Seeking God and seeing the ripples . . .

      Our reading in the Gospel today is a fun place to restart after the great Ice Storm of 2026, both to nudge us along in our work in this place and this time and to remind us of events in the wider Church.  The passage is well known as The Sermon on the Mount.  Back in the late summer or early fall, I think it was, I had a number of conversations with people at the Green Hills Y over Russell Moore’s comments about the Sermon on the Mount.  For those of you who do not know the name, Russell Moore was a leader in the SBC, which is headquartered here in Music City.  I think he was the runner-up in their election to lead the SBC, but he made waves criticizing the SBC for its failure to require the President to act morally and for its unwillingness to discipline clergy who raped or sexually abuse girls and women in their churches.  You can google him at your leisure.

     Moore has mentioned on several occasions, as have other leaders in the evangelical wing of the Church, that congregants are unhappy with the content of the Sermon on the Mount.  It has stunned and surprised pastors and other leaders that preaching on the Sermon on the Mount is being rejected.  After all, the words are in red letters in their Bibles, reminding them that the sermon comes from Jesus word for word.  The biggest complaints from those in the congregations was that the sermon was too woke, that Jesus was too weak, that the guidance Jesus gives just does not work in today’s world.

     People would stop and ask me, in light of this controversy, if I ever preached on it and what I thought about it and what you all thought about it.  I, of course, reminded them we used a lectionary rather than my personal choice, so we read it once year, if not more.  More than one inquirer laughed when I said your all’s response would be something akin to “duh.”  You all are laughing, but those talking to me were uncomfortable.  Some went to churches where Moore’s criticism was renounced from the pulpit.  Some went to churches where Moore’s criticism was embraced in the pulpit but rejected in the pews or chairs.  Some wondered if Jesus’ words were too woke?  Others were just confused that a well-known passage could be rejected in a church that prides itself on sticking to the Bible.

     I mention this as a bit of a vaccine in case you mention my teaching today.  If I end up preaching what you think is a lesson worth sharing, you may get significant pushback.  But if you do from a Christian, you know that they have been struggling with this since maybe August of last year.

     For my part, I was drawn this week to the “pure in heart” of verse 9.  Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.  A couple things stood out to me despite the fact we were living in the aftermath of a terrible ice storm.  The first is the understanding of the heart in Ancient times.  We are now in February and probably noticed since right after Christmas that stores were turning the page to Valentine’s Day.  The symbol of the day is the heart.  That’s because we modern westerners think the heart is the emotional seat or focus of our bodies.  Heck, the whole secular theme of Valentine’s Day is the piercing of a heart by an arrow, often Cupid’s.

     In the ANE, however, the heart was the seat of focus of the will.  Human beings had understanding in the head or brain, but the heart represented the choice that human beings made.  Sometimes we chose well; at other times, we did not choose as well.  Part of the reason that God speaks about circumcised hearts is that He is reminding those who listen to His voice that they should love what He commands or instructs.  Too often, though, we choose to ignore God’s commands that we love Him with everything we have, that we love our neighbors as ourselves, that we care for the poor, the marginalized, and the outcast, with our own selfish needs.  Good.  I see nods.  The evidence of our propensity for sin and our need for a Savior is the very fact that you and I, no matter our understanding and no matter how focused we are, always return to sin.  Augustine and his colleagues called it original sin; our Reformed brothers and sisters called it our total depravity.  Part of life, as Christians, is spent trying to attune ourselves to God so that we will choose to do or not do wisely.  That being said, we also remind ourselves that when we sin, we repent, and return to the Lord.

     When we talk about the pure in heart, we often speak in terms about those who are holy, those who are righteous, or those who have been transformed by the Holy Spirit significantly.  Think of Mother Theresa or Quintard or those in your lives who modeled Christ-like behavior seemingly with ease and, better still, were quick to catch on to their need to repent.  But, for those of us trying to attune ourselves to God through prayer and worship and study, there is another way for us to see God.  I was reminded as I talked with line workers this week.

     Starting on Tuesday, I think it was, people started showing up for food despite the roads, despite the ice, and despite the trees and poles and wires down.  I had been shoveling and salting when it started.  As the crews made their way down Forest Acres, I took a break to stroll over and see how things were going, thank them for what they were doing in those horrible temperatures and conditions, and to offer a bit of a bribe.  I told a couple of the guys that I wished the power was on to the church.  If the power was on, the heat would be on and they could warm up.  If the lights were on, they would be able to see their way around the bathrooms.  If the heat were on, it would be a great place just to rest and warm up.

     One of the guys thought it was cool so many folks were coming to check on us and the grounds.  I told them, of course, that nobody had been over to church.  For his part, he had seen 10-12 cars pull in and out.  I told him that was for the food insecure in our midst.  We had a normal talk about the desperation of those who are food insecure.  I also told him I was not unhappy they were coming.  The longer the power stayed off, the greater the chance things in the refrigerators and freezers might go bad.  We talked a bit about giving people choices, about the food and drink that God had provided in the Scriptures, and ultimately how Jesus warns us that how we treat those hungry, poor, oppressed, and imprisoned is how we treat Him.  Y’all know me, so it will not surprise you too much, but I was standing on Forest Acres on Tuesday, with poles down, wires down, trees down and the world around us encased by ice, talking about human beings being stamped with the characteristics of God that He wanted them to have before their birth.  And the one lineman was asking lots of important questions.

     When the conversation trailed off, he promised they were doing their best and would get us all up and running as fast as possible.  That was crazy meaningful work we were doing.  I headed back down to church and shoveled some more, salted everything unsalted, and served a few more people who arrived for food.

     The next day, the linemen were working again on the Forest Acres rise, so I headed over there to check in with them.  A third older guy, though, started heading at me as I was next to the neighbor across the street.  Are you the pastor of the church?  I pointed to Advent.  He nodded, so I nodded.  He asked if we really were feeding those people driving up the last couple days.  I told him I was feeding most of them.  Some people just turned around in my church, and a few people were looking for rides to hotels from the neighborhood.  But you’re the church feeding people steaks and lobster and fresh veggies, and bake bread and all kinds of crazy things?  I told him we were, though that had been over a period of 7 years.  His buddy, and he pointed at one of the two with whom I had spoken the day before, was telling him all about out our work.  That is awesome that you guys do that!  That’s the kind of thing churches need to be doing, and too few are!  Pastor, we intend to get your grid up and running tonight, tomorrow at the latest.  Y’all know it was not up and running until late Saturday afternoon, but it was not the close bathroom or the prospect of hot coffee or heated casseroles that had this guy motivating the other workers.  It was our work feeding the hungry in Christ’s Name.  He thought we honored Christ providing people with good food, giving them a choice, treating them like human beings, and testifying to them that as good as some our foodstuffs are, God has more amazing things for those who accept His invitation.  It was an exhorting conversation coming from yet another lineworker, who thanked us for taking His call on our lives seriously and doing things many churches would never do.  Had the conversation ended, I would have had a spring in my step.  It was a perfect example of us not knowing the impacts of the work we do.  He had learned about our work from one of the first lineman, and he was praising us for doing God’s work.

     But he went on.  Do you know about Tema?  I think Tema was a pastor and maybe ran a food pantry and said I did not know her.  He laughed and said, no TEMA.  It’s like FEMA but TEMA.  Ah, I knew of it, but only what I had heard or read.  Well, he went on, it’s like FEMA but the federal government gives the funds to the state government to administer.  Because Tennessee is a Christian state, we don’t automatically disqualify churches like other states do.  I asked him to go on.  Pastor, you and your church are doing things in the public good.  You are feeding the hungry around here.  If you can document it, you will probably qualify for help.  The money you spend on your tree removal will be money with which you cannot feed the hungry.  You should check it out and see.  I thanked him for the lead and headed back to the church.  Sarah had come down while we were chatting, so I realized he was watching the action behind me as we chatted.

     Later that afternoon, I asked Greg Platt about it.  Both of us thought there was no way we qualified, I think it fair to say.  Churches are almost always shut out of such things.  But he decided to do a bit of research, first by web and later by phone.  Though we won’t know until this week whether we are eligible to apply, we are not yet disqualified.  But we may get 80% of the damage repaired either through a grant or a very low interest loan.  And all that, that entire ripple, began with Adventers committing themselves to seeking God, to discerning the work to which our Lord was calling us, however many years ago!  I know.  Not everyone was sincere.  Not everyone was confidant.  But the fruit speaks for itself.  Many Adventers have been transformed by the Holy Spirit.  Some of those Adventers who did not think these instructions were real now know better.

     But the most amazing thing to me, because I know many of those thoughts and conversations, is that it has become a bit of an illustration for preaching and teaching on the beatitudes.  We have sought God, and we have seen God.  We have seen His provision.  We have been given a share in His glory.  Some of us have even come to see that those whom we serve are created in His image.  And the ripple includes some of the other beatitudes–you’ll hear about some of those in the weeks ahead.  We serve other humbly in His Name.  Hmmm.  Ours is His kingdom.  We mourn that some go hungry in our midst.  Hmmm.  We will be comforted.  We show mercy; we are promised mercy.  We are mocked for doing this unending work by some of our brothers and sisters.  Hmmm.  Those mocked and persecuted for righteousness’ sake will receive the Kingdom of heaven and be treated the way God’s people have always treated those whom He sent in His Name.

     And make no mistake, this is a corporate ministry.  All of you, even some of the less enthusiastic, have a share in this work.  Sarah and I, and then Hilary later, may have been the face of the work last week due to meteorological conditions beyond our control.  But every single Adventer, and even some people who do not consider themselves Adventers, were a part of that work.  Some of you provided funds to buy food; some of you pray for provision or encounters or other intercessions as led by God; some of you carried the food in; some of you volunteer and feed in Christ’s Name, reminding yourselves that in them we see some of Him; some of you provided funds that make sure the lights and HVACs are usually working properly.  Everyone had a hand in that work, just as everyone has a desire to want what He wants, to do what He wants done, to avoid those things He wants us not to do, and, since we are gathered in worship of Him and His saving work this cold morning, to do the work He has given us, both individually and as a congregation, to do, certain that, just as He was raised from the dead that Easter morning, we will one day share in all those blessings He promised in this sermon, and, in crazy times like last week, get a different pledge of the hope of our calling, that we might be encouraged to keep reaching for in His Name!

In Christ’s Peace,

Brian+

Bless the Lord, our souls -- Carey's last message for us!

      On behalf of Tawnya, Clara, George, Abe Jr., the rest of the family, and all Adventers, thank you for coming today to remember the life and witness of Carey, to share stories with one another, to fellowship a bit, and then to give thanks to God for His promises to her and to all of us who claim Him as Lord.  We are grateful you took time out of your busy schedules to join us.

     As part note and part commercial, I will warn you this is an unusual service.  Those who attend Episcopal liturgies frequently may wonder if I lost my mind organizing this service.  Those who attend Episcopal services less frequently or other liturgical denominations may well be thinking this is some kind of new abomination in the Episcopal Church.  It is one of those times when the non-liturgical folk will be no more uncomfortable than those around them.  Carey designed this service this way.  She wanted Rite 1 Burial with a Rite 2, Prayer B Eucharist.  She spelled it out that way, and I was not about to disappoint her.  Separately, they are good liturgies, even great.  I think because they are smashed together will make it seem unusual to us, and especial Roger who is celebrating today.  One thing of which I am certain, though, few of us will forget it, and I bet that was part of why she decided to plan her funeral this way.

     As part commercial for Adventers but also for my brother and sister clergy in other denominations, and even for those who may chose not to be buried from the Church, one of the greatest gifts you can give your loved ones is to plan your service before you die.  You can spell out how you want to be remembered and not force your loved-ones into some challenging work as they are mourning your loss.  Carey chose the liturgy, the hymns, the readings, and even some of those who serve today.  She reminded me three or four times to include the personal blessing from her that is on Page 3 in your service bulletin, as if she thought I might forget—I nearly did.  She knew her priest!  If you find this speaking to you in her voice, it is.  Think about doing the same thing for your loved ones in the hopefully distant future.

     Back to the main purpose of our gathering, the burial of our sister Carey, and yet another commercial.  Many of us, when we die, face what we call a Gethsemane moment.  Satan often tries to convince us in our last moments, perhaps as the terror of death is building, that we are excluded from God’s redemptive love.  In our tradition, we visit and we have liturgies that help us address those moments.  Most traditions do.  Please, for your own good, share those Gethsemane moments with loved ones and clergy.  There is no shame in those moments.  Our Lord Christ experienced THE Gethsemane moment, when He asked His Father to allow the Cup to pass.  But He submitted Himself to the Father’s Will, even to the point that when the crowd tempted Him, He chose to drink from the Cup His Father gave Him.

     Carey struggled with two things at her death.  She shared one, and the family shared the other.  The first was how terrified she was at the feeling of suffocating as her heart and lungs filled with fluid.  She worried that such fear was beneath a good Christian.  I had to remind her that God did not give her gills.  What she was experiencing was instinctual.  We cannot like breathing fluid any more than a fish likes breathing air.  It’s the way He made us.  So, my prayer for her over her last weeks was that she would not worry about the feeling.  I have to confess I was relieved to hear that she passed peacefully after a long day of family and Bingo and not as one suffocating.

     The other temptation she shared with her kids.  She was worried that she did not understand the Holy Spirit and the Trinity as well as she should.  She expressed that she was worried she might fail a test on the Holy Spirit or the Trinity and be excluded from heaven.  I told them as they gathered after I had anointed her body and prayed for the repose of her soul that I wished she had shared that worry with me.  I would have reminded her that God’s love and mercy was not conditional on knowledge or deeds or anything but a desire to love and follow Him.  I would likely have had her laughing at the fear pretty quickly, too.  What kind of hard question on pneumatology would Peter be able to ask her that she could not understand?  I mean, Peter.  And, on a more serious note, I would have reminded her that these are Holy Mysteries.  We cannot fully understand them until we receive that new body and new mind to see God as He is.  It is for this reason that good clergy go to those who are dying.  We know spiritual attacks.  We know that our Lord experienced them.  It is our calling even to shepherd our God-given sheep through the valley of death to that wonderful inheritance He offers and promises us!

     Speaking of that valley, those familiar with our liturgy will notice that Carey did not follow the suggested verses in the funeral rites found in our BCP.  In particular, she wrote that she really wanted Psalm 103 instead of those other suggested psalms, including everyone’s favorite, Psalm 23.  In fact, she gave me permission to change some things to convince me to include Psalm 103, that’s how important it was to her.  As I shared with Roger a few nights ago, I had a sermon in my head on Psalm 103 so quick, I knew it was a God-thing, maybe a Carey interceding thing, but definitely a God thing.  So, if you like to follow along in sermons and homilies, please turn to Psalm 103 in your Orders of Worship.

     Psalm 103 can generally be broken down into four parts.  There is the blessing in verses 1-5, where the psalmist reminds his or her soul to bless the Lord and not forget the blessings God has bestowed in life and promises in death.  Verses 6-19 is the meat or body of the psalm, where the psalmist reminds hearers and readers of God’s character and activity in history.  Verses 20-22b I would describe as the cosmological observance of God.  All Creation, including the supernatural angels and powers, are called to bless God.  And the Psalm ends on 22c with the reminder of verse 1.

     I know nobody wants to hear a comprehensive sermon on Psalm 103, but I do want to remind us all of Carey’s purpose in choosing this psalm for her funeral, why I taught you a bit about her Gethsemane moment, and why I am certain God gave me such a quick answer.  Notice the first essential characteristic of God revealed in the psalm.  He crowns you with steadfast love and mercy and works vindication and justice for all who are oppressed.  After that reminder of God’s essential character, the psalmist launches into what we call the Exodus and how God again and again forgives.  The modern Exodus for us, of course, is the Exodus from the consequence of our sins.  Unlike the psalmist and the prophets, we understand that the oppression that God was really about removing from us was the oppression of death, which results as a consequence of our sins.

     The most important part of why we gather here this day is to remind ourselves that God freed Carey from the oppression of death in the work and person of Jesus Christ.  Jesus drank that Cup, to use my earlier illustration in Gethsemane, that she might be freed from her oppression!  Better still, He drank the same Cup that we all might be freed from the oppressor.  Adventers will tell you I often remind us that God used the Passover and Exodus imagery to instruct us that He was intentional in that reminder.  When Jesus appeared in history, some thought Messiah would come to free them from or conquer the Romans, but He came for far bigger purposes than many suspected!  He came that we might be restored to our Father who created us, that the chasm created by our sins might be crossable.

     But we also gather today, guided by Carey, to consider something else about God that we often forget.  Humans forget it so much that God caused it to be told in Scripture and even in verse in the Psalter.  Politicians who self-describe as Christians are forgetting as they increase suffering on the poor and working class among us.  What is the essential characteristic of God to which the psalmist and Carey point us today?  His mercy and steadfast love.  That reminder carries us from the introduction to the body of the psalm.  That reminder carries us from the body of the psalm to the calling of all Creation to bless the Lord.  And that reminder of His never-failing mercy calls upon us to bless the Lord in our souls, in that very part of us which makes us us and contains the image of Him with which He blessed each one of us in our own creation.

     Sometimes it is easy to forget His steadfast love and mercy.  At Advent, we celebrate God each time we gather calling attention to His Death, His Resurrection, and His Ascension before we partake of that nourishment He provides us in the Body and Blood of our Lord.  Before we even partake of that nourishment, before we are sent back out into the world to do the things He has given us to do, we repent of our sins.  We remind ourselves intentionally of the reasons for why He drank from that Cup described in Gethsemane.  We prepare ourselves in humility, cognizant of those sins of which we are ashamed, or as Carey’s favorite liturgy proclaims, which we bewail.  We understand that had He not done His work on the Cross and in the Grave, we would have no hope!  And reminded of that hope, we go to that altar or table and eat of His flesh and drink of His blood and head back out into the world nourished, reminded of His mercy to us, to do His work, proclaiming to those in the world around us His mercy toward us and His love for all of us, all whom He has made.

     As a priest, I encounter Christians all the time who think there is a limit to God’s mercy.  I encounter people who express, “I was one (a Christian) once, but I have messed too many times.”  “I used to believe, but I know better now.”  Too often we listen to the lie.  Too often, we forget to listen to the story proclaimed in Scripture, to the life lived by Jesus, to His instruction and call upon all humanity, and to the love which He bore each one of us on that Cross.  When we tempted Him to save Himself, when we tempted Him to come down and avoid that Cup, He willed Himself to drink the Cup we deserved, that we might be able to dwell with Him eternally.

     I shared Carey’s moment as a last reminder of the love with which her Lord bore her sins.  Carey was a great confidante to many of us present; she was a friend and advisor to many of us here.  Carey had a hunger and thirst for learning about God.  Carey, though, was human and knew it well.  Even though she chose this service before she died, she still wondered near the end of her journey whether she might not be good enough.  She worried there was something she had not learned, even though she knew enough to remind us that God’s mercy was sufficient and never-ending.  She wanted to point us to the One whom she loved and who loved her to the Cross, the One with whom she is gathered today and learning all about those mysteries that eluded her in this life, and blessing Him for what He did for her.

     This psalm reminds us intentionally that the world is a horrible teacher about the love and mercy of God.  We humans sin and make mistakes.  We have tempers and hard hearts.  Because we cannot forgive one another, we find it challenging to believe that God can.  But we must never allow our experiences of life to shape what we think and believe about God.  Rather, we are called to remember His redemptive work in Salvation History, we are called to remind ourselves that He teaches us how to perceive Him, how to attune ourselves to His purposes.  No matter what we do to separate ourselves from Him, He is always quick to show us mercy when we repent.  He is always quick to remind us that He wants what is best for us.  To use the words and instruction of our Lord, He always welcomes the Prodigal Son or Daughters when we remember ourselves and return to His arms of mercy.

     My friends, it is hard to mourn the death of one like Carey.  I shared with her family that I knew they knew things about her that she would not want shared, but it was a pleasure to celebrate a life such as hers.  It was a pleasure to see what she wanted spelled out in her last message to each one of us.  And while we will no doubt miss her at moments ahead, during holidays or moments of crisis or when a core memories intrudes, we stand at her grave singing our alleluias, confidant that one glorious day we will join her in that great cloud of witnesses, remade as our Father intended us to be from the beginning of all Creation.  And like her, we will bless Him for all those saving works He has done, but especially for the saving work He has done in our own lives!

 

In His Mercy,

Brian+