it’s very possible to go to church with someone for years without ever really knowing them personally or spiritually. We have to work intentionally to build community.
One of the things that was so impressive about the very early Christians was that they were living a life of close community. They were seeking God through prayer and they were taking care of one another –Loving God and loving their neighbors.
Tonight, I believe that God is bringing together The Company of Jesus and All Saints Anglican Church into a new interaction a new expression of Christian Community – one that has a lot to do with our Mission of loving our neighbors as ourselves.
I’ve said before what a powerful impact the 8th Day Life Center had on me personally, and I’ve always wondered if God wouldn’t somehow bring that ministry back around in a new form. Back in the ‘Day’ Fr. David and I dreamed about having a religious order close by St. Luke’s Church to pray and to support the 8th Day ministry as an ‘apostlate’ (as the Roman Catholics would say).
Now, I believe God is doing something similar with Hope House as the Center.
Historically, the monastic pattern as been that a group of (voluntarily) poor monks go to a desert or waste place and set up a monastery. Through their continual prayer and work (ora et labora) the monks begin to produce agricultural surpluses, which they use to help feed the poor in their area. As a result, the whole region is built up and stabilized, allowing for civilization to flourish. Material blessings come to the people surrounding the monastic house as a result of the blessings overflowing from a worshipping community, and many are drawn to follow the Lord. In short, the community is transformed.
BUB
To a much smaller extent, we’ve seen this sort of pattern with Hope House. Every since November of 2006, we’ve been meeting on Friday afternoons for “None”. We pray for the families of the slain teenagers and then “prayerwalk’ around the block and pick up trash. We frequently meet and talk to our neighbors, sometimes we pray for them directly. We’ve begun to know our neighbors – most notably the new managers of a gas station convenience store on the corner, where another murder occurred several years ago. For several weeks, we’ve been picking trash there at the station and getting to know Abe – a Muslim, and Christo, an Orthodox Christian.
One of our All Saints ministries is what we call Bless Ur Biz – BUB – in which we go to businesses and pray a blessing over them. This past Saturday, Abe and Christo allowed us to come and bless their business. By God’s grace He gave us favor with them, and they welcomed us very warmly. It’s been very gratifying to see this kind of reception, and I believe we are bringing the Life of Christ to the world through this work. We are creating community with our neighbors through expressions of care, concern and divine blessing.
Another recent event took place that made a big impression on me. Thursday evening, September 25, about 30 people gathered at Hope House for a candlelight service to mark National Day of Remembrance for Murder Victims. Those gathered included members of All Saints, family members of the murdered teens, the Mayor, Police Chief and Treasurer of the City of Huntington – and several press people from TV and newspaper outlets.
That night, in the midst of a dark, unfinished construction site, I caught a vision for people gathering there at Hope House to pray the daily offices, seeking God in the darkness in order to bring the Light of Christ to the community. I could envision Company of Jesus members relocating to this struggling, ‘desert’ of Huntington, living in apartments close by Hope House, working in secular jobs, or even industries yet to be conceived through the Neighboring Initiative, praying the offices at Hope House – creating Christian community in order to bring blessing and transformation to our larger community.
What we’re talking about is like the concentric rings created by dropping a pebble into a pond. Hope House is a ministry taken on by a small community of believers, but it has touched both the community of suffering families, as well as the larger community of Huntington and the surrounding region. Our slogan for Hope House is: Turning Tragedy into Triumph. It seems to me that the Lord has indeed done that. Through media coverage, there is almost no one in the Tri-State region who doesn’t know what is happening at Hope House – and I believe it has been a great blessing to everyone – even in its smallness and unfinished state.
But there is an even bigger task to take on – praying for revival.
On September 21, in my Chapter Talk, I related how Cindy and I heard Rhonda Hughey speak at a local church in Huntington. David and Carol Ann were there as well. Rhonda is one of the leaders of the “International House of Prayer” in Kansas City. Its mission is to lift up 24/7 prayer and intercession, and indeed, hundreds of people have been doing this continual prayer for nine years now. Rhonda also is very involved in the “Transformation” movement which encourages people to pray earnestly for God to visit our communities and to dwell with us in a manifestly glorious way. Ms. Hughey had just returned from visiting Fiji, where hundreds of villages have experienced mind-boggling divine transformations.
In her talk, Hughey related a typical scenario, in which village leaders recognize that their lands and waters have become barren and that their communities are dying. Drug abuse, suicide, murder and ecological degradation all flourish and nothing seems to slow down the decay. However, when the people realize that they have turned from God and pursued their own wicked ways, and then repent as a community, God visits them, heals them spiritually and physically – even restoring their lands and healing their waters. Dead Coral reefs begin to grow overnight, polluted rivers are cleansed suddenly, and fish return immediately to places they had abandoned. Again, all of this is God’s response to the people recognizing their sin, repenting, and asking Him to come and be Lord of their community.
The people of Fiji have seen 200 villages in a row transformed when the people began calling out to the Lord en masse. They devoted themselves to prayer – morning and evening for hours at a time, abandoning all else because of their desperation for God.
In every case, the key to transformation was prayer.
I believe that we, the Company of Jesus and All Saints Anglican Church, are also being called to pray for such a revival. That’s what monastics are called to par excellence – to pray continually, seeking union with God in the spirit of humility. In places where monks have sought God with such humility, community transformation has always followed in its wake.
Impact of Order upon church.
Kurt Nielson was pastor of a flagging Episcopal church in Oregon. He went on a pilgrimage to Scotland and Ireland and came back very impressed with the Celtic pattern of doing church – in which the monastery was really the spiritual hub of the parish.
“What if,” wondered Nielson, “the focus of the community was not maintenance, but mission and nurturing the passion of pilgrims? …What if, like the traditional Celtic communities which included people of many states of life, there were various opportunities to live a committed and passionate path within the parish bounds…What if we broke through the walls separating church from neighborhood, and from other churches? What if we were to truly be a place where the poor and the most abused could find refuge? What if the future flowed from the gifts of our members, the gifts of which God is so lavish in giving, and we followed those gifts and let those gifts determine our plan?” (Urban Iona, pg. 148).
This is what I think God is calling us to do: To create a Christian community in which All Saints Anglican Church and the Company of Jesus find common ground in continual prayer, which becomes the basis for Community Transformation.
The physical location for this would be Hope House, but community members would live close by, and work day jobs but commit themselves to living out the ‘Eighth Day Life’ exemplified by the early church.
Of course, not everyone is called to living in such physical proximity. This will be a sovereign call of God upon certain individuals. But in this vision, the monastic disciplines and lifestyle become the wellspring of spirituality for the local church, while the Third Order folks also receive help and community from church members.
Since this notion of Eighth Day Life is central to this vision, I am proposing that we in All Saints adopt the name for our small groups. Instead of saying All Saints East, West or Central, we would call these “Eighth Day Life Groups” and perhaps adopt a patron – Benedict, Francis, Patrick, Brendan, etc. The object is to equip our members to live the Life themselves and to take it out to others.
For those in the Company of Jesus, I would like to propose that each member seriously ask themselves whether or not God may be calling him or her to relocate to the ‘mother community of the Order, Huntington, WV – always realizing that this is a very special ‘missionary’ calling, only to be considered in the same spirit as one discerns a call to Third Order monasticism.
Regardless of where we live, each member of the Company of Jesus should devote themselves to practicing the monastic disciplines, to pray especially for this Community effort in Huntington, and to be open to forming Eighth Day Life Groups in their own areas and to presenting seminars in local churches based on these ideas.
Tonight, after this service I am going to hand out a packet of information called The Four Practices for Eighth Day Life. This packet was inspired by some work done by Fr. Peter Matthews at St. Patrick’s Anglican Church in Lexington, KY. While the packet is designed to be used as the basis for discipleship at All Saints, it can also be adapted for use by the Company of Jesus, or for any other local church.
Tomorrow, as part of our Morning Prayer, I would like each of us to fill out the Spiritual Plan worksheet in the packet and then eventually review it with myself – or Father Mark. I know we won’t be able to do it all tomorrow, but I would like for us to get a good start on it and to eventually use this process as the basis for our new members and discipleship instruction.
I am very excited about what God will do through this vision and look forward to how individuals will walk it out. I thank God for these new vocations we celebrate tonight and for all that he is doing through All Saints Anglican Church and Hope House.
May God be Glorified. Pray for me, a sinner. Amen.
Tonight we come to receive two new vocations into the Company of Jesus. We describe ourselves as a Third Order Franciscan and Benedictine Community. We come from many different places and from many different backgrounds. Because we are so spread out, we are mostly a ‘virtual’ community. Our emails and phone calls go a long way towards helping us know each other, but it’s not and can never be the same as living together in a cloister, or even in the same town or attending the same church. These profession retreats and services are a partial attempt to mitigate the distance that separates us, helping us to continue to forge relationships ‘electronically’ between our face to face meetings.
Our calling in the Company of Jesus is monastic – essentially alone, even if we are married and have families. Because there are not many of us in any one place, we have to walk out our calling mostly alone. That’s how it was when I first became a Benedictine. There wasn’t another CoJ member within 400 miles of me. But it didn’t matter because I knew what God had built into my spirit and what he was calling me to, regardless of what anyone else did.
But after a while, a funny thing began to happen. God brought Mark Goldman alongside me and we started walking out this life together. Mark and Brenda and Cindy and I began to meet for dinner, conversation and prayer on a monthly basis. We began to have a sense of Community together, and this was tremendously encouraging. Later, God also brought a Franciscan, Sr. Connie Mershon, and another Benedictine, Ryan Connor to walk with us – Ryan and his wife Shannon joined our monthly dinners and things were going swimmingly for us as a CoJ ‘Chapter” - until October 1, 2006 - when we started All Saints – and soon afterward bought Hope House - and that’s when our schedules began to get really complicated and our monthly meetings became quarterly, and if it keeps up, probably semi-annually! Our sense of community has taken a hit.
We live in a paradoxical world. Because of the Internet and phone service, I know some of you who live 400 miles away better than my next door neighbor. Because we live so close to each other in cities, we put distance between ourselves emotionally. We know intimate details about each other via Facebook, but not that our next door neighbor is having major personal problems. When it comes to our church life, it’s sometimes not a whole lot better. Unless we have a small group structure where we can come to know one another, it’s very possible to go to church with someone for years without ever really knowing them personally or spiritually. We have to work intentionally to build community.
One of the things that was so impressive about the very early Christians was that they were living a life of close community. They were seeking God through prayer and they were taking care of one another –Loving God and loving their neighbors.
Tonight, I believe that God is bringing together The Company of Jesus and All Saints Anglican Church into a new interaction a new expression of Christian Community – one that has a lot to do with our Mission of loving our neighbors as ourselves.
I’ve said before what a powerful impact the 8th Day Life Center had on me personally, and I’ve always wondered if God wouldn’t somehow bring that ministry back around in a new form. Back in the ‘Day’ Fr. David and I dreamed about having a religious order close by St. Luke’s Church to pray and to support the 8th Day ministry as an ‘apostlate’ (as the Roman Catholics would say).
Now, I believe God is doing something similar with Hope House as the Center.
Historically, the monastic pattern as been that a group of (voluntarily) poor monks go to a desert or waste place and set up a monastery. Through their continual prayer and work (ora et labora) the monks begin to produce agricultural surpluses, which they use to help feed the poor in their area. As a result, the whole region is built up and stabilized, allowing for civilization to flourish. Material blessings come to the people surrounding the monastic house as a result of the blessings overflowing from a worshipping community, and many are drawn to follow the Lord. In short, the community is transformed.
BUB
To a much smaller extent, we’ve seen this sort of pattern with Hope House. Every since November of 2006, we’ve been meeting on Friday afternoons for “None”. We pray for the families of the slain teenagers and then “prayerwalk’ around the block and pick up trash. We frequently meet and talk to our neighbors, sometimes we pray for them directly. We’ve begun to know our neighbors – most notably the new managers of a gas station convenience store on the corner, where another murder occurred several years ago. For several weeks, we’ve been picking trash there at the station and getting to know Abe – a Muslim, and Christo, an Orthodox Christian.
One of our All Saints ministries is what we call Bless Ur Biz – BUB – in which we go to businesses and pray a blessing over them. This past Saturday, Abe and Christo allowed us to come and bless their business. By God’s grace He gave us favor with them, and they welcomed us very warmly. It’s been very gratifying to see this kind of reception, and I believe we are bringing the Life of Christ to the world through this work. We are creating community with our neighbors through expressions of care, concern and divine blessing.
Another recent event took place that made a big impression on me. Thursday evening, September 25, about 30 people gathered at Hope House for a candlelight service to mark National Day of Remembrance for Murder Victims. Those gathered included members of All Saints, family members of the murdered teens, the Mayor, Police Chief and Treasurer of the City of Huntington – and several press people from TV and newspaper outlets.
That night, in the midst of a dark, unfinished construction site, I caught a vision for people gathering there at Hope House to pray the daily offices, seeking God in the darkness in order to bring the Light of Christ to the community. I could envision Company of Jesus members relocating to this struggling, ‘desert’ of Huntington, living in apartments close by Hope House, working in secular jobs, or even industries yet to be conceived through the Neighboring Initiative, praying the offices at Hope House – creating Christian community in order to bring blessing and transformation to our larger community.
What we’re talking about is like the concentric rings created by dropping a pebble into a pond. Hope House is a ministry taken on by a small community of believers, but it has touched both the community of suffering families, as well as the larger community of Huntington and the surrounding region. Our slogan for Hope House is: Turning Tragedy into Triumph. It seems to me that the Lord has indeed done that. Through media coverage, there is almost no one in the Tri-State region who doesn’t know what is happening at Hope House – and I believe it has been a great blessing to everyone – even in its smallness and unfinished state.
But there is an even bigger task to take on – praying for revival.
On September 21, in my Chapter Talk, I related how Cindy and I heard Rhonda Hughey speak at a local church in Huntington. David and Carol Ann were there as well. Rhonda is one of the leaders of the “International House of Prayer” in Kansas City. Its mission is to lift up 24/7 prayer and intercession, and indeed, hundreds of people have been doing this continual prayer for nine years now. Rhonda also is very involved in the “Transformation” movement which encourages people to pray earnestly for God to visit our communities and to dwell with us in a manifestly glorious way. Ms. Hughey had just returned from visiting Fiji, where hundreds of villages have experienced mind-boggling divine transformations.
In her talk, Hughey related a typical scenario, in which village leaders recognize that their lands and waters have become barren and that their communities are dying. Drug abuse, suicide, murder and ecological degradation all flourish and nothing seems to slow down the decay. However, when the people realize that they have turned from God and pursued their own wicked ways, and then repent as a community, God visits them, heals them spiritually and physically – even restoring their lands and healing their waters. Dead Coral reefs begin to grow overnight, polluted rivers are cleansed suddenly, and fish return immediately to places they had abandoned. Again, all of this is God’s response to the people recognizing their sin, repenting, and asking Him to come and be Lord of their community.
The people of Fiji have seen 200 villages in a row transformed when the people began calling out to the Lord en masse. They devoted themselves to prayer – morning and evening for hours at a time, abandoning all else because of their desperation for God.
In every case, the key to transformation was prayer.
I believe that we, the Company of Jesus and All Saints Anglican Church, are also being called to pray for such a revival. That’s what monastics are called to par excellence – to pray continually, seeking union with God in the spirit of humility. In places where monks have sought God with such humility, community transformation has always followed in its wake.
Impact of Order upon church.
Kurt Nielson was pastor of a flagging Episcopal church in Oregon. He went on a pilgrimage to Scotland and Ireland and came back very impressed with the Celtic pattern of doing church – in which the monastery was really the spiritual hub of the parish.
“What if,” wondered Nielson, “the focus of the community was not maintenance, but mission and nurturing the passion of pilgrims? …What if, like the traditional Celtic communities which included people of many states of life, there were various opportunities to live a committed and passionate path within the parish bounds…What if we broke through the walls separating church from neighborhood, and from other churches? What if we were to truly be a place where the poor and the most abused could find refuge? What if the future flowed from the gifts of our members, the gifts of which God is so lavish in giving, and we followed those gifts and let those gifts determine our plan?” (Urban Iona, pg. 148).
This is what I think God is calling us to do: To create a Christian community in which All Saints Anglican Church and the Company of Jesus find common ground in continual prayer, which becomes the basis for Community Transformation.
The physical location for this would be Hope House, but community members would live close by, and work day jobs but commit themselves to living out the ‘Eighth Day Life’ exemplified by the early church.
Of course, not everyone is called to living in such physical proximity. This will be a sovereign call of God upon certain individuals. But in this vision, the monastic disciplines and lifestyle become the wellspring of spirituality for the local church, while the Third Order folks also receive help and community from church members.
Since this notion of Eighth Day Life is central to this vision, I am proposing that we in All Saints adopt the name for our small groups. Instead of saying All Saints East, West or Central, we would call these “Eighth Day Life Groups” and perhaps adopt a patron – Benedict, Francis, Patrick, Brendan, etc. The object is to equip our members to live the Life themselves and to take it out to others.
For those in the Company of Jesus, I would like to propose that each member seriously ask themselves whether or not God may be calling him or her to relocate to the ‘mother community of the Order, Huntington, WV – always realizing that this is a very special ‘missionary’ calling, only to be considered in the same spirit as one discerns a call to Third Order monasticism.
Regardless of where we live, each member of the Company of Jesus should devote themselves to practicing the monastic disciplines, to pray especially for this Community effort in Huntington, and to be open to forming Eighth Day Life Groups in their own areas and to presenting seminars in local churches based on these ideas.
Tonight, after this service I am going to hand out a packet of information called The Four Practices for Eighth Day Life. This packet was inspired by some work done by Fr. Peter Matthews at St. Patrick’s Anglican Church in Lexington, KY. While the packet is designed to be used as the basis for discipleship at All Saints, it can also be adapted for use by the Company of Jesus, or for any other local church.
Tomorrow, as part of our Morning Prayer, I would like each of us to fill out the Spiritual Plan worksheet in the packet and then eventually review it with myself – or Father Mark. I know we won’t be able to do it all tomorrow, but I would like for us to get a good start on it and to eventually use this process as the basis for our new members and discipleship instruction.
I am very excited about what God will do through this vision and look forward to how individuals will walk it out. I thank God for these new vocations we celebrate tonight and for all that he is doing through All Saints Anglican Church and Hope House.
May God be Glorified. Pray for me, a sinner. Amen.
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