Epiphany IV - Skip Windsor

The Timeless Virtue

We gather this morning at this one service to worship together as a church community. Afterwards, we all are encouraged to attend the church annual meeting downstairs in Fellowship Hall. During the meeting, we will vote for new lay leadership, listen to reports from members of the staff and vestry, learn about new emerging ministries, and hear about the financial condition of the church.

This past year was a difficult one for everyone. Institutions failed. People lost their jobs. Families tightened their belts. Liquidity was scarce. For many, it is still difficult; and tough times lie ahead for many. The same is true for churches everywhere. Christ Church was not immune from these storms either. As you will read in the annual report, the vestry cut the budget by over 20%. Parishioners dug deeper into their pockets to ensure that vital ministries stayed in place. For this, we can be thankful. Because of your generosity and our expense cutting, we maintained a balanced budget and even carried a small surplus forward into this year.

We turned a corner in 2009. Average Sunday attendance is up 4% while the national church saw attendance decrease. Our average pledges have increased from approximately $1750 to $1850 matching the national church average. We are blessed to have scores of newcomers join our church community who are bringing diverse gifts and talents with them. Several new ministries are emerging at Christ Church such as The Party People and The Energy Efficiency Committee. Our affiliate, Circle of Hope, continues to make strategic partnerships with temples and churches in Needham and is adding an arm for kids that will draw in another generation to learn about social justice and outreach.

Good things are happening. God is taking us places we never thought we would go. Yet, with these important ministries occurring, we must ask ourselves where are we going as a church? What does 2011 look like for us? What about the next five years? Where will we be? Where do we want to be? In the strategic planning report handed to the vestry in April, there were provocative questions raised. In the heart of the report were these comments,

“As a parish we will need to decide as we go forward whether we are satisfied with the current reduced programming levels or whether we can devise a plan to “grow” our financial base in order to support our prior level of activities. possibility would be to increase non-financial participation in the church so that we could do more with less income.”

I do not think anyone here today would disagree with me that we want to grow as a church. The question becomes more of one about what kind of church we want to grow into? As I look around the diocese, I see 188 churches seeking to discern their mission in a rapidly changing culture and society. No longer will new wine fit into old wineskins.

The tectonic plates of the world are changing everyday. The language we speak. The communications we use. The people we meet. The climate we experience. The institutions we count on. All is dynamic. We must define our mission if we are to grow and flourish in a rapidly changing world. Being clear about our mission will determine what kind of church we will become in the next five years.

We do not have to create a mission. There is no need. We have one given to us. According to the Gospel of Matthew, Christ gave it to His disciples as His last command. It is called The Great Commission,

“And Jesus came and spoke to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.’”

Go. Make disciples. Baptize men and women in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. I believe at Christ Church we do go out in the world to do ministry: in Needham, Boston and the wider world. I believe we do make disciples by inviting people to join our church and become part of the community. I believe that we do baptize bringing young children and adults into the Household of God.

But, to carry out the Great Commission is not simple. Not today. There are obstacles along the way as we seek to serve Christ loving our neighbor as ourselves. And the one I wish to highlight this morning is a rising factionalism and partisanship in the wider church and in the public square. I would call it the “New Tribalism.”

The tribalism of community I am talking about is analogous to our North American Indian tribes, who manifest a certain culture, and ethos based upon a common, shared, and collective memory. Such collective memory formed around the narratives and stories of a people gives the tribe, and each member of the tribe, a sense of identity, as well as, provides a context for making meaning about their lives and their shared destiny.

Tribalism still exists today. You and I are from tribes. Whether we call it the Windsor, Baker, or Jensen tribe, or the Needham, Westwood or Newton tribe, or the Episcopalian, Congregational or Unitarian tribe, or the Democratic or Republican tribe, or, yes, even the Red Sox or Yankee tribe, in some way we come from a tribe and more than one tribe. Shared language, common memory, and an understood sense of values forms the basis of tribalism. Tribalism defines and differentiates us from others and helps us to know who we are.

The New Testament tells us that Jesus was descended from one of the twelve tribes of Israel. Jesus was a Jew, and more specifically, was a Nazarene Jew. In today’s Gospel lesson from Luke, we hear about Jesus’ rejection by his hometown people. His tribe rejects him. The late comedian, Rodney Dangerfield’s signature remark, “I get no respect,” would be one way to sum up today’s Gospel lesson.

Jesus came from Nazareth. It was his father, Joseph’s hometown. In today’s reading from Luke, Jesus is recognized as one their own. A local boy who was a skilled carpenter who later took over his father’s business after Joseph died. So when the local boy comes back to teach instead of to carve, the people become intrigued even complimenting him saying, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son who is doing remarkable things in Capernaum? He’s come home to do those same amazing feats here with us in Nazareth!”

Their acceptance quickly turns to anger and unrest when Jesus announces to them that no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. And adds a truth about what ultimately is at stake when he speaks to his townspeople: He recalls two examples in Israel’s history that hearken back to the earlier prophets – Elijah and Elisha – who reached beyond the people of Israel to welcome those who were most representative of the marginalized “Gentiles” or non-Jews. Elijah went to the unnamed widow in Sidon and Elisha healed the Syrian leper known as Naaman. The widow, in spite of famine and poverty did not give up on God or the words of the prophet Elijah. Naaman, who at first was reluctant to follow the words of the prophet Elisha, washed himself seven times in the Jordan and was healed of his leprosy. Both the widow of Sidon and the Syrian Naaman represented the “extreme other” to those in the synagogue crowd. Jesus used these two examples to drive home the point that the Good News of God in Christ was intended for all tribes – Jew and Gentile alike.

The life of Jesus was devoid of personal factionalism. It is true he was an observant Jew and identified himself as a rabbi. Yet His arguments and preaching were always against the Jewish and Roman authorities that sought to divide communities: poor from rich, Jew from Gentile, women from men. He opposed those in authority because of their narrow-minded self-interests. What Jesus was calling people to was a higher unifying loyalty that transcended all tribal and partisan loyalties: Loyalty to God.

Through his life, death and resurrection, Jesus shows how God is with us in the world. When we see how Jesus forgave sinners, invited the despised, healed the sick, spoke to the doubtful, and prayed to God, we apprehend not an idea but a real person who sought to reconcile all people together in their common humanity under the banner of love.

In the Epistle lesson we heard today from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, the familiar words take on a familiar resonance. We hear it read at weddings. But, a deeper reading leads us to note that Paul is making a diatribe against the cliques and factions that fought for turf in the Corinthian church. He presents the ideal virtue of a Christian community: Love. While some church factions valorized spiritual knowledge and prophecy, Paul says that even these gifts will pass away but love, love will abide. It defined the ideal of the Church. It defined the life in the Kingdom of God.

Inspired by the words of Paul, The words by the Spanish mystic, St. John of the Cross-comes to mind, “In the twilight of our lives, we will be judged on how we have loved.”

Jesus’ call remains as fervent and persistent now as it did in his own day. You and I are called to a universal discipleship where compassion eclipses tribalism. This discipleship leads us to act on our faith in love and in action. Being disciples of God does not make us refugees from the issues of the day. Rather, it makes us go deeper into the injustices, the prejudices, and the problems of our time.

In the end, because of the world’s great needs, there is more that unites us than divides us. In Christ, we are called to be the Beloved Community of God. Each of us together forms the Body of Christ and “Who is our neighbor?” extends as far as our love.

The concreteness of this virtue of love I find most exquisitely in the Holy Eucharist. Through God’s sacrificial love in Jesus Christ, we become the Body of Christ. But, at Christ Church, I find the symbol of Christian love in another place, too, in this sanctuary.

There is never a moment before I leave this sanctuary when I don’t stop to gaze upon this majestic glass cross before us. It is truly unique and brightly beautiful. When the morning sun comes through the glass the colors of the cross seem to dance across the floor. I find it very comforting, inspiring and reassuring in times of concern or worry.

But there are other times, more times these days than most, when I see the cross as a prod. Prodding you and me forth fulfilling Great Commission to go. “Go. Go out from this place. Make disciples. Put my love into action and equip the saints for the work of ministry.”

My hope for us as we look ahead this year is that we may we never lose sight of the Cross and may we always give ourselves over to love.

Let us pray:

O God of unchangeable power and grace, give us the vision to see you and to serve you with Christ-like love. We do not know what a new day will bring but let us be ready in body, mind and spirit to heed your call. Let us go forth from this your church renewed and restored for the work of ministry. All this we ask in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Epiphany II - Peter Tierney

Poured out for Haiti
Psalm 36:5-10; John 2:1-11

“How priceless is your love, O God! Your people take refuge under the shadow of your wings.”

Last week, I announced that I would be preaching about spiritual gifts today, but some things have happened between last Sunday and this morning, and God sometimes has a way of telling us that we need to change our plans, no matter how well thought out. One of the ways that God uses to get our attention is when we encounter the same person, or idea, or thing multiple times in a short period, seemingly coincidentally—and that is what happened to me while planning for this sermon. I had looked at the readings for last week and this week some time ago, and decided that I would preach two sermons on the Holy Spirit, so I wasn’t planning to talk about today’s Gospel reading at all. Now, Pam and I sat down to plan the music for this service a few weeks ago, and it was Pam’s idea to use the music in our hymnal with Jewish roots for nearly all the hymns in this service, in honor of the wedding at Cana, which was of course a Jewish wedding. When I told Pam earlier this week that I wasn’t preaching about the wedding at Cana, she looked a little disappointed—that was sign number one. A day or two later, I happened to be reading a book, and the author referenced the story of Jesus changing water into wine—sign number two.

On Tuesday night, we received the word about the earthquake in Haiti. By Wednesday morning, reports of the full extent of the destruction had begun to reach us, and we heard directly from Fr. Kesner Ajax, who visited us here at Christ Church two years ago. It was when Fr. Kesner reported that the Episcopal Cathedral in Port-au-Prince had been reduced to rubble that I knew for sure that a sermon on spiritual gifts would have to wait. Because, you see, the walls of the sanctuary of Holy Trinity cathedral in Port-au-Prince were painted with the most amazing, brilliantly colored murals of biblical scenes, but these biblical stories were painted in a distinctly Haitian style, with Haitian people and with elements of Haitian culture—clothing, tools, customs—woven seamlessly into the paintings as a way of saying that the biblical world and the Haitian world are one: the days of Jesus are today, just as real for Haiti as they are for ancient Israel. These murals were national treasures—exquisite examples of Haitian religious art. I was in that Cathedral, looking at those murals just this past September, on our mission team’s first day in Haiti—a Sunday—and for me, the most beautiful and powerful and moving of those paintings was the mural depicting today’s Gospel story—Jesus’ miracle at the Wedding in Cana of Galilee. When I heard that the Cathedral had been destroyed in the earthquake, and I realized that no one else would ever see that mural of the Wedding at Cana, I knew that God wanted something different from me in this sermon than what I had planned.

The Russian author Dostoevsky wrote of Jesus’ miracle at the wedding of Cana that “It was not people’s grief, but their joy Christ visited. He worked his first miracle to help human gladness.” By sustaining the wine at the wedding, Jesus allowed the celebration to continue when it might have been cut short for lack of the cup of gladness. But isn’t this a strange and alien story for us to hear today, of all days, when the suffering of Haiti lies heavy on our hearts? Do we not need Jesus to visit our grief now and the grief of an entire nation? What is there to celebrate, when destruction has erased the Wedding of Cana from the walls of Holy Trinity Cathedral? What need is there for wine, when the people of Haiti are desperate for the water that Jesus started out with? Our hearts cry out: “Turn it back, O Lord, and give them the water to drink!”

The joy of the wedding feast does not fit our mood or our circumstances, and it might be completely out of place, if it were not for the ambivalence that marks Jesus’ mood in this Gospel. Jesus is reluctant to work this miracle, he is not ready to give the sign—when his mother tells him that the party has run out of wine, he says to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” Jesus knows that as soon as he gives this sign, as soon as he does this wondrous thing, his feet are set on a path that will lead him to his hour. That hour is the hour of the Cross, the hour of his death. The road that begins in Cana of Galilee is the road that ends at Golgotha—the wine that Jesus gives to the wedding feast is forever linked to the wine poured out from his body when the spear pierces his heart: “This is my blood of the New Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.” Even in the joyous celebration of the wedding feast, there is a whiff of desolation. Our lives are rarely marked by a pure and unadulterated joy—they are a mixture of celebration and sadness.

But the reverse is also true, that joy and hope can linger and remain and grow, even in the most desolate and seemingly desperate times. When Jesus is hanging on the Cross, the life nearly gone from him, sensing that he has been abandoned by the God he has called Father all his life, he cries out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” It is a cry that we can imagine echoing through the streets of Port-au-Prince today. But on Jesus’ lips, this cry is more than a sign of desolation—it is a quotation from the 22nd psalm, the first line of that most piteous and heartbreaking of the songs of Israel. The psalm goes on, “Why are you so far from my cry and from the words of my distress? Oh my God, I cry in the daytime, but you do not answer; by night as well, but I find no rest.” That is how the 22nd psalm begins, but I want you to hear how it ends, because the rest of the psalm could not have been far from Jesus’ mind. After rehearsing many unanswered pleas for God to save, the psalm takes a turn, declaring faith in God despite the certainty of death for the sake of the future. The final verses of the psalm end, “My soul shall live for God; my descendants shall serve him; they shall be known as the Lord’s for ever. They shall come and make known to a people yet unborn the saving deeds that he has done.” On Jesus’ lips, the desolate cry of the 22nd psalm is a statement of faith and hope, a cry from the heart that although God may not spare us from the time of trial, there is a future for the peaceable kingdom, there is a hope for generations yet unborn.

The God we worship is not a remote and distant God, sitting in the heavens passing judgment from afar. The God we worship, the God we remember today in our holy meal of bread and wine, is the crucified God, the God who has taken the pain and suffering of the world onto himself, and poured out his blood for our sake. The God we worship today is the risen Lord, the God who overcomes Death. Our God encompasses all things, from the joy of the Wedding feast to the suffering of the Cross to the triumph of the Resurrection. Our human lives are a mixture of these things—joy and suffering, desolation and consolation, and the lives of the people of Haiti are the same, even today. They are lives of faith and hope, even today.

You do not need to believe my word alone about this--I want to share you testimony from Haiti. These words are taken from an e-mail sent to us by Suzi Parker, a Presbyterian missionary who with her husband John is running the guesthouse in Leogane that Christ church’s team stays at when we are going to Lazile. That guesthouse was seriously damaged in the earthquake—John and Suzi’s apartment was destroyed. Suzi writes, “At night we sleep in the yard behind the hospital where the bandstand was. It has fallen, as has the Episcopal school. There are two to three hundred people who sleep in that field at night. They sing hymns until almost midnight, and we wake up to a church service, with hymns, a morning prayer, and the apostles’ creed. The evening sky is glorious. In the field, there is a real sense of community. I have never understood joy in the midst of suffering, but now I do. The caring I have seen, the help we have received from the Haitians, the evening songs and prayers are wonderful. The people will survive, though many will die. Please pray for us. And pray that we and the hospital can be of help to the people here.”

The psalmist says that in God is the well of life, and in God’s light we see light. But sometimes we do not see the light, sometimes all we can see are the shadows and darkness, and we have only the memory of what it is to see God’s light. Sometimes God hides. And in those times, having faith and hope means trusting that the shadows falling on us are the shadow of God’s wings covering us to protect us from a greater darkness, for there is no shadow without a light somewhere to cast it. I pray that this is so for the people of Haiti and for the people who are traveling to aid them—people of great faith and hope. “How priceless is your love, O God! Your people take refuge under the shadow of your wings. Continue your loving-kindness to those who know you, and your favor to those who are true of heart.” Amen.

Epiphany I - Peter Tierney

Burning with the Holy Spirit
Isaiah 43:1-7; Acts 8:14-17; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

"John answered all of them by saying, 'I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.'"

Here, in the words of John the Baptist, we are first introduced to the difference between the baptism that John administered and the baptism that Jesus administers: the baptism of John is a baptism with water, but the baptism of Jesus—the baptism of the Christian Church—is baptism with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Now it is true that Jesus honors the baptism of John by being baptized himself with water by John’s hands, and also by making baptism with water the sign and means of Christian baptism, but make no mistake—even though Christians are baptized with water, the essential part of Christian baptism is the gift of the Holy Spirit. Jesus himself emphasizes the importance of being filled with the Holy Spirit when he teaches, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.”

In the book of Acts, once the apostles hear that the new converts in Samaria have not received the Holy Spirit, even though they have been baptized, they send Peter and John to pray for them and lay hands on them so that they will receive the Spirit. The conversion of the Samaritans is not complete without the presence of the Holy Spirit with them, and the author of Acts suggests that the reason the Samaritans had not received the Spirit was because “they had only been baptized in name of the Lord Jesus.” The connection between Christian baptism and the gift of the Holy Spirit is so strong that even though baptism in the name of Jesus alone was permissible in the very earliest days, it came to be seen as deficient, and the practice of baptizing in the threefold name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit became the universal practice of the Christian Church.

So, all of that tells us that Jesus and the followers of Jesus baptize with the Holy Spirit, or call upon the Holy Spirit to complete the action begun in baptism, and it also tells us that Christians should value the presence of the Holy Spirit, but it doesn’t do much to tell us why the Holy Spirit is so important. What’s so great about the Holy Spirit anyway? What has the Holy Spirit done for us lately? I am convinced that one important clue that points us toward the answers to these questions lies in the other thing that John tells us Jesus will baptize with. Jesus baptizes, not only with the Holy Spirit—but with fire!

What does it mean to baptize with fire? Fire is not an element in Christian baptism—we don’t light babies on fire before dipping them in the font. You may have heard the expression “baptism by fire” used to describe the circumstances when someone is thrown into a particularly difficult situation that becomes an extreme test of their abilities. This idea of a trial by fire is one of the most frequent ways that fire is mentioned in the New Testament. Fire as a means of testing the purity of metals, fire that cleanses and cauterizes and purifies, fire that judges whether something is durable and will endure—that is how the New Testament speaks of fire.

Fire is also closely linked with the Holy Spirit and with the presence of God. In the Old Testament, God leads the people of Israel out of Egypt and through the desert in a pillar of fire by night, and when they reach Mount Sinai, “the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel,” and it was out of this fire that God spoke the Ten Commandments to Israel. Again, in the Acts of the Apostles, it is no coincidence that when the Holy Spirit descends upon the apostles at Pentecost, it appears in the form of tongues of fire. Fire is a sign and a symbol of God’s presence—which is one reason why we keep a flame constantly burning in our sanctuaries.

So we have these two aspects of fire connected to each other: fire as a sign of God’s presence, and fire that tests the mettle of what it surrounds. The Holy Spirit is a fire that both tests and purifies the people that it falls upon. The Spirit is the spirit of truth, and so it tests and divides truth from falsehood; the Spirit is the spirit of righteousness, and so it tests our actions, revealing what is good and what is wicked in the things we do and empowering us to do the good. Above all, the Spirit is the spirit of love, that burning fire of love that draws us together and tests our bonds to God and to each other, refining those relationships to make them even more truly beautiful and pure reflections of God’s own infinite beauty. The love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

Elsewhere in his Gospel, Luke records a somewhat cryptic sentence spoken by Jesus, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” The fire that Jesus is speaking of is this fire of the Holy Spirit, a fire that is meant to burn in the hearts of his disciples, a fire that will rage throughout the ages and test the world that God has made, burning away what is false, and wicked, and against God’s will for the world that he made in love. This is a fearsome fire, an awesome and terrible and relentless fire, a fire that Jesus means to share with those who will take up their cross and follow him. Jesus came to set each and every one of us on fire—he wants you to burn with the Spirit of God. There is an urgency and a great power in God’s mission, it is the same urgency that fire has as it latches onto anything that will burn and keep the fire going. This mission, the mission that Jesus shared with his disciples is the mission to love God and our neighbor truly, it is the mission to share the good news of God’s forgiveness in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and this mission that is powered by the burning flame of the Holy Spirit, which is given to us in baptism.

God wants us to burn with this mission; Jesus wants to set us on fire for God’s mission, the Holy Spirit has been sent to reach into us and draw forth our greatest energies and efforts to further God’s work in the world, to light a fire in us that will shine out and proclaim that God is here! God is here in us and between us and around us!

Next week, I will be preaching about some of the specific ways that the Holy Spirit acts in the Church to further God’s mission by granting spiritual gifts to disciples of Jesus, but for now, I want to leave you with one last observation—this time an important difference between fire and the Holy Spirit. Fire, as we know it, consumes the fuel that keeps it burning, until nothing is left. The Holy Spirit is not that kind of a fire—it does not rely on the power and the energy that is within us, but rather unlocks the depths of our energy, focuses it and sets it free. It is not so with other kinds of spirits—we can all think of examples of people who, caught up in a passionate spirit for human endeavors, end up consumed by that Spirit. Think of athletes who focus so much on sport that they destroy their bodies or lose their love for the game, or neglect their other commitments and relationships. Think of politicians who enter public life with the best of intentions, but succumb to the lure of power and influence. Think of financiers and investors who start who start off in business to make a living, but the pressure and the desire to make more and more money takes over and overrides their judgment and their sense of right and wrong. Think of religious zealots, who begin by following the leadings of the Spirit, but come to confuse their own thoughts and prejudices with the mind of God. In all of these cases, people are consumed by the fires of their own passions—but it will not be so if we are burning with the true Holy Spirit of God. Jesus wants us to burn, but he does not want us to burn out. When we are filled with the Holy Spirit and acting in accordance with God’s will, the work may be strenuous and difficult, but it will not be draining and tiresome, it will not burn us out.

God promises that when his people walk through the fire, they shall not be burnt, and the flame will not consume them. This is a promise that extends to the fire of the Holy Spirit as well. The image to remember is the image of God speaking out of the burning bush to Moses—what astonished Moses and got his attention was that the bush was not consumed by the flames. So it will be with us, if we have received the Holy Spirit of God—we will burn with a shining light that does not consume us, and God will speak out from us—perhaps in words, but also in our deeds. And in the power of the Spirit, we will find that God has given us the most rewarding work and the most blessed gift we will ever know.