Lent 3: Restless Hearts and Roadblocks to Repentance

TranscriptioN

I am so grateful to be with you this morning on this third Sunday of Lent. I'm the vicar here at Corpus Christi Anglican Church, Father Morgan Reed, and it is good to be with you. As I think about the third Sunday of Lent, it's an interesting Sunday because it's far enough away from the beginning of Lent that the initial excitement that was in Lent has sort of worn off, but we're also still kind of far away from Holy Week. We're right there in the middle, but that is often where I find life is lived, right? We find ourselves in the place where the shininess of new things has worn off.

We're just kind of in the middle, and the things that we're really hoping for might seem far away, like they're unapproachable right now, and we find ourselves often in this place where we are perpetually in the third week of Lent. In our prayer book this morning, we prayed this call-act that if I'm allowed to have a favorite call-act, it is my favorite call-act in this third Sunday of Lent, that it reminds us of the ways that our hearts are restless until they find rest in God. It's a quote from St. Augustine, and we carry on in that restlessness quite often.

It reminds us that our rest is found in a person, not in answers that we so often seek, but in the person and work of Jesus Christ. And I was thinking about my own childhood this week. I have these vague memories of our grandparents driving down from Oregon.

We lived in California, and so they didn't come often, but when they did, you know, you'd look out the window in anticipation of grandparents coming to visit. I'd have these butterflies in my stomach, waiting with a nervous kind of energy. You know, you've seen children in that place of excited, waiting for something to happen, but you know, as a child, prolonged excitement for too long turns to despair really quickly.

What if they're never really gonna come? You know, and so that nervous excitement turns to angst and anxiety and despair pretty quickly. The nervousness and that restlessness might cause weird behaviors, like all of a sudden as a kid, I start pulling out toys I haven't played with in a long, long time, but I need to get my mind off of the fact that I'm anxious about them coming. I start doing meaningless tasks to get my mind off the fact that my heart is restless.

Until I see that vehicle drive up in the driveway, grandma and grandpa come out of the car, until my body is hugged by theirs, my body is restless, my mind is racing, my decisions might be sporadic or illogical, and then entering the arms of that grandparent becomes the thing that settles my body down into a state of rest. It's not enough to know when they're coming, and if you were to say, oh they'll be here in an hour, well that might as well be tomorrow, right? But just the presence of them satisfies all the restlessness of my little body. And you know, it's difficult, or it's sweet actually, when it's a kid in that scenario, and it's a very specific situation, it's sweet to watch that excitement, and then to find them finding rest in the thing they were longing for.

It's troubling and it's difficult when that state of anxiety and restlessness is the constant state of the human heart. It's troubling, it's distressing, and it's common that that is the constant state of the human heart. And it's a state of restlessness that when we're in it we create false narratives, and we start to believe things that aren't true out of anxiety or out of fear, keeping ourselves from being present to life as it is in front of us.

We distract ourselves with things to not be present to the anxiety that we're feeling. We fill our times with things that keep us from dealing perhaps with the real pain of something that's happening, or some urgent task in asking God for his mercy, and it is grace in our real need. Today's passages all have something to do with the compassion of God.

They all have something to do with the restlessness of the human heart, and they introduce this idea that there are barriers that we put up to repentance. Turning from these false narratives of anxiety and fear, the things that we've created in that space, the meaningless tasks, to turning towards the Lord where we find rest for our souls. What are these barriers? And all these passages have something to do with the restlessness of the human heart, the compassion of God, those barriers that we put up to repentance.

As we look at our passages this morning, let me pray for us. “In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. Amen.”

The Compassion of God and the Old Testament Creed

Before we get into the the other two parts, the restlessness and the longing and the the barriers, let's talk about the compassion of God. We'll do a little bit of biblical theology this morning. And so even though in Judaism there aren't recognized creeds, per se, at least there weren't in Jesus's day, there is something of the name and the character of God that functioned like a creed throughout the Old Testament. We get a glimpse of it today in our Old Testament passage, which was read for us in the book of Exodus, where God reveals his name. 

A few chapters later, in chapter 34, Moses is inscribing the law on the tablets, and God will make a declaration to Moses. God will say, God proclaims his name to Moses, and as he passes by Moses, what he says is, Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. That phrase, the character of God, becomes like a creed in the Old Testament.

The Lord, the Lord, Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. And that declaration about God and his name functioned like a creed throughout the entirety of the Old Testament, in all the ways that Israel will be formed. And we read it again in Psalm 103 this morning.

We said it together. The prayer book has it as, the Lord is full of compassion and mercy, long-suffering, and of great goodness. This becomes a source of their poetic prayers in the book of Psalms, and it becomes the foundation for Israel to repent. Why can they expect God to respond when they turn from their sins? It's because of this idea, this creed of who God is. If there's any hope for repentance, it's because God is merciful, and he's full of compassion. So later on, as Israel moves along its history, we get into the book of Joel, where they haven't gone into exile yet, but they have gone into sin.

They've rebelled against God, and the prophet says to them, this famous verse, rend your hearts and not your garments. You may have heard that before. “Rend your hearts and not your garments, and return to Yahweh your God, because he is merciful and compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.” And then this addition, “and he relents from calamity.” So there's like a little addition to this creed as they move along. And after the people are exiled, they do eventually go into Babylon in exile, but God promises that they will return, and after several generations, God brings them back to the land under the Persian Empire.

 And Nehemiah, the book of Nehemiah, is a reflection on God's faithfulness during that period. Nehemiah says in chapter 9, verse 17, as he reflects on Israel's history, and “they refused to obey, and did not remember your wonders which you did with them. And they stiffened their necks, and they raised up a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. And you, oh God, are ready to forgive, merciful and compassionate, long-suffering, and abounding in steadfast love.” And the addition, “and you will not forsake them.” And so I love that how this creed functions as like a drumbeat throughout the history of Israel's experience with its covenant God.

And I like how every part of their life together, there's a little bit of an addition, an expansion, a teasing out of the implications for each subsequent generation as they reflect on their relationship with their Creator and their King. So by the time that people have become so disobedient, that they find themselves functionally putting themselves back into bondage in Egypt, God's compassion is the foundation for bringing them back. And the reason why God delivers them, and he's willing to relent from disaster and not forsake them, is because of who he is.

His own reputation and his name is at stake. He is the compassionate and merciful God, long-suffering and abounding in steadfast love. And so that creedal foundation forms the background for the foundation of the work and the person of Jesus Christ.

It helps us to understand what Israel is processing as they look forward to the Messiah coming. It's because of who God is that we understand the ministry of the Messiah better. So Jesus comes as a new Moses to bring a new covenant and a new kingdom which delivers people out of a bondage that's far deeper than just enslavement to Egypt.

Roadblocks to Repentance

And with all of that in our background today, we get to the gospel reading which brings us to an encounter with Jesus preaching in the northern part of Israel in Galilee. As Jesus is preaching, there are some people who come and they ask him about this local tragedy. We actually don't know the exact events that are described there other than what's in the text, but it seems like what happened is there's a crowd of Galileans who are worshippers, they're Jews, they're going to Jerusalem to offer their worship.

Pontius Pilate, a Roman governor over the area, has them executed as they are coming to Jerusalem to offer their worship. And from what we know of Josephus, that is consistent with Pontius Pilate's character. He tests the Jews quite often, and this is exactly in line with the kind of thing that he would do.

So you can imagine that as they ask this question of Jesus, part of the question might be, you know, Jesus is somebody who is leading a group of Galilean pilgrims to Jerusalem. Are you not also worried that this might be your fate as well? That might be a question in their minds. Maybe, you know, as they start to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, they're asking this question because they're really hoping that as Jesus makes his way to Jerusalem, that vengeance will happen, and that the enemies that had done this to these Galilean Jews will be crushed, and that God's name will be vanquished, and that the names of these people who were martyred will be vanquished.

And they're wondering also, you know, these are questions they might be, that different people might be holding in their heads. The one that presents itself, the one that Jesus addresses is, so Jesus, were these Galileans maybe more sinful than other people? Is that why they ended up going to Jerusalem and getting killed? They really want answers. They want answers for the pain that their hearts are feeling over these people they probably knew, or at least they knew their families.

And it makes total sense that they would want answers, but that search for answers is leading them astray and distracting them from the interior work of the kingdom of God that Jesus is coming to do. Jesus is going to use this opportunity to invite them into repentance, to turn from one thing, to go to to the kingdom of God, to think differently about the kingdom that he's preaching. Jesus is not going to go to Jerusalem just to overthrow the unjust Roman authorities.

That is way too small of a vision of the kingdom of God. But this might be on their minds, and so he's expanding their vision for what the kingdom will be. His kingdom isn't won through the sword.

And these were not worse sinners than others. He makes that very clear. Their suffering is not an indication that they were worse sinners than other Galilean Jews.

In fact, the focus on the trying to find the answers is for why these people died under cruel human injustice is actually a distraction. Now what that doesn't mean, or I should say it this way, it is good, and it would have been culturally appropriate and right to mourn, to grieve, even to lament, right, how much of the Bible is written in the form of lamentation. But know that God's promising his presence among them.

He's not promising answers to why the suffering has happened. And so their search for answers and the causes for the pain might distract them from the answer for which their hearts are longing for, which is God's very presence among them. And to seek for answers rather than to seek for rest in Jesus's presence is going to contribute to the restlessness of the human heart, and that can start to distort our views of what God's doing inside of us and what he's doing around us and what the work of the kingdom is.

And so Jesus brings up another disaster that the crowd may have in their minds. So that was one. This disaster that they had just brought up was a disaster that happened under human injustice. Another one was a natural disaster, and he brings this up for the crowd to ponder. There's a tower of Siloam, which is part of Jerusalem, and it seems to have crumbled and those within it all died, about 18 people. Everybody knows about this story.

And Jesus assures them again, this isn't because the people who were in the tower are worse sinners than other peoples. Not so. But injustice and natural disasters should be something that reminds us of our urgency to search our hearts and amend our lives.

So he sort of says, I'm not going to give you answers to this, but I want you to see those things and note the urgency of repentance, that we need his presence, and to note the restlessness in our hearts and to find rest in God. You know, we should often be careful not to place blame and causes on people's suffering. That's not helpful.

But these things, when they happen, they become a marker of repentance, that God is asking us to look inwardly and what is he doing in our hearts? How is he rightly ordering our disordered lives? And so these people were thinking that they could overthrow an earthly empirical power by the sword. They too were on shaky ground, like this shaky tower, and at the risk of all their theological edifices falling and crumbling beneath their feet. And so they should repent, and they should turn to the Lord, who, like our Old Testament biblical theology today, reminds us is compassionate and gracious, long-suffering and abounding in love.

This is the God Jesus is calling them to come back to, and he follows this up with a parable about a fig tree. There's three years this fig tree has not produced fruit, and so the gardener, the owner of the vineyard, is wondering, it's using up the soil and the nutrients, let's just tear it up and get rid of it. And the gardener says, the vine dresser says, well before you do that, let me try something, let me dig around it, let me clear the soil a little bit, add some nutrients, amend it, and then we'll give it some more time.

And if in a year it doesn't produce anything, then it can be destroyed. And then that's one parable. He continues the logic of this parable into a real-life scenario, so not just a parable, there's this woman who has been bent over in pain for 18 years. Eighteen years! And those Jesus is calling to repentance now, he's being backed up by a miracle that he's about to do. What he's showing them is the freedom that exists in the kingdom of God.

He is about to deliver this woman from a bondage that, well, she was probably very aware that she had, but maybe the crowds weren't aware that she had. And those whom Jesus called to repent, you know, they're the ones saying, why would you do this on the Sabbath? And he calls them out for it and says, you know, you're happy to unshackle and untie your animals on the Sabbath and to bring them to water. This woman on the Sabbath has been feathered to the kingdom of darkness, and I am unfettering her on the Sabbath.

There is no better ministry on the Sabbath than to free people from the kingdom of darkness. And so he calls these people out as hypocrites, and before we're quick to point the finger at them, I would remind us that often we are hypocrites too. This is where Jesus, you know, says, look at your own heart, and he calls them to repentance.

So this passage calls us to look inwardly, it calls us to look at the systems, the structures, the rhythms, and the habits that maybe we've set up or that we're a part of that perpetuate spiritual bondage or keep us bound from experiencing the freedom in the kingdom of God, or other people as well. And it challenges us not to obsessively look for answers to the causes of suffering, but to invite people into the presence of the one who heals. I often think of that as our evangelism ministry.

We are creating context to invite people into the presence of the God who loves them, and the one who heals them and wants to deliver them from the kingdom of darkness. And so repentance, then, is about turning away from our bondage to the kingdom of darkness right now to claim that freedom that Jesus has delivered us into through his death and resurrection. And the things that kept Jesus' hearers from pursuing repentance was this fear, maybe, that Jesus was probably less powerful than the empirical powers and the Roman authorities.

It was scrupulous searching for answers to questions that they were incapable of answering. And so that, for me, is I was thinking about the things that were keeping the crowds from asking the questions about what to repent of, what to turn from to enter the kingdom of heaven. What is the thing that keeps us from repentance? Another way I think of that is what things are keeping us from seeing the world as God sees it, and from learning to love the things that God loves.

What do we need to turn from? What keeps us from that? During the season of Lent, one of the books that I love, that I pick up quite often, is a book called St. Augustine's Prayer Book. It's a nice prayer supplement to the Book of Common Prayer, and in it they have something called an examen. And in the examen, it walks through the seven deadly sins that are part of the church's tradition, and it teases out some of the implications of those.

And I want to read you a little bit of one so you can see kind of how granular this gets. Under the sin of greed, there's this subcategory. So it has subcategories of these things.

One of them is domination, and under domination it says, “…seeking to use or control others for our own ends or needs, overprotection of children or other dependents, refusal to correct them for fear of losing affection, insistence that they conform to our ideal…” You get the point. These are all things that as you hear that you go, yeah, I've probably done that maybe this week, maybe this morning.

And so, you know, I find this examen such a helpful tool to get down to the granular of saying, Jesus, what keeps me from seeing your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven? What keeps me from repenting? What keeps me from loving the things that you love? And these seven deadly sins are not often at the forefront of my imagination or teasing them out. So I find it helpful during Lent to make a habit of getting down to the granular details. It's kind of like driving a car where the window gets slowly dirtier and dirtier, and we are in the the yellow dust season where eventually our cars will be covered with a thick film of pollen, you know, and you look through your window and there's just a yellow haze and you can't see quite so clearly.

And so the examen I find is kind of like shooting a bunch of windshield wiper fluid onto the window for God to just take the windshield wipers and clear off that layer of dust and pollen. You and I, we need God's help. And because over time the distractions of the world, the distortions of the world, our disordered loves start to twist the affections of our hearts, and our hearts become restless until they find rest in God.

 Conclusion

And so the examination is kind of like a recalibration. And so if you're not familiar with those deadly sins, I'll read them out to you. They are pride, anger, envy, greed, gluttony, lust, and sloth. So each of those you can think about as some sort of, you know, demonic agent, or in the church tradition they call them a passion. They try to bind us to the kingdom of darkness through self-deception or deception from outside, creating false narratives when our hearts are restless. And we cling to these things for security and safety.

And to frame it in other words from our colleague today, like each of those sins becomes something that creates a restlessness in the human heart. And so when the initial moments of excitement from the beginning of life with Jesus start to fade, before we can see the hope of the things that are to come, we find ourselves in the middle. Right now, in this place of restlessness, this almost perpetual third week of Lent, and we are restless.

And so in this third week, the thing that will help us is honesty, vulnerability with God about the things that have become disordered, consistency in coming to Jesus, and looking for the so that Jesus becomes the person who reintroduces us to this God who is merciful and gracious, who's slow to anger, who is abounding in steadfast love. And it's in the person of Jesus, in his presence, that not in the answers of why suffering persists, but in Jesus's presence, Jesus himself, who is given for us, that we find the rest that our hearts are longing for. And so today is this call to trust Jesus, to join in his divine life, and it's in his presence that he teaches us to love what he loves.

Let me pray for us. Heavenly Father, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. Look with compassion upon the heartfelt desires of your servants, and purify our disordered affections, that we may behold your eternal glory in the face of Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited by the Author.

Lent 2: The Narrow Door and the Fundamentals of Following Jesus

TranscriptioN

Good morning again everybody. It is great to see you. As I mentioned before, if you're new or visiting, I'm Father Morgan Reed. I'm the vicar here at Corpus Christi Anglican Church and it is a joy to be with you this morning on the second Sunday of Lent, this season of 40 days where we follow the path of Jesus to the cross and then into Easter and to his resurrection.

Today's passage is a really interesting one. It comes from the Gospel of St. Luke, which we are in this year, and it's an example of Jesus helping people ask the right questions. In our household right now, if you were to ask our son what was good this week, he would say, we started baseball.

This is baseball season in the Reed household. And one of the things that I was experiencing this week reminded me of the passage. You know, as the kids jump on the field, you know, they want to, they are wondering, and they might even say, like, when am I gonna be like CJ Abrams or whoever their favorite player is? They jump on, like, when am I gonna be that good where everyone's gonna watch me in the stadium, you know? And so part of my job as the coach is to bless the good desire they have and to say, “I love that you want to do that. And also, let's start with the fundamentals. How do you hold a ball? Because that's where we're at. How do you hold a ball? How do you throw a ball? Which foot do you step with? How do you hold a bat? How do you swing a bat? You know, all of these sorts of things.”

What is a run? What is an out? How do I score points in baseball? And so don't focus on what you are eventually gonna look like. Start today in learning the fundamentals. And that's a bit of what this passage feels like to me from the Gospel. Jesus reframes a question that the disciples have about the kingdom of God and what it's gonna look like. The question shouldn't be about who is going to be in the kingdom or how many people are gonna be there. The question should be, how do you enter the kingdom of God right now? What are the fundamentals of God's kingdom and life in Christ? And so the kingdom of God comes through following Jesus, which is often more difficult than we would like to think, and it encompasses more than we often imagine.

But these are the fundamentals following Jesus. And so Jesus in this passage is going to take down a few misconceptions about what the kingdom of God and what that's going to look like, and he's gonna fill their imaginations for what the kingdom of God will become, and maybe perhaps the not-so-intuitive way one enters it. As we look at this passage from St. Luke's Gospel, let me pray for us, “In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable in your sight. Oh Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. Amen.

Proximity to Jesus is not enough

The first idea that Jesus is going to dismantle this morning is that proximity and ethnicity connects people meaningfully to the kingdom of God. Proximity and ethnicity connect people meaningfully to the kingdom of God.

This is the first thing Jesus will deconstruct. Jesus has been going from village to village in the northern region of Galilee, teaching about the kingdom of God through parables. It's like a mustard seed. It's like finding a coin, etc. And as people hear him teach, it's easy to imagine that they're wondering, well, what is the kingdom going to look like? How is it going to go from going from village to village, whipping up excitement about the Messiah being here in these little Galilean towns, to something big enough to overthrow the Roman occupation? How are we going to get there? This is what's on people's minds. And how does, when Jesus is teaching things like loving your neighbor, forgiving other people, repenting of your sins, giving towards the poor, learning from them, how do those sort of ethical demands in the New Covenant contribute to the expansion of the kingdom of God? This is sort of baffling because they're expecting something militaristic, something to overthrow the pagan Gentiles who are lording it over them.

This isn't what people expected. And so somebody, as Jesus is going along teaching, they raise the question, Lord, is it the case that only a few people are going to be saved? Like, are only a few people going to make it into this kingdom? And the problem with that question is that it's focusing on people's perceptions of what the kingdom of God is going to look like, and it's not focusing on the fundamentals, on the process of how to enter the kingdom. And so Jesus tells this parable to get their mind off of, what's it going to look like? Into, why don't you worry about how to get there first? And his parable is about a rich man who is throwing this banquet.

All are invited. Eventually, though, the door is going to be shut. And after the door is shut, those who are on the outside are going to be banging on the door, and they're going to be asking to be let into this banquet, and the reply is going to be, I don't know where you come from.

And then notice that their response to this is, well, you ate and you drank with us. We know you. We listened to you as you taught in our streets. And so in other words, they've opened up their homes to the ministry of Jesus. They've potentially eaten with him and drank with him. They've listened to him as he's been preaching.

But then it says that they're going to be cast out as evildoers and look on as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the prophets are all present at the banquet in the kingdom of God. This is a parable about the kingdom. For them, what this means is that being a Galilean Jew is a privilege, but that is not a guaranteed entrance into the kingdom.

They can't rely on being a Galilean Jew to enter the messianic kingdom. Hearing and dining with Jesus is a privilege, but hearing and dining with Jesus is not a guaranteed entrance into the kingdom of God. In other words, being Jesus' disciple adjacent is not the same as being a follower of Jesus.

And so similarly, we can't just set the kingdom of God to the side and say, I'll get to that in the future. Eventually, we'll look at that. Right now, I need to chase these personal dreams and aspirations, a certain vision of life.

And then eventually, once that stuff is settled, then I have time for following Jesus in the kingdom. Instead, our aspirations, our hopes, even our contentments, our longings, all these things need to be framed first by entry into the kingdom of God and following Jesus. And we can see the kingdom right now. 

This is one of the amazing things that comes out of this parable. The kingdom of heaven is not something far out there eventually that will come. It is something that we can participate in right now.  So the kingdom of God is in your midst. This is what Jesus comes to bring. And every day, the everyday stuff of life then becomes an invitation to participate in the kingdom or to run from the kingdom, no matter how small or significant.

And so I do want to do a quick aside here because of my own background and I would imagine some people in the room too. If you've grown up in certain evangelical circles, you would probably think of the kingdom of God in terms of a future heaven or hell, right? And so if you're thinking that, you're hearing that, then this can sound scary because it's like, well, does that mean that I have to do a lot of good things in order to get to heaven? And that's not what Jesus is addressing. He's not talking about the kingdom in terms of a future heaven and future hell here.

The kingdom of God, as he's presenting it, is this present reality. The kingdom of God is here. It's now.

It was inaugurated at his baptism and it will be made certain in his resurrection. And so, you know, I can affirm and actually I should say there what he's getting at in this parable is the urgency with which we pursue the kingdom. The urgency.

It's not something we put off till later and I would say that whenever we read parables, we always have to be careful not to try and make a one-to-one correspondence with every single detail of the parable. There's a main thrust of the parable and in this parable, it's the urgency by which you see the everyday stuff as the materials of the kingdom of God. So I can affirm Jesus's words when he says, strive to enter through the narrow gate.

And he's not suggesting that your moral and your ethical actions are the determining factors of whether you are in or out with regards to eternal fellowship with God or eternal separation from God. Instead, the kingdom of God, especially when we're in the Gospels. Again, the Jews then are thinking of heaven as God's domain, earth as human domain, but God's domain can overlap and intersect with the human's domain.

This is why we can pray, Lord may your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, not will be in heaven. And so, strive to enter the narrow gate. And instead, we're thinking of the kingdom of God here as a new creation reality that Jesus inaugurated at his baptism and then he brings to reality, realizes it in his resurrection and his ascension where he reigns as king. 

And so, we await for the fullness of that to come again. There's a word for that they use in CGS a lot called parousia. And we await the fullness of Jesus coming back to bring the full reality of the kingdom.

But the reality is that the kingdom is present now and we get to see glimpses of it in this earthly life. And so, Jesus's parable might be framed in really extreme terms and that's because it's a parable. And so, we've got to be careful not to limit the one-to-one correspondence to each aspect of the parable.

The main thrust is the urgency by which we are longing to see God's kingdom come in our world right now. His point is that today is the day to prepare your life to encounter God's presence. Today is the day, not tomorrow, not next month. Today is the day to prepare your heart to encounter Jesus's presence. To trust him and follow him as your Lord. And so, here's why I think entering the kingdom of God can be so difficult.

There's a couple of reasons and this isn't an exhaustive list. But it involves carving out time to ask for God's help. To realize that we're actually dependent on God's help. It involves cultivating rhythms of recognizing the little moments of the everyday stuff of life. To bless God for the things that he brings. To bless him for his presence among us.

To bless the good desires of other people, even when they're ugly towards us. It involves blessing our own good desires, even when we find something disordered in our own heart and in our own life. So, it's not enough to just know a bunch about Jesus.

That would be to be Jesus follower adjacent. It's not enough to just know a bunch of things about Jesus. We have to respond with trust in Jesus.

And it's really hard work to trust that Jesus is Lord and that I'm not. That's hard work. And to accept his love and grace. To be transformed by it. To humbly seek to repent of the things that have gone wrong. And to actually expect that God will show up with mercy and grace.

Because I'd rather beat myself up over it and take that into my own hands. To reflect on the goodness of the kingdom. These are good things and they're really hard things. Because it involves Jesus being Lord and not me. And so, it's way more than just a future heaven or hell. This is learning to trust in Jesus right now.

And to practice the fundamentals of the kingdom. Don't worry about how many are going to be there. What shape it's going to look like. What oppositional powers are going to be overthrown. Focus on the fundamentals right now.

Jews and Gentiles will comprise the banquet

So, Jesus has deconstructed this idea that proximity and ethnicity are meaningfully connecting people to the kingdom of God.

Now, he's going to open their hearts and their minds to how great the kingdom of God will be. Because it's often more than we can imagine. Those who heard Jesus thought that the kingdom was just for the Jews.

As the children of Abraham. We had read this passage of the promise to Abraham this morning. And this is how they're interpreting the kingdom through that grid of Genesis 15.

And even within that group of Jews who will enter the kingdom, they're expecting a subgroup. Which the Old Testament prophets would call the remnant leader. So, they're wondering how big this remnant is going to be.

And in the parable, it's interesting, Jesus says, actually as those who are outside the door and are knocking, the reality is there will be people coming into this final banquet who come from the north, the south, the east, and the west. And this is the prefiguring of God bringing in all kinds of peoples and nations into the people of God. To make them a holy nation. 

A kingdom of priests to serve the Lord. And so, the kingdom of God starts really small in the earthly ministry of Jesus. He's just going from village to village.

Telling people about the kingdom of God in these little towns in Galilee. But, there's an overarching picture. As people's hearts are turned towards Jesus, as Lord, as they're doing the hard work of repentance, God is saving a people from every tongue, tribe, and nation to the ends of the earth.

One household, one village at a time. And so, each one of us in our neighborhoods, in our households, our workplaces, the cities in which we live, we're all called to be these outposts of the kingdom of God in this life. Where we are just sojourning together as pilgrims, making our way home to the presence of the Lord.

The kingdom of God doesn't move forward through billboards, through Bible tracts, through political posturing, or social media platforms. Although God can use the worst kinds of missionaries. It becomes realized in our lives first. And then, as we seek to live this life in dependence on God, under the Lordship of Christ, that is what makes Jesus's Lordship compelling to other people. It's like the collect today that we prayed. “Lord, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves. Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls.” We are in need of God's help. We are dependent on the God who loves us.

And as the grace of God comes to you, and God's presence as your good shepherd and loving King comes to you and transforms your heart in the daily work of repentance and transformation, then in relationships, and as we learn to love God in community, we join more deeply in the loving life of our Creator. And then, as that happens, these are the fundamentals, as that happens, people are compelled by the goodness, the truth, and the beauty of the kingdom of God, so that the gospel becomes good news. Because it needs to be transformative first in the lives of those who are proclaiming this good news that Jesus is King.

And so, the kingdom of God, it moves one life at a time, one household at a time, and then you and I are part of that larger story that God is telling and will be telling of bringing people in from the north, the south, the east, and the west. But it's not by major movements, it is one life at a time, one household at a time, one neighborhood at a time.

Jesus’ road to Jerusalem is the roadmap for how to enter this banquet.

So, Jesus has first deconstructed the idea that proximity and ethnicity meaningfully connect people to the kingdom of God, and now he's filling their imaginations for the greatness of the kingdom and what it will be in a way that is surprising to them.

And then finally, in our passage today, Jesus is going to connect his death in Jerusalem to being the means by which one attains the kingdom of God. And this is where we leave the parable. We get into something else here.

There are some concerned Pharisees who come to Jesus while he's preaching in Galilee, and they give him this news that Herod Antipas wants to kill him. Herod would rather silence any political uprising or threat of instability than to come with curiosity to find out what Jesus is about. And so this sets up a clash between the kingdom of God and his Messiah and the kingdoms of the earth, which is here mitigated through a Roman puppet, Herod, as he is keeping several of the Jewish leaders in his back pocket to make sure that he's procuring peace through violence and power.

And so this isn't going to be the way of Jesus, as these two kingdoms are set against one another. And Jesus's comment is incredibly ironic. He tells the Pharisees, don't worry about it, because of something that you should know.

You know, he says, I can't be killed outside Jerusalem, as you should know, which is, again, in their minds, Jerusalem is the center of political and religious power, because Jerusalem is the place where prophets are killed. Jerusalem is the place where prophets are killed. It's incredibly ironic.

And what's interesting, then, is this frames the growth of the kingdom. The kingdom of God grows not by circumventing the suffering, but going straight into it. There is a meaningful suffering that he will go through on behalf of all those who will follow God's kingdom.

And this is the way of the kingdom that he's setting an example of. And we're called to victory by the same means. Jesus isn't going to rule an earthly kingdom through violence like Herod.

He's going to conquer and have victory over death itself by means of the cross. And so he sets us an example to follow that any growth we can talk about in the kingdom is done by this means, not by the means of people like Herod. So we take up our cross daily, and we follow Jesus.

And those who will lose their life for the sake of the gospel will discover the true life of the kingdom of God, life in God's presence. Those who, like our New Testament passage this morning was talking about, allow their appetites and lusts for power, their aspirations to guide their life, and never discover life in the kingdom of God. And so this Lent, this is an invitation to do the hard work of seeking the kingdom first and foremost.

This means recognizing and discerning what bits of our networking or our aspirations, our strategizing, come from worldly appetites or lusts for power versus a desire to discover the goodness and love of Jesus as Lord, and as Lord over the lives of others in his goodness. It requires examining how you and I spend our time throughout the week, looking at our calendars with intention, examining how we spend our time, examining how we spend our money and give of our resources. Are we in constant survival mode, or is there intention, thoughtfulness with the ability to edit the things that won't facilitate rhythms of God's presence.

Lent is an invitation. It's not a condemnation, so don't hear me say this is a condemnation, but it's an invitation to ask God for his help, because without God's help, I should say, we were reminded in the collect, we need God's help, and so it's good to start by asking for God's help to do these things. This season invites us into a prayerful intentionality with how we pursue God with the everyday stuff of life in his kingdom, and so today is the day, as the parable says, not tomorrow, not next week, sometime later in life.

Conclusion

Today is the day to follow Jesus and to ask for his help in discovering the kingdom of God where new life begins, and the everyday stuff that you put your hands to, that you put your mind to. It's more difficult than we would like to think to follow Jesus and to accept his lordship and not my own, and it encompasses far more than we would imagine, but following Jesus fills our everyday moments with the goodness and the purposes of the kingdom of God, and it invites the interweaving of our stories with the story of the redeemed people of God that God's been telling from this promise of Abraham that we read to now, and so this Lent, let's recognize and discern the disordered aspirations that we have, or attachments, or appetites, and learn to no longer be led by them. Let's carve out time to cultivate rhythms where we're seeking God's presence in our everyday stuff, where we can learn and join with God and discover his presence where he is Lord in all of these things, and then discover the goodness of God's love in our new life in him one moment at a time.

Let me pray for us. “Go before us, O Lord, in all of our doings, with your most gracious favor, and further us with your continual help, that in all our works begun, continued, and ended in you, we may glorify your holy name, and finally, through your mercy, obtain everlasting life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited by the author.

Ash Wednesday: Eliminating Self-Deception and Prioritizing the Kingdom

Transcription

 Well, good evening again everybody. Thank you so much for being here tonight. Thank you for making the drive. I know the weather was a little challenging and a lot of you are coming from work, so thank you for making time to begin Lent together with your church community.

I'm the vicar here at Corpus Christi Anglican Church, and this is a season that reorients our priorities to the priorities of the kingdom of God. Lent is a season that helps us peel off all the layers of self-deception that we have started to build over time, to do the hard work of naming the truth and then asking for God's help and mercy because he's more ready to give that to us than we are to ask for it. And so as we consider getting our priorities straight, I want to look at three parts of this passage. 

First, keeping good rhythms. Second, be honest about where self-deception lies. And third, framing your earthly life in light of the life of God's kingdom. And so as we look at this passage, Matthew chapter 6 tonight, let me pray for us. In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. Amen.

Keep Good Rhythms

Well first, keep good rhythms. Keep good rhythms. In the passage today, Jesus mentions almsgiving, fasting, and prayer. And it's assumed that these pious Jews, his followers, are going to have these rhythms.

He's not exhorting them to start doing them as though they're not. They are already doing them, having these rhythms of almsgiving, fasting, and prayer. These are the rhythms that recalibrate God's people to God's covenant faithfulness when God is their king.

So giving towards the plight of the poor is an invitation to the justice of God's kingdom where the wrongs are going to be made right. And that's what we're giving towards as we give to the Lord. Prayer is this invitation to commune with the God of heaven, to get clarity on what his love is and what his will looks like, so that as we pray every day, his will might be perfectly done on earth as it is in heaven.

And then fasting is this invitation to depend on our Creator. It doesn't always mean food, but for them it often did. For us it often does. And it's this invitation to depend on our good Creator to examine all the ways that our appetites, our wills, and desires lead us and guide us rather than the God who loves us. And so the church, even in the earliest centuries, continues these habits in the new covenant where Jesus is king to recalibrate life to what it looks like to return to the covenant where we live under the kingship of our Lord Jesus. And so when we fast, pray, and give alms, we're invited into dependence, justice, and love that frames our earthly life in light of heaven.

And if you haven't realized this yet, you will, that living in northern Virginia can feel frenetic. Yes, I know that's surprising. And sprints are fine. 

If you do a 50-yard dash, it might be doable. But you can't sustain that pace for years and for decades. And so Lent invites us, helpfully, to just stop and slow down, cultivate rhythms that are this wholly upsetting of our sprinting pace.

Changing your evening routine, maybe waking up earlier, how you do a meal, perhaps intentionally skipping a meal for the sake of prayer, changing a diet like going vegan, carving out part of your budget to support God's work in your neighborhood or in the church or around the world, using prayer tools like the examine or other prayer tools. All of these things contribute in new ways to a wholly unsettling to push us off our frenetic pace, to disorient us so that we're reoriented to the kingdom of God where Jesus is Lord. Lent is a wholly unsettling, so we need to keep good rhythms.

Be honest about self-deception

Second, we need to be honest about where self-deception has filled our hearts. Jesus had warned his followers about the motives that they were doing for prayer and for almsgiving and fasting. And it's not wrong to be noticed by others.

It's not like if you see somebody with a cross of ash on their forehead during the day that they're somehow disobeying Jesus. It's about motivation. What is the aim and the goal of practicing piety before the Lord and the outward actions that are associated with that? Wanting to be noticed fuels self-deception.

If you're wanting to be noticed for how holy you are, you are fueling self-deception. It reminds me of gardening because we were doing some gardening yesterday, and there are a lot of plants that I've tried to plant along our fence, and they all die. Even ones I thought would do just fine, like thyme, have died along our fence.

And now what's happening that is killing those plants? It's Virginia clay, my arch-nemesis. And so, besides English ivy, that's my other arch-nemesis. So I have two arch-nemeses, but Virginia clay. So unless I spend some time amending the soil, you know, what's underneath the surface is going to continue to kill whatever I put there. Doesn't matter how nice that plant is, it's eventually going to die. We don't want to have the kind of spirituality that signals our piety to other people, but what it's actually doing is fostering a kind of death inside of us in our interior life.

And so what have we allowed to calcify in our inner life that needs to be broken up and amended? I can't answer that question for you. It's a question to ponder during Lent. What have we allowed to calcify in our inner life that needs to be broken up and amended? Have we begun to believe false narratives that we've created about other people, about ourselves, about God? Are we making decisions, communicating out of a place of fear, allowing our external circumstances to guide our decisions? But we need to let our prayers, each of our gifts, each thing that we give up or take on in this season with new rhythms, each of those things is contributing to the breaking up of the hard soil of our inner life.

And so we do these things all with intention to break up what is hard underneath. And so don't be afraid to look undone before other people. This is a season to remind each other that you are a mess. I mean, we are a mess. All of us are a mess. We are like that unfinished wall that is sitting there that is completely undone. That is all of us. We are a mess. This is a season to acknowledge it, embrace it, and give comfort to one another that it is okay to be a mess together in community.

Acknowledging our mess in community is actually the beginning of rightly ordering your interior life under the rule and the reign of King Jesus, who, as I said, and as the colic says, he is more ready to hear than we are to pray. And I love that collect.

Adopting Kingdom Priorities

So we looked at keeping good rhythms. We looked at eliminating self-deception. Finally, let's look at adopting kingdom priorities. Jesus ends this passage with this reminder that where your treasure is, that's where your heart's going to be also.

Heaven is God's realm. So heaven's God's realm where he abides and where his will is done perfectly. It's not something ethereal out there.

It's an alternate sphere that overlaps and interlocks with the age that we're in now. The age to come, the age we're in now, heaven and earth overlap and interlock. And that's important because what that means is that there's the possibility that we get glimpses of heaven in our day in and day out experience right now.

And it's not all something just to be looked forward to in eternity. And that's important because Jesus, what he does in his earthly life and in his death and resurrection and in his ascension on high, is he breaks into this age into the realm of the earth with the realm of heaven. And we see heaven meeting earth in the person of Jesus.

And so in Lent we make extra space to ask God to break into our realm again. And then to give us glimpses of what things will ultimately be when Christ is in all and over all and all things are in him. And so it's not an invitation to be so heavenly minded that you're of no earthly good.

Let me say that again. This is not an invitation to be so heavenly minded that you're of no earthly good. Instead, it's an invitation to prioritize your earthly life around God's priorities. 

We learn to love our enemies even when we publicly or privately disagree with them so that we learn God's love for them and for us. And so that ultimately they learn it as well. We abide with Christ.

We endure disappointments. We endure unmet expectations and sufferings not as things that are distracting us or taking us away from the will of God, but as those things that are, in accepting them, they are meaningfully part of God's forming us into the image of Christ. And so we take, we make time and we allot our resources to love and serve those who are the least, the lost, the forgotten, because in God's kingdom those are the ones to be honored as divine image bearers.

And this is the reality of heaven breaking into earth. Prioritizing God's kingdom has ethical implications both personally and publicly, and we don't do things to be seen by other people because we want God to break in through our layers of self-deception and to form us into the image of his Son. So in conclusion, this passage has three important points. 

Keep good rhythms. Break through the hardened layers of self-deception and adopt God's kingdom priorities. This is the invitation of Lent, to keep good rhythms.

Break through self-deception and adopt God's kingdom priorities. And so tonight you're gonna receive a bit of ash on your forehead, and it's in the shape of a cross, the Lord being our helper. I'll do my best.

The ash reminds us that each of us one day will die, which is really hard to think about. The reality is like in our culture they have built habits to avoid remembering death, and so Ash Wednesday cuts through the culture's self-deception to remind us to make things right with God and right with others as there is still time. And the shape of the cross reminds us that there is hope for us, that Christ has defeated death, and that God loves the dust that we are.

God hates nothing that he has made, as our collect says tonight, but God longs for our forgiveness, and he longs to grant us his mercy. And so tonight invites us into a whole season of repentance and renewal as we start to break up that hard soil and begin to rightly order our interior life once again.

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited by the author.

Transfiguration: A Vision of the Glory of Jesus for the Valley of Demons to Come

Transcription

 Well, good morning again everybody. It is good to see you. I'm Father Morgan Reed. I'm the vicar here at Corpus Christi Anglican Church. If you haven't heard the term vicar before, it's because we Anglicans have great terms for things. And so I am like the equivalent of a senior pastor of a mission church that's still in formation. And as we are growing, those titles change, but that's what they call me in the Anglican world.

It is great to be with you this morning. And this, as I mentioned before, is the final Sunday of the season of Epiphany, where we focus, as a whole season, on the glory of Jesus Christ, this loving rule and dominion of God that is over all the nations, that comes through the person and work of Jesus Christ as our King. And today, this Sunday, focuses our attention specifically on the glory of Jesus in the transfiguration of our Lord on the mountain.

We don't know which mountain, perhaps Mount Tabor, but we don't exactly know which mountain it was. Up to this point, Jesus' disciples, they've been receiving bits and pieces of information and seeing glimpses of something of the kingdom of God. They've been hearing about it from Jesus, and now they're putting it together.

And this moment is putting it together in a way that's going to prepare them for the valley that Jesus is about to enter, and the valleys that they themselves are about to enter. It's interesting that in the Gospels where this story is recorded, each gospel writer always follows up this story with the boy who is possessed by a demon that only Jesus can heal. And so, you know, it's helpful for them.

The glory of the transfiguration is preparing them for a valley of demons that they're about to face. It's preparing them and preparing Jesus in some ways for the valley that he's about to enter into as he goes down to Jerusalem, the place where he'll be crucified. And so you can see as we end the Epiphany season why this focus is so helpful to bookend the glory of God in the season of Epiphany, but then to begin our time of Lent together this week. 

And like Jesus's disciples, you and I are putting the pieces together slowly. We are often vacillating somewhere in between incredible, meaningful encounters with the God who loves us, the joy of sitting in his presence, and moments of failure, panic, disappointment, and feeling like God is woefully distant. Somewhere in between there on any given day we are vacillating, right? And so we don't often understand those things that Jesus is preparing us for in those moments between the radiant glory of God and the valley of demons.

But the best posture to adopt as we vacillate between those things is a posture of listening to the Son. Listening to the Son of God. As we open ourselves up to what God is doing in his kingdom work, and as we focus on the glory of God here in the Transfiguration, there are three things that I want to think about this morning.

First, Jesus prepares us for what we will face. He does. Jesus will prepare us for what we will face. Second, Jesus is present on the mountain, but He's also present in the valley. Jesus is present on the mountain. He's also present in the valley. And third, God invites us to listen. Those are the three things I want to think about this morning.

 Jesus prepares us for what we will face

So let's look at how Jesus prepares us for what we're going to face. Jesus takes his disciples up to a mountain to pray. This is something they do a lot. And while Jesus is praying, something not common happens. Jesus's appearance, the appearance of his face changes into something other. His clothes become dazzling white, and then two men appear with Jesus, Moses and Elijah.

Why Moses and Elijah? We aren't 100% sure, but perhaps it's something to the effect that as prophets in the Old Testament, Moses shows us something of the prophetic office that Jesus is going to come to occupy. And Elijah is, as a prophet, a portrayal of Israel's hope in the future, in the Eschaton. And so Jesus is talking with those who he is going to fulfill their ministries, both looking backwards and looking forwards.

And so the disciples get to hear this dialogue. They're kind of like in and out. They're really tired. They're not totally asleep, but they come to be alert when this happens. They see Jesus with these two prophets, and in this dialogue that's happening, Moses and Elijah are speaking to Jesus about his departure that he's about to accomplish at Jerusalem. And that word departure is really important.

This doesn't come across in English, but if you're reading it in Greek, the term that they're using is ἐξοδόν. Does that sound like something? “Exodus”. Yes, exactly. It's a very loaded term. And so in this passage, those who are listening would have totally been conjuring up images of Israel's exodus in the past, and looking forward to the deliverance in the end, where the kingdom of God is fully established. And so the disciples, as they're listening, images of the exodus of God's people are being conjured up in their minds.

And I think New Testament scholars are right to point out, some will say that it's not just Jesus's death, but this is actually truncating the entirety of his salvific ministry. His death, his resurrection, his ascension on high where he reigns as king, and his coming again, which in Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, they like to throw around the term παρουσία quite a bit. That's his coming again to establish all things in the fullness of God's glory where Jesus reigns as king.

All of that together is the exodus that we're talking about. This is the departure that's about to begin at Jerusalem and be fulfilled in his coming again. And so up to this point, if you think of what the disciples have been going through, they've been hearing bits and pieces about the kingdom of God through all these enigmatic parables that Jesus has been teaching. He's mentioned his death in somewhat veiled terms, it seems to confuse them, and he's said these elusive commandments to take up your cross and follow me. Well, what does that mean? He hasn't yet been crucified. They're putting the pieces together without the full picture.

And so these are all pieces of the larger picture of God's kingdom story that they'll come to understand, but they definitely don't yet. Jesus here is giving them this sufficient glimpse of the plan of God's kingdom that will sustain them in those moments where things just don't go according to plan. Like, Jesus, I did not think this was how your kingdom was going to come.

Is your kingdom even coming? Whatever those moments are, this glimpse is supposed to sustain them when those things that don't fit in the plan will happen to them, which they will. And so Jesus, you know, when tragedy strikes and things don't turn out the ways that they thought they would, they need this vision. When they watch their Lord being crucified, this moment of glory on the mountain was meant to remind them that that tragedy of their crucified Messiah is actually part of a cosmic exodus from the kingdom of darkness, where we're all enslaved to the powers of sin and death, to the kingdom of darkness, that this cosmic exodus of God is being brought about through this crucified Messiah.

And God often gives us glimpses of the story that he's telling, if we would pay attention to them. But it does take work to recall those stories in your life. I remember a particularly challenging season in my own story, where I was wondering, as a clergy person, have I made the right decision? I'm sure other pastors have thought that at times. I'm sure maybe in your work you've thought, have I really made the right decision? And in my story, it was there was people, not at this church, none of you, there were people that were making my life really challenging, and it was really hard to the point where I thought, maybe I've just chosen the wrong thing. I should go back to Starbucks. And maybe, but you know, maybe you've had similar doubts in the course of your work, too.

These hardships. And in those moments, what I did was I looked back and I asked, God, where are the sort of mountaintop glory experiences that I can look at where I actually knew you were present? I hang on to those moments and recount them of where was God present that led me up to this point? Because I didn't do this on my own. I didn't just like will myself into this.

Quite frankly, the church wouldn't have okayed my ordination had I done that. But the thing is, I needed those moments to look back on and go, if God has been present before, I know he's still present right now, even if I'm not in the same state of joy that I was in those moments. That was a season of the Valley of Demons for me, and I know that several of you have gone through your own seasons of the Valley of Demons, and perhaps you're in one at the moment. 

And so in those times, it's really important to remember the glory of God, keep a short list of the experiences where you know God has been close. Because there are moments where God is present, but his closeness and his presence may not feel tangible.

Jesus is present on the mountain, but He's also present in the valley

And so we've looked at how these moments of glory, they're preparatory. They're preparing us for a season of the Valley of Demons, for what's coming. And then second, I want to look at that Jesus is present, whether it's in the dazzling white clothing on the top of the mountain, or it's in the Valley of shrieking Demons. Whether you're here or here, Jesus is present.

It's that long obedience to Jesus through the ups and the downs that the redemptive story of God is being shown. And so these high moments prepare us for the low moments, but it's in looking back on those highs and lows that we piece together the story of the kingdom of God that he's telling in our story. And so we might be tempted to think that when we have arrived up here, that we've hit all that there is.

Like, I've arrived. Whether we're in the high or the low, Jesus is present. And so we need to hold on to those moments as preparatory.

We think often, like, I remember hearing as people were doing their Bible studies, you know, I had a really great time with the Lord this morning, and that's awesome, but not every day is like that, right? Or I came to worship and I didn't get anything out of it today, right? But the reality is there are highs, there are lows, and it's in this long obedience between the highs and the lows that we piece together the story of God's redemption. And even when there are lows where we don't feel his presence, we know he is there, and these things, these rhythms, are feeding us despite the fact that we may not feel his presence so closely. So we get to the text, and just as Elijah and Moses were about to leave, Peter says, “Master, it is good for us to be here. Let's make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” And then it says, “…Not knowing what he had said.” Like, imagine, he didn't know what he was really saying in that moment.

And so Peter was asking them to celebrate a Jewish festival, the Feast of Booths. And the Feast of Booths celebrates God's redemption of Israel, bringing them out of Egypt in the Exodus, and it anticipates God's ultimate deliverance of his people. Peter recognized that that was a significant moment that they were in, and, you know, he didn't know the significance of the moment that he was in.

Maybe he wanted to prolong that moment to get more information about the kingdom of God. Maybe he thought, it's about to come now, right? You can imagine having a crucified Messiah is not in their plans. And so you can imagine, if you see Moses and Elijah talking with Jesus, and he looks very different, you think, this is the time, I'm ready, you know.

And so we should celebrate the Feast of Booths. I'm not sure what that would accomplish. I'm not sure he knew what that would accomplish. But he didn't know what else to say in that moment. He's just overtaken with the glory that he is seeing. But he doesn't know what he's asking for.

And so experiencing that moment of the radiance of the glory of God was preparation for all the things that Peter was about to go into, into the future encounters with the kingdom of darkness, in ways that he had no clue about. And again, I find comfort there, because we we can prop up moments of joy like that, moments where we know God is so present as somehow being the standard for how life should always be. It is so easy to go there, or to say, I'm not healthy spiritually unless I am there.

And you know, so again, you might wonder if as I'm reading the scripture, doing the daily office, you know, if I'm not feeling anything, am I doing this right? Is there something wrong with me? But again, of all the days that Jesus went to pray, we only have one transfiguration recorded. And so I find comfort in that, that our habits of prayer, our habits of being in community, being formed in community, when you don't feel it, being carried along by the community, and hoping somebody else is feeling something that day, whatever state you're in, these are all formative and feeding us, even when they're not memorable, right? There's an analogy that comes from a couple authors about food. I can't, I have a bad memory anyways, but I can't tell you more than ten meals I've had, probably, because they were memorable, but I needed all those meals to feed me.

And so worship functions like this. Even in the unmemorable times of worship, I am being fed, and I may only remember ten of those, right? Or something like that, but I need them all to feed my soul. And so we should thank God for those deep moments where God's presence and abiding in God's presence are filled with this consolation of Jesus's good presence being so real to us.

And don't worry when he's not. You can take comfort that sometimes you're in those moments where he is present, but his presence is sometimes more difficult to experience. And those moments where he has been really present are a preparation for those moments where he doesn't feel present.

And so name those moments, write them down, keep them close, that he feels so real. And then sometimes name those moments where he doesn't feel like he's really present. Because as you piece those things together, you're starting to piece together the story of redemption that God's telling in your life.

God invites us to listen to his son

So we looked at how he prepares us for the things we're gonna face. We've seen that Jesus is present, whether it's on the dazzling, in dazzling clothes on the mountain or in the valley of shrieking demons. And finally, as we live out life in the kingdom of God, God invites us to listen to his son. 

I'm not good at listening, so this was really helpful for me. After Peter utters his saying, there's a cloud that overshadows them. This is something like the theophany that we talked about where Moses's face is shining, the cloud of God, the Shekinah, the glory of God, overshadowing the people and bringing them out of the wilderness.

This cloud that reminds them of something of the Exodus, overshadows them and says this is my son, my chosen one, listen to him. If you remember back to January 8th, at the beginning of our Epiphany season, I preached on the baptism of the Lord that day. It's the day where we celebrate his baptism and that really kicks off our Epiphany season.

And now this language that was at his baptism of my son, my chosen, brings together two really important passages. Psalm 2, which is kingly coronation language, and Isaiah 42, which is the chosen servant, and the songs of Isaiah are being brought together in the person of Jesus. So the one who will redeem Israel, the one who will bring them out, the one who will be king over all, is brought together in Jesus at his baptism, and bookending our Epiphany season is brought together here at the Transfiguration.

And so Epiphany is bookended by those important statements. The heavenly voice tells us about Jesus's kingship over all things, that as the beginning of his ministry, again to remind the disciples of that same truth that Jesus is Lord, he's king, they're going to need to know this as he goes down into the valley. He's the one who's going to bring redemption to Israel.

He's the one that's going to carry out the fullness of God's kingdom and justice, and reign over all nations, and overthrow the kingdom of sin and death. And that the crucifixion is not a deterrent from that plan, but actually part of it. And so very importantly, this voice from heaven says, listen to him.

And as a result of that, it says they kept silent, and they didn't tell anybody what they'd seen until a lot later. And at some point, they will come to talk about it, since it's written in the Gospels, but they needed to know that they could listen to Jesus and trust him as king, because the thing that was going to happen next did not look like they expected it to happen. This was not supposed to be God's plan for the Messiah, that he would be crucified by, you know, pagan powers in the city of Jerusalem.

This was not part of our plan, and they needed to be able to trust him. And so Jesus continually disappoints his disciples with unmet expectations about what God's kingdom is going to look like, as they move from the Mount of Transfiguration on Mount Tabor to the crucifixion at the hill of Golgotha. Somewhere between those two mountains, they're going to experience a lot of disappointment.

And they need to know that Jesus says, and what he does will guide them for continuing the work of the kingdom of God. When Jesus rises from the dead, they'll begin to tease out and connect these dots of the revelation on the mountain with the rest of his ministry. But between these two mountains, between Mount Tabor and the hill of Golgotha, they really are at God's mercy in their unmet expectations, and having to listen to the voice of the Son.

And so it's a good reminder that you and I, we are all in these moments where we vacillate between being on the mountain, where Jesus feels so good, so present, so powerful, to moments where we wonder if we've messed things up beyond Jesus's ability to fix them. If we're being punished for something outside of the boundaries of God's love. Like, I have messed up so bad that not even God could love me.

Just feeling like we're stuck, like there's nothing that's going to budge in our lives, and we can't understand why God doesn't seem to answer our prayers, or why his presence feels so far from us. Somewhere in between those two things, we're often going back and forth. And so whatever he's bringing us through, this command is to us as well.

Listen to the Son. He's trustworthy. He knows what he's doing. He gives us the moments of glory as preparation for the moments where his glory is hidden. Begin to name those things that hurt to God. Tell him what hurts, so that our hearts are open to healing, rather than closed off in a defensive posture.

We need to look for the face of Christ in other people. Yes, when they bring us joy, but also when they drive us crazy, and even when they offend us. We need to discover the face of Jesus in them. We can go on a walk, and we can look at the kind gestures of God in the world around us. That's often my help. I love in the spring to just watch the plants grow on the mountainside and the creek to flow, and to know that I had nothing to do with it.

It's really helpful. The specifics of what you do to listen to the Son are sort of secondary. Keep the daily office.

Keep your prayer rhythms. We're going to talk about fasting, almsgiving, and prayer during Lent. These are all good rhythms. But the main thing is that we're moving towards the love of God. And we're moving towards loving what God loves in whatever we are doing. That's listening to the Son.

We don't pursue the kingdom through military might or worshiping power. We experience the lordship of Jesus and the kingdom of God by just stopping, breathing, and listening to the voice of Jesus. And so rather than doing what I would normally do and ending my sermon with more words, what I want to do today is have almost two minutes of silence, which is going to feel a little awkward.

And that's okay. And in those two minutes of silence, I want to invite you to pray about two questions. Jesus, where are you today? So sort of in that question, think back on the day, on the week.

Where is Jesus present? Even in those moments where you may not have felt present. And then, Jesus, what are you saying today? Jesus, where are you today? Jesus, what are you saying today? So I invite you, in the next two minutes, let's just be silent. Jesus, where are you today? Jesus, what are you saying today? And I'll conclude us with an amen.

 [Silence]

Amen.

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited by the author.

The Glory of Jesus in Learning to Love our Enemies

Transcription

Well, good morning, my friends. It is good to see you this morning. I'm Father Morgan Reed. I'm the vicar here at Corpus Christi Anglican Church.

And today it is a joy to be with you. I love Sundays where we celebrate baptisms together. One of the joys of celebrating baptisms is it reminds us of what God calls us into in our own baptism. And so this morning is we make vows and promises together and support Joshua and Grace in their vows and promises. Take a moment to remind yourself that this is God's call on your life as well this morning. We are in the season of Epiphany together, which is a season that focuses our attention on the glory of Jesus as it goes out to the nations.

And today's gospel passage is from what's commonly called the Sermon on the Mount. And today I actually did something that I've never done before and I've heard of other people doing it, which is I actually prepared a sermon on the verses after the ones we read today. So I'm gonna talk about how this Sermon on the Mount goes into where we didn't yet get to in the passage, which is verses 27 through 38, where Jesus is going to make this claim about, you know, love those who hate you and pray for those who persecute you or who mistreat you and to forgive those who mistreat you and who hate you.

And this radical love that we're gonna find in the Sermon on the Mount is part of the glory of Jesus going out into the nations. And in Jesus one of the things that the Sermon on the Mount calls us to is to reflect the mercy and the love and the grace of God. And the radical showing of that mercy, grace, and love are to be done because what we're actually doing in that and what the Holy Spirit has empowered us to do is to show the very nature and character of God himself.

And this is what we do, that what God empowers us to do when we're baptized and given the Holy Spirit. And this happens through loving our enemies, through blessing those who curse us, for praying for those who mistreat us. And so this call in the Sermon on the Mount is to continue the the ministry of Jesus by putting God's glory on display to the nations through a radical love, a love which shows the very nature of the mercy and character and grace of God himself.

Loving our Enemies

In a world that has been broken by sin, by disordered attachments and loves, this is our call to proclaim the glory of Jesus through this radical kind of love. The first thing Jesus calls us to, in verse 27, if you have your Bibles, this is Luke chapter 6, Jesus calls us to love our enemies. These commands are written in the context of religious persecution.

These are people who are being called into the way of Jesus, into living in the kingdom, and they're going to experience opposition as a result of living life following Jesus. And so they're called to carry on the good news of Jesus in their lives, and they're going to encounter people who are going to set themselves as enemies against them. This isn't referring to people who undergo natural consequences for doing what's unethical or wrong.

This is about people whose conduct is honorable, it's Christ-like, and then as a result of that, they suffer. And if we're to love our enemies, one of the challenging things is to pinpoint what an enemy actually is. I know sometimes we're like, well, we shouldn't have enemies, but the reality is, if you've lived any time on the earth, you know enemies present themselves, right? And so, I remember back when I was, before I was ordained, probably over 10 years ago at this point, we lived in Chicago, and I was working at a coffee shop, and I had a manager who was fantastic.

We really gelled, we clicked, he used to give me stuff to do that would help benefit the coffee shop, and just trusted me. And as a manager, it was great, because I, you know, it was, if there ever were room for improvement, and there was, of course, but he would couch it in gratitude. He says, I'm grateful for these things.

There's this area that we need to work on, but also, I'm so grateful for the ways that you pour yourself out into this. Well, he left, and then somebody else came in. There was a new manager who came in, and she had been, she had had managerial experience elsewhere, but not in this industry, and that made it challenging.

So I was often met by her with criticism, not gratitude, and if I'm honest, I didn't take it that well. I didn't look forward to seeing her. I tried to avoid her, and I really kept our conversations short.

I didn't want to give her anything, and one day when she was there working with me, her boyfriend had come in, and she took a break and sat at a table with her boyfriend, and I overheard their conversation as I was cleaning, and she was starting to tell her boyfriend all of her frustrations and her insecurities, some of which were related to work, some of which weren't, and it kind of broke my heart a little bit because I realized, oh, she's actually a human being, and so as I listened to those insecurities flowing out, I realized all the bravado, all the posturing that I was experiencing were all ways of her masking her deep sense of insecurity, and that gave me a lot of compassion, and so what I did as a result, as I worked with her, I started to actually name for her the things that she was doing well. You did this well, just reminding her, right, because if she's feeling insecure, it's helpful to remind her that there are things that she does well, and what's neat is it really improved the working relationship. By the time we left Chicago, we actually were friends, and she knew that I was a Christian, and so my prayer is that that relationship was something that marks her story in some way, that she understands the love of God more because of having known me.

Now, not everything goes that well. I shared sort of a nice story. I could have shared ones that don't go as well because there's some times where we just can't break through somebody's insecurities, and the animosity towards us and the contempt just won't go away.

Now, was she my enemy? Well, in one sense, yes, and in another sense, no. She made my life miserable. I didn't want to go to work, but this passage in the Sermon on the Mount would exhort me to stay sensitive to what causes somebody to become my enemy. 

It's more interesting to ask what makes her inimical to me, not is she an enemy or not, and the reason why is St. Paul says that our enemy is not flesh and blood. He talks about spiritual forces, principalities, and powers that are spiritual and real, but they're not flesh and blood, and so because of that, people, you know, when they're not fully themselves because of their sin and their brokenness, we will experience them as our enemies, but it's up to Christ's followers to love people and things for what they truly are and what they can truly become while simultaneously praying for the healing for the ways that people have become distorted by the enemy that is actually the enemy. St. Augustine says it this way. He says, “Therefore we're both prohibited from loving in this command what the world itself loves, and we're commanded to love it in what the world hates. Namely, the handiwork of God and the various comforts of his goodness. We are prohibited from loving the fault in it and are commanded to love its nature. The world loves the fault in itself and hates its nature. So we rightly love and hate it, although it perversely loves and hates itself.” Now, it's a little confusing. What he means by that is that people in their very nature are image bearers of God, and so we are called to love them for who they are and what God wants to make them into, what he is bringing them into in their salvation in Christ. Not for the ways that they are broken. We recognize that this is not their nature, to obscure the divine image in themselves.

And so this is the way that we love our enemies, to love what is truly them. And so when people lash out at you, when they make your life harder, which is going to happen when they activate something deep in you and you're feeling a response because of something in your past, we can recognize in our bodies the discomfort of experiencing something in that moment of the kingdom of darkness and not just of them. And so we can ascribe the harm then to spiritual forces of wickedness that are warring against us and they're warring against the person that we're perceiving as our enemy.

That's trying to cause us harm. And in doing that, in recognizing that, we set ourselves up to love the image of God in somebody while at the same time hating the very things that are not part of their God given nature and what God's making them into. And so it could be a friend.

It could be a relative, a family member, could be your spouse at times. It could be a child. It could be a co-worker.

All of these can present themselves at any point as your enemy. But ontologically, in all reality, they are just distorted image bearers of God in that moment. And so the command is to love your enemy because, and what's at stake? Because that's the very thing that God does. And so we're showing this radical love as we are sharing what the nature of God is like.

Do Good to those who Hate You

So second, Jesus calls us to do good to those who hate us. Doing good is the extension of love. It's this conscious choice not to take vengeance into our own hands, but to relinquish vengeance into God's hands while taking the initiative to actually do good for somebody when they are absolutely undeserving or unaware of what's actually good. Now, I do want to give a caveat, though, as I was thinking about this passage. Sometimes doing good to others will result in them being angry at you.

This is not people pleasing. For example, if you've escaped an abusive situation, doing good to somebody does not mean going back to an abusive situation or allowing somebody to overstep appropriate boundaries when they've been abusive or unhealthy. That is not good.

It's not doing good to them. It's not doing good to yourself. Sometimes doing good to somebody involves setting and holding firm boundaries that you've established even when they don't want them.

And that's OK. Remember that by doing good, we're extending love. What we're aiming for is the restoring of God's image in that person through the work of Jesus Christ.

So good boundaries can allow us to have space to love that person well without getting caught in systems that run healthy of sin and abuse. And it's good for that other person, whether or not they're realizing it in that moment. And so with that caveat, Jesus calls us to do good to those who hate us.

And part of doing good is to remain sensitive and vulnerable. It's really hard to do because sometimes we can feel like things are going so well. I don't want to feel vulnerable.

That's scary. And I get that. I remember early on in pastoral ministry, somebody giving me the advice to grow thick skin as a pastor. People are going to come at you with this, that, or the other thing. You just need to learn to grow a thick skin. But the reality is, the more I read scripture, I actually don't think that's the way of Jesus.

I don't think growing a thick skin is the answer. And because when you grow a thick skin, whether or not you're a pastor, this is for all of us. Growing a thick skin, it keeps us from being tender, keeps us from being vulnerable, keeps us from empathy and seeing the hurt and the need that others have. Many of us are going to be the objects of scorn. We're going to be the objects of other people's transference as they're working through their issues. We're going to be the objects of their projection.

 And they don't understand why they're so mad at us. And it's something that we can't fix. Perhaps like a spouse is feeling out of control. And then the other partner comes in and doesn't tune in well to what their spouse is doing. But they make a bunch of demands about how the house should look or whatever. And that spouse is going to be met likely with and become the receptacle of a litany of frustrations from the other spouse.

And if somebody is discontent with parts of their life and then you say the wrong thing, it doesn't matter if you're married, if you're co-workers, just roommates, whatever. If something is going wrong and you come in at the wrong time and you say the wrong thing, you may have just triggered something. They're getting activated.

They don't understand what's going on in their body. And they lash out and you become the object of their contempt and scorn in that moment. You know, it happens with sermons, too. I hate to say that, but it just happens. Right? There's going to be moments where you become the object of somebody else's contempt.

Now, the answer is not to ignore it. The answer is not to grow a thick skin and let it roll off and ignore it. But the answer is to stay grounded in the confidence of who you are in Jesus. 

What has God made you to be? And as you come with that confidence, then coming to that other person with sensitivity to their experience, you can then re-engage with curiosity and kindness for that other person because of the confidence of who you are in Christ. And that is to do good to others who hate you, to engage them with this curiosity and kindness, to actually seek for the image of God in that person. To seek for the face of God when they themselves have forgotten that they actually bear in themselves something, the image of their creator, and then to show up with kindness and the kindness of God in the face of their contempt. This is to do good to those who hate you.

Bless those who Curse You and Pray for those who Mistreat You

So loving our enemies, doing good to those who hate us. And finally, I want to look at blessing those who curse us and praying for those who mistreat us. Now, the ESV that we read today, I think, well, we didn't read it because I told you we read the passage before where I was thinking we were going. But the passage in the ESV, if you were to read it, it has the word “abuse”. I don't think that's really helpful as a translation.

And they got it from the old NRSV, the old RSV. The better translation here is “mistreat”. Bless those who mistreat you. And that's what the new NRSV has. And it's costly and it's courageous to bless people who curse you. And following Jesus as Lord means that no earthly authority, no political party, no governmental structure, no institution is going to 100 percent follow the kingdom of God into these systems that we're called, whether it's your family, government, work, church, any human institution in which you are called into.

We're called to be truth tellers as we follow Jesus in the kingdom way. With Jesus as Lord, we tell the truth. And now this is bound up, bound to make us the object of contempt with somebody, to be truth tellers amidst institutions.

You're going to become the object of contempt and cursing for other people because of breaking norms that are there, because of exposing evils within institutions, shining light on unhealthy systems. Whatever it is, some of you in your 20s and 30s are finally discovering the unhealthy systems of family as you shine a light on it. It's common for you to become the object of your family's scorn as you get healthy.

And it is so easy, then, to want to revile in return. But this passage calls us to bless and to pray. Ridding ourselves of contempt as we begin to pray for the salvation of others begins the process of our own internal healing salvation and our own internal rightly ordering of our internal life.

And that involves rightly naming the wrongs of other people. It involves accurately describing the impacts of other people's wrongdoing and then praying for God to deliver those people from the bonds of the kingdom of darkness. The things that have made them become contemptuous of you.

And this is where forgiveness begins. We're relinquishing the right to take vengeance into our own hands. We recognize that this person is made in the image of God and that God actually loves this person despite their sin and their brokenness.

And that begins our prayers for them. And it allows us to bless who God has made them to be and the good desires that God has put in their hearts while also recognizing and naming the brokenness that all of their distorted affections and desires have caused. And so don't dismiss somebody's wickedness.

On the one hand, that is not forgiveness. Do not dismiss their wickedness. But at the same time, don't let somebody else's contempt breed contempt in you.

Conclusion

Jesus has called us to share his glory to the nations. This is what the season of Epiphany is all about. And we do so here in a radical love, which he calls us to in the Sermon on the Mount, through loving our enemies, through doing good to those who hate us, through blessing those who curse us, and for praying for those who mistreat us.

 And so we are those as Christians who risk, who pray, who bless, who name the truth and who forgive other people while at the same time holding good boundaries. We love other people in the face of their brokenness because this this is the kind of love that God shows to each one of us. And for those of us who have died and risen with Christ, those of us who have been baptized into him and his death and his resurrection, this is the radical love that shows God's love to the world, the world that that longs to see the glory in the face of Jesus Christ.

Let me pray for us. Almighty God, you sent your son, Jesus Christ, to reconcile the world to yourself. We praise and bless you for those whom you have sent in the power of the spirit to preach the gospel to all nations.

We thank you that in all parts of the earth, a community of love has been gathered together by their prayers and labors and that in every place your servants call upon your name for the kingdom and the power and the glory are yours forever and ever. Amen.

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited by the author.

Jesus’ Best in Our Worst

Transcription

Good morning again everybody. It is good to see you this morning. I love seeing your smiles. It is good to be with you in worship and community this morning.

Regardless of the week you've had coming in, it is good and formative to be together. So thank you for making time to be here with your church this morning. If you're new here or visiting, we're glad you're here as well. I'm Father Morgan Reed. I'm the vicar at Corpus Christi Anglican Church. If you're new to Anglicanism, it's like a senior pastor of a mission church. And that's what I am here, and we are delighted to have you with us.

Today in our Gospels, we are looking at the calling of the disciples. And so we've been talking about the glory of God through Epiphany. Now that glory is going to go forth through these who Jesus will choose as his disciples to carry on the kingdom work. And whether or not they knew it, these disciples, their lives, their stories, their vocations, were setting them up in unique ways to bring their unique gifts to bear on the age to come, the kingdom of God. And they were doing so in the midst of an empire that was not eager to know the love of the Messiah.

There was this clash of good news messages, Gospels. One of those being, we have no king but Caesar. One of those being, we have no king but Christ. And in the midst of that tension, the disciples are being called, these fishermen, to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God where Jesus is Lord. And so the followers of Jesus are called to hold out the glory of Jesus in the midst of really challenging circumstances. And this is what the apostles are called to.

And how can they do this? I love this passage today. It is such an encouragement. How are they able to carry the glory of Jesus out in the midst of really challenging circumstances in an empire that's not necessarily friendly to them? That's what we're going to look at this morning. And what they're going to learn is that Jesus brings people into an encounter with himself often when they're at their worst. And then they're going to learn that Jesus can do far more than they expect of him. And then when they're confronted with their own finitude as human beings, then they're going to come to know the power of Jesus working in them to do more in them and through them than they could have imagined.

And I think that you and I this morning are in need of such an encouragement as we follow Jesus in seasons of real instability. As we look at our passage this morning, let me pray for us. “In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Almighty God, from whom all thoughts of truth and peace proceed, kindle, we pray, in the hearts of all people, the true love of peace. And guide with your pure and peaceable wisdom those who take counsel for the nations of the earth, that in tranquility your kingdom may go forward till the earth is filled with the knowledge of your love, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.”

Jesus meets us in our worst

Well first, I want to look at this first point that I brought up, that Jesus meets people often when they're at their worst.  Jesus meets them when they're at their worst. Chapter 5 of St. Luke's Gospel is what we read today. Jesus comes to the lake of Gennesaret, which is also called the Sea of Galilee. It's in the northern part of Israel. It's about 18 by 14 square mile, yeah, square miles. And it serves as a popular freshwater fishing location.

And when he shows up to the Sea of Galilee, there's a crowd that's gathered. They're gathered there to hear him teach. And the crowd is growing. And because it's growing, they need to be able to hear him. And that area provides a natural amphitheater, so he has to go out a little from the shore to utilize the natural resources around him to create an amphitheater so that everybody can hear. And so he sees these two boats that are by the lake that he needs, and he decides that he needs one of them to go out onto the lake.

Well, the fishermen are not in those boats. They're out of the boats, and they're cleaning all of their nets. They've just, it's morning time now. They've spent all night fishing, which is the best time for them to catch a hole. And so Jesus decides on one of these boats to be taken out to the sea a little ways to be able to preach. And this boat belongs to Simon, who's going to eventually be renamed as Peter. And Simon here is not at his best. You can believe it. He's really, really tired.

He spent all night fishing. Show of hands, how many of you have pulled an all-nighter in college? Right? This is, you, Peter spent an all-nighter, and he has not caught anything to show for it. You can imagine how useless he is at this point, and how frustrated and tired and probably deflated he's feeling. 

He is not at his best, probably just wants to go to sleep. But in his tiredness, when he's not at his best, he still welcomes Jesus in. And I wonder, with Peter and Simon, if a lot of us are not feeling at our best this morning, as you came in here today. This passage is for you. It's an encouragement. The instability of these past few weeks have been really exhausting.

I know because I'm fielding texts, emails, and prayer requests all the time. People are worried about their jobs. They're worried about the immigration statuses of family and friends. They're worried about the takeover of government systems and processes by the wrong people, that we might break democracy in irreversible ways, that people around the world are going to suffer and die because of freezing and cutting aid. People are afraid of economic impact, on what imposing tariffs on allies means, what the diplomatic fallout of this is going to be. And that's just to name a few things that might be causing fear for some people this morning.

And a lot of these things do impact people in our church because you work for government agencies, or you work for NGOs that serve other people around the world. And so I'm hearing an understandable fear about what is happening right now. Things that make us feel like we're just not in our best.

Right? And that's okay. And if all that wasn't enough, life still continues to march on. And you have your daily responsibilities, the things that you need to do, making repair in relationships that are broken, keeping it together with your spouse, if you have one, maintaining your own mental and physical health.

And in this scenario, in this, you know, current situation, for some of you have kids, caring for your kids, maintaining a sense of security for them, and dealing with the challenges that they present day in and day out. Being present to all the different people that you need to be present to, and your different spheres of life. How do we maintain all of those things? And the reality is, if we were to look back on human history, there is never been a time where heaven has been on earth that we can point to one nation state and go, that was the kingdom of God.

You know, we just want to be like that. We've never seen it yet. There has never been a nation state that has exemplified the ideals of the kingdom of God. And so, you know, I want to name what feels so hard for a lot of people today as they're walking in. What are the things that make us feel like, man, I am just not at my best right now. And the reminder to us this morning, that this is the setup to encounter Jesus.

That when you're not feeling at your best, let your heart and your body be reminded that this is the place where Jesus sees you, where he knows you, where he deeply loves you, even when you're feeling like you're at your worst. And so when we can learn to name the things that are broken before Jesus, then what we're also doing is naming the very thing where we are, we're place where we're longing for God's love and grace to be poured in and change, change our hearts. So when we're in our worst, that's when we're often most ready to encounter Jesus.

Jesus can do more than we expect

And then second, Jesus can do way more than we often expect him to be able to do. Jesus says to Simon, put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch. Can you imagine Peter cleaning his nets tired? And Jesus says, can you get back in the boat, push it out in the water? And also, can you put your nets down too for another catch? You know, it's like it's a very truncated dialogue in the gospel.

So I wrote my own. Jesus says, let down your nets.

And Peter says, “really? We've been at this all night. I am exhausted. I'm tired. I'm hungry. All I want to do is sleep.

Jesus: “I know I get it. And I'm so sorry that you are tired and hungry. Let down your nets.”

Peter: “ We know how to fish. We've been at this all night. We know the right time to go out. You're a carpenter. This is my thing. Do you think that you know how to do my job better than I do? “

Jesus: “Totally get it. You're an expert fisherman. I understand that. And yes, I actually do know more about your job than you do. I know more about you than you do. Put those nets down.”

 Peter: “OK, whatever. I'm going to do it. I will let down the nets.”

All right. Now, I know that that is apocryphal from the gospel of Morgan. This is not the actual dialogue that happened. But man, isn't that our internal dialogue? I mean, that is my internal dialogue. Whenever Jesus tells me to act in faith, we find ourselves really frustrated. We find ourselves in the place of being overwhelmed.

And then when Jesus reveals something to us that's broken, that's in need of his grace, we're quick to say, Jesus, don't touch that. You don't know what you're doing. I know how to fix this. Or at least I know people who do. And we strategize and we try to figure out who can help us fix this thing or a plan to get better or things to avoid it. People or activities that we can find or pleasures to keep us from addressing the very thing that Jesus says, I want to touch that and heal that thing in you.

And so Jesus invites us in all of our doubts, in those places of frustration and uncertainty, when we're definitely feeling like, you know, I'm just not at my best today, to set down the nets in faith so that we can see what he can actually do. And when they obeyed, those nets became so full that they were starting to break. And so Simon, when he sees that, he looks at Jesus and says, go away from me, Lord, I am a sinful man.

And that confession of Peter at this point, sorry, I keep saying Simon and Peter, you know who I mean. So Simon, as he confesses this, it highlights now how attuned he is to the fact that Jesus is the son of God, that he's bringing the kingdom and that he himself is unworthy. He's realized who he is and who Jesus is.

And it was at this moment where he's rightly esteeming his own unworthiness before Jesus, that he is now ready to receive exactly what Jesus wants to do in him, the grace of Jesus to be poured in him to continue the work of Jesus. He has to get to this point if he is going to be a vessel worthy of the gospel of the kingdom. And so when Peter is at his lowest, Jesus is ready to reveal himself to him.

And then that is a comfort to you and to us, to all of us this morning. If you feel like you've made a real mess of things this morning, if you feel like there's not any hope, like you are just feeling really undone, overwhelmed, if things outside your control are feeling completely overwhelming, then the posture that this text invites us into is to say, Jesus, I don't get it. And honestly, sometimes I wonder if you actually get it. But I really want to be surprised by you today. And so I will let down my net. Jesus, I don't get it. I don't know if you get it. But at your word, I'm going to take that next step and let down the net. This is the posture when we feel overwhelmed.

And this is the step of faith that leads to new beginnings for us. It opens up to us the God who brings abundance out of these places of emotional and physical scarcity. This is Jesus whose kingdom is transforming a people, individuals and corporately that if we ask, where is the kingdom of God? You're seeing it in a community that's being transformed by him, whether or not the empire is Christian, pagan, in peace or in crisis.

The kingdom of God goes forth in a community of people. And so these small moments of faith are where we learn how frail we are and how powerful God is. And we learn all the meager training that we've had up to this point. And our experience and our life circumstances are all the training to understand that our life has far more significance for the kingdom of God than we would have imagined before. And so when we're at our worst, Jesus comes to meet us. Second, we looked at how Jesus can do more than we would have imagined.

Jesus calls us to more than we expect of ourselves

And finally, Jesus calls us into more than we often expect of ourselves. Jesus calls Peter and James and John to come and to catch people. And they're going to go gather people into God's boat of salvation, where people are going to be delivered into the kingdom of God, where Jesus is Lord. And so they leave everything behind at this point to follow Jesus, which is a huge step of faith. And we read today two passages that were really important for this. Judges, where we heard about one of the judges confronting the Midianites, Gideon, and 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul calls himself the least of the apostles.

And those passages remind us that the kingdom of God doesn't go forward through our constructed worthiness or the image that we would like people, that we would curate on social media for people to experience our holiness or our worthiness. This is not how it goes forward. But through the honest, frail brokenness of our stories, people who are longing to see Jesus at work, who are willing to prioritize God's kingdom, first and foremost, above all things, in our brokenness. N.T. Wright says it this way. He says, “When Jesus calls, he really does demand everything of us. There are no bystanders in God's kingdom. And this is because he has plans in store for us and the world that we live in that surpass what we would have dreamt of.”

And so what God has brought you through up to this point, your circumstances, the things that have been really hard, what God has brought you through up to this point are the beginning of your story. Your places of brokenness are the unique places of redemption that are going to form the compelling stories that draw people into the love of God in the kingdom of God.

Your story, your life has a role to play in the kingdom of God. Your vocation, your skills, your proclivities, the relationships you have, the stories that form you. When these things are submitted to this disposition of, Lord, if you say so, I'll let down my nets.

Then we're ready to see how Jesus can take our frailty and our brokenness and do more in us and through us than we would have ever imagined or dreamt of.

Conclusion

And so as a recap, thinking about this passage, it teaches us three really important principles about life in the kingdom of God, a life of following Jesus. First, that we are ready to see Jesus when we are at our worst. I hope that's an encouragement for you this morning. Second, it teaches us that Jesus can do more than we can imagine. And third, that Jesus can do more in us and through us than we could have expected of ourselves.

And I know that these are fraught days. For a lot of people, these are really destabilizing days, whether or not it's the circumstances outside or not, or just the internal ones. There are a lot of things that destabilize us. Continue in these days to do your daily prayers, right? It's like that World War II poster, keep calm and carry on. Keep calm and pray the daily office. You know, keep praying your daily prayers.

Regulate yourselves when you feel emotionally out of control. Take care of your bodies, they're really important. Your bodies are the means by which you come into the kingdom, and so take care of those bodies. 

Take each day to admit to Jesus those things that feel broken. Where do I not feel at my best today? And then ask him for what the next step of faith is. What is the next right thing to do, Jesus, when I am not feeling myself today? Your days are going to be filled with moments and glimpses of the kingdom of God and Jesus's power, but we need to search for them prayerfully with intention, in the midst of things feeling pretty chaotic.

And so my prayer for us is that may God give us the grace to prioritize his kingdom first and above all when we're not feeling totally ourselves. Let me pray for us this morning. “O God, you made us in your own image, and you have redeemed us through your son, Jesus Christ. Look with compassion on the whole human family. Take away the arrogance and the hatred that infect our hearts. Break down the walls that separate us, unite us in bonds of love, and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth. That in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.”

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited by the author.

Candlemas: The Glory of Jesus in Ordinary Faithfulness

Transcription

Well, good morning everybody. It is good to see you this morning. I'm Father Morgan Reed. I'm the vicar here at Corpus Christi Anglican Church and February 2nd marks a very special day in the church's calendar.

It usually occurs not on a Sunday, so we haven't often, we haven't been able to do it yet, but this we'll start doing this in the future on February 2nd. Today it's on a Sunday, so we get to celebrate, it's called Candlemas, or the Feast of the Presentation of Christ into the temple. And this passage that we read today concludes the infancy narratives in the Gospel of St. Luke.

If you remember, in the last several weeks, we're going now backwards chronologically, we've started Epiphany the first Sunday talking about the baptism of Jesus, so he was already an adult, and then after that we talked about him changing the water into wine, his first miracle in Cana of Galilee, and then last week we saw his glory going from synagogue to synagogue as he taught. And so now we're going back in time, back to the infancy narratives, and this passage today brings us to an encounter with the glory of Jesus that Mary and Joseph are going to experience at the temple with Simeon and Anna. And as we look at these passages this morning, let me pray for us.

“In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable in your sight. Oh Lord, my rock and redeemer. Amen.”

We're going to look at this passage through the lens of Mary and Joseph, through the lens of Simeon, and through the lens of Anna. So those are sort of my three points this morning, and through them all we're going to see about what it looks like to live a life of faith when things feel really uncertain. In today's gospel, we find people waiting for the glory of the Messiah. They're waiting, Joseph and Mary, Simeon and Anna, and Mary and Joseph show us this example of a devout couple, a couple who is following the law as it prescribes.

 Mary and Joseph

They come to the temple to do three important things. First, for Mary's ritual purification after childbirth, so it's about 40 days after her son is born, for the presentation of the firstborn to the Lord, and for the dedication of the firstborn to the Lord's service. All these things are sort of wrapped up summarily in St. Luke's Gospel.

They come and they offer two turtle doves, which is according to the law, but it shows us that they are among the working class and the poorer in their culture. They can't afford to offer a lamb or a bull, and it's actually quite un-extraordinary what they're doing. They are just being faithful Jews, following the law.

They have had extraordinary encounters surrounding the birth of their son Jesus, but this particular thing that they're doing is quite un-extraordinary, and I find a lot of comfort in that because they're about to experience something amazing that God is bringing together and orchestrating, but from their perspective, they're just carrying on in the un-extraordinary, being faithful with the next thing God's called them to do, and the presence of God is making its way into the temple through this child who is being carried along by faithful parents who are doing something completely ordinary. When we think of the glory of Jesus coming to meet us, day in and day out, it reminds me that the glory of God comes through very common vessels and very ordinary encounters in your walk of faith, in my walk of faith. Sometimes people can look for signs of God's blessings in really big things, like if everything is going right, then God must be blessing what I'm doing. 

You might hear someone say, well this bad thing didn't happen to me, so God must be pleased with me for what I'm doing, and that person who's experiencing failure must not be experiencing God's blessing, or they might say this good thing happened to me, so God has to be blessing me. But instead, the story of Mary and Joseph here reminds us that God's glory is often discovered among those small, seemingly insignificant acts of faithfulness that we take, and the outcomes are sort of out of our hands, as it were. Carving out time to pray, carving out time for intention and meditation to be honest about how we're feeling, doing something for a spouse without them having to ask you to do it, making time to invite other people over.

These are small rhythms of intentional faithfulness that as we encounter the image of God in other people, these reveal to us the glory of Jesus. This is the soil. The intentional rhythms are the soil for the revealing of the glory of Jesus.

And in the last two months, I've been listening to a few books, one on parenting, the other one on marriage, and then I've been reading one on friendship, because it is so easy to occupy my mind with things that I can't change, right? And maybe some of you are in that space too, where you've spent the week and your mental load has been occupied with things that are out of your control, right? But I want to see Jesus in the everyday stuff of my life. So, not that I want to stick my head in the sand, but I want to spend an equal amount of time on these things, these everyday moments that I can control, living out life with Jesus in the everyday stuff of the household, the neighborhood, the place that I live, our church. And the things that I can control are familial relationships and friendships, and I can have an effect in those places.

So, we need to discover the glory of Jesus in small places that are just very common places. We need to be surprised by Jesus in those ordinary spaces, those everyday faithfulness encounters of just walking and doing the next good thing, just like Mary and Joseph are in this story.

Simeon

So, this is Mary and Joseph, and then the camera changes, right? If you can picture like a movie, the camera is now changing to another person, to a man named Simeon. And Simeon, according to tradition, is an old man and a priest. We don't really have that in the gospel text, and that's not the point. The point is, this is a devout man who is living in the city, who is looking and longing for the Messiah to come and bring the redemption of Israel.

Jesus had already been testified about earlier in that chapter by shepherds in the wilderness, and now he's going to be testified about in the city and in the epicenter of religious power. Jesus has the witness of those in the country, and now he's going to receive the testimony of the devout Jews who are in the city of Jerusalem. So, the Holy Spirit reveals to Simeon that he will not die before he sees the hope of the Messiah.

And so, then it says the Holy Spirit guided Simeon to the temple. I'm not sure what that looked like, but Simeon has this habit of, you know, being a part of temple life. He's described as a devout and a just man.

And so, Simeon meets Mary and Joseph and Jesus, either in the temple of the women or the temple of the Gentiles, sorry, the court of the women or the court of the Gentiles, somewhere in the temple complex. He meets them. We don't know where, but as he encounters them, God is clearly orchestrating this moment from behind the scenes.

And then, when Simeon speaks, he speaks Isaiah chapter 60, with the light and the glory that are being brought together that describe the goodness of God's kingship over all the nations. And it's really important, in light coming to the nations, this is going to be one of the important themes in the ministry of Jesus, and this is where it first shows up in the Gospel of Saint Luke, that the light of Jesus going to the nations starts right here in Simeon's song. It's connected to this universal reign of the kingdom of God that is going to include the Gentiles, and that's what's new here.

You have, in the infancy narratives, you have these songs, the song of Mary, the song of the angels, the song of Simeon, and we'll get to the song of Anna. Each of those progressively reveals something about the nature of the saving work of the Messiah. And now that Simeon has seen Jesus, he can give up his post. He can rest. He's done. He's seen it. 

He's seen God's promise fulfilled in his sight. And he adds what's interesting in this song, which we say every day in evening prayer, he adds this note of suffering in the song, and it's really interesting. So I can imagine Mary and Joseph, they're smiling with delight.

Yes, yes, you know, blessed be the Lord God of Israel. Oh wait, that's the morning prayer one, sorry, the evening prayer one. You know, as he's, you know, the light to enlighten the Gentiles and the glory of your people Israel, and their faces are beaming with joy, like, yes, we are seeing God's goodness here.

And then he says, and a sword will pierce your own soul too. Whoa, right? This is the first moment where there's this introduction of the ministry of the Messiah will involve some level of grief and suffering, but they're not sure the fullness of what that means yet. And I would imagine Mary and Joseph's facial expressions change in that moment. 

And so now, the grief of anticipated pain is going to sit side-by-side with the joy that she's feeling about her son. And maybe, just maybe, you've been in a place like that, and maybe you're in a place this morning where grief about some sort of anticipated pain and suffering is with you. And in Mary's example, take note of her example here, she is somebody who we find that grief and hope sit next to each other for decades, right? This is 40 days into her child's birth, you know, being born.

There's 30 plus more years to go. Grief and hope are going to sit side-by-side for decades throughout the life of her son. And in that daily space between grief and hope, she does the next good thing as an act of faith, that famous, be it to me Lord according to your word.

She gives us an example of faith in that space between hope and grief. The next good thing as we're longing for the glory of God's kingdom to show up. And so we're called to follow her example.

Simeon has similarly cultivated a life of everyday faithfulness in anticipating the work of the Messiah, and he's led by God to meet these ordinary parents as yet another witness with the angels and with the shepherds of what this child's ministry is going to be. And so I've been thinking about the significance of what does it mean to end our days with this prayer of the song of Simeon, Lord now let your servant depart in peace, according to your word. Whether it's comp line or daily evening prayer, this ends our prayer every day.

And so what does that mean for us? Well, this prayer offers us an opportunity to discover the glory of Jesus in the everyday, moment-by-moment conversations and encounters that you guys are going to have every single day. It does that first. It also affirms that Jesus is present in all those things, and it invites us to rest.

I mean, when you hear Simeon sing this song, there's this profound sense that the work of God is in God's hands, and he can rest in this quiet confidence and stillness that God is going to be the one to carry out his work and his plan. And so this song invites us into a quiet rest with quiet confidence. And our bodies and our souls need that rest, and so this is why I love having this as a daily prayer. 

Our bodies need this daily reminder. There are days when you and I are enraptured by joy upon joy, and there are days where we're finding the glory of God in that joy, and there are days where you and I are struck by grief, and there are days that we just live in the ordinary somewhere in between. There are days that we undergo this pain that pierced Mary's heart as well.

But Simeon invites us to frame things differently, to frame gladness and grief under the umbrella of God's glory going forth through Jesus as he shines his light on the nations. So as we live in that space between hope and grief, we live out the next good thing to the looking for the glory of God which is going forth to the nations as we take the next step of faithfulness in God's kingdom.

Anna

So we've seen God come in surprising glory in the faithful lives of Joseph and Mary and Simeon, and now the camera is going to change yet again, and we encounter a prophet, a woman named Anna.

Anna is introduced as this prophet who is from the tribe of Asher, which is one of the northern ten tribes, and there's some debate about how old she is. You know, it's common in those days for women to get married in their mid to late teens, and so if she had been married somewhere around 16-ish, then her husband would have died by the time she was 23. So she was probably a widow from her mid-20s, and so it's possible that she's somewhere now in her early to mid-90s or even in her early hundreds, but she has spent all that time in the station of widowhood.

People know who she is. She's been in the temple every day. She is a pinnacle of the example of female piety, and she represents the voices of the women in Jerusalem in the city who are longing for the hope of the Messiah, and Anna has been looking for the redemption of Israel, which comes and brings in the new age of the messianic king, and this is going to be a major theme in the gospel, this coming kingdom.

The Venerable Bede, one of our saints in the English tradition, says something really important here. He says, “What needs to be mentioned too, is that deservedly both sexes hurried to meet him, offering congratulations, since he appeared as Redeemer of both.” So Jesus would be the redeemer of man and of woman. He would be the redeemer of Jew and Gentile, of pious city dwellers, and of common herdsmen in the wilderness.

Jesus is the hope and the redeemer for all people, and when people find their rest in the lordship of Jesus and his reign as king, they do so in a way that takes full account of who they are and the uniqueness of where they've come from, and so Anna invites us to be very curious about what the redemption of Jesus looks like in groups of people who aren't always given the most prominent voices. Women have to be heard and held in honor. Children and elderly must be heard and held in honor.

Ethnic, linguistic minorities have to be able to tell their stories, and those lives must be honored, and so the poor must have a voice in honor. So Anna hears one group of people, a representative of one group who is looking for the redemption of Jesus. She invites us to reflect on whose voices I think feel under- represented in the church.

Now think with me again about the infancy narratives. Angels, shepherds, a just and devout city-dwelling man, a pious Jewish woman prophet who is a city dweller. These are all giving unique voice and testimony to the work, the hope, the consolation of Israel in the ministry of Jesus, and so the kingdom of God is going to be lived out, and it's going to look very unique and different in the different vocations and stations of life, sexes, families of origin, subcultures, stories, and all of these things creating a tapestry in the church that's depicting this narrative of the glory of God and how the light of Jesus is going into the nations, through our neighborhoods, through our households, through our individual lives, and so as the glory of Jesus goes forth, take notice of it in the everyday stuff of life and the lives of the other people that you're encountering with a disposition of curiosity to learn more about the global picture of redemption that God's portraying.

Conclusion

So in conclusion, today's passage calls us to join Mary and Joseph and Simeon and Anna to live out faithful anticipation of God's coming kingdom in the midst of the everyday encounters that you and I have in our routines, and Mary and Joseph remind us to carry on in obedience, one good next step at a time, even though we don't fully understand the significance of what we're holding in our hands. Simeon reminds us to find rest and quiet confidence in the God who's going to carry out his plan, even though there will be times of grief and gladness. Anna reminds us to value Jesus's redemption and the unique stations and stories of others in the kingdom of God, and just as we all were carrying in our candles this morning, singing about the light of Christ, let's remember this day, candle-ness, that this day calls us to carry the light of Christ in everyday faithfulness to the world around us that is longing to know the light and love of our Lord.

Let me pray for us. “O God, our Father, source of all light, today you reveal to the aged Simeon your light, which enlightens the nations. Fill our hearts with the light of faith, that we who have borne our candles may walk in the path of goodness and come to the light that shines forever.

Your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited by the author.

The Glory of Jesus in New-Creation Community

Transcription

Well, good morning again everybody. It is good to be with you this morning. As I mentioned earlier, I'm Father Morgan Reed. I'm the vicar here at Corpus Christi Anglican Church.

We are in the season of Epiphany, which focuses our attention on the glory of God, which is moving to the nations and the neighborhoods around us. And today in St. Luke's Gospel, we are experiencing the glory of Jesus as it moves through the synagogues throughout Galilee. And here in the passage this morning, we have Jesus, whereas before when we focused on his baptism a few weeks ago, the Father is declaring the glory of Jesus over him for all to hear.

Now we have Jesus's self-reflection, his own declaration of his own glory, as he is anointed and understands his own anointing by the Holy Spirit in bringing about the Messianic Kingdom. And so as we look at our passages this morning from Nehemiah, the Psalms, 1st Corinthians, and our Gospel, let me pray for us. “In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable in your sight. O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer.”

Amen. Well, the ministry of Jesus in this passage is one of bringing about the New Age, the age that was to come that everyone was looking forward to, bringing about the kingdom of God through a community of people. And one of the implications from this passage is that the church becomes the society of the New Age.

It's a community where we experience the kingdom, where wrongs are to be made right, where the downcast are to be lifted up, where the wounded are to be healed, and where the poor and the marginalized are to be dignified and held in honor in community. And all of this is the continuation of the work of Jesus, revealing his glory to the nations through his works. This is what the church is called to.

And it's really important for the church, then, to view itself as a society of new creation. But in order to view itself as a society of new creation, we need constant recalibration. And by recalibration, I mean the daily process of repentance and conversion of heart, turning from all of our disordered and worldly attachments to turning towards the way of Jesus.

We need that daily to recalibrate ourselves to the way of Jesus. And I think our passage today calls us to join in those crowds who were sitting in the synagogue watching Jesus. They were fixed on him, as our passage said. We're to join those crowds in wondering attentively at the works of Jesus. And as we think about wondering attentively at the works of Jesus, we want to look at three things. First, Jesus's self-understanding from this passage.

Second is the ministry of the servant in Isaiah. And third, the resulting posture the church ought to take based on Jesus's self-understanding. So first, let's, I want to look a little bit both at the ministry of Jesus, but also the history of the synagogue, because I think that's helpful as we think about this passage.

Jesus and the Synagogue

We read something really interesting in the Old Testament. We read from the book of Nehemiah, where the exiles have returned from Babylon, and they're hearing the law of God being read to them for the first time in a long time. And there's only one problem, though. After 70 years of being in exile, most of the generations have forgotten Hebrew. And in fact, the younger generations may have never learned it, because in this time period, in the Persian period, Aramaic became the lingua franca. Everyone spoke, read Aramaic, not Hebrew. 

And so groups of men are going through, according to the passage that Father Steven read for us, as they're going through, they're interpreting the Hebrew for the crowds to understand. I can't remember what English word was used there, but the idea is probably something like translating, and maybe with a little bit of exposition in there, too. But the fact of the matter is, they're making it accessible for people by taking Hebrew, which nobody understood, translating it into Aramaic, and slowly explaining it as they went along.

And so scholars think that that, not that particular event, but the Persian period becomes the origin of what is later known as the synagogue. It wasn't anything formal back in that time, but groups of people are starting to share a common life together, and they're living out the covenant of the Torah in decentralized ways, and that will eventually grow up into a more robust system by the time of Jesus. That was a way over simplification of 400 years, but just so that you have an idea of kind of the trajectory of these things, there's no temple at this point, they're hearing the law read away from the temple, they have to figure out how do we live this out when the temple is not central to our lives? And so by the time you get to Jesus's day and age, Pharisaic Judaism and the synagogue is what gains the most traction for living out the the life of the covenant of Moses.

Pharisees being the ones who established the rules and the norms for the synagogue, which just means assembly, but it had boundaries to it. There was a liturgy that usually consisted of recitation of various prayers, a reading from Torah, a reading from the prophets, instructions in the readings, read Aramaic there, you know, translating into Aramaic, and then a benediction, which actually if you're familiar with the daily prayer life of the Anglican tradition, it's very similar, and there's a reason for that. The Jewish synagogue and the daily office will, there's a common thread there.

And so Jesus opens the scroll when he's in the synagogue, and it happens to be Isaiah 61. Now anybody remember two weeks ago, if you were here to celebrate the baptism of Jesus, what servant song did God proclaim over Jesus at his baptism? Anybody remember? Yeah, there you go, Isaiah 42, good memory. So God proclaims over Jesus the anointing of this servant, Jesus.

Now you have also the Spirit of the Lord is upon me. So Jesus is reading this passage, which is another servant song in the book of Isaiah. There are several of these. There's this question in Jesus's day, who do these apply to? Is it the prophet? Is it a messianic figure? Is it the people of Israel? Is it all of them? And Jesus is here understanding them as himself. And so he's saying the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, and then what's going to follow is how Jesus understands the nature of his own messianic ministry. He's going to dictate the terms of what this is going to look like based on Isaiah 61.

So he's reading the servant song with an understanding that this is what the Lord has called him to do, and the last time we heard about the anointing of the Lord was at the baptism. And Jesus began his public ministry here after the baptism and after being tempted by the devil in the wilderness. We come to this part of the book of Luke where Jesus is going synagogue to synagogue in the northern region of Galilee.

That's where the ministry of bringing the kingdom seems to begin, and he's going throughout Galilee calling people to turn to the kingdom of God. He's the one who's going to bring this new age, this new covenant, and fulfill all these servant songs in the book of Isaiah that point towards the redemption of God's people, and this is exactly what they're looking for. They're looking for the judgment of injustice, the renewing of creation.

 And Jesus says, “I am the one who will bring this about.” We didn't read the later part of this passage, which will show that there are some who will reject the message of Jesus, his words and his works, in contempt and thinking about, well, we know we've known this kid since he was born, you know, how can this kid be the one who's going to bring all these things about when he preaches in Nazareth? But instead of joining those, I think this text calls us to join the crowds who are watching with attentiveness and waiting on the ministry of the Messiah to come, dignifying the image and honoring the image of Jesus and other people with compassion, following the way of Jesus. We begin by listening to who Jesus says he is. That's what this passage calls us to, to join the crowds and listen to what Jesus, who Jesus says he is.

The Ministry of Jesus in the Servant Song

So secondly, we got to pay attention to the ministry of Jesus. It's a society of new creation that Jesus is forming. That's what the church is, a society of new creation. Jesus says that his ministry is to proclaim good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to the captives, to recover sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and then to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And what this does is those who are in the synagogue now who are listening, this puts them in the place of being the poor that are mentioned in Isaiah 61.

And why the poor? Those who are economically impoverished, they know that they have need generally. And what we find in the Gospels is that those who are among the poor have a more positive response to the ministry of Jesus than those who don't think that they have need. And so the poor, economically, point us to the fact that we all have the need for the ministry of the Messiah.

 All of us, whether we're economically well-off or not, this is why we dignify the poor in community as a reminder that all of us are in need of the redemption that Jesus brings and the deliverance that Christ wants to bring in us. Jesus is bringing individual transformation through a society of new creation. So it's not just about one narrow sense of justice, it is about individual transformation, but it's also about both.

And I think there's a New Testament scholar named Darrell Bock, he brings these things together in a really helpful way. And I'll read the quote from him. He says, “…It's significant that the poor get singled out as a particularly appropriate audience for the gospel. The outsider often related to Jesus's message the best. The church is certainly called to minister to such people and to do so with a sensitivity to their plight and poverty, since a major ethical call for the church is that Christians are to meet one another's needs and to love their neighbors as the church expresses its love concretely to all.” I was, as I was thinking about this text today, one of the things I had thought about and think about how fast this church changes over.

Some of you may not remember a family that was in our church about three years ago. There was a family that visited our church back when we were at our old location. And during the passing of the peace, the father in this family came up to me and said, Sir, I want to be baptized. And then as I talked to him, he wanted the whole family to be baptized. It's the first and only time that's ever happened to me at the passing of the peace. It was an incredible moment.

And the family had come here from India and they were seeking political asylum because they had been threatened by death by their Hindu family. And so their request to be baptized led to one of the most deeply effective journeys for me, and I think in a lot of ways for the whole church, because you all walked with this family through their immigration process, providing needs, through the process of walking them through baptism and confirmation. You helped them with job hunting and medical expenses, provided them resources and even vehicles to help them get to their jobs and medical appointments.

And their ministry among us was incredible because there was a joy and a warmth with which they welcomed people. And some of you said on your, well, I'm thinking of somebody's testimony that this man welcomed them on their first day and they just felt incredibly welcomed, like his joy was palatable. And watching them grow in Jesus and understand more of the gospel and what Jesus can do for them was such a renewing experience for me. And if you knew them, I'm sure that was a renewing experience for you. And it made me so sad when they moved. I'm still sad about it.

But that season, when I think about it, you know, for the year and a half or so they were here, yeah, I was so proud to be a part of this church at that time because all of you worked together and you gave me a great example of what the holistic transformation of Jesus could look like in community, right? There was the spiritual need of new life, and there were also these other needs that the community came around them and served them in a holistic way, and it made me so proud to be a part of this church. And so Corpus Christi Anglican Church, when you think of this name, Corpus Christi meaning the body of Christ, it's inherently communal. And so it should always be a place where those who are other are brought into loving community and known and are knowing others, where they're honored and where they're dignified and they experience the redeeming love of Jesus in one another.

And what this reminds us of, and as I think about this for myself, as we think about the ministry of Jesus and the servant song of Isaiah, all of us then are the blind. Like, we are all unaware at times of our spiritual need. We are all the poor who are spiritually lacking and we need the abundant life of Christ in the kingdom of God. We are all held captive to disordered affections and attachments of the world, and we all need freedom from them. We are all the downtrodden, we are all the oppressed who need liberation from the outside forces that are all warring against our souls. And so as we experience the work of Jesus in community, we're filled to the brim with mercy and compassion for all of our neighbors who find themselves in the same place spiritually and socioeconomically.

Think of your neighbors, who lives next to you, who lives a few doors down, right? Think of that person. And this is how the glory of Jesus, the dominion, the loving rule and reign of Jesus, and his fame and reputation as king go into the world through our neighborhoods. That's what I love the season of Epiphany, because it focuses us on how Jesus's glory goes to the nations and in the embodiedness of nations.

I'm always reminded that the nations are in my neighborhood, and this is true for you as well. And so the glory of Jesus goes to those that we know and that we love and to those that we don't know, but we shovel their sidewalk during a snowstorm. This is, you know, the potential of the glory of Jesus going to the nations and where Jesus is made famous as king.

The Disposition of the Church

And it goes forward in a community that's bound by the love of Christ, who, like the crowds today, are looking attentively at the works of Jesus, who are dignifying and honoring the image of Jesus in one another, who then are continuing this work of raising the downcast, bringing freedom from bondage, bringing the truth of God to light with nuance and with compassion in a world that's shrouded in the darkness of lies and half-truths. And so we've seen Jesus's self-understanding of his anointed ministry, how that work of Jesus is carried out in new creation society, and finally, because you and I are anointed to carry on this ministry, we ought to have a disposition as a church of wonder and attentiveness at the work of Jesus. When Jesus died for us and when he rose again, he ascended to reign on high, and he took captivity captive, and he gave his spirit to the church, which has anointed you and I to carry on the work of new creation in New Covenant community.

So we're a society of new creation. And so imagine with me that Corpus Christi Anglican Church now is an embassy of God's kingdom where people find community and they find the healing that Jesus promised in our passage today in loving community. And so to continue this work, I think that we need to join, as I've said before, the disposition of those crowds and the faithful disciples of Jesus.

There are going to be those who reject Jesus, but we want to be among those who have our gaze fixed on Jesus, saying, teach me more, I want to understand this. There's a wonder, there's a curiosity about the works and the words of Jesus. And it's that disposition of wonder that I think recalibrates us.

It's kind of what repentance is, saying, Jesus, what is it I ought to be doing? And where are the disordered attachments that I've given myself to? And help me turn to you, I need your grace. This is the recalibration. So in your formation groups, as you guys meet together during the week with each other, you know, asking and wondering with one another about where you see Jesus in each other's lives.

And if you're not in a formation group or beyond the formation group, as you go and you get coffee together and you sit, or if you don't like coffee, tea, or something else, when you go hang out together, you know, asking yourself, what is the Spirit saying through the life and the ministry of this person, this image of God that I am sitting across the table from? And most challenging, in your child's tantrums and joys and delights, you know, in all of those moments, as you look at your child, looking and listening for blessing those good desires that God has placed into your child's heart, where do you see the image of God? Where are you learning of the image of God in your child, in the joys and in the sorrows? And making a habit of looking for that. Those short prayers are really helpful. I don't know if you've heard of breath prayers, but “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner,” is a really helpful prayer in the midst of a tantrum, as you're trying to look for the image of God.

That's a freebie. And so, yeah, so we want to look for and listen for the ministry of Jesus in daily prayer, in the Scriptures and in your conversations with those who bear God's image, always holding them up with profound dignity and honor, because you're anticipating to find something of Jesus in that person. And, you know, I'll be the first to admit that there are some times where some people are quite undignified, if not offensive and hurtful, but even seeking the image of God in those people allows us to have a healthy amount of separation and compassion for who they are longing to be, and a longing for their freedom from their disordered attachments in this world, while remaining healthy and separated from those things.

 Conclusion

But our gospel today, in conclusion, it invites us to join with those who are hearing the teachings of Jesus, who are recognizing our bondage and our spiritual poverty, as we long for Jesus to redeem and restore our brokenness by his power. And so this passage calls us to continue on the ministry of Jesus, to continue on the kingdom of God by dignifying the poor, the downcast, the stranger, those who are in bondage and who seek for Jesus to bring them new life in New Covenant community, even before they know they are longing for it. And finally, this passage today calls us to listen attentively to the voice of Jesus, and to carry on with this disposition of wonder about what Jesus is about, and what he's doing in you, in this community, and through this community.

And so as we close, I want to close with a prayer for us that shows up a couple times in our liturgical year. It's a prayer for the Universal Church from our occasional prayers, but I want to pray it for us this morning. Oh God of unchangeable power and eternal light, look favorably on your whole church, that wonderful and sacred mystery.

By the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquility the plan of salvation. Let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever.

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited by the author.

The Glory of God in a Life Transformed by Jesus

Transcription

It's good to see you this morning. I'm Father Morgan Reed, the vicar here at Corpus Christi Anglican Church and on Monday we celebrated Epiphany. So we had our twelfth night party last week. The 6th of January is Epiphany, or if you're familiar with the Eastern Orthodox tradition, they call it Theophany. In the Western tradition we begin the season thinking about the celebration of the Magi, the wise men who come to visit Jesus, the child in Bethlehem, who is king of the Jews and the hope for the nations. And then in the eastern part of the church, rather than focusing on the Magi, they tend to focus on the celebration of the baptism of Jesus as the foundation for this season.

But the point, whether it's east or west, is that the glory of Jesus Christ is going forth to the nations and that's what this season is all about. And so you know as far back as you go in church history they were celebrating the baptism of Jesus in this season. And so we do that in the West on the first Sunday of Epiphany, also called within the octave, the eight days of Epiphany. We celebrate Jesus's baptism today. We have a day set apart for that. And as we look together at our gospel text this morning, let me pray for us. “In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and Redeemer. Amen.”

The Baptism of Jesus affirms Jesus’S anointing as the Servant

Well, Isaiah 42 was our Old Testament reading this morning. It's a famous passage in the Old Testament. It's one of what's called the servant songs of Isaiah. There are these passages scattered all throughout the book of Isaiah that talk about a servant who will come, who would deliver the people from exile, who would deliver the people from their sins, who will heal the people, who will restore them and make all things new. And in the book of Isaiah, there's actually quite a bit of ambiguity about who that servant is.

Is it a Gentile pagan king like King Cyrus? Is it a future messianic ruler? Is it the prophet himself? Is it the remnant, the people of God? Or is it all of the above? There's quite a lot of ambiguity in the book of Isaiah about who this servant is. But we read this passage today in Isaiah 42, and it said, Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights. I have put my spirit upon him.

He will bring forth justice to the nations. When we get later on in the season of Epiphany, I'll talk about how the call on Jesus as the servant gets democratized to the people of God as the remnant. So there is this, I think Steven Myles talked about this when he preached prophetic, what was the word you used? Foreshadowing? Sort of like mountaintops where it's, you see this much of it, but there's something behind it, there's something behind it, right? So there is a sense in which it's the prophet, it's Jesus, it's the people themselves who follow Jesus.

And in Luke chapter 3, the connection is made between this prophet, the servant song in Isaiah, and the person of Jesus. We start with the ministry of John the Baptist. And John had been proclaiming the kingdom of God, and the people wondered, which makes sense, is John the Messiah? He's going around proclaiming the kingdom of God, he seems to have a messianic style ministry, he's calling the people to repentance, and John assures them, no, I am NOT the Messiah, there is somebody coming after me who is going to come and bring justice to the nations. It's not me. And then John gets put in prison at the hand of Herod for his testimony against Herod's unrighteousness, his illicit marriage, etc. And interestingly, when you read the Gospel of Luke, the other Gospels, when they talk about it, John's present at the baptism.

In this account, the summary of John's ministry happens when Herod puts him to death, and then it talks about the baptism of Jesus without mentioning that John was actually there. So it sounds like Jesus is just there being baptized, but we know John was there. There is a literary reason why I think St. Luke is doing that, and that's because he's trying to show that at the baptism of Jesus, this is God's work alone.

This is God's work alone to declare Jesus the Messiah, to justify his ministry in front of people, to anoint him as the servant. This is God's work alone. And the text says that all the people had been baptized, and then Jesus was baptized, and while Jesus was praying, the heavens were opened up, and then the Holy Spirit came down on him in bodily form, in something like a dove, and a voice came down from heaven, saying, “this is my beloved Son. With you…” or sorry, it says, “you are my beloved Son. With you I am well pleased.” And so the Spirit that had overshadowed Mary in the conception, the miraculous conception of Jesus, is the same Spirit that's now anointing this adult man to carry out the ministry of the servant that had been prophesied about in the Old Testament, that it had pointed to. 

And the Father's declaration about Jesus's ministry is coronation language. Psalm 2:7, which talks about, “kiss the Son lest he be angry and you perish in the way.” Psalm 2:7 is all about God's coming King; sort of opens the Psalter in a unique way, thinking about kingship, and that passage, Psalm 2:7, is brought together with Isaiah 42 in God's quotation. So you have the language of coronation, the language of the anointing of the servant being brought together in the baptism of Jesus. And so heaven endorses Jesus as the Messianic King.

It's not that Jesus is becoming the Messiah at his baptism, that was an early heresy, so I'm not saying that. What I am saying is that Jesus's ministry as the Messiah is being legitimated here by heaven's testimony. And so in reflecting on this moment in the book of Acts, which is also written by St. Luke, and we read it, Ivory read it for us today, in the book of Acts, Peter the Apostle reflects on this moment, and he says, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. “How he went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.” So Jesus has this ministry of healing, and doing good, and freeing people from the power of sin and darkness, and the kingdom of evil, and that good rule and reign of the kingship of Jesus is inaugurated here at his baptism. And that's the thing that we celebrate in the baptism of Jesus, and it's the thing that continues on in and through the church, which is Jesus's body.

So the kingdom ministry inaugurated at Jesus's baptism is furthered, continued, solidified in his death, and in his resurrection, and his ascension, and the giving of the Holy Spirit to the church. And so the glory of Jesus in the work of the kingdom is now carried on by you and by me, who have been given the Holy Spirit, who have joined him in his death and in his resurrection through our own baptism. And so the glory of God, which is a shorthand for the dominion of love, the rule and the reign of God's kingdom, and his self-revelation to his people, his presence, that glory continues to be made visible in the lives of you and I, who are being transformed by the grace of God.

The Baptism of Jesus begins the kingdom that will be manifest in our lives

If you ask, how is the glory of God continuing to show itself more and more in the world, it's through the testimony of the lives that are being changed by the grace of Jesus. And so the baptism of Jesus frames our baptism as well. And I love this quotation, there's a church father named St. Maximus of Turin, I'm sure you've all heard of him, and he's in the fifth century, one of the things, he was a student of Ambrose of Milan, one of the things that he says in thinking about the baptism of Jesus is this, “when someone wishes to be baptized in the name of the Lord, it is not so much the water of this world that covers him, but the water of Christ that purifies him. Yet the Savior willed to be baptized for this reason, not that he might cleanse himself, but that he might cleanse the waters for our sake.” What do you do when the maker of the universe is holier than the font by which he's being baptized, right? He is sanctifying creation in this moment. So at the baptism of Jesus, creation experiences the inauguration of the kingdom of God, it experiences new creation, so that every time someone is baptized, the Spirit that anointed Jesus now anoints you and I as followers of Jesus to carry on the revelation and the glory of Jesus into the world.

And that is the power of our baptism. And so when somebody is born into a family, you can think of it this way, when someone's born into a human family, there's a sense in which they carry on roles, responsibilities, and the reputation of that family more and more through time. When the child's a baby, there's not a lot of expectation that they're going to reflect the reputation of that family, but as that child grows, there is.

So as a child grows, none of you have experienced this, but hypothetically if, you know, that child smacks another child on the playground, then the parent has this internal sense of, that is not a value in our household, and I need to instill this value that the the household code must be seen, understood, and named for that child. You know, no kid of mine is going to do that. There's this internal sense of the reputation of the household is at stake, you know, for right or wrong.

We have our own internal work we need to do, but the point is, as the child gets older, the reputation of the household kind of sits on the shoulders a little bit of that child, and the parent then disciplines or sets boundaries for that child to help them internalize the household code, the household values. And as the child gets older, they carry on that reputation of their household with them when they meet teachers or friends. You know something of the household when you meet that child, whether good or ill, right? And the stories that form them become part of their story as they start their own households.

And, you know, whatever they make of their own households, someday something of their stories of their family of origin affects how they think about things, how they speak, and how they react to things. This is why it's good news that baptism is a new birth. Baptism brings us into the family, the household of God, as adopted children. Romans 6:4, St. Paul says this, “Therefore we've been buried with him, with Christ, by baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” We share in the death and the resurrection of Jesus in our baptism. And that's good news.

So in our baptism, we are made not only adopted children, we are made citizens of the kingdom of God. We experience new creation, and it's a reality that we live into. And we carry on then, when we're baptized, we carry on the ministry of making the glory of Jesus known to the world around us, as we experience the grace of God more and more for ourselves.

And we make that grace of God, the glory of Christ, known to our friends, our relatives, our acquaintances, our neighbors, and our co-workers. All those people experience something of the glory of God in our lives that are being transformed. So carrying on the glory of Jesus requires us to listen to the Spirit, and to see the Spirit's work in us, and to grow in an awareness in the ways that we're broken, which is really hard work.

There are undercurrents of our family history, and there are stories of our lives that influence our speech, our thoughts, our reactions to things in ways that we may or may not be aware of, and as we become aware of them, we will come to see that some of those things may reflect the glory of the image of God in us, and some of those really don't.

Maybe you've experienced this as well, but making known the glory of Jesus means that we are growing in living out the entire counsel of Scripture, from its commands to love, to its demands for justice, to its commands to serve and care for the poor and the marginalized, to its demands for humility and having the mind of Christ, to its requirements for having the right use of speech and the right use of creation, all of these things. To know the mind of Christ, and to know the whole counsel of Scripture, takes a long time. I mean, you might even say it takes a lifetime. In fact, you should say it takes a lifetime. To know the entire counsel of Scripture takes a lifetime. And to know the brokenness and the ways that the image of God in us has been stained and marred by the effects of sin takes a long time. In fact, it takes a lifetime. And so you have these parallel tracks of things that take a lifetime of work.

Knowing the full counsel of God and the grace of Christ, knowing how deeply broken we are, and wanting and desiring the redemption of Jesus in those places. Those are parallel tracks that run together. And I thought it would be helpful, as I was thinking about accepting the grace of Christ, to share something of my own story.

Something that I'm constantly working on. Okay, and this may not actually be surprising to those of you who know me pretty closely, but I can look back on a series of events in my life. And I'm not going to name all of them, but just thinking about a few of them. I was thinking of my son who is about in kindergarten. I was thinking back to being able to read in kindergarten. I was thinking back to playing sports in middle and high school. Thinking back to playing guitar, leading music in my youth group, then in my church. Starting a PhD, building a Syriac website, even planting a church. I mean, if I think back to all those events in my life, to be honest, there is a besetting sin of pride.

They're all good things to do, right? If I look back, I can say, gosh, you know, I really did want the welfare of others. I did want people to experience Jesus. I did do something because I genuinely enjoyed it and I experienced the goodness of God in those things. And then there's also this little voice that says, you have to do it better than other people. So I'm just being vulnerable with you. This is my besetting sin.

You have other ones. But there's a good desire in that to do something well. And there's also this mixed motivation to be the absolute best. So if I'm honest, you know, part of my own brokenness is that I internally feel like I have to be the absolute best at something or else it's not worth doing. Somebody had said this at the men's breakfast. You if something's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly. That is true. And I cannot internally get myself there. I want to so bad. And I can't point to a particular story that I look back to and go, oh, yeah, from that moment on, I had this internal sense about myself.

But I can tell you that internally, this is a pattern that I can look back on. And so part of accepting God's grace in my own life has been the discipline of accepting failure and love at the same time. I can accept failure and I can accept love, but those two things don't go together for me naturally.  And because what I often internally think is, I am only as loved as my last success, my last sermon, my last whatever it is. So this is the internal voice that just sort of sits under the surface for me — in the Tradition, we would call this a besetting sin. Whether it's parenting and the way I discipline or provide good boundaries or whether this is my vocation or something that I'm called to do or accomplish, I am constantly reminding myself that even if I fail at this thing, I'm still loved. Right? This is a really, some of you are going, man, why is this so hard? It is hard for me. And so, you know, and it may not even be failure, but I may not even, I may not do something as well as somebody else. And I have to sit with going, okay, somebody else did that better and I'm still loved and I'm okay.

And that's God's grace. And so, you know, failure then becomes, if I were to accept the grace of God in those spaces, it would become a place where I could repair a relationship with somebody where I've broken it or where God may be calling me to pivot and do something different with full confidence that he'll provide. But God's grace is there in those places, if I'm curious enough to find it.

But what often happens with our besetting sins is we sit and we stew in self-contempt or we isolate ourselves in the loneliness of shame and say, I am, I am not going to be curious. I don't have the energy for that. I am a failure. I will isolate myself or I will hate myself because it's easier to do that than to sit with curiosity about where God's grace might be in those places of our insecurity. But maybe I'm alone in that. So my baptism and my anointing, you know, they call me, they beckon me, they compel me to search for God's grace in failure.

And so I don't know if I'm, I don't think I'm ever going to be done working on that. I think this will be a lifetime track for me, but it's a reality that accepting grace and love in perceived failure, this is important. That's going to be the place where transformation happens and where the glory of Jesus is going to be made known to other people. And so now that I've shared that with you, I want to ask you as you consider this, what is that place for you?

What is that place where if you were to accept the grace of God with curiosity, where transformation would happen and where the glory of Jesus would be made known in your life? Living out the glory of Jesus is a lifelong work of exploration, of repentance, and of dependence on the grace of God. But to live that out day in and day out will make the glory of Jesus made known to your friends and to your relatives, to your acquaintances, to your neighbors, and to your co-workers, which is all the nations. So in this season of Epiphany, consider how the picture of the glory of Christ is being depicted in your story.

Conclusion

How is that being depicted in your life for others? How is your unique story presenting the grace of Jesus? And the season of Epiphany focuses our attention on God's revealing of his good and his loving and his just rule and reign to the ends of the earth in the person of Jesus. We often don't know what the word glory means, but when you hear glory, think as a shorthand the good, loving, rule, and reign of the King Jesus and his revelation of that. That is the glory of Jesus. 

Remember your baptism. This is a season to remember that. This is a day to remember your baptism. For those of you who haven't yet been baptized, consider your own story. Continue to think about it, because when you are baptized, what you can look forward to is that the Spirit will anoint you for this work of carrying on the glory of Christ with you wherever you go. And so may we all continue to do that hard work of repentance together in community and individually as we are learning God's Word to us and the ways that our brokenness needs to be redeemed, those parallel tracks.

And as we live into the grace of Christ, our transformation becomes the means by which the glory of Jesus is going to be made known to others. Let me pray for us. Eternal Father, at the baptism of Jesus, you revealed him to be your Son, and your Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove.

Grant that we who are born again by water in the Spirit may be faithful as your adopted children, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited by the author.

12th Day of Christmas: Rewarding Rachel's Work of Lamentation

Transcription

 It is good to be with you today. I'm so excited that the snow decided to wait until 11 o'clock tonight so that we didn't have to change our plans this morning. It is good to be with you on this 12th day of Christmas, and as I mentioned before, this is the final day of Christmas. If you're not used to the Anglican tradition or Catholic, we have 12 days. It's a whole season. And so today's gospel passage is about Jesus being brought into the temple, presented in the temple, and actually we're gonna have a whole feast day for that on February 2nd, which this year occurs on a Sunday. It's called Candlemas, and I'll introduce you to that as it gets closer. We'll have a procession with candles. It's going to be a delight.

So I'm not going to preach out of our gospel passage today, because I'm going to do it in a few weeks. So I wanted to spend some time this morning in our Jeremiah passage. This is a passage that might be unfamiliar to you, and as we look at Jeremiah chapter 31, let me pray for us. “In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. Amen.”

It was back a decade ago, it's hard to believe, in 2015. I was a pastoral intern. Before I was ordained, I was working at a church, and the priest I was working under gave me a really challenging assignment. There was a family in the church that sadly experienced a stillbirth, and the priest that I was working for had asked me to find a liturgy that she could pray through with this family. The loss of pregnancy and infertility are not things we often talk about from the front. They're very painful, and they're also very common, and they're very grief-worthy. And this, as an intern, was my introduction to how common these things are in the church. And I was looking through all kinds of liturgical resources to try and find something to help this priest pray with this family in a way that wasn't going to bypass their suffering, that would enter the depths of grief with them, but also that would point them to the real hope that was in Jesus, our Christ who has suffered with us, who suffered for us.

And as I looked through different liturgies, it was interesting what passage came up over and over again surrounding birth issues, and that is Jeremiah chapter 31. It was a verse that we didn't read this morning. It was one verse afterward, verse 15, and it says, “Thus says the Lord, a voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted for her children because they are no more.” And I have come to love that passage over the last ten years.

There are two images of God in our passage today in Jeremiah that are meant to be a hope for the grieving, which ties in really well to the gospel in Christmas. The hope for Israel in this passage comes from two images that are mentioned explicitly, one that we can infer by extension. And again, this fits with the gospel, the good news of Christmas, which, you know, Christ entered into the darkness, the light of the world to bring new creation. 

And so God in Jeremiah 31, he's pictured first as a shepherd, and then he's also pictured as a bereft mother, and I'll explain that later. And by extension, this is mentioned implicitly, he's pictured as a gatherer. So these three images form the good news in Jeremiah chapter 31. And so if you have ever felt excluded, like if people really knew you, they wouldn't like you, if you don't really feel like you belong, this passage is an encouragement for you. If you've ever experienced deep loss and deep grief, this passage is hope that your grief is meaningful, that it is a productive kind of grief. And so this passage is an encouragement to all of us in one way or another, and it shows that our God is the God who pursues the broken, and he pursues the scattered to bring them home.

God as Shepherd

First, God is a shepherd. In the history of Israel, you may not be familiar with how these things shook out. Israel had split into two kingdoms, the North and the South, and in the South, some of the older kids, if you know the answer to this, do you know what two tribes comprised the South? Hmm. Yeah, exactly, Judah and Benjamin, which had two different mothers, historically, in the book of Genesis. And the northern ten tribes were all the others. And the northern tribes came to be referred to by the most famous tribe among them, which is Ephraim.

And interestingly, Ephraim's grandmother is actually Benjamin's mother. I should have put a chart up there for that. Anyhow, so Ephraim is a shorthand way of referring to the northern kingdom of Israel, and I don't know if you heard this during the reading today, there was a lot of mention of Ephraim in the text, which is weird, because Jeremiah is prophesying in the South. And Jeremiah is prophesying at a time where the northern kingdom had already been exiled a hundred years before he was actually prophesying. Or sorry, I should say it this way, they were exiled, and a hundred years later, the South would be exiled. And in between those two exiles, Jeremiah is prophesying God's Word to the southern kingdom in Jerusalem, to the religious institution, the seat of power.

And his ministry would be a very polarizing one. It would often be a ministry of rejection, wherein his call was really to solidify the hardness of people's hearts. And interestingly, there's these alternations between oracles of judgment and oracles of salvation. Today is a happy one, it is an oracle of salvation. And so what's interesting in this passage is, rather than being a condemnation for all the injustices the South is doing, it's this joyful exhortation to the remnant in the South who is going to follow the Lord faithfully. It's this oracle of salvation reminding them to trust the Lord no matter what, because the God who has scattered is going to be the one who will gather them in.

And so we read verses 7 through 14 today, we didn't quite get to verse 15, and this exhortation to the South is to rejoice and sing. And surprisingly, it's not rejoice and sing because the South is going to be okay, but it's because God is going to rescue the northern kingdom, which is surprising. And again, that's indicated in verse 9, where it says, for I have become a father to Israel, not Judah, Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.

So God is referring to the North. God didn't take delight in the destruction and the exile of those northern ten tribes, and God is reminding them that he hasn't forgotten them. The rescue of the North is good news for the South, even if in reality the way this plays out is the salvation of the Samaritans in the book of Acts, but that's for epiphany.

So, well, let me connect the dots there. The northern kingdom becomes what is later the Samaritans when you read the New Testament, and God's salvation extends to those who were forgotten by those who are calling themselves Jews in the South. Verse 10 says that the one who has scattered Israel is going to gather them in as a shepherd does the flock.

And Jesus, in his incarnation, has come to deliver all people, which means those who are easily forgotten by others. Again, in Jesus's day, you could read the Samaritans there, but again, by extension, all of those that we so we so easily forget. And this encourages me to delight in God's work in other people. As you hear about the testimonies of God's faithfulness in other people, remind yourself that if God is at work in this or that person, he's at work in me also, and in us. So if you've ever felt like you just don't belong, like, you know, if people really got to know you, then they wouldn't like you. If you don't know exactly where you fit, this passage is an encouragement for you, and my suspicion is that probably everybody in the room at some point, right? Because imposter syndrome just kind of sits under the surface for everybody, and especially in northern Virginia, maybe even more than most other places.

And the good news is that God longs to save those who feel forgotten, that he brings in those who are scattered into his flock to bring them home. He longs to bring his people safe and secure into his flock in Christ. And so we've seen God is a shepherd, and then now I want to look at a surprising image that God is like a bereft mother in this passage.

God as Bereft Mother

Our passage, again, stopped at verse 14, but if we were to go on to verse 15, we would hear that famous verse that I quoted before. “Thus says the Lord, a voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted for her children because they are no more.” Now, Rachel was Jacob's favorite wife. If you go back to the book of Genesis, he had two wives and two servants of those two wives. And so the tribes of Israel were populated by four different women, and part of the reason for this is the favorite wife could not have children while the other ones were populating these tribes. It's sort of like an arms race of procreation, it's very bizarre to read. And so Rachel is Jacob's favorite wife in the book of Genesis, and she had been childless, and eventually though, God blesses her with the birth of Joseph, who the rest of the book of Genesis will talk about at length.

And then she gives birth to Benjamin. So remember when I talked about Benjamin was the other tribe in the south? So she has one child who will comprise the north, one child who will be part of the south. And Joseph, importantly, was the father to two half-tribes. Extra points for anybody who knows the half-tribes of the north. Any guesses? One of them is like a city in Virginia. Yeah, Manasseh, good.

 Manasseh, if you didn't put that together. Yeah, and Ephraim. Ephraim and Manasseh, these two half-tribes. Ephraim, the more famous of the two, becomes the sort of moniker, the symbol of the northern kingdom. And again, Rachel is Jacob's favorite wife. She's the mother now of the preeminent northern tribes. And it's thought that when she died, she was buried in a tomb at Ramah, which is north of Jerusalem, southern part of the northern kingdom. And this city would have had a good vantage point when the people are taken off from Ramah. You could see them being carted off.

And so what this passage is picturing is Rachel weeping from her grave as she sees her children being taken from her. And so you can see why, when you read this passage, it is such a poignant and helpful text. When thinking about, in the past, how the church has used this historically, both for the death of children, there's lots of homilies on that topic, and for the loss of pregnancy. And you can see why this text is so helpful for this. In fact, you may not be aware of this, but our fourth day of Christmas is actually honors the holy innocents, those infants who were killed in Bethlehem by King Herod. This is sort of the dark underside of the Christmas story, right? And so, but these these children are dying for the sake of Christ without consent to it, and without having actually seen the Messiah.

And in reflecting on that terrible scene, Matthew, the gospel writer, quotes Jeremiah 31, verse 15, about Rachel's voice being heard in Ramah, and her wailing and lamentation and weeping for her children. And so you hear the echoes of this over and over again, and there is good news in Jeremiah 31 as well. On the flip side of this passage, God is moved by the lamentation of Rachel. God is moved by the repentance of Ephraim, and who confesses, Ephraim confesses his sins in the text. And God comforts Rachel, and he tells her that she doesn't need to keep on weeping, she doesn't need to keep crying, because, and this is a really important phrase, there will be a reward for her work of grief. There will be a reward for her work of grief. That's verse 16. Ephraim will be brought back from the land of the enemy. And the text, really interestingly, connects the sorrow of Rachel with the sorrow of God's heart in verse 20.

God says it this way, “Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he the child that I delight in?” The implied answer is yes. “As often as I speak against him, I still remember him. Therefore, I am deeply moved for him. I will surely have mercy upon him.” And so God mirrors the emotional state of the bereft mother and is moved to action, and that's often not a symbol or an image that we associate with the heart of God, but I do think it is so helpful because it is so real and so human. And so when our loss and grief feels like it's too much, we can trust in a God who knows the deep loss of a bereft mother, and we trust that, like this passage, he honors the work of grief.

And he honors the work of grief, eventually restoring what was lost, maybe not in the way that we would have anticipated, but does, in fact, honor the work of grief. And so God is pictured as a shepherd. God is pictured here as a bereft mother longing for the child that she loves.

And the good news, and why I love that this passage occurs in the last day of Christmas, is that when you go back to the prophets, it's the word of the Lord in Isaiah 40 that is speaking to the exiles that says, comfort, comfort my people, says the Lord your God. And the voice of the Lord, the word of the Lord is who is bringing the exiles back. And when we read John 1, which we read last week, we find that the word is incarnate.

The word takes on human flesh to bring God's people home. And so the shepherd the bereft mother longs to bring back her wayward children. And that is why also God, both implicitly and explicitly in this text, is called a gatherer. Here, like a shepherd, but more than that. So God is the one who has scattered them. God is the one who will bring them in and gather them back.

 God as Gatherer

And so that goes beyond just the Northern Kingdom, who potentially is forgotten, to include all Gentiles, which is good news for us. We were the ones who potentially would have been forgotten, except that God is the one who gathers us into his flock. Even to the most forgotten of Gentiles, or those who are sort of in between Jew and Gentile, like the Samaritans had been in Jesus's day.

And so whoever becomes excluded, whoever becomes made other, the good news is for them. That God is gathering them in, and that their joy is our joy, as we see God's work in their hearts. And that reminds me of a very early Eucharistic liturgy. There's this really beautiful document called the Didache. It was written in the second century, the teaching of the Twelve Apostles, and it probably has roots of tradition that go back to the time of the Apostles themselves. And it gives us one of the earliest Eucharistic prayers in the church.

And the prayer that the celebrant prays over the bread is this, we thank you, our Father, for the life and the knowledge which you made known to us, through Jesus your servant, to you be glory forever. Even as this broken bread was scattered over the hills, and was gathered together, and became one, so let your church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom. And so here the Eucharist itself, the celebration of the Eucharist together in the church, recalls God's gathering together of a people into one body in Christ.

So our gospel passage was about Jesus's presentation into the temple. And we hear Zechariah's song, which is also in the daily office, daily prayer. So some of you pray that every day, and it probably threw you off when I read it from the ESV, because you've probably heard it from the the BCP.

And you know, that passage, Zechariah's song, and Anna's song, help us connect God's saving work that he's doing in Jeremiah 31 with the person of Jesus. Zechariah says, my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel. And so Jesus is the means by which God is bringing the least, the lost, and the forgotten into one body in Christ, to the praise of his glory, which is what we read about in the book of Ephesians today.

Conclusion

And we're going to talk a lot about the glory of God in the weeks that are coming up, because that really is what the season of Epiphany is all about, as the glory of God moves to the Gentiles, to the ends of the earth. But here, as we end the Christmas season together, we have this beautiful good news, that God longs for his people to turn to him like a shepherd who is gathering his wayward sheep, to turn to them like a mother who is desirous of her lost child. And from the Didache, that God is like a harvester who is gathering grain in from the mountains to bring it together into one bread.

 And so your loss is not too deep for God to know your grief. That's one of the encouragements. And that he will honor the work of grief. If you have ever felt like you don't belong, like if people really knew you that they wouldn't like you, that you're sort of on the fringes all the time, that you're unworthy of God's love unless you can really prove yourself, this passage from Jeremiah is an encouragement for you this morning. And so may we be a church where these things are true, where we reflect God's love for all people, where people find a home. May we be a church where people experience God's care for the grieving, where the work of grief is honored and given back with honor.

And that this would be a church where people are desiring to bring the scattered into one community in Christ, in the church. Let me pray for us. “Oh God, who wonderfully created and yet more wonderfully restored the dignity of human nature, grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.”

 Transcribed byTurboScribe.ai. Edited by the author.