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+

God makes that which is worthless, priceless!

      I wish I had greater clarity about what to preach this week.  I settled on Philemon because people have been asking questions or commenting on trafficking and modern slavery, and it is an important teaching in our own parish history.  But I could have been easily swayed to preach on the dangers our Christian Nationalist friends should see in Jeremiah’s warning this morning.  And the Gospel lesson might need a reminder that the word translated as hate by our translators today should be more or first understood comparatively.  When clarity is not present, blame the preacher; but do feel free to grab me this week if I did not choose what you needed.

     Today is the only time in the three-year cycle of the lectionary that we read from Paul’s letter to Philemon.  So, if you do not know it or remember it, that can be a large part of why.  Those who like to tease their friends can tell them I preached such a great sermon on the letter today that you felt called by God to read the whole book.  Before you groan, we read all but 4 verses of the book.  So, if someone is impressed that you ran home and read the whole book of Philemon, you know they do not know their Bible that well.  Philemon is actually the third shortest book, when it comes to word count.  I will leave it to you to figure those out for your studying pleasure!

     The entire subject of Paul’s letter is slavery, which is why it has been important in our past as a parish and as those who live in the South.  Of course, the slavery of Rome was different than the slavery of the South in the lead up to the Civil War.  But, as one survivor once reminded me, slavery and oppression are all the same.  Once you lose control of your life, there’s no good.

     To put the letter in context, though, we need to remember that when this letter was written, likely around AD 60, there were maybe 300,000 citizens like Paul and maybe as many as 10 million slaves.  Historians like to argue over the numbers, so you may read there were as few as a 100,000 citizens and 5 million slaves; and you may read higher numbers.  What is important to us is the response to runaway slaves.  Rome was constantly on guard about the numbers game between the upper class and the lower classes.  There was often a genuine worry that the slaves could overwhelm the upper class by sheer numbers.  So, when a slave escaped, it was an event.  Everybody in the community was on the lookout for the runaway slave.  Punishment for capture depended a bit on how the slave had worked prior to running away, any crimes they committed while free, and the on the temperament of the slave owner.  Those that got off the easiest just had to do the most menial jobs after their punishment.  Some returned slaves were beaten and/or branded with an F for fugitive on the forehead.  Some were maimed to prevent future flight.  Some were sold into an Ergastulum, think the worst prison imaginable, or even to gladiator schools.  The perceived worst were killed in tortuous ways, often by crucifixion.

     I assume everyone has seen the movie Spartacus with Kirk Douglass.  That rebellion was the fear of every community in Rome.  Though Crassus eventually defeated the army of freed slaves, and crucified them along the way back to Rome as a warning to others who shared their thoughts, communities were ravaged by the slave army before their defeat.  No one wanted a repeat of that!  That’s the context of our letter today.

     A slave deemed worthless by a man named Philemon, whom we think lived in Colossae and certainly Asia Minor, has run away.  For reasons known only to the slave, he has made his way to Rome, where he has encountered the Apostle Paul, who is imprisoned – we read about that at the end of Acts, for those who want more details.  Paul writes the letter, telling the recipients that Timothy is with them.  That greeting is likely important for two reasons: to let them know that Timothy sends greetings and that Paul’s decision to write this letter is VERY intentional.

     Paul greets Philemon, Apphia, Archippus, and others in this house church hosted by Philemon.  This will be important in a few minutes.

     Paul shares that he prays for them always and hopes that they may perceive all the good that they may do for Christ, and he tells Philemon and the others that the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through them.  All that serves as the leadup to Paul’s purpose in writing the letter.

     Paul states that he could command Philemon to do what he is about to ask, but he wants Philemon to choose to do the right thing on the basis of love.  Yes, Paul plays on Philemon’s sympathies by reminding Philemon he is old and now a prisoner, but Paul really wants Philemon to make the right choice here.  Think weird Barbie and Stereotypical Barbie in the movie last year.  Weird Barbie offers Stereotypical Barbie the opportunity to discover the reason for the portal and to close it or to stay in Barbieland.  Stereotypical Barbie choose to stay.  Weird Barbie offers the choice again.  Stereotypical Barbie again chooses wrong.  Weird Barbie tells her she has to go to the real world or learn to live with cellulite, she just wanted to give her the opportunity to think she was in charge of her own fate.  It’s kinda like that, except Paul really wants Philemon to choose based on love.

     It turns out that Philemon’s runaway slave has made his way to Rome and met Paul, who has shared the Gospel with the slave.  In fact, Paul has so discipled Onesimus that he will be the one returning the letter and risking his life or well-being!  Paul tells Philemon he preferred to keep the slave, but he wanted Philemon’s consent.  And Paul writes that maybe this is why Onesimus was separated from Philemon for a while, so that Philemon might have him back for ever.

     Then comes the big ask: If you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would me.  Charge his debts to my account.  Understand, the who community would be in an uproar over the runaway slave.  Bounty hunters have likely been employed.  Philemon will be taking a real risk, if he does not severely punish Onesimus and make a public spectacle of his return.  That’s likely the reason Paul does not command Philemon but rather prays he makes the right decision out of love.

     Paul is, of course, not done.  Paul tells everyone in attendance he is writing this letter in his own hand.  We have a lot of doctors in this congregation, so we have a lot of illegible handwriting in this congregation.  Paul does not see well.  He always has someone like Timothy or Luke write the letters he dictates.  I have seen his writing on the walls of that prison.  Imagine a doctor’s writing but with peaks and valleys.  You read it going up and down and complain that he cannot write in a straight line.  That’s what Paul’s writing was like.  It was expensive, too.  Papyrus cost money.  Meandering writing wasted papyrus.  This is so important to Paul, though, he writes it himself, aware of the challenge and the expense to drive the point home to Philemon.  Paul knows what he is asking.

     Paul, of course, writes that he will say nothing about what Philemon owes him.  By writing that, he is of course reminding Philemon what Philemon owes him, namely the sharing of and hope found in the Gospel of Christ Jesus!  Like Onesimus, Philemon was persuaded by Paul’s arguments that Jesus was the Messiah of God.  Is it passive aggressive?  Maybe?  I think it aggressive.  Paul has given this letter to be read to the congregation meeting at Philemon’s house.  The leaders have been praised by Paul, as has Philemon, and now Philemon must make a decision in front of them.  Reject Paul and reject the Lord, or do the right thing for the right reason knowing the risks and potential cost.  Paul has set the table to make sure Philemon does the right thing, as many of us often do with our children or valued employees.

     The letter is important in our history in that it was one of the ways in which our predecessors made the courageous decision to allow their slaves to worship at Advent.  Others read, and still read, this letter and, because Paul does not condemn slavery outright, decided God thought slaves the natural order of things.  Quintard and our predecessors read it to understand that a slave cannot truly be a brother in Christ or adopted son of God.  For their understanding and decision, they were labelled Yankee Sympathizers.  They were mocked and shunned.  Initially, they were not even allowed to join the Confederate Army.  But they were correct.  God wants all people to come to Him, of their own free will.  More wondrously, He entrusts that invitation to men and women like Paul or Apphia or Philemon or you or me.  He trusts us to make the right decision based on our understandings of what He has done for us, just like Paul trusts Philemon.

     It is a good story for us individually and corporately.  Like the house church at Philemon’s, our ancestors made good and bad decisions.  Through it all, God was at work, discipling, maturing, and transforming.  It would be a good story if I ended there, but there is a Paul Harvey more to this story as there often is in the Gospel.

     Some in the modern world and Church condemn Paul for not outright condemning slavery, as if he was not a someone in his own context.  We are able to evaluate such things because our context is very different.  Such people like to fuss about Paul in this letter because we do not know how Philemon chose.  Since it was not commanded by Paul, Philemon might have continued to enslave Onesimus and punished him accordingly.

     For the most part, Philemon disappears from history.  He appears in one sentence in the letter to the Colossians, where Paul dictates he is sending Onesimus back.  But that is it.  Except for some other extent writings.  They are not Scriptural so we must acknowledge that we cannot accept them with the same certainty or trust.  But Philemon is listed in early Church writings as one of those killed in the mid-60’s in the great persecution of Nero.  The early Church considered Philemon one of those who was willing to die and eventually did die for his faith.  How do we think such a man would have responded to that letter we just read?  Would he respond out of fear, or would he have responded out of love, trusting God to keep His promises to Him?

     Onesimus’ story is also pretty cool.  Some extant literature has him dying as a martyr with his former master in Colossae.  But other literature speaks of Bishop Onesimus.  On the one hand, we can accept that God was so at work in the life of a useless slave that He transformed that worthless slave into a worthless bishop!  I know, I know, the real play on words is a worthless slave into a useful bishop, but I could not help myself at the joke, and, as one of our 8 o’clockers asked between the services: Can there be a truly useful bishop?  There can, with God’s help and God’s grace!

     If Onesimus died in the Nero persecution, the story is no less amazing.  Within a few short years of our letter, in a world where cell phones, e-mails, texting, and other forms of instantaneous communication did not exist, somehow this story was known.  This letter and its results traveled throughout the Church, and three men took the name Onesimus at their consecration, indicating they wanted to be a useful bishop to God.  Or, given the fact that Onesimus is not exactly a common name, our Onesimus survived, was eventually consecrated a bishop, and served three dioceses.  In either case, it worth remembering and sharing.

     And reminding.  The same God who worked in and through people like Paul, Apphia, Onesimus, Quintard, and all our predecessors at Advent, wants to work through us.  That same transformative grace that made them all worth remembering and considering makes the same possible for you and for me.  Reminded of that truth, and nourished by His Body and Blood, we are sent out into the world to be those clay vessels which He shapes and finishes, and leaves as His marker of salvation in the world around us!

 

In His Peace,
Brian+