Sermon: Fourth Sunday in Lent

The Very Rev. William Thomas Deneke, rector
> Scripture for the day

We are midway through Lent, midway through the season of wilderness that precedes Easter. Lent and Easter together are liturgical expressions of holy baptism. During Lent we die with Christ and during Easter we are raised with Christ. In these forty days before Easter we are invited to open ourselves to God’s presence in the wilderness just as Nicodemas discovered grace in the dark of night.

It is a challenge to find meaning in darkness. On their journey around Edom, the ancient Hebrews lost track of the promise and were overwhelmed by the desert. What had seemed so grace-filled lost its wonder and was replaced by fear.

That is such a deeply human experience. The wilderness represents the side of life we might call unholy. That part of ourselves we associate with God’s absence.

We all have times in the wilderness. Times when we lose heart, times when hope vanishes, times when bitterness and cynicism wrap themselves around us. Sometimes we spend long stretches in the wilderness. We may become afraid and lose our way. In fact, as a rule it’s not until we are in the wilderness that the concept of God’s grace makes sense. Up until that time grace may seem like a nice idea but nothing more. A nice idea applicable for others. It is when we realize that we are in the desert and parched with thirst that we can find God’s grace to be a sheer gift of living water.

Lent is about this kind of experience. Finding God’s presence in the deserts of life is the work of Lent.

Paul Tillich, a remarkable theologian, in his classic sermon “You are Accepted” wrote,

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we were estranged.

It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when old compulsions reign within us as they have fordecades, when despair destroys all joy and courage.

Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: “You are accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know; perhaps you will find it later.

Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!”

It is hard to believe that such a gift could be associated with wilderness experiences. Yet that is exactly what we proclaim in baptism. We die with Christ that we may be raised with Christ. It is in the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life, that new life emerges through grace.

This is not a process that we can control or even reason our way through. It is too existential, too soulful, too close to our core for us to manipulate. Our journeys in the wilderness call us to trust that God accompanies us not because of anything we do but because God loves us unconditionally. God walks with us through the desert not as the cause of our sorrow nor as one oblivious to it, but as a companion in grief. In the words of the Psalmist, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.”

If we have the courage to be honest with ourselves, sooner or later all of us find ourselves in the wilderness. It is never very far away. John’s gospel knows that. And so the evangelist says to keep our eyes on Jesus. When we’re lost, when we’re without hope, look to Jesus. And then John presents some of the most remarkable words in the Bible: He says,“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

Here is the great paradox of faith. It is through our encounters with God in the wilderness that we are saved. It is in our unholiness that we discover we are not condemned but accepted. As Tillich said, “ … a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: ‘You are accepted’”.

St. Paul reminds us not to run out into the wilderness in order to discover the grace of God. He says, in the King James Version, “Sufficient unto the day is the call thereof”. There will be plenty of times for trials without our manufacturing them. We don’t need to go looking for wilderness experiences. They will find us.

Today’s Lenten readings remind us that God is not absent when we think God is. In fact it is when we feel most separated from God that we may find we are loved and accepted.

A lot of people in the developing world know this well. Many have discovered God’s presence in the valley of the shadow of death. [e.g. Haiti] It may be harder for those of us with resources enough to escape from some of the valleys to know we are loved. We may not even think we have to depend on God’s love for survival. But there are other valleys, other wildernesses that we tend to find ourselves in. Wildernesses of meaninglessness, greed, and self absorption, the valley of clinging to anger when a hand of reconciliation has been offered us, the valleys of failing to love our neighbor by turning a blind eye to our neighbor’s plight, and the deep valley of failing to act on the faith into which we were baptized. These are unholy places, but not places beyond the love of God. God came into the wilderness of the world not to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved.

Let us pray:
O God, give us the courage in these days of Lent to see you in the barren places of our lives. Give us ears to hear you in the silence of alleluias. For you walk with us in the wilderness and share our pain in the valleys of grief. Through Jesus Christ in whom we die and find new life.
Amen.

Sermon: Last Sunday After the Epiphany

The Rev. Allan Sandlin, associate rector
> click here for the Scripture for the day

If you were to ask a Harry Potter expert about the meaning of transfiguration, she might quote Professor McGonagall’s introduction to first-year students at Hogwarts:

"Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts. Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned."

In the world of Harry Potter, we see things and people changed from one thing into another. Students turning pairs of white rabbits into slippers, Hagrid trying to change Dudley into a pig, that sort of thing. Complex and dangerous it may be, Professor McGonagall, but when things get transfigured at Hogwarts, we often laugh. A lot.

In this morning’s gospel, we hear once again the story of The Transfiguration. There’s nothing magical about this moment in Jesus’ life, though it is an awe-inspiring vision.

The Hebrew scriptures add to the splendor of the day with this extraordinary story of the ascension of Elijah taken up into a whirlwind with chariots and horsemen. Even St. Paul gets into the act describing the light of God shining in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

In Mark’s gospel, Jesus led Peter, James and John up onto a high mountain and he was transfigured before them, his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. Here on the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, we have one more epiphany, the most profound of them all. Some call it a theophany but biblical scholar, Morna Hooker, more accurately calls this moment a christophany, the moment when we recognize “who Jesus Christ really is.”

The transfiguration of Jesus was a brief window for those three disciples to witness the human Jesus become something more divine just for an instant, a glimpse of his divinity bathed in bright light. It’s easy to read this story and be awed by the vision of a dazzling Jesus. It has a beautiful, breath-taking look to it, and some scholars think it points toward the resurrection or maybe it’s even a resurrection story that the author simply inserted into the wrong part of the gospel. It’s surprising and comes totally out of the blue and we want everything to stay this way: triumphant, with bagpipes singing and the world ablaze with the glory of God.

It fits so well with one view of the church: the Church triumphant, the Church that is always right. The Church that is always on the winning side, the side that loves prosperous, successful people. From the mountain-top, transfiguration perspective, it’s not hard to imagine just such a place, just such a way of being church.

But then my sermon-writing time gets interrupted by an e-mail from a good friend in Germany. One month ago, her 51-year-old husband was killed by a speeding car while riding his bicycle to work. She’s asking lots of questions of God these days and she’s really dreading Ash Wednesday. Her faith has always been strong and clear and quite certain about things like heaven and sin. Now, her world is suddenly unsteady and she holds onto her two daughters very tightly.

And then there’s Cynthia, who cuts my hair. On Friday she told me that 3 more of her clients have lost their jobs in the past 2 weeks. In church this morning, sitting close to you, perhaps, are friends who are out of work or are anxious about whether they’ll still have a job next month.

And these days, my prayer list now includes 4 friends who’ve been diagnosed with cancer since the first of the year. All of them are really good people. All of them go to church. They have children and grandchildren who adore them.

How does this transfigured Jesus, this bright and shining image of God, help us make it through the night? We might echo the man with the unclean spirit who earlier in Mark’s gospel asked: What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?

But pay attention to this: into this vision of transfiguration, which seems to be all about seeing, all about beholding the divine Christ, come these words spoken from the cloud: This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him! God doesn’t tell us to look at Jesus, to marvel at his radiance, soak up some of those rays emanating from his divine being… God tells us to listen.

Listen to what, I wonder? Jesus doesn’t say a single word while up on the mountain. He’s silent. Maybe, just maybe the disciples had the words Jesus said to them in chapter 8 still ringing in their ears. Just 6 days ago at Caesarea Philippi, this is what he told them:

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lost it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it…

Or maybe they were supposed to remember to pay attention to what Jesus said the next time they were talking with him. On their way down the mountain that day, Jesus returned to the theme of suffering, reminding them of what he’d already told them once before about the Messiah who would suffer. Listen to him. Listen to Jesus and know that he comes among us as one who suffers, one for whom life was not easy, one who knows what it’s like to be human. Wholly and completely human.

Maybe the transfiguration does make us think of Easter, maybe it does point toward the resurrection. But when we listen to the story in context, we begin to sense that the cross stands behind it and on either side of it and runs right through the middle of this glorious transfiguration. So we hold the two together somehow knowing that the cross is the place where we might begin to make sense of our suffering or at least, the place where our suffering is joined with Jesus’.

Up on the mountain we can open our ears to listen to what Jesus wants to tell us. Up on the mountain we begin to sense that the church God dreams of is a place where people who are hurting, who are worried about their children and grandchildren’s future, people who are addicted to alcohol or drugs, people whose lives are falling apart…God dreams that people like this, people who can see themselves for real, will come together and listen to what Jesus has to say.

In Mark’s community, that early Christian church he was writing for, people were experiencing all kinds of doubt and failure. Down in the valley, it was hard to keep going, hard to have much of a vision for an abundant life, a growing church, a spiritually healthy life. But when they see things from the mountain top, when they see Jesus just for a moment from the inside out, they remember God’s promise to them at baptism, how they were marked as belonging to Christ forever. And all of a sudden, Jesus isn’t the only one called Beloved. Those who follow Jesus begin to recognize that whatever happens, whatever hardships and loss and sorrow they will encounter, God will continue to call them Beloved.

According to the church calendar, we leave our Epiphany mountaintops after today and begin the descent into the desert of Lent. We move from Transfiguration splendor and glory to Wednesday ashes on our foreheads and litanies of repentance. From being comfortable with who we are to being discomforted by who God might be calling us to become and the places where God might be leading us…

That astounding moment of transfiguration didn’t last long. Jesus didn’t stay up on the mountain. He came back down into the desert. We still encounter Jesus in the desert as well as the mountain-tops of our lives. Wherever people are hurting, where people are struggling just to make ends meet worried about making the mortgage payment, where people are broken, lonely and wounded, where they are going through a divorce, mourning the loss of a spouse, enduring chemotherapy, that’s where Jesus is. And that’s where he leads us…

From up on transfiguration mountain, Jesus was indeed already looking beyond the desert to another hill. Jesus was headed to the hill of Calvary. The cross on that mountain was his destination and that cross is the intersection of our life and his life. That is where we meet him, where our mortal life comes into contact with his mortal/immortal life.

Jesus invites us to journey with him toward the cross and bids us listen and watch for Christ in each other as we walk that road together. And Jesus longs for us to hear him calling us Beloved in all those life-changing, transfiguring moments that surprise us on mountain-tops and in desert valleys. Amen.

Sermon: Fifth Sunday After the Epiphany - Youth & Children's Sunday

Mary Margaret Winn, guest preacher
> Scripture for the day

Today’s gospel seems like a fairly straightforward lesson about the healing power of Jesus. He comes to Galilee, heals the fever of a friend, performs some miracles, casts out some demons… pretty normal “Jesus” things to do. But I don’t think this is really about Jesus’ high profile, memorable actions. Rather, I think it is about the people’s response to these actions.

Life is all about choices. What to wear each day, what to have for lunch, how we are going to treat others, and so on. But before we can make these decisions, a choice has to be presented to us. In my English class, we are reading Flannery O’Connor, the quintessential Southern religious writer. In all of her stories, there is a character we call a “candidate for grace” or someone who has not yet seen or understood the love of God. This character has some sort of sudden, often violent, revelation about his or her spirituality or personal characteristics. After the initial shock, they begin to process what they have learned about themselves, God, and others. And then the story ends. O’Connor leaves it up to the reader to determine what the character is going to do with their new-found Grace.

In one story, Mrs. Turpin, a Southern, middle-class woman, enters the waiting room at a doctors’ office and strikes up a conversation with the other patients. She continuously insults people based on their “class” while at the same time praising herself for being such a good Christian woman. Finally, one girl becomes so angry that she hurls a book at Mrs. Turpin’s head and attempts to choke her. After the action dissipates, Mrs. Turpin makes her way home to finish up her chores for the afternoon. In the “pig parlor” where she raises hogs, she begins to really process what has happened to her. She hoses down the pigs, ends her inner monologue, and walks back to the house. We had to decide whether or not she was going to act on her epiphany.

This scenario is a lot like our relationship with God. At some point in our lives, we start to notice the wonder of His grace. This realization may come gradually through everyday experience and observation, it may come in a fun Sunday school assignment from Father Deneke, or it could hit you like a book between the eyes as it does for Mrs. Turpin. Regardless of what prompts this moment, we have to process and react to how this “revelation of love” affects us emotionally, spiritually, and socially. Then we act.

One way that people can act is by spreading the Word. For me, this is like the first time I visited Yoforia. Yoforia is a place in Virginia Highlands that sells frozen yogurt. But not just any frozen yogurt-- this stuff is unbelievably delicious. Three different flavors with an endless supply of toppings. I fell in love, and the next day at school, all I could talk about was Yoforia and the “best dessert ever.” I wanted everyone to know about so they could go try it and fall in love just like I did.

Now replace the frozen yogurt with God’s love. Some people spread the Word by bringing people to church, the same way I brought people to Yoforia. Others volunteer their time or money by doing missionary work, helping at a soup kitchen, or giving money to charity. Still others simply chat with the check-out lady at the supermarket, or (a rare occurrence in Atlanta) actually let someone into the lane while driving. The best way to spread God’s love is to show others that our actions are a direct result of our faith.

But there is also another reaction, or lack thereof. Some people forget about their revelation. As much as I love Yoforia, I have not been there in months; Mrs. Turpin may have continued her life as if her eyes were never opened. Our lives are so hectic—with school, work, the economy, family, and a multitude of other commitments—that we can often let everyday life get in the way of responding to God’s Grace, even though it is always there. If we are in a hurry, we can forget to thank the cashier at the gas-station, or even cut someone off on the highway. These actions—good or bad—are evidence to others about our faith.

But God has done his part…showed His love to us…and all He wants us to do is act. To take what we have seen and do something with it. Again, the purest, most effective way to spread God’s love is to act on our faith. In our Gospel reading, Simon’s mother-in-law responds to Jesus’ care by serving Him in her home. The people of Galilee respond by going to the synagogue to see Jesus at work. Simon acts by searching for Jesus in the early morning. Jesus is our model as he moves from town to town to “proclaim the message.” So we need to take what we see as evidence of God’s grace- a sister, a friend, nature, or even frozen yogurt- and act.

Sermon: The Feast of the Presentation

Angela Wiggins, seminarian
> Scripture for the day

The town I grew up in was small - big enough to have a movie theatre, but the theatre had only one screen. Since it had to appeal to all audiences, the wait between G-rated movies was months long. So I never really got into the genre of children’s movies. Besides, I was skeptical of talking animals – if animals talked, wouldn’t they speak their own language instead of English?

Then there were musicals; I didn’t get that genre either. It seemed like every time something happened, somebody would burst into song and interrupt the whole movie. I just didn’t get it.

What finally won me over was the release of the movie musical “Grease.” Or maybe what won me over was the long summer of waiting for Grease to make it to our theatre. We could endure the wait only because one of our friends bought the soundtrack.

That was also the summer our youth minister scheduled an out-of-town trip each week for the middle-school kids. As our mothers drove us on these excursions, we played the “Grease” soundtrack over and over, hour after hour, week after week. By the 4th of July we had memorized all the songs, complete with hand motions, and we kept on singing all summer. It was a long summer of expectation.

When I hear those songs now, I can still see us riding upside-down in the backseat with our beach-soaked hair dangling onto the floorboard, our torsos on the seat, and our legs folded over the back of the seat. Who knows why we did that, but when I hear those songs, “You’re the One that I Want” or “We Go Together,” I sing along and remember the joy, laughter, and expectation of that summer.

When Grease finally made it to town, we sang along with the movie. We knew the plot from all those hours with the soundtrack. That freed us up to gaze dreamily at John Travolta. But as soon as another song came on, we’d jump right back in. We knew it was time to pay attention. That’s the advantage of a musical – you always get a clue when something big is about to happen. You don’t have to guess if the next scene is significant; if it has a song, it’s important. Expect something.

I wouldn’t go so far as to speculate that St. Luke was an early writer of musicals, but he does use song in much the same way, especially when he tells the story of Jesus’ infancy. Something really big is happening, so Luke doesn’t just narrate. He doesn’t write a speech or a dialogue. He puts it in song and we pay attention. We expect something. These beautiful songs convey more than narrative can contain. When we hear these songs, we know something beyond words is happening. We remember these beautiful songs and continue to sing them, even tonight. These songs shape our understanding and remembrance of the incarnation.

Our Gospel lesson is from the second chapter of Luke, but let’s back up and think about chapter one also. In these two chapters Luke tells the story of the infancy of Jesus and he fills this story with song and angels. What is happening – God coming to live among us as one of us - is beyond human imagination. There is no way to explain this; the only way to tell it is with song and with angels. Like Zechariah, like Mary, like the shepherds, when we see angels, we pay attention. No matter what we have been expecting, God is about to exceed our expectations.

One thing Luke makes clear about his characters is their piety and devotion. They are people who love and serve God, people who understand that God is at work. People like Simeon who wait in expectation to see salvation. Like Mary and Joseph who bundle up Jesus and take him to the temple, just as they were expected to do. People like Elizabeth and Anna who go about their daily work – at home and in the temple – while they wait for the fulfillment of God’s promises. They are expecting redemption; they are expecting God.

And God is up to something that day. Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the temple, and the Holy Spirit brings Simeon. Anna the prophet is already there, at prayer, just as usual. They’re doing ordinary things, the tasks expected of them, but God is doing something beyond their expectations. Their redemption is at hand in the most unexpected way. The distance between heaven and earth, between God and creation is gone. God is right there, right where they are. God is right here, right where we are.

Luke announces this in-breaking with angels. Nothing less would do. Gabriel appears to Zechariah and to Mary. A company of angels announces the birth of Jesus to the shepherds. The Holy Spirit prompts Elizabeth and then Simeon to recognize the fulfillment of God’s promises, to recognize the presence of the Lord. Zechariah, Mary, and Simeon respond with songs of praise. Like any good writer of a musical, Luke alerts us with these songs that something significant is happening. We know to look for God in the story.

Luke is a great storyteller; he doesn’t try to explain how all this could happen. Instead, he records the amazement of Zechariah and Mary and Simeon in song. These are songs of amazement, but not disbelief. Although this is not how they expected their hopes to be fulfilled, they recognize that God is doing something beyond expectation.

So they sing. They sing praise to God and proclaim God’s goodness that is beyond expectation. They had trusted God’s faithfulness, but God has surprised them. Simeon sings, “These eyes of mine have seen the Savior, whom you have prepared for all the world to see.” Tonight, as we celebrate the Feast of the Presentation, we join Simeon in this canticle of praise. In this song we celebrate the fulfillment of God’s promise and we remember. Just as favorite songs from our youth transport us back in time, in this ancient song we relive our redemption in Christ. We join in singing praise that the light of the world has been revealed to us.

We try to find precise words to explain what has happened. In my former work, tax accounting, we had tricky words that made no sense to anyone but us - and the IRS. One set of tricky adjectives was “realized” and “recognized.” For most people, these words have similar meanings, but not for tax accountants. A realized gain meant a profit has been made, yes, it’s happened, but you don’t have to do anything about it. Just sit tight. Everybody liked that kind of gain. A recognized gain, though, meant a profit has been made and you’ve got to do something about it; you’ve got to claim the income and pay the price. And, well, you know what that means.

While these words seemed like secret code to our clients, they understood the distinction between the words determined whether they had to share their profit with the IRS. It’s nice to know an investment has paid off, but most would rather not recognize the gain.

All too often, that’s our response to Christ. It’s nice to know Christ has happened, but we’d rather not do anything about it. We’d rather live as if the Light of the World wasn’t shining in the darkness.

Singing about light and salvation with Simeon is lovely, and remembering the joy of our salvation is important, but it’s not enough. For Simeon and for Anna, the recognition of Christ, our light and our salvation, was life changing. They were no longer expecting redemption; they were proclaiming redemption. Verse 38 says Anna “kept speaking about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.” The encounter with Christ has given Anna new work and a new way of living.

Luke must have written the next verse, verse 39, with a sly grin. He says, “When they [Mary and Joseph] had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth.” If we didn’t know what happened next, we might think they went back to life as usual. But we know the next chapter of the story – Jesus at the temple at age 12 – and we know how the story ends. We know they can’t go back to what life was before. Once we recognize the light of the world, life is no longer the same.

Let’s sing with Simeon and join in Anna’s praise. But let us also be open to being transformed by encounter with Christ. Let us live in the light of Christ.

Amen.

Sermon: Fourth Sunday After the Epiphany

The Rev. Dr. Deborah Silver, assisting priest
> Scripture for the day

Been to any good exorcisms lately? That’s a question that’s sure to stop conversation at most proper dinner parties. But as you listened to the Gospel reading this morning, what may have caught your attention more than anything, and hopefully you were listening, was the man with the unclean spirit crying out to Jesus, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”

Now the safest, and perhaps we might think the sanest, way to deal with this story of the unclean, or some translations say demonic spirit, is to remind ourselves that we are sophisticated, 21st century people who no longer believe in this primitive way of seeing the world. However, well known preacher Fred Craddock puts it this way, “No service is rendered simply by announcing that we no longer believe in demons. Although that is true, for most, not believing in demons has hardly eradicated evil in our world.” Good point. If you are in any doubt that evil still flourishes in our world I wonder on what remote desert island you have been living lately. In fact, I would even venture to say that what the world is in desperate need of right now is a Jesus untamed by our image of the gentle Shepherd holding the lost lamb. No, we need a demon-tossing, Spirit-possessed Son of God, who acts with divine authority and proclaims that the boundary between heaven and earth has been pierced and the reign of God is at hand.

This is the Jesus we encounter in Mark’s Gospel. It is the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. He takes his newly appointed disciples with him to the synagogue at Capernaum. The people in the synagogue are amazed at what they see and hear. The people do not focus on demons or on what they have to say, or how Jesus effectively exorcizes them. The people are amazed by this new teacher whose words carry with them authority and power to make the unclean, clean.

The sudden and unexpected arrival of this tortured man offers a profound teaching moment for Jesus. The exorcism story drips with irony as Jesus, a man possessed by the Spirit of God, faces off with a man possessed by the demonic. This battle proves to be no contest for the demonic contingent that resides in this man. They recognize who Jesus is, “I know who you are, the Holy One of God,” while everyone else in the synagogue stays strangely silent.

A child of God is delivered from his bondage, and there are no shouts for joy or spontaneous prayers of thanksgiving. The words of the Prophet Isaiah echo in the background – “Is not this the fast that I choose to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?” – and yet no one notices that what the Gospel of Mark signaled in Jesus’ baptism when the heavens are “torn apart” is happening now before their eyes. [1]

As the people in the synagogue maintain a safe distance from Jesus, speculating among themselves about this new powerful teacher, we hearers of Mark are invited to follow Jesus into a whole new world. New Testament scholar Brian Blount says that we are invited into “Mark’s world of Jesus walking around possessed by the power of the Spirit of God. In such a world you either go with the man and help him create the holy chaos he’s creating or you find a way to stop him so you can get your people back in line.” [2]

The Gospel of Mark puts us on notice from the first chapter that the boundary-breaking, demon-dashing, law transcending Son of God has arrived in the person of Jesus, and he expects of his followers far more than “amazement”.

What does Jesus expect of his followers? What does this Jesus of Nazareth have to do with us?

There is a story attributed to Cherokee wisdom:

One evening a grandfather was teaching his young grandson about the internal battle that each person faces.

“There are two wolves struggling inside each of us,” the old man said. “One wolf is vengefulness, anger, resentment, self-pity, fear…

“The other wolf is compassion, faithfulness, hope, truth, love …”

The grandson sat, thinking, then asked: “Which wolf wins, Grandfather?”

His grandfather replied, “The one you feed.”

Which one do you feed? It’s a question well worth asking ourselves, as individuals, as the church, as a community, as a nation.

In times of personal or national crisis, it may be more tempting to hunker down and feed the wolf of fear and resentment than to feed the wolf of compassion and hope.

There is plenty out there to feed our cynicism, fear and self-absorption. There are lots of voices claiming authority, seeking our attention and vying for our allegiance. Which wolf do we choose to feed? How can we even tell the difference?

And that, my friend, is why you and I are here this morning. We cannot identify and feed the wolf of love and compassion on our own. We need each other. We need the Body of Christ. We need the food of hope and grace whose singular nutritional authority comes from God. We need to be fed with the Spiritual food that nourishes our souls when we gather at God’s table.

We cannot do it on our own and we know that. It is why we say the Confession of Sin before the Eucharist. We know all too well our own capacity for choosing evil and our own need for forgiveness. And that’s why we come here.

It’s here that we pray for God to deliver us from evil, to vanquish the demons, that is, whatever binds us and prevents us from loving God and our neighbor as ourselves.

It is why in the Prayers of the People we pray for all those in power and ask God to
“Guide the people of this land, and of all the nations, in the ways of justice and peace; that we may honor one another and serve the common good.”

It is here that we are fed on the Scriptures and nourished by the sacraments that make us one and transform us at the same time.

It is here that we find encouragement to commit ourselves to the grand work of loving God and the hard work of loving our neighbor.

It is here that we meet the Holy One of God who has the authority to call evil out of us, to forgive us, to transform us and to empower us by the Holy Spirit to proclaim in our own words and deeds the coming of God’s Kingdom.

And it’s as we leave this place
and follow the light of Christ into the world that we,
we of all people, have been given the authority to speak,
and live, and heal in ways that feed a hungry world.

And that is truly amazing.


[1] Gary W. Charles in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 1, p. 313, Westminster John Knox Press, 2008.
[2] Ibid.

Sermon: Third Sunday After the Epiphany

The Very Rev. William Thomas Deneke, rector
> Scripture for the day

Call to me and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things you have not seen. (Jeremiah 33:3)

If you watch the Holy Trinity video on the parish web site, you will hear sung this remarkable scripture from the prophet Jeremiah. I want to use Jeremiah’s words to direct our thoughts to the gospel for today and to the ministry of Holy Trinity. Call to me and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things you have not seen.

What an invitation! One way to approach this invitation is through the eyes of stewardship. When we call to God, we are opening ourselves to a wider reality than just ourselves. We are coming out of the womb of self-service into the realm of God. It is in that larger reality that we are shown great and mighty things. It is here that we are enabled to see a larger vision than could ever be seen in the smaller world of self-service. The irony of the invitation is that as we move from self-focused stewardship to the values of God’s realm, we find our lives enriched. In the words of Jeremiah, we are shown great and mighty things we have not seen.
Great and mighty things in God’s realm are not always the things commonly counted as spectacular. Yesterday, I heard an interesting story on National Public Radio. A rabbi was being interviewed about how extravagant many bar and ba mitzvah celebrations had become over recent years. He described one bar mitzvah that was especially over the top. At an appointed time in the celebration the young man who was celebrating his bar mitzvah came out standing astride a replica of the Titantic with his arms outstretched like Leonardo de Caprio, saying something like, "I'm the king of the world". A replica of a killer whale also appeared to be jumping through a Star of David.

Especially interesting was the rabbi's take on this. He said that our present economic downturn could be an important time in our spiritual growth. Times like these force us to look at what is truly essential in life -- our stock portfolio or our soul. What is great and mighty in the eyes of God may have a better chance of being revealed when we are less distracted by the glitter of more worldly pursuits.

We also need to be careful that in seeking the promise of great and mighty things that we do not leave God behind in our exuberance. The pursuit of great and mighty things of God requires humility. At times the church has hitched its wagon to models of greatness that resembled more the values of the corporate world than that of servant-leadership. However attractive it may seem, we cannot depend upon success to be our savior. Our hope is in one who revealed that great and mighty things may be found where we do not expect to see them.

I was reminded of that at two recent funerals. Jimmie Ward and Josephine Ward, both deaf, died within a short time of one another. They had come to Holy Trinity with their daughter Conne because we made available an interpreter for principal services of worship. This ministry enriched their last years. Perhaps we would not have considered it a great and mighty thing, but for these two people cut off from the world of sound, it was a gift of grace from God’s realm.

In today’s gospel, Jesus invites Peter, Andrew, James and John to follow him into a holy realm where they will become fishers of people. Unfortunately, the NRSV rendering, I will make you fish for people, is a poor translation of the Greek text. Jesus is not simply giving them an additional job, but is transforming how they approach life. In the realm to which he is inviting them, their priorities will change. No longer will they be focused on maintaining themselves or even their families. They will still have basic human needs, but their energy will be mostly directed toward serving the realm of God. Life will be seen differently. Jesus makes it clear that they will be focused on enabling people to see God’s great and mighty things.

Jesus’ invitation captures the fishermen’s imaginations, and they follow him into the process of being born anew. We might say they were drawn into the possibility of becoming stewards of the realm of God. The disciples would come to see that the invitation to follow Christ would have to be visited over and over again. They would always be discovering what it meant to be stewards of God’s realm. They would come to see more and more that to follow Christ meant learning to trust the Spirit, to be open to reform, and to be adaptable. Their accomplishments would be measured more by faithfulness than success.

On this day of our Annual Parish Meeting, we might ponder these things. Are we faithfully calling to God? What are the great and mighty things God is showing us? Are we being faithful stewards of what God is enabling us to see? And what great and mighty things are we revealing to others about God’s realm?

As we read the annual reports of our various parish ministries (either on line or in printed booklets), we may be surprised by what we see. Hidden in words and statistics are stories of holy encounters. Behind ministries and programs are times of prayer and discernment. The reports present a portrait of a parish that is seeking to be faithful to its mission in Christ. Sometimes more faithfulness is needed. Sometimes great and mighty things emerge. The reports reveal something of the life and faith of this community as we continue to learn what it means to follow Christ.

The call to follow Christ is always at work in the world. It is an invitation to a journey of faith, a pilgrimage of discovery, a walk in hope. We are never too old or too young, too bad or too good to see great and mighty things of God. We are never too holy or too unholy to grow as stewards of God’s realm. We can make a difference for others and ourselves by calling to God, by following Christ, and by being transformed into fishers of people.

This morning please join with me in giving thanks to God for the journey of faith to which God calls Holy Trinity. Please join me in praying that we will call to God in hope, and that we will have the wisdom, courage, and strength of character to follow the wondrous path revealed in Jesus, affirmed by Peter, Andrew, James and John, and heralded by the prophet Jeremiah when he said of God, Call to me and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things you have not seen.

Let us pray.

Lord of grace and hope, Spirit of peace and encouragement, our life is a great and mighty thing. Even more glorious are your love for people and your caring for this planet. In this community of faith, you have revealed great and mighty things. You have called us to your mission of redemption and equipped us to be servant leaders. You have led us to feed the hungry through DEAM, give water to the thirsty through Food for the Poor, partner with poor villages in Honduras, work for human relief and development with our sister Episcopal churches. You bring us into communion with friends and strangers and invite us to your table. You send us into the world with a song in our heart and a story on our lips. We are more grateful than words can express.

Lead us, O Holy One, into the future. Open our eyes to your great and mighty things. Give us a vision of community and ministry that will deliver us from self-service and draw us more and more into your realm.

We pray in the name of Jesus who said long ago to four fishermen and continues to say to us, Follow me. Amen.

Sermon: Second Sunday After the Epiphany

The Rev. Allan Sandlin, associate rector
> click here for the Scripture for the day

Out of breath, Philip runs up to his friend, Nathanael, and can’t hold back a minute longer: We've found the One Moses wrote of in the Law, the One preached by the prophets. It's Jesus, Joseph's son, the one from Nazareth!

Raising an eyebrow, Nathanael seems skeptical: Nazareth? You’ve got to be kidding. Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

I like Nathanael. I like that he wants more than enthusiasm, more than an emotional, gushy introduction to this supposed Messiah. I like him, but he also makes me a little uncomfortable because his question isn’t just a doubting question. It’s a bigoted question. His question judges someone on the basis of where he comes from, who his people are.

Philip might have argued with Nathanael, but he doesn’t. Instead, Philip simply invites him to come and see. Come and find the answer for yourself. Come and see, discover who this person is for yourself.

That’s where I started with this sermon. I found myself drawn to those three words, wanting to invite you once again to come and see Jesus. Come and see Jesus in the unexpected person sitting next to you in the pew, see Jesus in the stranger you meet on the street or in a colleague at work. Come and see Jesus in the wondering questions of children, in the wisdom of our elders. Come and see Jesus in the bread and wine of the Eucharist.

That’s a sermon I’ve preached before. That’s where I thought we’d be headed this morning.

But keep reading. It’s not just Nathanael’s response that catches our attention this morning. The story doesn’t end with the invitation for him to come and see.

In fact, it’s Jesus, not Nathanael, who sees first. Jesus spots Nathanael coming toward him and says, out of the blue, without prompting “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Here's a real Israelite, not a false bone in his body, Jesus is saying.

Say you were out for a walk in the park with a friend and your friend introduced you to someone, someone you’d never seen before and instead of saying “Nice to meet you” that person said “I know more about you than you know about yourself”…you might be just a bit suspicious. Jesus’ greeting prompts Nathanael to ask “Where did you get to know me?” Who have you been talking to about me?

And Jesus’ answer is as perplexing to us as it was, no doubt, to Nathanael. “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.”

Something about those words takes root in Nathanael and he changes his mind about Jesus. The one who had been skeptical, even bigoted in his initial response to the idea of Jesus, now meeting him face to face, recognizes him and proclaims him to be Son of God, King of Israel.

The recognition is mutual. Jesus sees Nathanael and recognizes in him a faithful, honest man, someone who could be trusted. And Nathanael sees in Jesus someone he can only begin to name, something divine, someone who invites him into a future he can scarcely imagine.

All in all, it was a strange first meeting.

We read about another surprising first encounter in the lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures this morning. It’s the middle of the night and the child Samuel is lying down in the temple keeping watch. His teacher, Eli, is in the next room, trying to get some sleep. Samuel keeps hearing someone call his name and three times he gets up, goes to Eli and presents himself, ready for service. “Here I am, for you called me.”

Eli must have assumed the boy was dreaming until finally, Samuel came to him for third time. Eli’s eyesight was failing him but he was also losing his spiritual vision and thus he didn’t see what was going on right away. It was only after Samuel’s 3rd visit that he realized it was God calling the boy.

Samuel needed Eli to interpret, to help him understand the call from God. And God is about to give this young boy who is both truthful and confused some very adult responsibilities.

Author and social ethicist, Christine Pohl, directs our attention to the similarity of experience between Samuel and Nathaniel.

On their own, neither (Samuel) nor Nathanael is able to interpret these strange encounters. Samuel doesn’t recognize God’s voice and Nathanael is puzzled by Jesus’ inauspicious origins and then by his extraordinary capacity to know and see.

But both of them are portrayed as truthful...the childlike innocence in Samuel is reflected in the description of Nathanael as an Israelite in whom there is “no deceit.” No cunning, no spin…just a purity of heart that helps open their eyes to see God. (1)

Those words describe our leading characters in this morning’s lessons. But they also remind me of Martin Luther King…a man who told the truth, with no cunning, no deceit, no spin…he had a purity of heart that opened his eyes and all of our eyes to see God.

This past Thursday, January 15, was Martin Luther King’s birthday. He would have been 80 years old. That’s hard to imagine. We remember him as that young man of 39: passionate, courageous and strong. In churches across the nation and indeed around the world today, we honor Dr. King in our prayers, in our hearts and in our songs.

We are told that Martin was a reluctant civil rights activist and even a reluctant preacher. He was embarrassed by the enthusiastic singing and shouting at the church he grew up in, Ebenezer Baptist Church, of course, and didn’t imagine that he’d grow up to be a preacher. His encounter with God must have been a surprise to him. But that encounter or rather, those encounters, I suspect, propelled him into the activist ministry that led to changes in the law and began to change American attitudes toward race.

And helped prepare the way for January 20th, 2009…

No matter how you voted, this is a remarkable thing that’s about to happen. 40 years after Martin Luther King was assassinated, an African-American, a man whose mother was a white Caucasian woman from Kansas and whose father was a black man from Kenya is about to become the President of the United States.

And whatever your hopes for him, whether or not you think you will agree with the decisions he will make and the actions he will take, we join together today in praying for him and for our country.

Our soon-to-be President has challenged all of us in a particular way that relates to the gospel this morning. He has called for a renewal of the Martin Luther King National Day to be a day of service. In 1994 Congress passed the King Holiday and Service Act, designating the King Holiday as a national day of volunteer service. Instead of a day off from work or school, Congress asked Americans of all backgrounds and ages to celebrate Dr. King's legacy by turning community concerns into citizen action.

So, tomorrow President-elect Obama and Vice President-elect Biden and their families will lead the way, volunteering to work in the Washington DC community. They will set an example for the nation: it will be a day for Americans of every race, every religion, from every corner of our country to give an hour or a morning or a day in the service of others. Not just a day off from work, but a day on, a day on in service of those in our beloved community who are in dire need of help and not just tomorrow.

Closer to home, I look around and see my friend at Holy Trinity who volunteers time working to prevent teenage suicide. And I think of those among us who work to provide clean water for Haiti and who teach children in Honduras to make rosaries to sell and those who will travel to New Orleans in a few weeks to help with the re-building effort there.

I remember the woman who regularly checks in on her lonely neighbors in the retirement community where she lives, offering a little company, a smile and always, a prayer. And the Holy Trinity family who brought in a trunk load of groceries to help restock the shelves at DEAM after Christmas.

If you’re looking for a place to volunteer some time tomorrow, here’s a website for you to visit: just go to mlkday.gov and you’ll find good options right in your neighborhood. I read on that website this morning that there are more than 11,000 projects happening tomorrow across America, more than double last year’s number. Americans will make it “a day on, not a day off” by delivering meals, refurbishing schools, reading to children, cleaning up neighborhood parks and much more.

Some of you have been to one of our Welcome Table services and you’ve experienced how we’re trying to connect our worship—come and see—with the work God calls all of us to do—go and serve. As we feast on bread and wine, as we taste God and are drawn into the mystery of this feast, we also have the opportunity to do something, to offer something for others within the context of worship.

For example, at one service recently, after receiving Communion, the congregation moved to tables set up along the edges and made sandwiches to be distributed to the homeless.

In Communion, we receive the gifts of God for the people of God and we ponder what our gifts will be back to the world, back to our city, to our communities.

Here’s the thing: our life in Christ only begins when we come and see. Don’t get me wrong.

Wherever you are on your spiritual journey, if you’ve been at Holy Trinity all your life or if you are new to Holy Trinity or especially if you’re new to the Christian faith, we invite you to come and see. Come and see because God is waiting for you at this table.

But once you’ve experienced God’s love here in Communion, offered freely with no strings attached, how can you keep from wanting to pass it on to someone else?

Today we can all aspire today to follow in the footsteps of Samuel and Nathaniel, open and receptive to God’s surprising call, to come and see.

And we can be inspired by Martin Luther King and Barack Obama to go and serve.

Some of you have heard this invitation to Communion often used in the Iona Community in Scotland:

This is the table,
not of the Church, but of the Lord.
It is to be made ready
for those who love God
and those who want to love God more.

So, come,
you who have much faith
and you who have little,
you who have been here often
and you who have not been for a long time,
you who have tried to follow and you who have failed.
Come,
because it is God who invites you.

It is God’s will that those who seek him
should meet him here.

That’s the come and see invitation.
Today we would add:

And having met the Holy One in this place,
go with strength and courage to seek and serve others
in the name of Christ.

Amen.



(1) from The Christian Century, ”Living by the Word” January 18, 2009