Halo Shining
Sermon: Psalm 51, Hebrews 5:5-10
5th Lent, March 25, 2012
Let’s take a quick journey through thousands of years of God’s work among us, through the Old and New Testaments and up to the present time. It will be a fast trip and we will have glimpses of biblical characters and passages. Hopefully, it will all make sense in the end. Think of the intro to the current tv show, the very popular, Big Bang Theory, At the beginning of the show there is a fast moving collage that takes the viewer from the origins of the universe, through the evolution of life, into the study of physics and up to the present time. So our biblical journey will be similar. What would a tv show be without a commercial, though? Our commercial this morning is for the Scripture 101 class that meets at 9.30 most every Sunday morning. We are taking a quick journey there through scripture and invite you to get on board, if you haven’t already.
Okay, ready for this journey, here we go. Picture Adam and Eve in the Garden, shamed because they sinned. Suddenly we see old Abraham. He approaches the priest Melchizedek, who offers to the God Most High a sacrifice of bread and wine in Abraham’s name. Next there is David, God’s favorite king, breaking three of the ten commandments, like all at once, and then composing that great psalm of his repentance, Psalm 51, the one we prayed after the reading from Jeremiah this morning, “Have Mercy on me, oh God.”
Then there is Jesus at the Last Supper offering up the sacrifice of bread and wine, a foreshadowing of his sacrifice the next day upon the cross. We hear echoed today’s words from Hebrews, “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”
A quick transport in the salvation time machine and we see the present day Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun, writing one of her many books. What is Sister Joan saying?
“One mistake we often make is to accept perfection as our standard, as our goal. When we imagine that we will never fail, failure hits hardest. Perfection is an oppressive standard and no Christian this side of heaven will ever reach it. The problem, of course, is that we fail. We know ourselves to be weak. We stumble along, being less than we can be, never living up to our own standards, let alone anyone else’s. We eat too much between meals, we work too little to get ahead, we drink more than we should at the office party. We are all addicted to something. Those failures and addictions convince us we are worthless and incapable of being worthwhile. It is a self-fulfilling prophesy of the worst order because it traps us inside our own sense of inadequacy, of futility, of failure.”
Do her words feel familiar? What’s to be done about this condition? If we can’t be perfect, do we just give up and “go the way of all flesh,” to quote St. Paul. Well, let’s go back through the time machine and get the bigger picture. God didn’t give up on us. In that mythical story of the fall in the Garden, God didn’t give up on Adam and Eve and on the human race. When David broke those three commandments (he lusted after his neighbor’ wife, he committed adultery with her and he had her husband killed so she could be his wife.) God didn’t give up on David and David didn’t give up on David. His repentance is expressed in that remarkable psalm that can be our expression of repentance, if we need it.
“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving kindness; in your great compassion blot out my offenses. Wash me through and through from my wickedness and cleanse me from my sin.”
The thing about it is Christ has won forgiveness for us. He offered the ultimate sacrifice upon the cross; that sacrifice is re-presented and we are invited to enter into it each time we celebrate the Eucharist. He is a priest forever according to the Order of Melchizedek. Remember that Melchizedek offered the sacrifice of bread and wine, way back in the days of Abraham, just as we will today, only it has much more power and meaning now because of Christ’s death and resurrection. And there will be a time in today’s service, very soon in fact, to express our repentance and hear the words of forgiveness. Then there is also the opportunity to go for personal confession.
So, what about Joan Chittister’s words concerning perfectionism. I find them encouraging. We can’t be perfect as we tend to define it. So, let’s give it up. We don’t give up trying to live the Christian life, we just stop trying to be perfect. We will screw up and be less than we think we should be. I dare say, very few of us will screw up like David; and he was forgiven because he repented and made amends. And so will we, if we repent and make amends. We have to forgive ourselves. Most of the things we beat ourselves over the head about aren’t sins at all but failures to live up to our own self-image, you know, trying to shine up the halo.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Friday, March 2, 2012
Baby Powder
Sermon: Gen. 17:1-16, Mark 8:31-38
Lent 2, March 4, 2012
When the comedian Yakov Smirnoff first came from his native Russia to this country he was amazed at what he found in our supermarkets. “On my first shopping trip I saw powdered milk—you just add water and you get milk. Then I saw powdered orange juice. You just add water and you get orange juice. Then I saw baby powder and I thought to myself, ‘What a country.’”
He was speaking the truth about America. We don’t have baby-making down quite that efficiently, but we are into fast-food, fast-communication, and fast-solutions. Sometimes we have the same approach to religion. Powdered salvation. Mix with water, Baptism maybe, and you have instant salvation. There are two kind of extreme approaches of this type. One is the evangelical Christian approach of accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior and you are saved. It comes across as fast-food salvation. I haven’t looked but maybe there are cans of powdered-salvation for sale in the Christian bible stores. Without beating up on the evangelicals too much and continuing to over-simplify their belief, let’s look at the other end of the spectrum, the Roman Catholics. Their emphasis on the power of the sacraments can come across not only as fast food religion, but instant salvation, as well. The belief, for instance, that if someone is baptized and dies suddenly, they go immediately to heaven or that through confession and the sacrament of anointing a dying person also goes immediately to heaven, smacks of salvation-in-a-can theology. Indulgences, which guaranteed passage from Purgatory, and the sale of which triggered off the Protestant Reformation, are thankfully not for sale any longer.
How about us Episcopals? Are we immune to such thinking? Since we share both Protestant and Catholic origins, we are susceptible to this kind of magic from one side or the other. We consider ourselves the bridge-church, assimilating both the best of Catholicism as well as of Protestantism. We need to check if we are always assimilating the best. Are we perhaps into instant salvation, as well?
Part of the problem is an over emphasis on the afterlife. If I see salvation as primarily about life after death, my major goal will be to do whatever I can to go to heaven and avoid hell. Then I’m tempted to do it the easiest way possible. Go and get saved or receive the right sacraments just before I die.
If, on the other hand, I see salvation as primarily dealing with this life, the one we have right now, then I will take a very different approach. Let me present an approach which I think is much more in keeping with Scripture and with human nature. It is a roadmap for living. It is called transformation. In other words, the purpose of our life and our calling as a Christian is to transform ourselves with God’s help and that of the Christian community into a true follower of Jesus. This does not happen overnight and we can’t get it from canned religion. It is the work of a lifetime. The afterlife will follow from it as naturally as day follows night, sight follows blindness and resurrection follows death.
Today’s readings are transformational. In the Old Testament reading, God is speaking to Abraham when Abe was 99 years old and telling him he would become the father of many nations. Abraham had already done a lot of living and because of his faith he found favor with God, but his faith was still in need of strengthening. When he is told he and Sarah would have a son both of them in different passages are described as laughing in disbelief, but they came to believe, and they had a son, Isaac. That wasn’t enough. Abraham is further tested by God who asked him to sacrifice that son Isaac. Through Isaac Abraham became the spiritual father of Jews, Christians and Muslims, but he didn’t find faith and salvation in a quick fix. His transformation was slow and painful.
Paul in today’s reading from Romans speaks of Abraham and tells us he was justified by his faith and we his spiritual descendants are justified in the same way, by our faith. That faith is not a mere intellectual thing; it is the work of our heart, of our whole self, of our whole life.
In the Gospel reading from Mark Jesus is having trouble getting his disciples to believe he is going down to Jerusalem to be crucified and that they are going with him. They want the quick earthly messiah, establishing His kingdom with them as his lieutenants. None of this crucifixion stuff. He ends up having to say ”If any want to become my followers let them take up their cross and follow me.” This is how we are transformed, not by powdered religion, but by trying to walk with him in faith wherever he leads us. That doesn’t mean we should go out and ask to be crucified. Trouble in the form of challenges will come without our asking. How we deal with them is the determining thing. Do we deny them, run away from them or, worse, try to handle them all by ourselves, as if He and those who care about us were not on this journey with us.
Lent is that time when we figuratively go down to Jerusalem with Him. I’ve asked you during this Lent to work at giving up worry. And you say to me, “Give up worry and you tell us we are going down to Jerusalem to be crucified with Him.” Ah, but you see, that’s the Christian bind. We are called to accept life in faith and hope and love, but to realize we don’t have to face it all alone. He is there, often in the person of caring, loved ones. In another place he has told us that his yoke is sweet and His burden light.
Lent 2, March 4, 2012
When the comedian Yakov Smirnoff first came from his native Russia to this country he was amazed at what he found in our supermarkets. “On my first shopping trip I saw powdered milk—you just add water and you get milk. Then I saw powdered orange juice. You just add water and you get orange juice. Then I saw baby powder and I thought to myself, ‘What a country.’”
He was speaking the truth about America. We don’t have baby-making down quite that efficiently, but we are into fast-food, fast-communication, and fast-solutions. Sometimes we have the same approach to religion. Powdered salvation. Mix with water, Baptism maybe, and you have instant salvation. There are two kind of extreme approaches of this type. One is the evangelical Christian approach of accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior and you are saved. It comes across as fast-food salvation. I haven’t looked but maybe there are cans of powdered-salvation for sale in the Christian bible stores. Without beating up on the evangelicals too much and continuing to over-simplify their belief, let’s look at the other end of the spectrum, the Roman Catholics. Their emphasis on the power of the sacraments can come across not only as fast food religion, but instant salvation, as well. The belief, for instance, that if someone is baptized and dies suddenly, they go immediately to heaven or that through confession and the sacrament of anointing a dying person also goes immediately to heaven, smacks of salvation-in-a-can theology. Indulgences, which guaranteed passage from Purgatory, and the sale of which triggered off the Protestant Reformation, are thankfully not for sale any longer.
How about us Episcopals? Are we immune to such thinking? Since we share both Protestant and Catholic origins, we are susceptible to this kind of magic from one side or the other. We consider ourselves the bridge-church, assimilating both the best of Catholicism as well as of Protestantism. We need to check if we are always assimilating the best. Are we perhaps into instant salvation, as well?
Part of the problem is an over emphasis on the afterlife. If I see salvation as primarily about life after death, my major goal will be to do whatever I can to go to heaven and avoid hell. Then I’m tempted to do it the easiest way possible. Go and get saved or receive the right sacraments just before I die.
If, on the other hand, I see salvation as primarily dealing with this life, the one we have right now, then I will take a very different approach. Let me present an approach which I think is much more in keeping with Scripture and with human nature. It is a roadmap for living. It is called transformation. In other words, the purpose of our life and our calling as a Christian is to transform ourselves with God’s help and that of the Christian community into a true follower of Jesus. This does not happen overnight and we can’t get it from canned religion. It is the work of a lifetime. The afterlife will follow from it as naturally as day follows night, sight follows blindness and resurrection follows death.
Today’s readings are transformational. In the Old Testament reading, God is speaking to Abraham when Abe was 99 years old and telling him he would become the father of many nations. Abraham had already done a lot of living and because of his faith he found favor with God, but his faith was still in need of strengthening. When he is told he and Sarah would have a son both of them in different passages are described as laughing in disbelief, but they came to believe, and they had a son, Isaac. That wasn’t enough. Abraham is further tested by God who asked him to sacrifice that son Isaac. Through Isaac Abraham became the spiritual father of Jews, Christians and Muslims, but he didn’t find faith and salvation in a quick fix. His transformation was slow and painful.
Paul in today’s reading from Romans speaks of Abraham and tells us he was justified by his faith and we his spiritual descendants are justified in the same way, by our faith. That faith is not a mere intellectual thing; it is the work of our heart, of our whole self, of our whole life.
In the Gospel reading from Mark Jesus is having trouble getting his disciples to believe he is going down to Jerusalem to be crucified and that they are going with him. They want the quick earthly messiah, establishing His kingdom with them as his lieutenants. None of this crucifixion stuff. He ends up having to say ”If any want to become my followers let them take up their cross and follow me.” This is how we are transformed, not by powdered religion, but by trying to walk with him in faith wherever he leads us. That doesn’t mean we should go out and ask to be crucified. Trouble in the form of challenges will come without our asking. How we deal with them is the determining thing. Do we deny them, run away from them or, worse, try to handle them all by ourselves, as if He and those who care about us were not on this journey with us.
Lent is that time when we figuratively go down to Jerusalem with Him. I’ve asked you during this Lent to work at giving up worry. And you say to me, “Give up worry and you tell us we are going down to Jerusalem to be crucified with Him.” Ah, but you see, that’s the Christian bind. We are called to accept life in faith and hope and love, but to realize we don’t have to face it all alone. He is there, often in the person of caring, loved ones. In another place he has told us that his yoke is sweet and His burden light.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)