Of first importance: the Resurrection!

     If this works better, or rather, if this is what you needed to hear today, you have 8 o’clockers to thank for the improvement.  I knew I needed to discuss the Resurrection.  That was never seriously an internal debate, at least until Friday.  The problem was that I was boring myself.  Those who have been here a while and heard me preach know the danger of me preaching on a text with which I am too familiar.  In reality, that’s only Job, 1 Corinthians, and Mark.  I did a Masters on Job and have translated the latter two.  I can write a mean academic report.  But those put congregants to sleep.  My job is to excite you, cajole you, comfort you, and do anything but put you to sleep when it comes to God’s Word.  But imagine the familiarity with the text when one has declined every single noun and adjective, conjugated every single verb and verbal, dealt with all the idioms, and then chosen how to translate each word into English.  That’s my preparation on those three books.

     I have discovered over the years, though, that my work in Corinthians has given me a . . . let’s call it a deep understanding and appreciation . . . for the systematic theology spelled out by the Apostle Paul.  That appreciation and understanding, of course, has led me back, time and time again, to the systematic theology of the torah.  One cannot read one without the other.  If we read Paul without that zealous commitment to the torah, we miss much of what it is exactly fulfilled by the life and ministry of God’s Anointed, Jesus.  Similarly, if we fall victim to that nonsensical idea that Paul was not work and not writing as one empowered by the Holy Spirit, then we lose the perspective that what Paul was doing was truly God’s work.  In a nutshell, Paul was fulfilling God’s promise made to Abraham and Sarah however many years ago, that God’s people would be a light to the world, a nation of priests.  There is a myth in parts of the Church that Pauline theology is somehow unattached to or a misreading or a misappropriation of the message of Jesus of Nazareth.  There’s a myth that Paul took parts he like about Jesus’ teachings and buried parts he did not like in order to create a religious system in his own image.  Heck, I have seen “experts” declare that the Christian religion is more based on Paul than on the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.  I see the nods.  You’ve heard and seen them, too.

     Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth could easily be a letter to the church in Brentwood.  Corinth, as many of you know, was a city of some means and privilege.  Oh, none of us would want to move back there.  The hotels were made Motel 6’s look good; the restaurants were not what we are used to; the plumbing needed more invention; there was no electricity; modern conveniences were simply lacking.  But, in that context at that time, it was a great place in which to live.  Those chartered to settle the city were made Roman citizens.  Those of you who have seen maps assume that everyone was a Roman in the Mediterranean Basin.  At its geographic height, there were only 120,000 or so citizens.  Corinth’s founders were granted citizenship by Caesar as a reward for their military service.  So they had that privilege going.

     In most places in the Roman world, there was a great disparity between the lower class and the ruling class.  Corinth, though, had a pretty good sized middle class.  All kinds of businesses thrived there because of the portage businesses.  Corinth made a living transporting cargo or entire ships from one side of town to the other.  The 3.3 mile portage saved as much as a full month at sea, and the risk to cargo.  But, that meant portage businesses needed to be established.  And restaurants.  And hotels.  And . . . all kinds of service industries.  Tailors had a thriving business.  Home builders did just fine.  Shipbuilders had an opportunity to do repair work.  You get the idea.  Corinth was a bustling community.

     By virtue of its businesses and wealth, it was also a place where a number of religions found a purchase.  All the Roman gods were, of course, honored there.  Other Mediterranean gods also found a home in Corinth.  Given his travels around the basin, it is not that surprising that Paul found himself there and aware of the problems facing the fledgling church.  An easy but disgusting example was the apparent willingness of affluent Romans to gather and eat feasts in front of those who could not afford food.  Another was the tolerance of a man sleeping with his step mom.  Another was the Corinthians penchant for ranking the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and so on.  Paul had much to say about all these issues facing the Corinthian Christians, much as he has to say to us Brentwood/Southern Nashville Christians on those same issues.

     If you read the letter, Paul spends a great deal of time addressing these pastoral issues and detailing the proper attitudes and behaviors that should be found in disciples of Christ.  What makes Paul’s teaching so interesting is that he can appeal to the various factions within the church at Corinth and show why allegiance to Christ trumps all else.  You think it great you are a Roman citizen?  This is not our inheritance.  We are just passing through like Abraham.  You have wealth and so think yourself blessed by God?  If you let brothers and sisters starve before you or go homeless before you, you have received your reward.  Paul does a masterful job, we might say Spirit-empowered job, addressing the behaviors and underlying attitudes and the expectant result of those who claim Christ as Lord, and he does so as an equal.  The things they value, he has cast aside because of the Resurrection of his Lord Jesus.

     It is that Resurrection, of course, upon which everything in his letter turns.  It is the Resurrection also that causes much of the scandal in the world around us when they hear the Gospel.  I am often amazed at the number of clergy in churches that reject the Resurrection because science has taught them better.  There are tons of better paying jobs with much better hours and far less emotional and spiritual weight than being a clergy.  How someone does it without the hope of the Resurrection is way beyond my grey matter.  But there are far more people who claim to be Christian sitting in pews, or likely at home, who share in that disbelief.  We think we know what we know, and we disregard whatever does not fit in our epistemological boxes.  Of all the testimony about Jesus, the Resurrection is the most outside those boxes.

     Those of you in church in January probably remember the appointment of Dean John to replace Archbishop Bernard as ambassador for Justin and Francis.  Dean John famously preached to his congregation in Perth that they needed to move beyond the literal belief that Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead, that God could not contravene the laws of science He put in place.  Those working toward closer relationships between the Anglicans and Romans were utterly shocked that such a man could be tapped to serve as the bridge between the two.  Sadly, his view, whatever it is in light of his subsequent retraction/clarification, is not that unusual in the Church.

     The world is nervous about such things as well, though it does not necessarily recognize its nervousness.  Most of you know I am a nerd and, thanks be to God, I have some nerd children.  We watch and read a lot of science fiction fantasy in our house.  How does science fiction fantasy feel about Resurrection?  In truth, it’s a struggle toward which many strive but a possibility that many fear.  Take for example ST:TNG.  In a famous episode, a scientist, who married a former love of Captain Picard, succeeds in overlaying his cognitive functions on Data’s positronic brain.  In short, he takes over the body of Data.  How does that go?  Though the writers do not explore the fear as much as I would like now, the scientist is truly disembodied.  He loses his sense of humanity and humility.  He thinks he knows, better than all those around him, what they are feeling, wanting, desiring.  In the end, of course, he becomes a monster possessed of great strength and super human intelligence.

     How about the movie that starred Johnny Depp as a great scientist?  That story is more of a love story, but similar to the one from Star Trek.  Depp’s character succeeds in uploading his consciousness into a mainframe built for that purpose.  He recognizes that, for all his accomplishment, he is limited by input and ability to act.  He fashions . . . what, androids, to accomplish his tasks.  Sensors go up everywhere to provide him with information.  Again, the disembodied scientist ends up at enmity with all those on his team and, most especially, his girlfriend. 

     I share these episodes not because I think they are great Emmy or Oscar worthy narratives, but because they capture two fundamental truths about the human condition first revealed by God.  (1) We are embodied creatures.  Period.  You and I were created to inhabit a body.  Bodies are somehow essential to what it means to be human, at least in God’s eyes.  This should not surprise you at all.  When God created each thing, what did He say about it?  That’s right!  It is good.  At the end of each day, when God finishes His assigned task, He pronounces it good.  Unlike all the other ANE religions, and even most of those from elsewhere in the world, God says matter is good.  For all the other cultures, matter was, at best tolerated, and, at worst, considered “yucky.”

     You and I are descended mostly from Greco-Roman stock.  How did our cultural ancestors view matter?  It was yucky.  It was distasteful.  To this day we think spirit is somehow better than matter.  It’s invaded all parts of our thinking, even our thoughts on the afterlife.  How many of you think or thought that, upon your death, part of you will float up to be with God?  How many of you assume you will drift to an empty cloud to play a harp?  You are laughing, but we all know we have heard it, right?  We all know that story.  The body is bad; the spirit is good.  Heck, why do you think people in the Ancient Near East found the idea of the Incarnation so scandalous?  God becoming human?  Why would a god want to become human?  Sure, they could take on a form to impregnate a beautiful girl or to dally with a handsome man, but become human?  No god in his or her right mind would ever do something that disgusting.  They were incorruptible and our bodies were the definition of corruption.  We get old and die.  We get sick.  We experience pain.  Who wants that?  Certainly not a god.

     If we are embodied creatures, if we truly are meant to have bodies, what do you think eternal life will look like?  That’s right, (2) there will be bodies.  Jesus clearly had a body upon His Resurrection.  The passages where Jesus eats with and drinks with His disciples is to demonstrate He is not a ghost.  There is something real and tangible about Him.  To be sure, He can travel hundreds of miles in a blink of an eye and pass through locked doors, but there is a body doing those things.  There is a body in which Thomas declines to stick his fingers.  There is a body to which Mary tries to cling that Easter morning.  There are bodies which are not given in marriage in the age to come.  Over and over and over, Jesus and His disciples remind us that our bodies are truly part of us.  They belong to us.

     It is at this point that folks start wondering what the body will be like.  I tell them “Better than we can ask or imagine.”  I joke somewhat about my experience.  When I met Karen, I had a good body – she was not cooking for me then!  But I was lifting lots and exercising.  I had arms.  I also had an orange streak of hair because I was downwind of some chemicals before we met.  So, when I tell people what body I want, I want that body with normal colored hair.  And, if Karen overhears that, she adds “with real hair, not that buzz cut.”  She’s nodding.  What can I say, it was easy to care for!

     Even Paul understands the Resurrection will involve a body.  Paul’s understanding is, to me, fascinating.  Paul was the chief prosecutor and persecutor of those who first followed the Way.  His zeal for the law was famous, and the Temple authorities gave him carte blanche to root out this teaching and preaching that Jesus was the Anointed of God.  Paul truly believed he was doing God’s work.  Paul truly believed he was doing what God had commanded all the people of Israel.

     All that changed, of course, on the road to Damascus.  Critics here will want to say But, Brian, he really only heard the voice and was blinded by the glory of God.  He did not really see the body.  Horsecrap!  What do you think blinded him?  Paul knew, once Jesus identified Himself, to whom it was he was speaking.  And it was that knowledge that changed everything for Paul!

     One of the reasons we go to seminary for three years is that Paul spent three years in the desert reordering what he thought he understood about God.  How could God become human?  How could God suffer and die?  How could God raise the dead to life?  And about a billion other questions.  Paul had to reconcile what he had learned studying under Gamaliel with the reality that Jesus of Nazareth stood before him AFTER dying on the Cross.  Words cannot explain the mind-blowing experience.  Paul was forced to examine everything taught by Moses, the prophets, the psalmist, and the wisdom literature authors in light of the Incarnation, death, and Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.  This was the game changer, to way way way way way oversimplify our understanding, of salvation history!

     No wonder it is so hard for some among us to accept it.  Heck, it was hard for the folks in the ANE and even in Corinth to accept the truth of the claim.  How does one explain the Resurrection in terms that people can understand, absent that encounter experience by Paul or Peter or Thomas or Mary?  Paul turns to agriculture.  The seeds we plant are nothing like the plants that spring forth from them.  Does the wheat grain look like the plant?  A kernel of corn like the plant?  A mustard seed like the plant it produces?  Of course not.  We readily accept that those seeds produce those plants, but heaven forbid we think faith in Christ will give us a new body, right?  That’s part of Paul’s argument.  The people in Corinth have an agricultural example that explains, in part, what will happen to them.

     At some point they, like us, will die.  Their bodies will be buried . . . like a seed.  At some point in the future, when God gives the growth, a new, imperishable, glorious body will replace the dishonored and sinful body we now inhabit.

     Paul tries to explain it to them and us using image of God language, too.  Adam and Eve were created in the image of God, that’s a fundamental truth revealed at the beginning of Scripture.  Each of us bears the image of the generations who came before.  We are like bad copies or bad copies of bad copies (with a lot of copies in between), of our ancestors Adam and Eve—these bodies are corruptible.  Now, however, we are heirs of the Man of heaven.  By virtue of our baptism, we have died to self and are promised a share in all Christ’s inheritance.  He is the Son of God, the firstborn to use Paul’s language, but we are all heirs.  In everything.  Period.  That includes a Resurrected, imperishable, glorious body!  It is that promise that gives us great hope, to use Paul’s language and teaching from earlier in the letter.  It is that realized body that will allow us to remove the veil and see each other and God as He created each of us.

     Paul lived in a world that understood the human condition.  Sometime, depending on those with whom I speak, I think those in Paul’s world understood the human condition far better than we.  But I know, I know in my deepest parts, that people are people.  There were wise folks and foolish folks and all kinds of in between folks, just like there are today.  Paul’s teaching speaks to all them, regardless of the age in which they live and the location.  I handed on to you as of first importance what I had, in turn received: that Christ died for our sins, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.  If we deny the Resurrection, brothers and sisters, we are denying our faith and dishonoring God.  So important is that understanding that Paul spends nearly two full chapters discussing its implications.  For Paul, and us, the Resurrection is the capstone event of salvation history.  It is the one thread upon which all the other threads in the tapestry are based.  Pull it, and the tapestry falls apart.  But if it is true.  If what Mary and Peter and Thomas and Paul and all the experienced was true, what a tapestry!  What a hope!  And the truth of that event, of course, is enshrined in our liturgy.  Each and every time we gather, we remember His death, we proclaim His Resurrection, and we await His coming in glory.  Those words of first importance, those words of proclaimed mystery serve as the basis for the Thanksgiving we celebrate each and every time we gather as His people.

     Like us, the ANE had lots of examples of suffering.  Prometheus was famously tortured for giving humanity the gift of fire.  Sisyphus was famously condemned to a futile task.  Over and over again, ANE theologies discussed suffering and its meaning.  Over and over again, ANE theologies, in particular, came to understand that our reaching for the gods was threatening to them.  There were even stories of gods dying and rising again, but they died gods and were raised as gods, emulating the seasons of the earth.  Only one story, however, told the story of God reaching down to humanity.  Only one story told the story of God wanting His people to dwell with Him.  Only one story told the story of God tabernacling with His people.  Only one story told the story of God redeeming His people.  And that story, my brothers and sisters, is our story.  There is a reason that the story was shared and shared and shared, despite persecution and the possibility of death, until an emperor, nearly 300 years later, heard it and converted.  There is a reason that story continues to be shared today, comforting and scandalizing folks as it did nearly two thousand years ago.

     What makes the story the Gospel, what makes it truly THE GOOD NEWS, is the Resurrection.  If God has power to redeem that over which you and I have no power, namely death, what else can He not accomplish for us?  So important is the Resurrection that Paul claims it is the hope from which all our hopes hang, and it is that hope that is of first importance of our faith.  8 o‘clockers teased me gently this morning that I was a bit adamant about the truth of the bodily Resurrection.  One attendee wondered if my experience of seeing God raise a dying man as a result of my prayers gave me different perspective.  Perhaps.  But he was raised to die again.  Neither he nor his wife nor I nor the doctors nor the nurses thought he was in an imperishable body.  What I experienced was more like the experience of the widow at Nain or at the tomb of Lazarus or at the raising of the widow’s son for Elijah.  What God promises is exponentially beyond those experiences!  He confirms His power to keep that promise in the Resurrection of our Lord Christ, and He extends that promise to all of us who claim Him as Lord.

     I know I have bordered and maybe crossed over the edge of a rant a bit this morning.  If you believed the Resurrection and had no issues before today, then I apologize for your wasted time.  But for those of us who wrestle with faith and wrestle with God, what are your thoughts on the Resurrection?  Do you find it too fanciful and simply too good to believe?  Do you discount its importance and, so, undermine your own testimony about God’s redeeming power to others?  Or, like Paul, and all who profess the faith of the Apostles and disciples, do you believe the testimonies?  Do you believe that He was raised from the dead?  Then, as He promised Thomas and others so long ago, you are already among the blessed.  Jesus recognized the difficulty and declared that those who have not seen and yet believe as blessed by God.  How are we blessed, even though we still live in this world in these bodies?  Thanks to the Resurrection, we know Jesus’ teachings and promises are trustworthy.  Thanks to the Resurrection, we know that the sacrificial life He calls us to live can be redeemed, even if that sacrifice asked of us is our very lives.  And, for those who love justice, thanks to the Resurrection we know that God, who is justice and love and whatever great adjective we use in our descriptions, that He can vindicate us even as He condemns those who reject Him.  So, my brothers and sisters, what say you about the Resurrection?  Do you believe? 

In Christ’s Peace,

Brian†

A Complex man in a complex time--Just like us!

     I suppose the preparation for this particular feast began almost exactly two years ago.  Our Wednesday Eucharist at noon typically involves us hearing a bit about the life of the particular saint of that day.  Two years ago, I was preparing for the week’s midweek Eucharist and reading about Richard Todd Quintard in Holy Women Holy Men.  In the middle paragraph of his biography it says something like “Quintard was named the second rector of Church of the Advent in Nashville.”  This statement, of course, follows the declaration at the beginning that he was the second bishop of Tennessee, First Vice-Chancellor at Sewanee, and some of the other family and professional background.  It being early in the week and preparation for a Wednesday service, let’s just say my attention was not laser focused.  I think I made it to the Civil War paragraph before it dawned on me what the line had said.  So I went back and read it, a couple of times.

     Then I started asking around.  None of the ladies or Larry knew anything about him during Monday morning Bible study.  MC, to her credit, knew the name at the Tuesday evening Bible study, but she is pretty well-versed in the history of the diocese, at least compared to others.  Most faces were surprised like me to learn that Wednesday that our saint that day was an Adventer!  We even went down the stairs over there to see if his picture really hung in our parish – it does!  He is a stern looking man in his picture.

     Naturally, I started reading more about this Adventer.  I daresay I have read too much at this point to be an effective preacher about his life, though I expect that some of his life will be useful going forward in other sermon illustrations.  But, for those of you visiting today, even though it is the fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, we are celebrating the life and history of Richard Todd Quintard today.  Everyone will get a history lesson and be reminded of the spiritual DNA in this parish.  And please, visitors, do not worry, very few Adventers know anything about Rector/Bishop Quintard.  That’s part of why we are remembering his life today as a gathered community. 

     Now, if my history lessons began two years ago, part of the genesis for this sermon began a couple weeks ago.  A priest from another diocese reached out to criticize me for celebrating the life and history of Quintard in our parish.  As a fighter against modern slavery, she thought it horrible that I would celebrate the life and ministry of a man who had fought for the South, for slavery.  Did I not realize my cognitive dissonance?  Lol.

     I agreed with her that, by modern morality, it was scandalous that he had fought for the South.  But the cognitive dissonance she thought she had picked up on was nothing compared to the life of the complex man that was Rector/Bishop Quintard.  Did she know that soldiers had to prevail upon their officers to allow Quintard to serve as surgeon and chaplain for their Nashville Unit because he was perceived as a Union sympathizer?  (She did not)  Did she know that Quintard had led the Vestry and parishioners of the Church of the Advent to allow their slaves to attend worship with their owners prior to the onset of hostilities? (she did not)  Did she know that Quintard had accepted the Vestry’s decision that only the slaves belonging to Adventers could worship at Advent, that slaves of other Episcopalian masters were not welcome to worship in the parish prior to the Civil War? (again, she did not)  Did she know that Quintard was, disliked or distrusted—you pick your term, for his insistence that slave owners were morally obligated to provide places of worship and religious instruction for the slaves of their household? (she did not)  Plantation owners did not appreciate Quintard’s demands or criticisms when he found slave owners shirking their responsibilities.  Did she know that Quintard provided medical and spiritual care to soldiers, regardless of the uniform?  Did she know that Quintard accepted freed slaves’ claims that it was too hard to worship with their former masters, and so he raised the money to build some of the most famous historically black Episcopal churches in Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama after the War?  Did she know he raised the money to build the first seminary dedicated to the education of and training of freed slaves for pastoral ministry over by what you and I call Fisk?  Like you, she knew none of this.  It did, of course, confirm her assessment of my cognitive dissonance.  Why would you celebrate such a character in your church?  He got so much wrong!  But look at what he got right!

     What is a saint?  This is not rhetorical.  When I ask you to define a saint, what’s your answer?  I know, it’s like pornography.  You know a saint when you see one, or at least see their halo.  But what makes a saint.  Holiness?  Ok, now we are starting to get somewhere.  Righteousness?  Sure.  Love?  Absolutely.  Fighter for justice?  Good one.

     Now that you all are awake this rainy morning, let’s think a bit harder.  How do we know holiness or righteousness or love or justice?  Great answer!  Because God teaches us!  Who said that?  Would it be fair to think of a saint as someone whose pattern of life points others to God?  I’m glad you all agree because that was one of the dictionary definitions.  These qualities you named, and no doubt some of you thought but refused to speak, are known because of God’s revelation.  Saints are, to keep things a bit easier to understand, human beings whose lives evidence God’s grace and an awareness of His mercy in their lives.

     Think of your favorite saint from the Bible.  Who is it?  Wow.  Lots of answers to that question.  Good.  I heard a lot of names tossed out there.  Which one of those saints that you admire lived perfect lives?  Jesus?  Good answer.  Any others?  This is a good time for you folks to have remained silent.  Part of the reason that the stories in Scripture are told the way they are told is to teach us that the saints are ordinary human beings like you and me.  What makes them unique, what makes them special is God.  More specifically, it is the fact that God chose them and graciously worked through them that makes them special.  There is nothing inherently worthy in the saint that you admire that makes them worthy of being chosen by God.  They are not necessarily rich enough or good looking enough or smart enough to deserve to be chosen by God.  It is the fact that He chooses to work through them that makes them special.  Think all the way back to Abraham and Sarah.  Are they faithful?  Yes.  Are they perfect?  Not by a long shot.  Their decisions to provide their own heir still cause problems today in the Middle East.

     How about Jacob and his mother Rebekah?  Again, Jacob catches a lot of heat for being conniving, but he seems to have had a mother that was a pretty good teacher.  David, a man after God’s own heart?  He sins a few times.  How about Peter?  Paul?  Martha?  I’m probably a bit unfair to Martha including her in this list.  She’s chastised by our Lord because she chooses the less important job of hosting folks when Jesus is there teaching the disciples that number her sister, but he does not say her choice is wrong.

     Though I have simplified it and used easy to remember stories, all those in Scripture have faith, but they sin.  They are real people living in real times.  Some are complex people living in complex times.  And though Scripture never glosses over their faults, it does point out that God’s grace is sufficient to cover even faults and bend what they mean for evil to His purposes.  More importantly for us, their stories serve as instructions and reminders that God can and does work through men and women like us!  Even Adventers who forget the life and ministry of one of those who planted the spiritual DNA at this parish we know and love and attend.

     I learned this week that our Gospel reading has been removed from the RCL.  It’s odd because it used to be included in our BCP lectionary, and we do a great job of reading from most of Luke over the three year cycle.  It’s also odd because it speaks to God’s command that we are instructed to invite those to His feast that the world would rather ignore.  Adventers, at their best, have lived out that spiritual reality.  Most of us know we split from Christ Church over the issue of pew rents.  In the days before our split from our mother church, you paid to rent a pew.  Naturally, the better pews, those front and center rather than way back there, fetched more than the pews in other parts of the parish.  But that’s how the church paid to keep its doors open.  Guess which Vestry and which Rector were among the first American Christians to deal with the consequences of doing away with pew rents, inviting all to worship God regardless of one’s material standing, and still be tasked with the responsibilities of paying staff and keeping the doors open?  Those of you who have served on Vestries at Advent or other places, where money tends to dominate discussions anyway, can you imagine that environment?  Lots of rueful laughter.  You had no idea how easy you had it when you served, did you?  By the way, if you are having a hard time imagining the discord and strife, check out our archives.  And, while I am at it, that should serve as a cautionary tale for us all.  Somebody may be reading our words 150 years from now in those same archives, so keep your discord eloquent and polite so that they might mistake us for holy folks.  It’s ok, you can laugh at that.

     I’ve already shared how we opened our doors to our own slaves but closed our doors to those slaves who were owned by non-Adventers.  In 2019 such a behavior is easily seen as ignoring God’s command of drawing all to His saving embrace, but let’s not forget how cutting edge it was in the mid 1850’s.  It was a brave decision to allow their slaves to worship at Advent.  Folks left the parish because of that decision, folks whose leaving made the budget worries a bit more worrisome.  Is it any wonder, though, that those same Adventers became the early sources of funding when Quintard sought to care for widows and orphans of the War?  When Quintard sought to rebuild Sewanee?  When Quintard sought money to build churches for the newly freed slaves?  When Quintard sought money to establish the first seminary for freed slaves?

     Perhaps, some of you sitting in the pews have wondered a bit at why there are so many healthcare professionals at so small a parish.  Perhaps some of you have wondered why folks like Dick Blackburn seek to extend Medicaid to the poor, like those in Good Neighbors seek to minister to the immigrants and refugees in our midst, why Nancy and Hilary chose the name Body & Soul for their food pantry, why Larry and Betty and so many others provide Room in the Inn for those in our community, like Janice and Jerry and Ron and Ellen and so many others have been so involved at St. Luke’s, why Adventers give so generously to the ministries invited by Oliver and his committee?  It’s in our spiritual DNA.  It’s who we are, even if we do not know it!  We are complex people living in complex times!  Who better than Adventers seeking God’s will in their lives to navigate these choppy and murky waters?  Who better, indeed?

     Adventers are unique in that we have a patronal season rather than a patronal saint.  In churches that are named for a particular saints, congregations will take on some of the aspects of that particular saint.  St. Luke’s often find themselves in healthcare related areas of work and ministry.  St. Thomases will sometimes find seeker and other classes as a way to speak to doubt.  And so on.  It’s no small wonder.  Patron saints are chosen with an emphasis on prayerful discernment, on a new parish trying its very best to figure out the work God has given them to do in a particular location.  Our forebears, in another location and another time, chose Advent.  We are a people called to remind the world that God’s Anointed, Jesus, has come into the world and that He will one day return to judge the living and the dead.  No exceptions.  Is it any wonder that a group of Christians worshiping with an eye looking back to the work and person of Christ and an eye looking forward to His glorious return might find themselves so engaged in the work described in our Gospel today?

     Adventers made it a point to create a space and welcome the poor in Nashville and, by so doing, led the Church in the country to do the same.  Adventers made it a point to welcome their slaves—a group of people about whom the society around them debated whether they even had a soul—in order that they might hear the word of God.  I’ve no doubt that some wanted their slaves to believe that this was the life God had planned for them and that they should be content with their lot.  But, if such was an effective strategy, if bringing slaves to worship was a great way to tap down moral outrage and cause slaves to accept their lot, why did more churches, regardless of denomination, not try it?  It was within the walls of this parish that slaves were reminded of God’s desire that all should be free, not just free from their chains of ownership, but of the dark sin that seems so often to govern the world and all who live in it. 

     Much is made of the work that St. George’s is doing with Church of the Resurrection, and rightfully so.  But do you know the first parish that reached out to its neighboring parishes when they lacked the means for full time clergy?  That’s right, Advent.  Adventers, in some cases begrudgingly, allowed their rector to tend the flocks at St. Anne’s and at Holy Trinity.  Remember, we were physically closer to them in those days.  But as the economics of the church changed and the prospect of war loomed, it was our spiritual ancestors who made sure those not as adaptable or those with insufficient whatever were fed by the word of God as preached from the mouth of its rector, Richard Quintard.

     I could go on and on.  It is likely in the months and years ahead, I will share more stories of our beloved saint.  And while I have no doubt that Quintard found Adventers every bit as challenging to lead to Zion as I do, I also have no doubt that he would be the first to remind each of us that he is remembered only because of the faithful response of those given into his cure.  Can you imagine the courage required to allow slaves to worship with you at that time?  Can you imagine the courage required to blow up your economic system so that “those poor people” could know they are loved and redeemed by God?  Can you imagine the courage of sending your sons and fathers and rector off to fight in the War?

     You should and you can.  Look around at the ministries happening here.  Lisa has not totaled the giving yet, but it is likely we gave away, on average, $1500 or so to each ministry we invited in last year.  Hillary and Nancy and now Pam are feeding dozens of families on the margin each and every month.  Tina and Robert are striding into different cultures, working to build bridges, and struggling to teach others the English language.  Jim and Robert are encouraging people to ask questions.  Do we believe what we read and hear?  Why does the Church insist on some teachings and not others?  The Good neighbors are, perhaps most of all, those the most closely attuned to those in our world who feel most oppressed.  Given the political discussions of immigration and refugees and the less than kind discussion on social media, can you not see the courage it takes for them to remind us that the immigrants and refugees in our midst are human beings, human beings whom our Lord loves and for whom He died—just like us!  Can you not see the courage it takes for Adventers to step out of their mostly Brentwood homes and welcome in God’s name those who are homeless?

     Complex people for complex times.  God has always used faithful Adventers, complex human beings in all their glory and in all their sin, to be heralds of His love and His mercy in the world around them.

      In reading a fair bit about Quintard and, in following his gigantic shoes, it is, I think, that last bit which really elevated Quintard in the eyes and ears of those who encountered him.  Pieces about him are being discovered in re-unearthed diaries and accounts.  Historians comment about how he seems to have been loved by nurses, in an age where male doctors tended to look down on female nurses.  Historians note how war widows credited his recognition of their plight and his willingness to raise money to support them or to rebuild schools or other necessities as instrumental in their survival.  Officer accounts depict him as a man who realized that warfare caused all kinds of collateral damage, both material and human, who was rather insistent when he demanded of them more Godly behavior.  Though slave owners bristled at Quintard’s judgment, many responded to his demands recognizing his voice carried the word of God in their ears.

     Modern historians, who are rediscovering Richard Todd Quintard and who are not unknown for their cynicism and judgment of others in this day and age, are nearly unanimous in their recognition that Quintard’s faith cannot be argued.  In their eyes, everything he did seems to have been motivated by his faith.  To be sure, he only saw darkly; he made great mistakes.  But as account after account after account of Quintard’s interactions with others are uncovered, one simple fact stands out.  His words of consolation, his words of God’s redemptive promise and redemptive power, were to those sorely afflicted and oppressed by the sins and condition of the world, a true healing message from God’s herald.  Would that those in the world around us were to say the same of each one of us!  In His love and in His mercy, there is no reason that it cannot!

In Christ’s Peace,

Brian†

Awe inspires ministry and mission . . .

     This week was fun and amusing and exciting at the same time.  The amusing part was Tina’s confusion.  Apparently, she has never had a year with a Fifth week of Epiphany.  She thought she had all her templates done, only to find out this week that the number of weeks in Epiphany fluctuates as Easter Sunday moves in the calendar.  So we spent some time going over the Prayer Book, the varied seasons, and other technical things with respect to Orders of Worship in the Episcopal Church.

     The fun part was more reminiscence on my part.  Our reading today is from Isaiah 6:1-8.  It was one of the readings from my ordination to the priesthood.  What made my ordination memorable was the fact that my bishop preached from the Old Testament that day.  I was not surprised to hear an Old Testament sermon, as I had heard quite a few in seminary.  The surprise was my new colleagues.  “Bishop Alan never preaches from the Old Testament” was often repeated to me that day and in the weeks and months that followed.  Colleagues were so surprised that they shared the contents of his sermon with other colleagues who were absent that day.  Those who were not present at my ordination asked “Is it true he preached on Isaiah?  He never does that.  Did you make him?”  and other such questions.  Needless to say, I relived a number of conversations in my mind, some of which are not appropriate to share in our setting today.

     The exciting part, though, was the wonderful new insight I had to offer Adventers when I first arrived.  Unlike Tina who did not think Advent goes past four weeks plus a Last, I generally forget that not every week’s readings get used in services.  Three years ago, when the reading last came up in the lectionary, I was working a bit ahead.  At that point, of course, we were still feeling each other out.  There were a number of well-educated intellectuals in my new flock.  I was having to stay on top of my game.  I know some thought I only worked three to four hours a week, but we clergy are required to do Continuing Education, as part of our obligation to the diocese, and those of us who like to be somewhat relevant, need to stay abreast of particular developments.

     My excitement was due to the simple fact that I had come across an article from one of the Psychiatric or Psychological peer-reviewed journals.  This article had purportedly figured out what caused human beings to move beyond self-interest to communal interest.  Many of you are in health care related fields, so I know you understand the lingo.  For those of you outside healthcare and mental health care, in particular, there is a recognition in the fields that human beings tend toward selfishness.  Put euphemistically, most of do things for our own benefit or self-interest.  Such behavior makes sense to us in the church.  But we are communal animals and need, sometimes, to put the good of others before our own in order to perpetuate the society or the family or the parish or the company or the tribe or whatever group to which we belong.  Psychiatrists and psychologists had theories, apparently, since the 1970’s, but no one had done the peer-reviewed studies until the last cycle of these readings.  While psychiatrists and psychologists struggled with this question, God had spelled it out for His people over and over and over again.  And I had scientific proof!  I was so excited.  And then I learned that we did not get to do Epiphany 5 three years ago.

     When I ask you to define awe, what is the quick answer that you give?  Is awe like pornography in that you know it when you see it?  Do you even give awe much thought?  For those of us who turn to the dictionary, we learn that awe is feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder.  If we have ever studied Kant, which I know a few of you have, awe is that feeling produced by the starry sky above us and the moral law within us.  The problem for psychiatrists and psychologists today is that the latter does not necessarily exist.  The only real Truth in the world is the axiomatic statement that there is no real Truth in the world.  Your truth is as valid as his truth is as valid as her truth and so on.  A moral truth requires an outside person or agency or observer, who is able to judge objectively.  In a world that has tried hard to kill God, such a being cannot exist.

     As you’ve no doubt figured out, awe is that feeling which causes human beings no longer to act selfishly, at least according to the experts.  Psychiatrists and psychologists were able to measure that truth, presumably objectively, and set up experiences that confirmed their hypothesis.  As I read the study three years ago, though, one of the author remarked on the difficulty of causing awe.  There is no formula, so far as they could tell three years ago, that would cause everyone to respond in the same way.  Put in simple terms, we are each awed by things differently.  For some of us, that reverential feeling can come upon us while looking at a mountain, at a starry sky, or maybe the beach.  Others of us, however, are not awed by visual clues.  Musicians may be awed by the perfect harmony or melody or other aspects of music that tone-deaf people like me cannot hear, let alone appreciate.  Still other folks can be driven to that feeling by a highly personal event, say the birth of a child or sitting with a loved one as they loose their earthly bounds.  Different things inspire awe, or so their research seemed to indicate.  It was both amazing and frustrating insight for those seeking to quantify such things.

     As a pastor, of course, I am not too surprised.  I think psychiatrists and psychologists are correct when the assert that we need awe to become better who were are meant to be.  Awe enables us to be fully actualized as human beings, as the mental health folks like to say, as who we were created to be, as those in the Church like to say.

     Our readings today have two different encounters with awe.  I’ll spend more time on the Isaiah vision, but I want you to notice the awe of the fishermen as well.  What drives them to awe?  What causes them to recognize that Jesus is from or blessed by God?  A lot of fish!  That’s right.  Now, it’s a lot of fish in a particular circumstance.  The men have fished all night and caught nothing.  The preacher, Jesus, has asked one of them to put out a bit from shore so that He can teach the crowds and keep them from pushing in and around Him.  By way of thanks, Jesus tells them to put down their nets.  If you know any fishermen, you know they are not shy about sharing their wisdom, expertise, and experience.  I can well imagine Peter’s eye rolls and arguments with Jesus.  Luke recounts that Peter merely points out they caught nothing that night, but he will do as Jesus says.  I’m sure that conversation went a bit more pointedly.  In the end, though, Peter catches so many fish that his nets are nearly burst and both his and his partners’ boats are swamped.  It is that miraculous catch of fish in Peter’s eyes that causes awe and drives him to his knees.  He tells Jesus to leave because he is a sinful man.  Jesus recognizes the truth of all that Peter is experiencing and understanding.  There’s no false modesty at play.  There is no deceit made.  And Jesus tells Peter that He will make him fish for people from now on.  From that moment of awe, an amazing catch of fish, Peter’s life is changed.  From that point forward he becomes a literal man of God.

     Look at our reading from Isaiah.  It’s a tough reading because most of us in the West do not believe in visions any more.  How do we know that mystics are not mentally ill or high on drugs?  In every parish I have served, I have encountered mystics, including here at Advent.  We are so unaccepting of their experiences that we drive them underground, but that’s another sermon.  Notice the vision of Isaiah.  All the senses are involved.  This is not just a dream where he watches events like we might on television.  He definitely can see, but he hears and feels the voice of the angels speaking and shaking the pivots.  He sees and smells the incense of the Holy Temple.  He both sees and cannot fully comprehend the Lord.  His line of sight seems to indicate that Isaiah can only see the lower half of the Lord sitting on His throne.  And he sees and feels the hot coal burning his unrighteous lips and making them fitting mouthpieces for the word of God.  All the sense are engaged, not just sight.

     What does Isaiah see and hear?  I’ve already touched on his perception of the Lord.  God is so big, so massive, so beyond that the hem of His robe fills the Temple.  The Temple was, what, something like thirteen football fields in area.  And God’s hem fills it?!  Like Peter after him, the prophet recognizes his sinful nature when confronted by the presence of the Holy, righteous, and other great adjectives we use to describe God.  He is an unclean man who lives among an unclean people.  The angel flies to him, holds the live coal to his lips, and proclaims that Isaiah’s guilt has left him.  Isiah rightly recognizes the danger and truth of his own standing before the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Yet, having been cleansed by God’s grace, he also recognizes he is a fit vessel to go for the Lord.  He takes up the role of prophet.  And, although our editors cut the reading off early, Isaiah takes on the role despite God’s announcement that his ministry will be fraught with failure.  The people will hear his words and reject them.  The people will know Isaiah is a prophet of the Lord and still will not listen to God.  Still, despite the promise of rejection by the Lord, Isaiah goes.  Isaiah picks up the mantle and does all that the Lord commands.  The awe of the vision compels him.  He can do nothing other than what God asks, no matter the cost.

     My guess is, if we spent time going around the pews, each of us has a moment similar to Peter or Isaiah.  I would expect that each of us, at some point early in our walk with God, had that experience or set of experiences which convicted us of our own mortality and of God’s holiness, righteousness, omniscience, and omnipotence.  There was a point in our life where we began to recognize that there was so much more to the world than our own self-interests, our own egos.  I would imagine, as we went around the pews, we would discover that those moments of awe were rather personalized.  I can remember sitting in a Roman history class, reading a castoff paragraph of Tacitus and realizing Jesus was real.  Real human beings wrote and talked about His work and ministry even though they rejected His claims on their lives.  I can remember sitting in my first Evensong service at Oxford, listening to the choir chanting the Nicene Creed in Greek, and realizing that chant had resonated off those walls for 7 or 8 centuries and in other locations for nearly 17.  I can recall my first visit to Canterbury.  The weight of the structure is immense; yet it strives for the heavens despite that weight.  And we 30-40 people gathered for Compline, needed only to speak in our normal voices to be heard, for worship to fill that structure.  I can remember that ordination at which my bishop preached, and in particular the complete and utter realization that God calls us even though we are not worthy.  If I spent more time, I can probably think of more times when that awe of the presence of God manifested in the world around me.

     What are your memories?  When did God speak to you in a way that, like Isaiah and Peter before you, convinced you of His deserving of worship grandeur and your own fallibility?  When did you truly become aware of the grace extended to you and of the Lord who was extending that grace?  What happened in your life that drove you to your knees and then lifted you up to serve Him?  Where did you do your darnedest bestest effort to do something right, only to screw it up royally, onlyt to see God’s redeeming grace at work in your life and ministry?  Those are our testimonies.  Those are those awe-inspiring moments which changed our lives for ever.  And how unwilling are we to share them with one another, let alone the world.

     One of the great aspects of the awe which causes us to act, of course, to which the mental health folks cannot speak in scientific terms, is the Gospel of that awe.  Like Isaiah and Peter and countless others who have gone before us, we are right to recognize that it is dangerous for us to approach God.  In fact, we would say it is fatal, apart from the work and person of Jesus Christ our Lord.  But, apart from that danger lies an even more glorious reality.  That magnificent and glorious God, whom we should fear to approach on our own terms, not only makes it possible for us to approach Him, but wants nothing more in the universe than for us to return to Him.  And then, like a proud and loving Father that He is, he raises and trains us to do His work in the world and sends us back out there to do the work He has given us to do.  In a real way, awe inspires mission and ministry just as the experts have noticed.

     And we, who at a glimpse of His magnificence and glory and other aspects of His awe-inspiring presence, are reminded that He stands with us and behind us as do those tasks He has given us to do.  Some of us, like Isiah, will be given tasks that result in abject failure.  Others, like Peter, will be given tasks whose results are easily measurable and quantifiable.  Both, and all those in between however, share in that knowledge and certainty that it is the Lord who makes all things possible.  We who were once broken and fearful are now healed and empowered.  We cannot end hunger in Brentwood, let alone Nashville or the state of Tennessee or the country or the world, but we can fight it where He has planted us, confident that He will sustain, enable, and empower us.  We might not be able to end all systemic injustices in the world, but we battle them confident that He whose hem fills the Temple, is ever watching, ever urging, and ever empowering.  We might not be able to conquer any of the evils of the world, in fact, I would argue such is not our job.  Our job is to go where He sends us, to preach what He tells us, to serve as He instructs us and to do so faithfully.  When we do that, my wonderful brothers and sisters, when we go in His name conscious of His grace and power, then we go knowing who it is that stands behind and with us, trusting that where we are too weak, he is more than sufficient, and that where we are great mess-makers, He is the Great Redeemer!

In Christ’s Peace,

Brian†

What is love?!

     To use the language of my classical studies’ days, there is a real Scylla and Charybdis to be avoided today in Paul’s letter.  If you are relatively new to Advent and do not get the classical reference, Scylla was a six-headed monster who ate 6 sailors if a ship came too close and Charybdis was a whirlpool that swallowed entire ships.  They bordered a straight between the Italian and Sicilian coastlines.  Captains had to be on their toes to avoid the danger on either side.  Before I get to the misteachings or dangers of Paul’s letter, though, I should probably share that I cannot use the single best illustration of the dangers presented in how we speak about love in the church from the last week.  I cannot tell you how agonizingly painful that is.  If you are visiting, you may wonder at my face and expressions.  But longer time Adventers know I was a Classical Studies major in college and pursued a PhD in Classical Philosophy a long time ago and in a galaxy far, far away.  My dissertation subject was on love, specifically eros, and its loss in philosophy.  So one danger today is clearly that I could give y’all a wonderful recitation of facts and understandings regarding love and bore you to death.  Another danger would be to ignore it altogether as something more fitting to discuss in the wider councils of the Church.  Certainly, my work on the bishop’s Task Force and with others regarding Christian Anthropology, could make the discussions of love far more important to me than to each of you.  That’s always a danger for preachers, right, that we focus on things that interest or bug us, but leave congregations just as hungry as when they entered the doors to the sanctuary.  But, my perfect illustration, which I cannot share yet, convinced me I was in the right place for a sermon, a place that many of us need to be considering.  So here goes:

     What revealed characteristic of God is the most important?  I’ll give you all a few seconds to do the rankings in your head.  Keep in mind, all the characteristics of God that we love and worship are revealed by Him—we could never rationalize or think our way to the fact that He has specific characteristics.  To hard?  Let’s try an easier one then: what spiritual gifts within the parish we call Advent do you esteem the most?  What spiritual gifts present among individuals who call Advent their church home do you prioritize in your head?  Again, I’ll give you a few moments.

     I will not ask for a show of hands for a reason that will become clear in a few moments, but doubtless some of you ranked the fact that God loves us as most important.  Certainly, Presiding Bishop Michael highlights God’s love in his sermons.  Some of you may have gone with His grace as most important.  Perhaps some of you considered the fact that He is just most important.  Maybe, just maybe if one or two of you were angry today, you valued God’s vengeance as most important.  When it came to ranking spiritual gifts among the parish, some of you probably wished there was a better preacher today.  Don’t hide.  I saw your faces.  I’m making you engage God and Scripture on Super Bowl Sunday.  This is not a time for deep sermons; this should be a quickie so that we can get to the altar of The Shield and start eating and drinking and eating buffalo winds and nacho chips, right?  Ouch!  Too close to home?

     If you found yourself ranking gifts in the parish or revealed characteristics of God then these words of Paul are as important to you this day as they should have been in Corinth some nineteen centuries earlier.  I understand when preaching on this passage the minefield into which I am stepping.  It is so famous that it has made its way into the secular world.  Certainly, it is used a lot in weddings, even weddings that are not particularly religious.  Truth be told, I find it a great passage for prospective brides and grooms.  I think it sums up much of the reasons we have argued in the Church for a few centuries over whether the joining of a man and woman in holy matrimony is a Sacrament or a Rite.  Is there an inward, spiritual grace present in a prospective bride and groom, or is the ceremony simply a ritual?  Hard questions, eh?

     Let’s ask an easy one, then: what is love?

     C’mon, why is everybody treating today like I’m interested only in rhetorical questions?  Just a few minutes ago, many of you were saying that love is the greatest revealed characteristic of God.  What is love, that we value it so much?

     Now, you are beginning to see one of the rocks upon which we may find ourselves cast and destroyed, if we do not pay close attention.  As I travel the diocese and the Church and ask that question, I am usually given that pornography answer—we know love when we see it.  People will often begin with something along the lines of “it is that feeling that lets us know we are valued, cared for,” and etc.  I see the nods.  Y’all like that stab.  Some folks will actually quote this passage to me in their attempts to define love.  Unfortunately, our translations are a significant part of the problem.  What do I mean?

     For starters, did you know that Paul’s teaching on love comes between his discussion of spiritual gifts in what you and I would call the parish and his teaching about how the Church, the people of God, should appear to the world around them.  It’s not a particularly romantic setting is it?  Paul spends a chapter discussing the various gifts of the Holy Spirit that are given to individuals.  Then he spends another chapter talking about why the Church needs or has all those gifts.  There is no feel good, no warm fuzzy feeling being discussed.  Paul is not speaking of happily ever after.  Heck, Paul never once says love necessarily feels good.  Love is what enables the local church to stay together, to work through their differences, to the glory of God.  Love is what enables the church to minister to the world around it, to work for the welfare and benefit of those who do not yet belong, to work for those who do not yet know the loving embrace of God.  What is love, then?

     Part of our understanding about the nature of love comes from the grammar.  Did you know that Paul uses love 16 times in this passage?  Did you know that each time Paul uses the word love, he does so with an active verb?  What, you thought Paul was using “to be” verbs?  In truth, it is no wonder.  The problem with using the predicate adjectives and the “to be” verbs in our translations is that it runs the risk of driving love into the incorporeal, into the theoretical.  When we read that “love is kind,” “love is patient,” “love is not envious,” and so, we really do not learn what Paul is teaching us.

     By using active verbs, with love as the subject, we begin to understand at a fundamental level that love is something active.  It is not passive.  We don’t stand there and hope that it “falls” on us.  Love is patient to others.  Love is kind to others.  Love endures all things.  And so on.  Mature married couples understand the work of marriage, and the teaching of Paul, right?  When couples in their youth agree to be married, do they have any idea what they are getting into?  Think back to the early weeks or months or your marriage, if you were married.  What was the biggest complaint?  He left the toilet seat up?  She burned dinner every now and again?  He leaves his dirty clothes on the bedroom floor when the hamper is less than three feet away?  She seemed to forget how to pump gasoline into a car when she drove it?  Rueful laughter?  Perfect, those of you laughing ruefully, I bet, get it.

      I get it.  The examples I used are a bit too stereotypical.  But they are true.  The warm, fuzzy, happily ever after feeling of a wedding was replaced after a few weeks or months with a recognition of these minor issues.  Of course, what many of us understand is that these issues really are minor.  The real fights will be over allocation of resources, how to parent, how to relate to extended family, and the other serious issues.  Where is love in all that?  Paul would remind us that if we are committed, if we are acting as true lovers, we would not be having those fights.  The wife would gladly put the toilet seat down with no complaint because she is bearing it for her husband’s sake, but she’d have no need to put it down because he would have put it down for her so that she would not fall in.  And if we are doing a good job of loving, with respect to minor issues, how much better will we be able to handle the major issues, the issues that really destroy marriages?  Can you imagine marriages if we tried to out-serve one another?  The world sure cannot.  From “starter spouses” to all kinds of jokes about marital spats to the simple statistic that more than half of all marriages end in divorce to the anecdotal evidence now that the young adults are avoiding marriage, we have all kinds of evidence that husbands and wives are not doing a good job of out-serving one another in marriage.

     Of course, active service is just a part of what love is.  Love is serving for the well-being of another.  To use the grammar side of this discussion, love acts upon something or, rather, someone.  For Paul, and for Christians, the well-being of another is ultimately related to whether the other person knows they are loved and redeemed by God.  Put in simpler terms, love is an active, working service of others for their well-being, their ultimate well-being.  Since the best well-being we can experience is the right relationship with God, love is best demonstrated by our abilities to serve others, that they might enter the saving embrace of God.  Heavy stuff, no?  It’s significantly different than the warm fuzzies the world proclaims when it speaks of love.

     Is Paul right?  Is love something far more significant, something far more important than warm fuzzies?

      His go to example of love is of course Jesus Christ.  Jesus makes it possible for us to be in right relationship with God.  Absent His work and ministry, absent His faith in the Father’s commitment to Him and us, how would we be saved?  The truth is, of course, we would not.  Jesus lived that sinless life, that life that never turned from the trust and purposes of God, no matter the cost.  Even at the end, when His death was impending, Jesus still trusted the Father.  Though He asked that the cup pass, still He agreed to the Father’s will.  Though we joined the crowds in the mocking, the spitting, the whisker-pulling, and the rejecting, still He will Himself to love us, to serve us that we might be restored to the Father.  Though we stand with the crowds at the foot of the Cross and mock Him with that devilish temptation, “If You are the Son of God, come down,” still He stayed.  His will to do what was best for us and our relationship with God rather than what was easiest or simplest for Him is the best example of love each of us will ever know.  And when we, joining the crowds, gave Him every reason to give up on us, still He prayed that God would forgive them because we did not know what we were doing.  That, my brothers and sisters, is the kind of active commitment Paul is describing.

     Nowhere in Paul’s teaching on love is love described as easy, or warm, or necessarily good for the lover.  How many times in Scripture, do God’s people reject Him?  How many times does God act to save His people despite themselves?  In that, Paul is reminding us that we could not truly love had not God loved us first.  God set the example.  And we struggle, feebly and darkly, to mirror that love.

     In my perfect example, an Adventer thought she was motivated by love to do something horrible.  Her proposed horrible act would have had all kinds of consequences for different people.  She knew that.  She needed to be reminded of what love truly was.  And let me say this, her motivations were not evil, as perhaps some of us might describe evil.  I suppose, were we considering her question in an ethics class, I would eventually come down on the side that she was being selfish, which is a rejection of God and the love described here by Paul.  But, I recognize that a chunk of her motivation was her concern was for someone else; she was simply trying to show that concern in a way that prevented her from serving them into right relationship with God.

     That enigmatic example, truthfully, left me floundering a bit.  How does serving play out in the world around us?  It is, ultimately, the answer for why Adventers work to feed the hungry or work to provide care for immigrants and refugees.  Ultimately, it the why we gather to wrestle with faith or share good books or even seek recovery from addiction.  Ultimately, it is the purpose of fellowship, whether we are playing banjos and fiddles or sharing chili and cornbread in social settings.  We serve so that others might know that God loves them, that God wants them in right relationship with Him, and that that right relationship is made possible only through Jesus Christ.

     Our wider church and denomination is, of course, living in the difficulty of this serving to draw others into the embrace of God.  Folks who are certain TEC is absolutely heretical have called to share their disappointment with our bishop’s decision to do his best to have us all walk together and to walk together with our national church.  Of course, as co-chair of his task force, a number of folks in the diocese have shared they are infuriated that his efforts have not gone nearly far enough to suit them.  Some claim to have written the national church to begin Title IV proceedings.  Two sides, both pulling apart.  Each convinced of its own rightness.  How are they demonstrating patience to another?  How are they demonstrating kindness to one another?  Where is the real quest for truth, that in which love delights?

     Further behind the scenes is the fact that Lambeth invitations went out before Christmas.  As you may or may not know, Justin is gathering the bishops of the Communion in England next summer.  Invitations had to be mailed so that bishops could get them on their schedules.  Predictably, folks are mad at who is invited and who is excluded.  Not a few have asked me “Who does he think he is that he gets to decide who is in the communion?” or that someone should be invited or excluded?

     Keep in mind, I am in no way diminishing the importance or significance of these discussions.  Many of the fights in the Church are, in one sense, of grave importance.  But the fights have existed in the Church at least since the time of the church at Corinth, which is to say that they will always be there.  Paul’s teaching that we read today comes about specifically because the members were rankings themselves and others based on their gifts.  Love, Paul says, shows that such rankings are flat out wrong.  Love is immeasurable.  Love struggles to bring others into right relationship with God, period.  Love shows patience to others.  Love shows kindness to others.  Love does not boast to others.  Love is not arrogant when comparing to others.  Love seeks and rejoices in truth.  Paul’s interjection of love is a reminder of how we are to treat one another.  We serve, as He first served us, to love them into the kingdom.  Given the way we do not love, we do not serve, is it any small wonder that we are now in the minority in our own culture?

     If love is important for those who are inside the church, think of how important it is for those outside the church.  Paul sure does.  Paul will remind us, after this brief discussion on love, that our ability to love one another in the midst of these fights, and that the purpose behind all those gifts of the Holy Spirit described in chapter 12, will bear fruit in the world around us.  Others will see us, others will hear us, and they will want what we have.  Does anybody here today think that a real danger for the Church, for this parish, right now?  Are people beating down our doors begging us to share what we have?  In truth, if we are going to take Paul seriously, if we, like Peter in his second letter, think Paul’s writings are inspired by God, we should be living in that danger of being overwhelmed by those seeking to know they are loved by God.

     What does it mean to you to know that God did all this, that God nudged and whacked and judged and nourished our spiritual ancestors, to get us to this point?  What does it mean to you to know that God is working salvation history to your own redemption, to those who share the title of Adventer with you, to those who claim the mantle of our denomination in this diocese, to those who claim the title of disciple no matter the modern expression of denominationalism?  It’s called a Eucharist because it is good thanks.  It is right and a joyful thing always and everywhere to give Him thanks for what He has done!  And our response ought to be so overwhelmingly joyful, so overwhelmingly awestruck that God would love us THAT much, that we would be motivated internally to shout it from the rooftops, to share it with strangers, to risk the things of this life confident that your Lord, our Lord, wants nothing more than the next person to claim Him as Savior and Lord.  Yes, such a way of living can be embarrassing.  Yes, such a way of living can be costly.  Yes, such a way of living can allow others to take advantage of you.  Yes, such a way of living will likely lead to death.  But so what?!  The One who calls you to that way of life is the One who lived that life first for each of our sakes, who gave us that perfect example, and who demonstrated that failure and isolation and even death are not the last word for any of us who claim Him as Lord.

     In my first sermon, I had a castaway line that resonated with Carey this morning.  As I work through this sermon I cannot remember how I got there.  But Carey impressed upon me its importance to her, and she thought I needed to be even clearer at the second service.  Only Abe would dare argue with Carey, so maybe she discerned rightly and her seed of encouragement has caused me to be a bit more blunt.

     Some folks wondered why, if Paul says love is immeasurable, does he proceed to rank these wonderful gifts of God and declare love the greatest from among faith and hope.  Paul is not ranking these wonderful gifts.  In fact, he is reminding us of life on the other side of the Day of the Lord.  What is faith?  Wow!  Hebrews 11!  The evidence of things hoped for; the assurance of things not yet seen.  Great answer.  Will there be faith after we are re-united with our Lord?  Of course, not.  All that He promised will have come true!  It will likely not have come true as we hoped or expected, but it will have come true.  There will be no faith on that side of the Resurrection.

     How about hope?  Will there be hope on the other side of the Resurrection?  I’m seeing the nods.  That’s right, there will be no hope because God’s promises to us in Christ Jesus will all be fulfilled.  Those things for which you hope for, seeing a departed loved one, knowing how the next life plays out, will be before you.  There will be no need for hope just like there is no need for faith.

     Love ranks above faith and hope not because Paul is ranking them as particular gifts.  No, love will continue beyond the Resurrection.  In truth love will be fulfilled beyond the Resurrection.  We will not have hope and we will not have faith because we will be with God.  For all eternity.  But love will remain.  We will all be engaged in the perfect worship, the perfect seeing, and the perfect understanding of the love of God.  Those things we misunderstand or misapprehend will be corrected.  Those sinful desires which cause us to doubt, which cause us to listen to the whisper of His enemy, will be gone.  And we will bask in the perfect understanding that we each were those for whom He worked salvation history towards its end.  We will know that He moved the heavens and the earth, literally, to bring us back into that right, loving relationship with Him.  When hope and faith fade to knowledge, love will still abide.  That is Paul’s teaching today, and it is God’s teaching every day.  Would that it were our way of life each and every day.

In Christ’s Peace,

Brian†