Pentecost: Called and Equipped for the Work of Jesus

This weekend we celebrated Pentecost! We were outside at Pohick Bay with no sound equipment. This is why the preacher is preaching a bit louder than normal. Please excuse our sound issues.

TranscriptioN

Well, good morning again everybody. It is good to be with you this morning. Happy Pentecost. For those of you who are new or visiting this morning, I'm Father Morgan Reed.

I'm the vicar here at Corpus Christi Anglican Church. This isn't our normal location, so we get to do this once a year and we're thankful to be able to be here in this covered area and that it's not too hot today. This is a really important day in the church calendar.

It reminds us that Jesus Christ reigns as King and that he has equipped us to carry on what he's doing in the world through the power of the Holy Spirit. It's only through the Holy Spirit that the church becomes the church, the people of God, and this day reminds us that we need help to carry on this commission that Jesus Christ gives us. So as we look together at Acts 2 this morning, let me pray for us.

In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Holy Spirit, breath of God and fire of love, we cannot pray without your aid.

Kindle us, in us, the fire of your love and illumine with your light, illumine us with your light, that with a steadfast will and holy thoughts we may approach the Father in spirit and in truth, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who reigns with you and the Father in eternal union. Amen. Well, let's look.

We're gonna look at two things. We're gonna look at the commissioning and how the disciples are equipped to carry on the ministry. So let's look first at the commissioning of the disciples of Jesus.

After Jesus ascended, there's a large group of his disciples that are waiting in a room together and they're praying until the Feast of Pentecost. It's helpful to know a bit about what this feast is. So in this feast in the Old Testament, it's a feast that started with celebrating something out of the harvest, 50 days after Passover.

The farmers would take the sheeps from their crop, from their wheat, and they would offer it to God. In some ways it was a sign of gratitude for what God had provided, but it's also a prayer that the rest of the crop would be successfully brought in that year. And then it took on new meaning as the people of God are delivered from Egypt and they celebrate the Passover together.

And then this feast, if Passover commemorates the event of Yahweh becoming king and delivering his people, 50 days later Pentecost or Shavuot is the festival that celebrates God's giving of the law on Mount Sinai, equipping the people for how to live out life as his people. And according to Jewish tradition, it was 50 days after Passover that Moses had gone up on Mount Sinai to receive the law, which is God's covenant with his people. And that mighty act of God of coming down on Sinai is something called a theophany.

It's a vision of God where God's power and his presence show up very visibly. And so Pentecost then becomes both a praise and thanksgiving as a feast of what God has done to act on our behalf in history, giving his people a way of life. But it's also a prayer that they would carry out his purposes and will as he's called and equipped them to do.

And today's passage that was so beautifully read is no less of a theophany than what happened on Mount Sinai. It reminded me of a couple years ago. Two years ago I was sitting in our house and I heard some giant explosion happen.

And I was praying it wasn't in our house. It wasn't. But then it did shake the house. And I did what any good millennial would do. I got on the internet. I said, Dear Google, what was that explosion near my house? And I found out that it turns out two F-16s had just launched from Andrews Air Force Base near the house to intercept a private plane that had entered and violated U.S. government airspace.

So that explosion that I heard was the sound of those two F-16s breaking the sound barrier over the DMV and causing a sonic boom. And so the mighty rushing wind that we hear about in the Book of Acts seemed to have the same impact on the crowd as the sonic boom in the DMV. But they did not have internet back then.

And so these Jewish pilgrims who had come from all over the place were wondering what had just happened. And so they come to this house where the disciples were praying. And in this Sinai-like theophany, instead of the twelve tribes of Israel, God had commissioned twelve apostles.

Instead of the Mosaic Covenant, the Holy Spirit is poured out on these disciples to shape a community together, doing life together under the rule and reign of Jesus, showing his love to the world. So Pentecost, again, becomes this thanksgiving for God giving us the Holy Spirit. And it's also a prayer that we would live out this life in the Spirit to discover God's kingdom here and now.

We're called to carry on the works of Jesus, and then we're commissioned to do so through the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit, God himself, who is given to us. So that's the commission. Now let's look at the ways that he leads us into new life.

When God had done this miraculous work, some of the crowd had marveled, some were astounded, and then some rationalized it away and they created false narratives about what they just experienced. And that's a paradigm for what would be the case as the apostles continue on their mission. It's still a paradigm today when people are confronted with the good news of Jesus.

So the people recognize they're hearing this news about Jesus in their own language. And some said, these men must be drunk. Because imagine if you speak Parthian and you hear Egyptian, it sounds like gibberish, right? So this is their conclusion. 

This can't be something of God. This has to be these people are drunk. They write off what they can't understand as being from drunkenness, explaining it away with falsehoods, not just because they can't understand it, but because they're unwilling to accept it. So we might get a mighty rushing wind here too. I'm excited for that. Thank God for a covered area.

So Peter stands up to address the crowd and he assures them they haven't even had their morning prayers yet, which means they haven't even eaten yet. There's no way they can be drunk yet with wine. So Peter gives us in this passage an amazing message from the book of Joel, which I know is highest on everyone's reading list.

So he's in the book of Joel and he tells them in the last days God is gonna pour out his Spirit on all flesh. And the Jews of his day are looking for the day of the Lord to come when God would put his King on the throne and where God would reign over his enemies. Peter is functionally saying here that Jesus has ascended, he's become King, and you and I are in the last days right now.

And in these last days we're called to be delivered to the kingdom of God, where the Holy Spirit brings heaven into our earthly reality to begin to taste the redemption now that's ultimately going to come for all things when Jesus comes ultimately to rule and reign and return. And the nations here that are mentioned in the book of Acts are really important. The Roman Emperor back in Peter's day and the Apostles day, he had set himself up as a divine figure.

 And when he brought peace to the Empire, he called it the gospel, he called it the good news of the Roman Empire, but it was a good news that came through violence. This was a shadow of true peace. And it was maintained nationally through violence, through corruption, and through coercion.

So St. Luke is now framing this passage to show the rule and the reign of King Jesus as a counter gospel to the Roman gospel, a true good news against the backdrop of the Roman Empire. Let's just sit and listen to this for a second. This is glorious, isn't it? Just want to name it because I see you looking around.

Thanks be to God. But don't miss this. There's a second century church father reading this passage and he says this, “Christ's name is extended everywhere, believed everywhere, worshipped everywhere, reigning everywhere, adored everywhere, conferred equally everywhere upon all. No king with him finds greater favor, no barbarian lesser joy, no dignities or pedigrees enjoy any distinction of merit. To all he is equal, to all he is king, to all he is judge, to all he is God and Lord.” What he's saying, in other words, is this radical renewal of all kinds of real ordinary people is a testimony to the power of the Lord Jesus Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit.

The kingdom is here and Jesus will reign over all. We see it breaking in now. God hasn't started with the most influential to bring about this kingdom. 

He hasn't started with those who are most outwardly pious and religious or well-off. God's dream team is filled with really ordinary people, misfits and sinners because wherever the Holy Spirit is, as one church father says, “clay becomes gold.” And so you and I, when we were baptized, we were filled with this same Holy Spirit to put God's works on display as he transforms our hearts individually and calls us to witness to the world.

Peter names what's true and then he invites people into these last days with him, you and I. And what this means is that we need to prioritize listening to the Holy Spirit who's been placed in our hearts. The Holy Spirit is the one who calls us to repentance, who comforts us, who invites us into wondering at new creation, and who miraculously transforms the stuff of our earthly life into the stuff of the heavenly reality. And what he can do in bread and wine and water, he can do with our broken family relationships, the responsibilities that weigh really heavy on our hearts, the daily meals we prepare and invite others into our household, the monies that we steward, the things that we hold on to that are broken.

If he can restore creation, he can restore in us what's been broken and what's been ravaged by the fall. And so there's a final exhortation in verse 21. This is for the crowd to trust in Jesus.

Peter says, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. And he's quoting again from Joel 2 and in this passage he is referring to Jesus. There's a Jewish tradition that whenever you see the name Yahweh, it was interesting to hear Yahweh in Tagalog.

That's how they decided to translate the divine name from Hebrew. Whenever you see that name in Hebrew, in Judaism you read the word Adonai out loud. You don't read Yahweh, it's considered blasphemous.

So even today if you read a Jewish document they'll put G - D for God. It's a way of keeping the holy name holy. And so this comes into Greek speaking Judaism when they did their translation work of the Old Testament.

They translated, they come across the name Yahweh and they would translate it Kyrios, which means Lord. Like if you've ever heard us say Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison, Kyrie Eleison, Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy. The word Kyrios just means Lord, Master.

And it's a generic word, but when the Jews read Joel 2 in Greek, originally they would think this is Yahweh, the God of Israel. That's the object of our faith. And so when Peter quotes it now, there's something new happening.

He intends for people to understand this as a reference to Jesus. Kyrios, Jesus is Lord. This is new and it puts Jesus on the same level as the God of Israel and that's going to be what he's going to prove for the rest of the chapter that we didn't read today.

When Peter's discussing salvation in this text, he's thinking in terms of deliverance from this present evil age and all of its brokenness and sin. He's assuming that Jesus rules over heaven and earth and then trusting in the name of Jesus brings in each of you and me the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to be delivered from this present darkness. And the Holy Spirit then brings heaven to earth in our lives.

He frees us from the powers of sin and death and comforts us in our afflictions and he redeems the suffering that we've gone through because he is working out in our lives what he's also working out cosmically, which is new creation. And that's why later the crowd is going to say, Peter what should we do? And his answer is to be baptized in the name of Christ so that their sins might be forgiven and then they'll receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Today we get to do that.

We get to celebrate this with Andrew and I'm so excited. Today we celebrate this in Andrew's life. The stuff of the world that's been part of his journey is taken away because the Holy Spirit uses water and the prayers of the church to bring heaven into this young man's life.

And he's going to be filled with God's presence and power in the Spirit to live a life that shows the world what God can do through Christ in a very ordinary person that lives under the rule and the reign of King Jesus. And you and I get to renew our baptismal vows with him. And we are reminded that we are a community that God has built and we're reminded of what God has done in us and what God is doing in us and the promise of what he will do in us.

And so we're all being saved. All of us are in process of being delivered. This is why the church is so important. The Spirit fills us as we continue the church's rhythms that we find in the book of Acts, chapter 2 actually, about continuing in the teaching, the breaking of bread, the fellowship, and the prayers. So the Spirit brings heaven to bear on our earthly realities. He creates a community that serves as a witness to the power of Jesus's resurrection. 

The Holy Spirit is in the business of daily theophanies. Sometimes those theophanies are obvious where God really shows up and there is no question. Sometimes they're more subtle, but whether obvious or subtle, today we remember that God has called and equipped us to become the body of Christ together through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Let me pray for us. Almighty God, on this day, through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, you revealed the way of eternal life to every race and nation. Pour out this gift anew that by the preaching of the gospel your salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

Through 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.

Sunday After the Ascension: Lord, Get us Out of this Mess

TranscriptioN

Well, good morning everybody. It is good to see you this morning. I'm the vicar here at Corpus Christi Anglican Church and this is, as I mentioned before, the final Sunday and Eastertide, this long Easter season that we celebrate. Next week we'll get to celebrate Pentecost together and so we'll be wearing red.

It will be a joyous celebration. And on this last Sunday of Easter, in this little 10 days that we often refer to as Ascensiontide, we are reminded of Jesus going and ascending where he rules and reigns and the disciples waiting for the Spirit to come and to empower them for the work that God is calling them to do, which is to carry on the work of Jesus. And so as we think about Ascension, one of the things that we did on Thursday is we celebrated the Feast of Ascension and we were reminded that there are two realms to creation, heaven and earth, that the Scripture describes.

And Jesus is Lord over all. And what he is doing in Ascension is bringing heaven's realm into earth, breaking in. And this is why each day we pray in the Lord's Prayer, Lord may your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.

God's doing this cosmic work of salvation that we're a part of, uniting heaven and earth in new creation. And we see in part now what we look forward to in its fullness when Jesus comes again to restore all things at his second coming. And so today we're still focused on this waiting period, these 10 days, where Jesus has ascended and he is reigning on high and yet hasn't given the Spirit to his disciples to dwell in them, to be his presence as they are to carry on his works.

But what Jesus' Ascension does remind us of, we might be tempted to think that he ascends and so he's absent, but actually the Ascension does not declare his absence, it declares his active presence as he rules and reigns and brings his kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven. And I don't want to take us too far off on a tangent, but I don't know how many of you are aware of this, but in the Bible, in the book of Esther in Hebrew, how many of you were aware that it almost didn't make it into the canon? Okay, a few of you. It almost did not make it into the canon.

That and the book of Ezekiel are two books that almost didn't make it in for different reasons. For those of you who knew why Esther didn't almost make it in, do you know why? Yes, excellent, yes. It never mentions God, never mentions Yahweh whatsoever, explicitly I should say.

So essentially when you read it, it's this narrative about a Judean woman in the Persian period who saves her people through deception, like that's the basic storyline. Now, some have suggested that the name Yahweh in Hebrews, יהוה, those four letters show up as an acrostic pattern at different points in the book, and that might be true. It's debated, but if it is, and even if it's not true, it still highlights something that's very true about the book, which is that the Lord's name may not be mentioned explicitly, but he's far from absent.

He's in their preservation, and to me the book of Esther in that way, as we see God working in the background very actively, this is something like what it feels like to me when we talk about the ascension of Jesus. He's not absent. He's reigning, and his reign moves over our age and into our earthly realm in ways that you could put sort of on this spectrum of overtly miraculous and overtly ordinary.

Still miraculous, but ordinary. Somewhere in there you see the kingdom of God breaking in. You see Jesus's rule and reign as king breaking into our realm, and we can see it in today's passage in the book of Acts, chapter 16.

We see it in the stirring up of hearts. We see it in the disruption of corrupt and demonic systems, and we see it in this surprising deliverance that produces faith in a Gentile, a pagan, and so I want to look at this text together this morning in Acts, chapter 16. If you have your Bible or you have it on your phone, you can open up to Acts, chapter 16, and as we get into it, 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.”

Lydia and the Stirring of the Heart

Well first I want to see how God's kingdom comes in stirred hearts.

Paul is in a missionary journey in this context, a different one than the last one we talked about. This time he's traveling with Paul, Silas, Timothy, possibly Luke himself, and they arrive at Philippi, which is a major Roman colony, a very urban place in northeastern Macedonia today, northeastern Greece, and he does what he normally does, which is to find a local synagogue to preach out of, to share the story about how Jesus ties all of history together for people's deliverance and salvation, but Philippi is so pagan that there are no synagogues in Philippi, so what is he to do? He hears a rumor that there are some people who pray down by, there's a regular place to pray down by the water, and there it's mostly made up of women, and when he's down there, this is before the passage we read today, he encounters a woman named Lydia, and Lydia is a God-fearing Gentile, meaning she was a pagan Gentile that converted to worshiping the God of Israel, so she's a monotheist, and as he encounters her, he ties together the stories of Jesus for her in a way that shows her what God has done for her in the Jewish Messiah. She believes this gospel, and then she is baptized, her and her household, so the gospel comes to a successful businesswoman, a woman who is very well known, well off, and she and her whole household are baptized, so we see the gospel being fruitful, multiplying, and filling the earth in this woman, Lydia.

Even in pagan Gentile cities where there's not even a synagogue to preach out of, we don't see all the parts of Lydia's life that lead up to this moment, but we do know that in Acts, God had given Paul a dream to go to Macedonia, and so we see Jesus reigning and bringing together the story of salvation in ways that Paul's not aware of, that Lydia is not going to be aware of until it happens, and Lydia reminds me that we often see the kingship of Jesus when we're open to looking for the ways that God is stirring hearts. Sometimes people will call these God moments, right? There's these ways that you couldn't have guessed that God would bring these moments together, but he does, and in the stirring of hearts, we see God's rule and reign. In Lydia's time, paganism was the norm, and especially in Philippi, this city to preserve its welfare, sacrifice to gods and to the emperor who was considered a god.

They were trying to keep the gods happy, to procure the blessing on their city, and so it was tied together. Economic, politics, religion, it's all brought together in a cohesive system, in this religious system that was intertwined, and this is what it meant to be Roman, and so to follow Christ was a Roman identity, and it was a threat to these Roman nationalists who didn't want anybody threatening the safety or the Roman-ness of their colony, and in our context, you know, there's often a veneer of Christianity that we can see in places, or at least if there's not a veneer of Christianity, people are pretty familiar with the story of Christianity. That might be less and less true, but even now, someone at least knows what this term means, generally, but the reality is our neighbors are still bound to the kingdom of darkness.

No matter where we go, our physical neighbors, our co-workers, and in this place where God, where people are still bound to the kingdom of darkness, Jesus is still stirring up hearts to find him, to discover his goodness, and you and I, like the disciples like Paul here, are called to be attentive to what God is doing, when to speak, when to listen, but we should be prepared to listen and then connect somebody's story to the story that God is telling in them and through them when the opportunity is presented to us. So that's Lydia that we encounter. Jesus is stirring hearts, as in Lydia's case.

The Gospel Disrupts Demonic Systems — the Freed Slave Girl

Jesus also disrupts demonic systems, no matter how embedded they become. This is an amazing aspect of the gospel. So they go another time to the place of prayer.

This is what we read this morning. They encounter a female slave. She's not given a name in the story, but they harass Paul and Silas, and he turns at some point, and he commands the demon to come out in the name of Jesus, and if you think about this, what's astounding is you have this Lydia, who is a well-off businesswoman who comes and believes the gospel.

She's a Gentile convert to Judaism and then believes the gospel of Jesus, and now you have a pagan slave girl who's being profited upon, or she's being used for other people's profit by telling the future, but Luke wants us to see that the gospel comes to all, whether it's the well-off, whether it's the poor, whether it's slave, whether it's free. Her society told her that she only had value in as much as she benefited other people, right? She was valueless, but Jesus has an alternate gospel narrative that her life not only matters, she is an image-bearer of the king of the universe, and that is this holy economic deconstruction of the earthly emperor's gospel. This does battle with the good news of the Roman Empire.

The woman had a spirit of divination. She could tell the future, and Paul liberates this woman both from the spirit of divination that was holding her hostage and, as a result, from her masters. The slave girl is now freed to reign with the king of heaven for the first time in her life, and that is stunning, and so first Paul has to recognize that what this girl is doing is not truly her.

She's bound to the kingdom of darkness. Then he has to take the risk to cast this girl's, the demon out in Jesus's name, and why was it risky? I mean, for a couple reasons. One is if he had said something and nothing happened, so that's a risk, but two, it's also a risk because he named something as demonic that was completely normalized in their culture, and it was something that was so normalized that it was expected to support the sustainability of their culture, so her masters are irate.

They tell the municipal authorities, these men are Jews and they're throwing our city into an uproar by advocating for customs that are unlawful for us Romans to accept or to practice, and I also wonder if there was, for these slave masters, a feeling of fear. If people start becoming Christians, then they're going to move away from Caesar as emperor and lord. They're going to move away from faithful citizens.

They're going to move away from what it means to be Roman, since it was Roman law to sacrifice to the emperor, and if these men's livelihoods could be lost, then perhaps other people's livelihoods could be lost too, as now Christians are just coming in and destabilizing the economy of the colony, especially when your commerce is, your commerce surrounds those gods, and so they're accused of a kind of revolution. People would rather be comfortable than free. Some people want to be told that they're okay, even if they're sick, because the process of healing can involve pain, it can involve suffering, and most difficult to swallow, it can admit that, it can, it can involve admitting that we were wrong, and that's really hard, especially when we're talking about religious political systems, and what if, if we think about the gospel here, what if there were a way to live in community in a way that didn't use slave labor, or exploit women, and that honored the image of God in all people, right? On this end of the empire, Roman Empire's collapse, it seems obvious. 

It did not seem obvious to those slave owning Gentile pagans, but this is the power that the gospel brings, a society where the slave is free, that women are honored, that the image of God is honored in all people. This is what the gospel of Jesus offers, but healing can be scary and risky when patterns of acceptable corruption start to calcify and get normalized in the society, and so the kingdom of heaven comes when the calcified patterns of the kingdom of darkness are named, and they're broken up, and they're deconstructed, and Jesus's kingdom comes when individuals are then de-shackled from the lies of the kingdom of darkness. This girl had value as an image bearer of the king, and after the slave woman is free, we see her masters double down on systems that they're bound to, patterns that they've lived into, but Luke's point, which is helpful for us, is that even though they double down on their systems of bondage to the kingdom of darkness, that is not going to stop what God will bring about through the gospel, and that's good news.

So this work of the gospel bearing fruit might be surprising, it might be disappointing at times because it's painful, or there's an admission that we were wrong, but if we prepare our hearts to receive people's reactions, the circumstances that we find ourselves in, with curiosity, kindness, and trust that the Holy Spirit is at work in us, that he's with us, that he's at work through us, then we begin to see the kingdom of God break through into this earthly realm, and the suffering becomes redemptive as the healing begins.

Discerning the Movement of the Kingdom — The Philippian Jailer

And so we've seen Paul and Silas's disposition. They needed to have this disposition of openness, curiosity, and wonder at what God was doing.

They needed this because they're going to then be thrown into prison as a result of these masters and their complaints to the municipal authorities. They're thrown into prison and they're beaten with rods, but then we find them again in Acts 16 praying and singing hymns in the middle of the night, and there's an earthquake that takes place, the whole place is shaken, and all the prison doors are opened. And you have to understand in this culture, people take, the Gentile pagans take things like earthquakes, and they see them as signs of God's disfavor or favor, depending on if it's favorable to them or not. 

There is a divine agent behind these natural disasters, and so this is frightening for the guard because the prison doors are open, and he was responsible for these prisoners. If they had escaped, he would be punished. There's little ears, so I just leave it out, he will be punished.

So Paul stops the guard from making a life-altering decision, and he reassures him that all the prisoners are there and they're accounted for. But God had used the earthquake to get the guard's attention, and the guard brings Paul and Silas out to ask them a question. Our translations make it sound so spiritual.

Sirs, what must I do to be saved? This is a Roman pagan. This is a prison guard. There is no way he's thinking in like Jewish kingdom messianic constructs. 

So other people have translated it differently. I think they're right. Rather than saved, which is a pretty loaded theological term for us, I think what he's saying is, okay you guys, how do I get out of this mess? That's the essence of what saved means here in this passage.

So God has brought him to this point of realizing, I'm in trouble, I need to know how to get out of this, and I am open to hearing whatever you have to say, because you must know something I don't. And so Paul tells him, trust in Jesus and you will be delivered, you and your household. And we have to keep keep in mind what this means.

Trust in Jesus. He's asking him functionally to disavow his allegiance with the Roman Emperor, who is a god, and to realign his allegiance to Jesus as Lord and King. Jesus is Lord, there is no other.

Jesus is King, there is no other. Caesar is not Lord, Caesar is not King. And that night this man puts his faith in Jesus, and he says, you know, no matter what God brings me through, I trust that Jesus is King.

And he and all of his household that night are baptized, which includes his wife, it includes his children, and if his household had slaves, it includes them too. All of them are brought into the body of Christ. God in his kindness then does what Paul says.

He spares the life of this soldier, as the magistrates just decide that Paul and Silas are allowed to leave now. And so they're released, and they go forward to the next thing, and the life of this soldier and his family are forever changed. This is the beginning of the church at Philippi.

A Jewish woman, a freed slave girl, or a Gentile convert to Judaism, a freed slave girl, a Roman soldier. These are the beginnings of what God is doing in creating the body of Christ in Philippi, where he is shown to be Lord and King. So Jesus delivered this person and his family in a surprising way, that Paul and Silas had to live a life to prepare for.

They had to be recognizing this. They had to be careful to keep faithful rhythms of prayer and worship in order to keep a watchful eye and an open ear to what God was doing and to where his kingdom was moving, and they noticed it in the life of this jailer. They could have run for freedom, but they were attentive to what God was doing, and the result was an enduring faith in the Philippian jailer and trust in the kingship of Christ for this man and his whole household.

Imagine how many generations of Christians there are because of this man and his household. So when Jesus ascends, he is not absent. Quite the contrary, he is actively reigning as Lord and King, and we see his rule and reign where heaven and earth are united in the stirring up of hearts, like in the story of Lydia, through the disruption of demonic systems, as in the deliverance of the slave girl, and when people trust in Jesus, as in the life of the Philippian jailer, and all of us are called to sharing in this ministry of sharing in Christ's rule and reign together.

This is the community where Jesus is King and Lord, and people see that in the way that we treat each other, and it requires a life of attentiveness, regular prayer and worship to reframe our everyday moments, our proclivities, our desires, and our loves under the reality of the kingship of Christ. We need what is real to frame what is temporary, and this also involves curiosity about where we see Christ at work. Sometimes his work is subtle in our everyday moments, and sometimes it is glaringly obvious, but in any case, Jesus hasn't abandoned the project of creation.

He's become Lord of all things, and all things will be brought to their fullness in his work of new creation. His ascension is a promise that he will come back again and restore fully what he is doing in part right now. So I want to encourage us not to just think of heaven as a place we go to where when we die, a geographic space, but instead it's something that is breaking into our reality now.

It is taking over in individuals and households and communities in this community, and so we're to prioritize looking for it attentively, so that each day we can actually pray, may your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. 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.

Ascension Day: The Reign of Jesus in the Realm of Life

TranscriptioN

Thanks for making time to come and gather on a Thursday night.

This is one of those days where it's often it comes up on us and we're not used to thinking about it, but it is such an important day in the church's calendar. Part of the gospel here is Jesus crucified, risen from the dead, ascended on high, who will come back again. All of this is the gospel, the saving work of God.

And this is actually our first time as a church celebrating it on its actual day. And thank you to Caroline for trying out the incense with us tonight. I was thinking about how joyous it is to talk about Jesus going up in the clouds and then having the clouds of incense just permeating our olfactory imagination.

So thank you. It smells like prayer in here. I'm grateful to you for your help.

And so as I said, this is one of the central days in the church's calendar, in the history of the church. And this feast commemorates not Jesus being absent, but his exaltation as King. That's what the Ascension is all about.

This feast declares that heaven and earth will one day be ultimately one, and that Jesus is Lord over both of these dimensions, heaven and earth, both parts of God's creation. And both of those realms find their overlap in Jesus himself, who is the promise that heaven and earth will ultimately be reunited, restored in this cosmic story of salvation and new creation. And as we look at this book of Acts chapter one, 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 disciples gather around Jesus, and they ask him in chapter one, the beginning of this chapter, Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel? This is the question on their minds. The expectation is that the Messiah is going to come, that the Messiah is going to conquer the nations that were warring against God and his anointed one.

This is sort of the theme of the Psalms, and that God would establish a throne that would last forever through his servant of the line of David. And that's why the cross had been so surprising, but now Jesus has risen from the dead, and you can imagine, now he's risen from the dead, perhaps their hopes are sparked again, that this might be the time now. Now that we've seen him, now that we've walked with him in his resurrection, maybe now is the time.

When are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel? Is this the time it's going to happen? And Jesus tells them not to worry about the day or the hour. That shouldn't be on the forefront of your thinking and your anxiety, but he instead gives them a call in the meantime. He tells them that the Holy Spirit will come upon them.

They're to wait until that happens, and then they're now going to be Jesus' witnesses in Jerusalem, and then in Judea, which is broader than the area in which is Jerusalem, and then Samaria, just north, and then to the ends of the earth. Everyone else, the Gentiles, but they are waiting. They're in this season of waiting for the Holy Spirit to come on them.

And it reminds me that we're not supposed to waste our time on worrying about when this is finally going to come. When is Jesus going to come back? Reading the newspapers for signs of the times is not a helpful discipline. Instead, we're called in this time of waiting while Jesus is reigning, and we're waiting for him to come again.

The word for that that they use in the Bible and in Catechesis of the Good Shepherd is the parousia, when he comes again to restore all things in their fullness. While we're in this waiting period, we receive this call to bring the message and continue the works of Jesus, who was crucified, resurrected, now he reigns on high. And now one of the things that we're called to do is look for the ways that he reigns right now, because his kingdom isn't just out there, but what the Ascension declares is that his kingdom is come, and will come more fully.

And so we're looking for the ways that his kingdom comes. And it's easy to get hung up on misconceptions about heaven being something out there, something disconnected from our everyday experience, or geographically above us. I can't remember who I was talking with, but there was a Russian atheist, and when he went up into space, he said, you know, I went up into the heavens and God was not there.

And so the reality is that heaven is not geographically located, somewhere out there disconnected. Heaven is another realm or dimension that overlaps with the dimension that we find ourselves in, and Jesus reigns over both realms and dimensions as king over all creation. It's easy to think of it as this repository of souls that's off in the sky, but the way that the Bible describes heaven is that heaven and earth, and we think of that phrase, heaven and earth, as this complete totality of the creation.

And sometimes God's realm breaks into ours. You can think of the Theophanies, the Old Testament, like Mount Sinai, the crossing of the Red Sea, or even something as simple as going into the temple, this thin place where heaven meets earth. And Jesus came in the book of Acts, part of the argument is that he is the temple, he is the place where heaven meets earth.

So if you want to encounter the place, you encounter Jesus, because that's the one who brings these things together. And so when we see Jesus being the temple, we see him stirring people's hearts, healing them physically, some other brokenness restored. These are all the miraculous spaces where we see heaven breaking into our world.

And so I was remembering a time where I felt something like this, where the two realms, there was two realms. And so I used to work when I lived in Chicago as a caterer for a catering company, and I was about 18 or 19, I was in under, no, I was 20, I was an undergraduate, and I was working for this catering company, which brought me into really cool places in Chicago. And one of the interesting places that I got to go was inside the stage of Millennium Park.

And the reason I was there was because there was a girl who was having her 16th birthday party. So this is a realm I'm not used to, where one 16th birthday party is celebrated with private catering inside the stage of Millennium Park. And here I am in this fancy tuxedo, going to this place, serving hors d'oeuvres.

And one of the kids had struck up a conversation with me as I was serving them food, because they don't have some of the same barriers. And the mom comes over and says, please don't talk to the help. I've never felt so out of the realm of where I was at.

I'm wearing a tuxedo, which is not me, and I'm serving food in Millennium Park, which is not me, and here I am, the help, and it's just a weird reality where there is a realm that I was in, which I was not accustomed. That realm was not mine. So it's possible to imagine that God's realm is kind of over here, and it has nothing to do with our realm.

But when we pray the Lord's Prayer multiple times a day, we say, may your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. And so there is something of the kingdom of God breaking into our realm that we get to experience when Christ reigns. So when Jesus becomes king, he rules over both heaven and earth, and when we see heaven break in, it's a promise that earth and heaven will ultimately be one.

Like when you read Paul's passages about all in all, Christ is all in all, these things will ultimately be one, and we taste now what will ultimately be true in the future. And it's not that like God has, Jesus has disappeared in the ascension, and we're left to just fend for ourselves down here, but Jesus again is Lord, and he is active, and our job isn't to just fixate on when he's going to restore all things, but to discover how he's doing it right now through the Spirit that he has given to us. He had to ascend in order to send us the Spirit, who is his presence that empowers us to carry on his works to the ends of the earth, which involves our neighborhoods, those closest to us, wherever we go and work.

So Jesus is taken up in a cloud in their sight, and the Son of Man ascending on a cloud is a reference to Daniel 7 13. Again, at this time there's no New Testament written. Their Bible, the Bible that they were familiar with, was what we would call the Old Testament.

So when Jesus ascends on a cloud, this is the image that's coming to mind, is Daniel 7 13. It's kingship language, that the Messiah has become King. It proclaims that Jesus is exalted, not that he's absent, and that's really important, because sometimes it can feel like he is, but being King is really the opposite of abandoning his project until the end when he's going to come back again, and that's why these messengers, heavenly messengers, say to the disciples, why are you standing here looking at the sky? The disciples had been focused on when Jesus is going to bring a physical kingdom, rather than being enamored with discovering where it is now

They were missing, well I should say it this way, they were called to mission, not to date setting, not to wonder when, but to discover where Jesus's rule and reign is breaking into their lives at this time. And so now they need to get their eyes off the sky to look at what's in front of them. Have you ever been on a road trip with a child, or have you been the child on the road trip? You know, the sense of time is just not the same when you're little, and so when you're on a four-hour car ride, and you're in the first five minutes, and you hear from the back, are we there yet? Are we there yet? Well, no, no, it's been five minutes.

Are we there? It's been two minutes since you asked. No, we're not there. Internally you have this dread about how long this four-hour car ride is going to be, and the way that a child is going to stop asking that question is either if they're sleeping, or if they become enamored with what the things are that they can look at out the window. 

And as they're looking out the window, there's things to look at, they're just enamored with wonder at what they're seeing as they see new landscapes and places. And that helps me personally to understand something of the kingdom mission that the disciples and us are called to. Rather than focusing on the are we there yet? Can you please come back now? Instead, it's a call to notice the kingdom that God is bringing in them, through them, and around them.

The end is secure. Jesus is ascended. He is going to come back again, and he's going to restore all things.

And he reigns now, and in the meantime, before he comes back again, their call is to proclaim the message, and more importantly, to notice where the kingdom is coming in their lives, and in the world, and in the lives of others. And noticing that is actually part of the proclamation. When you can notice it and name it, this is part of the work of the kingdom mission.

So Jesus ascends to reign, and the story of Acts is all about what Jesus continues to do and teach. And this is the story that's continuing and written into the life of the church through the centuries. I was actually thinking about this.

This is the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. This is how, you know, if we look back at the last 1700 years, we are seeing the work of the Holy Spirit writing out this story of the Acts of Jesus in the church. And as you consider your own story, what work has God done in your story to redeem what's broken? And so looking at those things that are broken, and seeing how God has redeemed them, those are miraculous breaking in of the kingdom of God.

Those are the places where heaven and earth get joined together, where you start to see Jesus's rule, and his reign, and his lordship. The point of being saved, when we hear that language, it's often loaded. It's not to go somewhere someday.

That's not usually how the Bible talks about being saved. Again, because heaven's not a geographic place out in the sky. It's to be joined to the new creation work that Christ is doing as he is Lord of all things.

It's seen in the freedom that we have from sin, or that we're experiencing from sin, even for the first time. It's experienced in the changed ways of thinking that we have, the behaviors that change, the breaking of generational trauma, of generational sin, the restoring of broken relationships, broken selves, patterns of speech. All of these things are where heaven breaks in, and we see Jesus's rule and reign as king.

So I want to encourage us to make time for contemplation and stillness, to reimagine how the world has sown in corruption, but how God is going to reap in corruption from that, as the Bible says. There's a passage that I really love from C.S. Lewis in a book called Letters to Malcolm, and he describes memory and reality in this passage, in the new heavens and the new earth. What's the relationship between memory and reality? What happens now in our lives should be framed by the reality of what will be later, and so as he's talking to his imaginary friends in these letters, he says, this is a quote, I can now communicate to you the vanished fields of my boyhood.

They are building estates today, only imperfectly by words. Perhaps the day is coming when I can take you for a walk through them. In other words, the reality of what will be restored is different than his memory, and the memory of what will be restored should reframe what's now broken and what's in need of redemption.

And so again, today we celebrate Jesus as Ascendant. He rules and he reigns as King over all and Lord, and our call is to carry on with the disciples these words in the works of Jesus until he comes again to restore all things ultimately. So we don't need to waste time or effort concerning ourselves with when he comes, but resting in the certainty that he will indeed restore all things, and then we're to engage with him in this work of restoring creation and discovering heaven in the daily earthly experiences that we have.

And that requires us taking time to wonder and notice what God's doing as we serve one another like Christ, and we cultivate incorruptible things from what's been sown in corruption. So make space, like a child in a car ride, to be mesmerized by God's work in your hearts, and in the hearts of others, those who you live with, those who are around you, be mesmerized at the kingdom work that Jesus is doing, because Jesus is Ascended not to abandon the world, but to rule and to reign and to make all things new. Let me pray for us.

O God of peace who has taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and confidence shall be our strength. By the might of your Spirit lift us, we pray, to your presence, where we may be still and know that you are God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited by the Author.

Rogationtide: Holy Work in Ordinary Ministers

TranscriptioN

Well, good morning again, everybody. It is good to see you. I forgot to introduce myself earlier. I'm Father Morgan Reed.

I'm the vicar here at Corpus Christi Anglican Church, and if you're new to Anglicanism, that's like a senior pastor of a mission church because we are very much a church in formation. But I am grateful that you're here this day, this Memorial Day weekend, but also this special day in our calendars, the last Sunday of Easter before we get to the ascension of Jesus. And this is called Rogation Sunday, which means tomorrow, Tuesday, and Wednesday are this little season called Rogationtide.

These Rogation Days, we celebrate before the ascension of Jesus into heaven, and the focus is twofold. First, it's on the goodness of God's gifts to us through his creation, and then second, it points us to the ways that our earthly labors are made holy because Jesus made labor holy. And that doesn't mean paid labor.

That means anything that you put your hands to do is made holy. And so I want to look at this passage today from the book of Acts through the frame of Rogation Sunday as we encounter Paul and Barnabas preaching for the first time to a pagan community that had no Jewish background at all in the book of Acts. And I think in this passage, what we see in Paul and Barnabas is an encouragement for us to see the works of our hands as an invitation for us and for others to discover the works of Jesus.

So our works, the things that God has for us to do, are an invitation to help others and ourselves see the work of Jesus. As we look at this passage, I'm going to pray for us, the collect for Rogation Days. Almighty God, whose Son, Jesus Christ, in his earthly life shared our toil and hallowed our labor, be present with your people where they work.

Make those who carry on the industries and commerce of this land responsible to your will, and give us all a right satisfaction in what we do, and a just return for our labor through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. So in our passage today, we encounter St. Paul, St. Barnabas.

Barnabas seems to be a little older, and they're on their first missionary journey together, traveling, bringing the gospel to the nations. They have just been, we didn't read this passage, they were just pushed out of Iconium, which is a place in southern Turkey, to another place in southern Turkey, two cities named Lystra and Derby, which are two cities in this region called Laconia. And while they're there, there's a man that they encounter who couldn't walk from his birth, and he was listening to Paul teach. 

And Paul, as he's teaching, sees this man, notices him, and he notices about him that he has faith to be healed, whatever that means in the context of a pagan Gentile who has no Jewish background. Paul notices this about this man, and he says to him, stand on your feet, get up. And immediately this man stands on his feet.

And so Paul and Barnabas are carrying on their labor that God's called them to do in an insignificant town to a person that we never learned his name. He's a crippled person, sort of a, he's probably a figure in their city, everybody kind of knows who he is. But God does something significant in this nameless person in a small town, in the overarching story of the kingdom of God and where it's moving.

It's a paradigm shift, where now Gentiles aren't first Jews before they hear the message of this Messiah Jesus. These Gentiles with no Jewish background whatsoever are hearing about the good news that has taken place in the Messiah. And the healing of this man is significant as a shift in the story where this is going to take place.

And even though Paul and Barnabas in this story, we would call them missionaries, I want to suggest that the work that God's given us to do in our different seasons of life, whether it's paid or unpaid, is equally important, equally as spiritual, and equally ministry. And I brought something for the kids to see, and for the adults, and to smell. You guys can pass around and smell it.

This is great. What what is this, kids? You can say, shout it out. Yes, good, good observation.

This is coffee, and it smells so good. So I'm going to pass this around because I want you to experience some of the joy and the sense of salvation. So that is coffee, and it's not just coffee, though.

It is a way to discover Jesus. That was the answer I was looking for. But it is indeed a way to discover Jesus.

Each time we're in the office, you know, my son, he'll brew a cup of coffee for me, and I love the coffee that he makes, and I hug him with gratitude, and I express my gratitude. And there is something of love in the action of doing this, and the beans make this possible. Every time I drink a cup of it, my hands are freed up to think because I'm a fidgeter, and I can meditate on the good things around me.

Every time I brew a cup, I can make some for somebody else if I brew a whole pot of it. And in those conversations, we discover the workings of God in ourselves, and I discover it in them, and vice versa. And so, yes, it's coffee, and it's so much more.

It is a sacred window into the mysterious workings of God. Now, it's not just true of coffee. It is true of everything that we put our hands to do.

My life just revolves, I actually literally have to make my schedule around how much caffeine I'm going to take in with people, so I have tea meetings with some people, coffee latte meetings, depending, so I have to chart my caffeine intake during the day. But either way, it is a window to the New Jerusalem, as is your labor. And so, you know, the thing is that we often don't think about, and why I love Rogation Sunday to be in our church calendar, is that life isn't broken up into secular versus sacred.

But as C.S. Lewis says in some place, I can't remember, he says, life is actually split up into religious versus irreligious. And so, even for a clergy person, the church, and working in the context of the church, should never be something that causes the neglect of the family, or even neglecting my literal neighbors in my literal neighborhood, because somehow church work is seen more valuable than another one, right? They're just different stewardships, different priorities, but one is not more spiritual or more sacred than another. Everything created is sacred in the kingdom of God, in this world, and so our task is to cultivate what is good, true, and beautiful in the good things that God's made.

So St. Paul might be a trailblazer in this passage, but his end goal in doing all this missionary work is to establish communities, to build up the church, to make little outposts of the kingdom of God that don't rely on him to be there anymore. And that's why, when we read his letters, he says in Ephesians chapter 4, God had granted that some be apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. And anybody know why? Anybody know the last part of that verse? To do what? Building up the church to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. 

You know the work of the ministry is not my job, it's yours. I'm just here to help you do it, right? And so this is a really helpful thing to think about on this Rogation Sundays. The ways that you shape your calendar, the things that you put your hands to do, these are opportunities to show the justice and mercy of God, to honor the image of God in another person, to hear some of the words of God from another person, to recognize brokenness and offer an alternative kingdom counter-narrative to what they're walking through.

And no matter what God's called you to do, this could be paid or unpaid, could be child rearing, could be grandparenting, could be real estate, could be social advocacy, teaching, military service, gardening, woodworking, making meals, or a combination of vocations. One's never truly retired in the kingdom of God, one just changes vocations. And so kids, this applies to you too, as you play, create, discover things, this is the work that God has for you where you discover the kingdom of God through very earthly means.

The earthly means matter, our bodies matter. So the work of Jesus continues through our work, the work of our hands, the thought life, the hearts, the words, these are the means by which people discover the goodness of Jesus in us and through us. And so our work points others to Jesus, it's the first point. 

And second, as you work, make sure to listen. Listen as you're working. When the crowds heard about this thing that Paul and Barnabas had done, they thought that Barnabas had to have been Zeus, the head of the Pantheon, which probably tells you that he's a little bit older than Paul, and Paul is the main speaker, so they think Paul is the chief god Hermes, the messenger god.

This is a common thing, their government systems, their municipalities are built around the religious system, and so to anger the gods will have bad results on your city, and so they want to, they can't believe that the gods would bless their small town with their presence in this miracle, and so not to offend the gods, who were pretty capricious and fragile, kind of like human beings, they wanted to properly thank the deities for their blessings and their presence just showing up, and so they don't want the gods to be offended. And Paul and Barnabas start to hear what's happening, that there's a temple that's dedicated to Zeus, the priest over there says, let's get everybody in the town to make sacrifices, and Paul and Barnabas tear their garments, which is a Jewish sign that blasphemy has occurred. So note, I think it's really important that for them the means are as important as the ends.

It could have been easy to take advantage of the gullibility of this small town, you know, they just got kicked out of somewhere, and so they're probably hurt and tired, they're wondering how this is going to go, they get a little taste of success all of a sudden, and they might think to themselves or be tempted to think, you know, after being kicked out of the last place, this must be a sign of God's favor, let's just ride this wave for a little bit, stay comfortable, eventually we'll get to the truth, we don't need to rock the boat, right? That's letting ends justify the means. But underneath it all, the means are as important as the ends. The goal is pointing people to Jesus, they are process-oriented, everything they do is done to point people to Jesus, not themselves or their own greatness.

Obviously Paul was talented, they thought he was a god, but that's not the point, he wants to point people to Jesus. Because of that, the means are as important as the end. And our labor, the things that we put our hands to, is a way of helping others see Jesus Christ's character and his work.

It's not a means of establishing wealth or comfort or ease or securing power or influence. Power or influence happen, right? That happens to people, and it's a responsibility to steward, it's not something to seek after. Wealth and comfort and ease, similarly, these are never promised to the Christian.

They might happen, but they might not, and they're only going to happen for a time, and they're being taken away, this is not God's sign of disfavor, it's never promised. But Paul and Barnabas, they hear what's going on, they start to put the pieces together of what the townspeople are thinking about the gods, and they've needed to pay attention before they can connect the dots of how their labor and the work of Christ can be given, and how to package that for these people to take what's true and false in their narratives and shepherd them into what is good and right and holy. And what I think is interesting is there is somewhat of a blessing.

So Paul and Barnabas bless the good desire of these people, and they can name some goodness by God's common grace, and then there is a gentle shepherding away from what is not good for them. So they bless what it's good, they shepherd them towards what needs to be redeemed. So our work points others to Jesus, and we need to listen well before we offer the kingdom to people in a way that they can handle.

And finally, words have to accompany our work as we help people sort through what's true and what's false. Paul and Barnabas challenge the crowds, and they say, why are you doing this? And they tell the crowds, we are people, we're more mortals, just like you. And so they start with where the crowd is at.

They recognize their beliefs, they bless the good thing they desire to do, but they say ultimately there's something flawed here, and they challenge them to turn away from worthless things that won't profit them, and turn towards the living God. Now who is this living God? They don't know yet. This is sort of a foreshadowing of Acts 17 with other pagans in a different group, but they don't know who this is yet.

It is very human to want well-being and prosperity, but the faith of the town is misplaced, and so Paul and Barnabas are emphatically, but they are tenderly, starting with what this town knows, to work towards what they don't yet know. Blessing and shepherding. And so now that Paul and Barnabas have earned the right to be heard in their deeds, they use that platform to offer words of truth and hope.

 They tell the crowds about the living God. This is the God who made heaven and earth. In other words, the earth is not deified, the moon is not a god, the Sun is not a god.

This is the God who has made the unseen, the invisible, and the visible. And he tells them for a time God had allowed them to go along in their ignorance, but even in their time of ignorance, God still showed them his goodness, because they were harvesting food. So as they were working with their hands, the labor they were doing was showing them the goodness of God.

God provided for them food, and he filled their hearts with joy. So even the joy that they experienced at a very human level is a gift from God, and those graces are truly common grace, and up to this time they had been misattributing where those came from. So Paul blesses the goodness that they know, and he uses what they know to point them to the God who's given them this thing.

Now, the question can be asked, in Paul's labor here, was he successful? Was he successful? It's your question, what do you guys think? Yes or no? I see some nods, yeah, he was. Well, the next couple of verses mention that the Jews come from Pisidi and Antioch, which we talked about a few weeks ago, and the Jews come from Iconium, where they had just been kicked out. And then they turn the crowds against Paul, and then they stone him, and they drag him out of the city, and everyone thinks he's dead.

That's success. And then the disciples, they come and they surround Paul, presumably to grieve the loss of their friend. Like, it's a tragedy.

And then, by God's power, Paul miraculously gets up. And then him and Barnabas go to the next city of Derbe to keep going. We don't see any of the fruit of Paul's labors here in this chapter.

So while none of us here that I know of have been persecuted to the point of bloodshed, it is the case that doing our work now unto the Lord might risk us being misunderstood, might risk us being cast out, not seeing the fruit of our hard work, even when that work has taken decades. And that's really hard. That can still be successful in the kingdom of God.

The success of Paul's labor wasn't measured in the number of conversions, the number of churches planted, the amount of money raised. It's his faithfulness to point people to Jesus as he follows God in the work that God's called him to do, whatever that is. And so the success comes because God is the one who brings the growth, not St. Paul.

Paul's job is to be faithful with the work God's called him to do. And I find it, and maybe I'm alone in this, but if you're like me, it is so hard to be open-handed and internally okay with the idea that others are going to inherit the labor that we've poured into, right? I want the satisfaction of a job well done. I want people to praise me for the goodness of the thing that I accomplished.

But to be open-handed and to be open to the idea and internally okay with someone else is going to build off what I did, and they're probably going to do it way better than I did. And to like rejoice in that is really hard, especially when things feel unfinished. And yet this is the work of pointing people to Jesus.

It's realizing that every sports team you coach, each moment you have with your kids or your friends, each book or article that you work on and you publish, each team you manage at your work, every document that you work on is probably going to be forgotten in the next hundred years. And if the document's not forgotten or if the acts are forgotten, like they're not going to know you in a hundred years or your contribution to that thing. And so even though that work is going to be forgotten, these are the little labors along the way that are building something like an implicit memory for generations to come that Jesus is good and true and safe and kind.

Try to think of how to explain that. So like as you are working, even though the labor and you and your memory and your name might be forgotten, the ways that you're investing in the people now that God's called you to be around are the little things that generations to come will feel and will know the goodness of Jesus whether or not they attribute it to you. And as the world discovers new ways to distort and confuse God's goodness and love, you and I are cultivating the goodness of the gospel that other people have planted.

We don't know who's sown in us. Maybe we do. But there are people that we don't yet know because there were people who sowed in the people who sowed in us, right? And we are sowing seeds through our labors for generations to come to cultivate.

And so I want to invite us this morning to see all the parts of our lives as sacred. You all are professional ministers. All of you.

Find some things this week that symbolize your work and pray over those things. Bless them in God's name during the days of rogation. I already mentioned coffee.

There are many prayers that happen around coffee. I was thinking for me I've got like a Syriac Bible that symbolizes part of my work. My book of common prayer. Cooking utensils. Ways that I might help people through making a meal or something. And a baseball glove that is part of my season of life right now.

And so what is it for you as you think of the things that sort of symbolize the work that God's called you to at this moment, paid or unpaid, what is that thing you can hold in your hand on rogation tide Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and say, Lord bless this. Make this a vehicle of your kingdom. May I see the goodness of new creation in this very simple earthly embodied work.

So take time to notice and delight in the work that God's given you to do. Kids, that includes you too. Our work is an invitation to see the work of Jesus.

Point people to Jesus. Help them reimagine their world as holy. And then listen to others and recognize what's true and what's false and help shepherd them to name what is good and the things that are in need of redemption.

I want to pray for us as we close a very short and simple prayer, but to highlight that this is a prayer we pray every Sunday in the Eucharist. So I'm gonna pray it for us now. And now, Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do.

To love and serve you as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord. Amen.

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited by the Author.

Fourth Sunday of Easter (Good Shepherd Sunday): The Shepherd-King and His New Temple

TranscriptioN

Good morning. It is good to see you all this morning. This is, as I mentioned, the fourth Sunday in Easter, which is Good Shepherd Sunday, and on this Sunday we celebrate the thing that Stephen read for us in Revelation chapter 7, that the Lamb is at the center of the throne, and he will be their shepherd. And each of the passages today that we read have something to do with this pastoral shepherding image of God in Christ.

So Christ is the shepherd and the king. And what might feel like an outlier among those different passages are the ones that we're gonna, is the one we're gonna talk about today, which is from the Book of Acts. And the Book of Acts supplants the Old Testament reading for a few more weeks. 

We often suspend the Old Testament reading in Eastertide to hear through the Book of Acts how the resurrected Christ is continuing his ministry through the apostles in the church, the body of Christ. And so this morning I want to look at the way that the shepherd leads us through three images. First is the temple, second is the proclamation, and then the third is the embracing of faith.

And as we look at this passage in the Book of Acts this morning, let me pray for us. “In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. O God, grant that we may desire you, and desiring you, seek you, and seeking you, find you. In finding you, be satisfied in you forever. Amen.”

The Temple

As we look through the Book of Acts, the Acts of the Apostles, we see the kingdom work of Jesus being continued through the ministry of Jesus' apostles. Chapter 12, which just happened right before what we read today, ended with this something that was recorded also outside the Bible in the writings of Josephus, a historian. Herod gets up to make a speech, and he makes himself like a god.

And right after this speech, he dies, both in the Book of Acts and in Josephus. And so in the Book of Acts, what we find is this thesis that comes through very strongly often, that Caesar is Lord, Caesar is not Lord. Sorry, let's try that again.

The thesis here is that Caesar is not Lord, which again, in the person of Herod, Herod is not Lord. Jesus alone is Lord. And the gospel, this proclamation that Jesus is Lord, will not be stopped.

And so Acts 12:24, right after the death of Herod, has this really terse little phrase, but the Word of God increased and multiplied, which several scholars have pointed out is mirroring the language of the Greek Old Testament, so the Greek book of Genesis, when it talks about humanity being fruitful and multiplying and filling the earth. It's the same verbiage here, that the Word of God is now multiplying and filling the earth, being fruitful and multiplying. And so what we see here is that the gospel is going out through the apostles, and it is bringing a new creation to humanity and to creation, the old creation.

God won't be mocked, and most importantly, he won't be stopped. And so this is the setup at the end of chapter 12 for St. Paul's first missionary journey. He goes to the church in Antioch of Syria, him and Barnabas are there, and they're going to be sent out to bring this gospel to the peoples at the farthest corners of the Roman Empire, and the church in Antioch in Syria lay hands on them and send them out to preach.

They go to Cyprus first, and then they go to several places that are in now southern Turkey. They end up in another city called Antioch. There were a lot of Antiochs.

This one is called Pisidian Antioch, a city in southern what is now Turkey. And one of the major themes in this book of Acts that you find as you read over and over is that God is building a new temple outside Jerusalem, outside the structures that they're used to. God is building a new temple.

In the Old Testament, the temple mimicked and pointed to the Garden of Eden, the place where God dwells and people can dwell with him. It's the place where people meet God, right? This is what the temple is. And in John's gospel and in other places, Jesus starts to reframe what the temple is.

You know, as he talks about, if you destroy this temple, I will rebuild it in three days. John adds this commentary about he was speaking of the temple of his body. And Jesus then is a new temple.

And then the story of Acts is that God is coming to abide in a people, the body of Christ, as the temple, the church. So what's interesting is that not only are Jews included in this temple, but also Samaritans who have their own temple in Mount Gerizim and eunuchs and Gentiles who would have been excluded from temple worship. People who have never entered the temple, who could have never encountered that place where heaven meets earth and the paradise of God are now being made into the temple where heaven meets earth and people encounter the paradise of God.

Men, women, slave, free, Jew, Samaritan, Gentile, young and old are all becoming the body of Christ, the place where heaven meets earth, where the resurrection of Jesus is experienced, where new creation work is the good news that Jesus is the risen Lord. And this is the place, the people from which the gospel is being fruitful and multiplying and filling the earth. So understanding that we are being made into a temple, the dwelling place of this good Shepherd King, helps us frame how meeting God in the fellowship of Jesus and his followers gives us a window into paradise for which we were made, where Jesus leads us to new creation, where he leads us to still waters, wide places, the power of the resurrection, where our wounds will find their redemption.

The Proclamation

And this is the message that St. Paul is bringing to the Jews in Pisidi and Antioch. So we've looked at the temple, now we're looking at the proclamation. Paul and Barnabas go to attend a synagogue.

This is where they normally begin their preaching in different places, where they're sharing the news that Jesus is Lord. And while they're there, someone reads from the law and the prophets, which is very typical in a Jewish liturgy, and the leader of the liturgy asks them for any words of encouragement they might have. And what follows in this passage is a beautiful homily from St. Paul, walking this group through what God has done in these promises and fulfillments throughout Scripture, and for them now too.

He addressed the men of Israel, who are presumably a diverse group of Jews who comprise the Jews that are in Pisidi and Antioch, and then he addresses the God-fearers, which is a term for Gentiles, who have renounced their paganism and are proselytes or converts to Judaism. And so St. Paul walks them through the deliverance of Israel from Egypt, he walks them through God's patience with Israel in the wilderness, giving Israel a land to inherit, he walks them through the period of leadership that leads up to King David, and then he says of this man's offspring, referring to David, God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, as he promised. And so this one from the line of David is the one that everybody has been waiting for, this is the person of Jesus Christ.

So then Paul tells them about John the Baptizer, which I find interesting because Paul wasn't really following Jesus back during Jesus's public ministry, much less John the Baptist, but John the Baptist must have been a really influential person amongst the Jews who, here in southern Turkey now, these Jews from all over the place know about John the Baptizer. And he talks about how John the Baptist pointed to Jesus, and then he also talks about how Jesus's rejection by Jerusalem's leadership, Pilate's approval of Jesus's execution, and then Jesus being laid in the tomb, were all part of God's promises and fulfillment. That God had promised this, he was making good on his promise.

And more importantly, where he's going with this for the community, is that Jesus was raised from the dead, and he made appearances to eyewitnesses, and he's there to tell them that this good news that God had promised to their fathers is now fulfilled to them, who are God's children, by raising Jesus from the dead. And if God can raise Jesus from the dead, then he can free us from the bonds of sin and death that so easily draw us away from the love of God to spiritual death. And those are the things that the law of Moses couldn't deliver us from.

And the good news for these Jews and proselytes is that if they embrace this message that Jesus has risen from the dead, that he is Lord and there is no other, then God is going to fulfill his promises to them to bring them into this new covenant community that had been looked forward to all throughout the Old Testament, which in their day was the Bible. There was no New Testament back then. And so they could become the place where God dwells.

They could become the temple where resurrection happens, where God's good shepherding is experienced in the lives of each other, and where people are finding rest for their souls. And so God's tender shepherding is experienced in the body of Christ because that's where God's presence dwells, where we discover God's presence, and where we're led to streams, where we're led to pasture, where he wipes away the tears from our eyes. It's done in the body of Christ, in the community of faith, first to show us of the ultimate reality that we look forward to, where all things are brought under the rule and reign of King Jesus, our good shepherd.

A Life of Faith

But we experience it now in the body of the church. And we've looked, so now we've looked at the temple, we've looked at the proclamation, and the ways that the good shepherd leads us, and now let's look at a life of faith, embracing that faith. This has to be good news for us first before it's good news for other people. 

If you think back to Paul's day, the Emperor had declared themselves Lord. The Emperor was a deity. And so it's stunning when you read Acts chapter 4 and you find Peter's sermon where he says, salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given by which mankind must be saved.

There's no other name Caesar cannot deliver, no political candidate can deliver, no perfect career can deliver, not the right house, not the right life circumstances, not a particular household structure, or just enough income can deliver. Nothing can deliver us from the things that draw us from the love of God except Jesus Christ alone. And so we acknowledge that yes, there are certain circumstances that will put you into life scenarios where you experience better earthly welfare than others, but none of those things can deliver us from what draws us away from the love of God, what distorts our loves, and what keeps us from seeing Jesus Christ fully and ourselves fully, except for Jesus Christ alone, him crucified and resurrected and ascended.

So discovering Jesus, having this gospel, this proclamation be the good news continues now as it did in the book of Acts through what the Apostles and the disciples did then, which is devoting ourselves to the Apostles teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and the prayers. We're not doing anything innovative. This is exactly what we do today because we believe that in it we will discover the resurrected Christ in one another.

And so someone the other day, it was interesting, I get this question a lot, but they asked, how is the church doing? They wanted to hear, you know, how's the church planting process going? And usually when people ask that, either they want to know about attendance and cash, or the temptation is to talk about attendance and cash. But I stopped and I asked, how is the church doing? And so when I answered this person, it felt holy and encouraging to my own spirit because I was reflecting on each one of you, because I know you. You know, we have coffee, I pray for you, I know you one-on-one, and you know each other.

And so I was thinking about how to answer this, and I mentioned to this person about a praise about the redemption that I'm seeing in community. Because I see people getting together. I see people who are longing to be baptized or confirmed, who long for a closer relationship with Jesus, who are growing into a deep sense of belonging into this community.

And because they belong, they feel that felt sense of belonging in community, they're growing in the knowledge of how much Jesus loves them, because they experience it in somebody else. There are people who are wrestling through, how do I forgive this person who I haven't forgiven? How do I show God's love to my children, become a better parent or spouse? How do I become more like Jesus to others around me? And I'm so grateful for the ways that, as I think about our church, people are serving one another, they're staying connected with one another, they're honest and vulnerable about sharing their struggles and joys with one another, and praying for one another. Like, you know that you can be undone when you come in, and that's a great culture to have.

Because I'm that way, so you can too. I was grateful thinking about our formation group last week, as the kids were playing together, and they're learning to delight in one another, in the friendships that they're making, they're learning important lessons about sharing, forgiveness, and kindness, and they're watching the adults pray together, and they're seeing the values without us having to tell them what we value. So I love how intergenerational things are.

So I can see, when I look at you, when I look at these groups, and the formation groups, as I get to know each one of you, I can really see how this is a temple of God, where heaven meets earth, and we experience the risen Christ in community. And so that's how this church is doing. Praise the Lord, that's how this church is doing.

As you think on your own story this morning, think about, there's three questions that I've been thinking about this week that I want to just hand to you as well. What has Jesus delivered you from? Where have you experienced redemption? What has Jesus delivered you from? What is he currently delivering you from? What do you long for him to deliver you from? These are important questions when we're getting to know the Good Shepherd. What has he delivered us from? What is he delivering us from? What do we long for him to deliver us from? And then carving out time to pray through those things, individually and as a community.

This is the work of the Apostles in the book of Acts, where God's gospel is being fruitful and multiplying and filling the earth. That's how it's done, one heart at a time. And the gospel is true, and because it's true, it's also good.

And that's really important. When the goodness of the gospel has touched our hearts, as we're led by this goodness and the kindness of our tender shepherd, we can start praying about the people that we encounter, who needs to hear about the goodness of their Good Shepherd, and how might we share our story with them. Or instead of having a posture of telling, maybe even better is to have a posture of listening, and pray about how we might best listen to somebody's story as they share.

To come with curiosity and kindness to enter into their story with them, to invite them to get to know the goodness of this Good Shepherd that we know to be good, first for ourselves, and then help them to get to know his goodness for themselves. So this morning we've looked at the ways the shepherd leads us into the image of becoming the new temple, through Paul's proclamation of the gospel, and embracing this faith for ourselves, so it is also good for others. And on this Good Shepherd Sunday, we look forward to the end, where we read in Revelation, we get to spend a lot of time in Revelation over the next few weeks, where God's throne, the worship around God's throne, we join this with the saints, where the lamb is in the midst of the throne, and he is the Good Shepherd.

He's the one who leads us to still pastures, great stars, still waters, and green pastures. He's the one who dries our tears. He's the one who restores our souls, who redeems our wounds, and we practice this in the church, which is true in heaven.

Looking forward to the day where the body of Christ, the temple, we see in full of what is in part now. We come to know the redemption that Jesus brings in the hope of the resurrection by discovering his love in the fellowship of the saints. This is why the church is so important.

And by continuing in this long line of saints who are devoting themselves to the Apostles' teaching, the fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers, we journey with Jesus in this pilgrimage of naming what's broken, the things that we're bound to, so that we might be free to live in the new life that's found in Jesus's resurrection. And discovering the goodness of the resurrected Jesus and naming this for others and with others is how the Let me pray for us. Almighty and everlasting God, you govern all things in heaven and on earth.

Mercifully hear our prayers and grant that in this church the pure word of God may be preached and the sacraments duly administered. Strengthen and confirm the faithful, protect and guide the children, visit and relieve the sick, turn and soften the wicked, arouse the careless, recover the fallen, restore the penitent, remove all hindrances to the advancement of your truth, and bring us all to be of one heart and mind within your holy church, to the honor and glory of your name, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited by the author.

Easter Sunday: Melito of Sardis — On Pascha

TranscriptioN

Introduction

Well, good morning again. It is good to be with you on this Easter morning. And I'm Father Morgan Reed. I'm the vicar here at Corpus Christi Anglican Church.

It has been a full week. Just last Sunday, we were celebrating Palm Sunday, if you can remember all the way back to last Sunday. And then we celebrated the Lord instituting the Eucharist on Maundy Thursday, His death on the cross on Good Friday.

And last night, we started in the darkness of the tomb in the great vigil of Easter and made our way to the resurrection together. And we celebrate the resurrection again this morning. It has been a really good, good and full week.

And one of our values of this church that we talk about is wanting to live out the church's tradition. And we're gonna do something this morning I haven't done before, which is that I'm going to help us to get to know someone in the church's tradition. One of the ways that we live out church tradition is by getting to know the mothers and the fathers of the faith that have gone before us.

So this morning for our Easter homily, I'm going to read us a historic homily. This is from a famous bishop in the year who died in the year 190, so the second century. His name was Melito, M-E-L-I-T-O.

So kids, if you're taking notes, you can write down Bishop Melito. He was the Bishop of Sardis, which is today Sart in Turkey. And this city was one of the cities, you'll remember from the book of Revelation, John had written to seven churches.

This is one of the churches that John the Apostle had written to. This was the center of Jewish civilization in Roman Asia. And so Melito, he was actually Jewish by birth at some point, he became a follower of Christ.

Like I said, he died around 190, within one century of the Apostle John having died. And so it's easy to imagine that maybe Bishop Melito's forerunner was the bishop that the Apostle John wrote to. These are the friends of the Apostles, the second generation.

This is an 1800 year old sermon. And Melito is from an ancient group called the Quartodecimans, it's a fancy word. That word means that they celebrated the passion and the resurrection of Jesus in the same liturgy together on the 14th day of the Hebrew month of Nisan, which is the first day of Passover.

Passover, פֶסַח in Hebrew, is transliterated into Greek as πασχα. So if you've ever heard the word Pascha, it comes from Hebrew Pesach, meaning Passover. To this day in the Orthodox tradition, they still call it Pascha, they don't use the word Easter.

And so the Quartodecimans that Melito is part of would celebrate this Paschal festival on the 14th of Nisan, connecting the Passover lamb with Jesus and what he has done for all of humanity, whether or not the 14th of Nisan was on a Sunday, kind of like we do with Christmas and Jesus's birth. Exodus 12 was part of their liturgy, so they would read the Passover texts together, and the events of the Passover were interpreted as a type of the saving acts of God through all of Scripture, culminating in the work of Jesus. And one helpful cultural note that I want to make, in case this isn't familiar to you, is how deeply entrenched Christianity was in Jewish ritual in the second century.

You can feel, when you hear Melito's words, you can feel the Passover Seder behind it, as the text for Melito. And he's going to refer to Christ as the coming one. Also, whenever I say the coming one in this sermon, there's a Greek word, in case you can write this down, Afikomenos.

Can you say that with me? Afikomenos! All right, it's an important word. There's a Jewish tradition in the Passover Seder of breaking off part of the main bread and hiding it somewhere in the room, and that broken piece of bread is called the Afikomen. And in modern Judaism, it's kind of like a kid's game to find the Afikomen somewhere in the room by the end of the night, and according to some scholars, then the Afikomen was originally this reminder that the Messiah is coming.

We don't know where he is, we don't know when he's coming, but he will come. And so it's a good reminder that as we hear Melito's hymn, and you hear the coming one, his Greek word there is Afikomenos. It's a play on words with the Passover liturgy in Judaism.

And so you can think of that little morsel of matzah, when you hear it, being found by a child by the end of the Seder, and with a smile on their face, they're declaring, “I found it!” Right? That's what the coming one means. So this might just be what Melito wants us to feel when we think of Jesus as the coming Messiah, the one who rose from the dead for us. Now I realize it can be challenging to listen to an old homily.

It's not something that we're attuned to doing, but it's also really helpful because it reminds us that we belong to the body of Christ, this body that has been begun in the work of Jesus and has been going for over 1,800 years. We're rooting ourselves in an ancient tradition. It gets us out of some of the anxieties of the cultural moment, and it invites us to see things more clearly, and to be more rooted into the tradition of the church.

If something goes over your head, it's okay. Just let it go and keep listening. That's okay.

You can go back and listen to this, or if you want to get the book yourself, the book that I'm reading from is Alistair Stewart's translation of On Pascha: Melito of Sardis. So we'll take a moment, and then we'll begin. God, in the beginning, having made the heaven and the earth, and all in them through the word, formed humanity from the earth and shared his own breath.

Homily on Pascha

“He sent him in the garden in the east, in Eden, there to rejoice. There he laid down for him the law through his commandment. Eat food from all the trees in the garden, yet eat not from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

On the day that you eat it, you shall die. The man was susceptible by nature of good and evil, as a clod of earth may receive seed of either kind. And he consented to the wicked and seductive counselor, and stretched out for the tree, and broke the commandment, and disobeyed God.

For this he was thrown out into the world, condemned as though to prison. Strange and terrible was the destruction of people on earth, for these things attended to them. They were grasped by tyrannical sin, and they were led to the land of sensuality, where they were swamped in unsatisfying pleasures, by adultery, by lust, by love of money, by murder, by the shedding of blood, by the tyranny of evil, by the tyranny of lawlessness.

And sin rejoiced in all of this, working together with death, making forays into human souls, and preparing the bodies of the dead as his food. Sin had set his sign on everyone, and those on whom he etched his mark were doomed to death. All flesh fell under sin, and every body under death, and every soul was plucked from its dwelling of flesh, and that which was taken from the dust was reduced to the dust, and the gift of God was locked away in Hades.

What was marvelously knit together was unraveled, and the beautiful body divided. Humanity was doled out by death, for a strange disaster and captivity surrounded him. He was dragged off a captive under the shadow of death, and the father's image was left desolate.

For this reason is the paschal mystery completed in the body of the Lord. Thus the mystery of the Lord, prefigured from of old through the vision of a type, is today fulfilled and has found faith, even though people think it's something new. For the mystery of the Lord is both new and old.

Old with respect to the law, but new with respect to grace. But if you scrutinize the type through its outcome, you will discern him. This is the one who comes from heaven on to the earth by means of the suffering one, and wraps himself in the suffering one by means of a virgin, a womb, and carries forth a human being.

He accepted the suffering of the suffering one through suffering in a body which could suffer, and set free the flesh from suffering. Through the spirit which cannot die, he slew the manslayer, death. This is the Pascha of our salvation.

This is the one who in many people endured many things. This is the one who was murdered in Abel, tied up in Isaac, exiled in Jacob, sold in Joseph, exposed in Moses, slaughtered in the lamb, hunted down in David, dishonored in the prophets. This is the one made flesh in a virgin who was hanged on a tree, who was buried in the earth, who was raised from the dead, who was exalted to the heights of heaven. 

Listen, all of you families of the nations, and see a strange death has occurred in the middle of Jerusalem, in the city of the law, in the city of the Hebrews, in the city of the prophets, in the city reckoned righteous. And so he is lifted up on a tall tree, and a placard is attached to show who has been killed. Who is it? Well, to say is hard, and not to say is more fearful.

So listen, then, shuddering at him through whom the earth shook. He who hung the earth is hanging. He who fixed the heavens in place has been fixed in place.

He who laid the foundations of the universe has been laid on a tree. The master has been profaned. God has been killed.

The king of Israel has been destroyed by an Israelite right hand. Oh, mystifying death! Oh, mystifying injustice! The master is obscured by his body exposed, and is not held worthy of a veil to shield him from view. And for this reason the great lights turned away, and the day was turned into darkness to hide the one who was stripped on the tree, obscuring not the body of the Lord, but human eyes.

For when the people didn't tremble, the earth shook. When the people didn't fear, the heavens were afraid. When the people didn't rend their garments, the angel rent his own.

When the people didn't lament, the Lord thundered from heaven, and the Most High gave his voice. The Lord clothed himself with humanity, and with suffering on behalf of the suffering one, and bound on behalf of the one constrained, and judged on behalf of the one convicted, and buried on behalf of the one entombed. He rose from the dead, and cried aloud, who will take issue with me? Let him stand before me.

I set free the condemned. I give life to the dead. I raise up the entombed.

Who will contradict me?

It is I, says the Christ, I am the one who destroys death, and triumphs over the enemy, and crushes Hades, and binds the strong man, and bears humanity off to the heavenly heights. It is I, says the Christ. So come, all of you families of people adulterated with sin, and receive forgiveness of sins.

For I am your freedom. I am the Passover of your salvation. I am the lamb slaughtered for you.

I am your ransom. I am your life. I am your light.

I am your salvation. I am your resurrection. I am your king.

I shall raise you up by my right hand. I will lead you to the heights of heaven. There I shall show you the everlasting Father.

He it is who made heavens and the earth, and formed humanity in the beginning, who proclaimed through the law and the prophets, who took flesh from a virgin, who was hung on a tree, who was buried in the earth, who was raised from the dead, and ascended to the heights of heaven, who sits at the right hand of the Father, who has the power to save all things, through whom the Father acted from the beginning and forever. This is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the ineffable beginning and the incomprehensible end. This is the Christ.

This is our King. This is Jesus. This is the Commander. 

This is the Lord. This is He who rose from the dead. This is He who sits at the right hand of the Father.

To Him be the glory and the might forever and ever. Amen. Hallelujah.

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited by the author.

Great Vigil of Easter: Hesitant Joy about What is Next

TranscriptioN

Oh, what a joy. I love this service, this opportunity to worship with you at the Easter Vigil. Well, good evening, my dear friends. It is good to be with you.

Tonight we heard God's story of salvation throughout the Scripture. We witnessed a death and a resurrection tonight in baptism, and we remembered the death and resurrection that we've experienced in Christ in our own baptism. Tonight's gospel passage in Matthew chapter 28 brings us to the women who discover that Jesus has risen from the dead.

They encounter resurrection life with joy, but a hesitant joy, and I think hesitant joy is something that feels close to home for us. We walk through each day in small acts of faithfulness to Jesus, discovering these glimpses of new creation and resurrection amidst all of our daily moments of fearful hesitancy and hope-filled joy as we bring the of the new life of the resurrection to bear on a broken world, a world that's been broken by sin and is bound to death. And the encouragement to us tonight is the same encouragement given to the women in this text.

Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. It was on the first day of the week that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary had gone to see the tomb.

Mary Magdalene is often called the apostola, apostolorum in Latin, or the apostle to the apostles, as she and the other women become the first to bring the gospel of the resurrected Christ to the other followers of Jesus. And as they went to the tomb, there was a great earthquake as an angel came and rolled the stone away and sat on it. The angel tells them, Jesus is risen.

He's not here. And the guards see the angel and their terrified. They tremble. They fall to the ground. The women are equally terrified in that moment. These aren't angelic cherubs like you see on Christmas cards.

The angels in the Bible are in fact terrified. And so they are rightly terrified when they see this angel, but the angel addresses them and says, do not fear. The angel invites them then to walk into the tomb and to look in on this empty tomb.

So they're the first ones to walk in and to see death defeated. But I would imagine that as they stand there and they're looking in the void of where death had once been, that they're fearfully and somewhat hopefully teasing out all of the implications of what this might now mean. The angel tells them to go to Galilee, where Jesus is going ahead of them, to meet the disciples and share this good news about Jesus's resurrection with them.

They leave the tomb quickly and the text says, with fear and with great joy. Joy for what God's done, but fear about what's next. And so while the angel tells them not to fear, I do wonder what that conversation looked like on the road.

What in their lives now needed to stay the same or change? Rome hadn't actually been overthrown, so what did God's kingdom actually look like that Jesus had promised? Jesus had conquered death, but what does that mean for everybody else who is still alive and fearing death? There are so many unanswered questions for the women and in their anxious excitement and in their unanswered questions, Jesus comes and he meets them along the way. Jesus meets them with a greeting and they come to him and they hold on to his feet and they bow down and they worship him. Like the women, I think that it is in God's kindness, in Jesus's kindness, that he meets us in places of hesitant joy, where we experience this kind of hesitancy and delight on the road of obedience.

He offers us the comfort of his presence and a glimpse of his resurrection to sustain us along the path. He tells the women, like the angel did, do not be afraid. Then he says, go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee and there they will see me.

As we walk in faithfulness, in the little daily obedience that Jesus has for us, he often meets us with these glimpses, however small, of new life and resurrection that sustain us along the way. Maybe he comforts us in a time of prayer, speaks through his scripture to us, gives us joy through the smile of a child, reminds us of his goodness through the kind words or the kind actions of a dear friend, restores a relationship to us that might have been broken, or something else that reminds us that the kingdom of darkness and the power of death no longer have the final power over us, who are in Christ Jesus. To search for Jesus and his kingdom is to invest in the life of the resurrection that outshines the darkness of sin and death.

His reminder to the women is a reminder for us that he has risen, he is with us, he goes before us as we walk with him in hesitant joy, so do not fear. We live in an anxious world that is longing to escape death, nervously seeking reprieve from its slavery to death and sin in all sorts of insufficient ways, denying the reality of death, numbing our pains with addictions, other escapisms, turning towards disordered loves and appetites, looking for saviors where there are no saviors, believing false narratives to avoid addressing what's actually broken inside. But having died to this world and risen with Christ, the Spirit has made us in our baptism an unanxious sacramental presence of Christ-like new creation for the life of the world.

Jesus is alive and he's conquered death and we get to join him in that victory. I don't know if you know this, but in the Anglican liturgy the funeral pall that covers a Christian casket is an echo back to the white garments that are given to the newly baptized. It's this defiant declaration that death is defeated and our baptism is now complete and we await the glory of the resurrection to come because Jesus has defeated death.

Jesus is alive and we will ultimately be made like him. I've been really encouraged lately by reading the biography of the late great pastor Eugene Peterson and I want to read a bit of the book to you this evening, a bit that I found really encouraging as I was thinking about the resurrection of Jesus. It says this, ““Dad didn't know what state he was in,” Eric, Eugene's son reflected, “didn't know what year of the Lord it was, didn't know his dad built the house that he was sitting in, didn't know who the president was, but he knew in the depths of his soul the unshakable reality of God's presence.”

And Eugene out of that confused disoriented state maintained a holy awareness residing at his core in an interior place completely intact untouched by dementia. “That life of prayer grooved itself deep inside my dad and he had full access to that until the day that he died. I think in those last moments dad was simply descending deeper into that interior world that he built with God his entire life, only we could not access it with him.”

The last light was fading. During Eugene's final weekend, Leif and Eric and Amy and Elizabeth kept vigil at the lake. Eric and Leif kept the lantern on the dock burning 24 hours, light flickering over the dark water. Eugene took to his bed declining visibly.

Jan, his wife, held his hand as he drifted in and out of consciousness, walking that precarious threshold between our two ways of being and then unhurried and gentle, Eugene went at 630 a.m. on Monday, October 22nd, 2018. The lantern on the dock went dark. Eric placed his hand on his dad's head and passed the blessing. “Together we are witnesses to this glad fact that in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, I declare the baptism of Eugene Hoyland Peterson is now complete. Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, says the Spirit, that they rest from their labors and their works follow them.””

So this Easter season, let's be an unhurried and gentle people who look to the day where our labor here is done and the beloved around us can speak over us that our baptism is complete. Build that type of interior life, that interior resurrection life that gets brighter when the light of the world fades so that others will learn to praise God for the works that you have done in their midst. The kind of interior presence where Jesus's presence is enough to meet the doubts of today. Christ is risen and we have died and we have been raised with him.

Carry the good news of death's defeat in you into this broken world that's bound to the kingdom of darkness and that's longing for its redemption. Do not fear. Jesus is alive and he is with us in our hesitant joy.

Let me pray for us. Almighty God, who through your only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, overcame death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life, grant that we who celebrate with joy the day of the Lord's resurrection may by your life-giving Spirit be delivered from sin and raised from death 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.

Palm Sunday: New Life and the Next Step of Obedience

TranscriptioN

Well, welcome to this Holy Week at Corpus Christi Anglican Church. It is always striking to me how fast everything shifts. We hear in one moment the crowds who are shouting with joy for the King who's coming, and we get to celebrate with them, deliver us, Hosanna.

And then we hear how the rest of the week goes in the same service. Jesus is arrested. He's brought up on false charges. He's rejected by the people. He's hung on a cross among thieves. And this week, we're going to walk the way of the cross together. 

And why do we do this? Our New Testament reading told us, Philippians 2, where St. Paul says we're supposed to take on the mind of Christ. And then he walks through what that means, how Jesus considered equality with God something not to be held on to, but he took the form of a slave and being made in the likeness of humankind, he was obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. So to walk the way of the cross, the way that paves the way for the resurrection, is to learn the mind of Christ, which we need to take up.

People had wanted a king to overthrow their empire through violence, to establish a new order through the sword, to be victorious. This isn't the mind of Christ. Through death on the cross, Jesus would defeat the kingdom of darkness that had bound the world to sin and to death.

And Palm Sunday reminds us that God wants to bring new life to his people, new life with himself, and that the road to get there involves this everyday obedience, through both these moments of celebration and through the times of suffering, where we feel like there are forces that are warring and oppressing against our souls. And it's in that obedience that we discover, in this everyday obedience, the mind of Christ as we walk with him on the way to the cross. And it's in doing that that we find the cross to be the way of life and peace, as our collect prayed for us.

So I want to look together at Luke chapter 19 that we read outside. Jesus is entering into Jerusalem. Jesus is leading a group of pilgrims from Jericho up to Jerusalem for the Passover festival. And as they make their way from Jericho, they're going from 840-some-odd feet below sea level, up a long, hot, dusty, mountainous road under the beating sun towards the city of Jerusalem. It's a really long trek. And as they make their way up, they get to the towns of Bethany and Bethpage near Jerusalem.

And they're just across the Kidron Valley. After that long journey, they're at the place where they get their first glimpse of Jerusalem off in the distance. And as they near the town, Jesus asks two of his disciples to go into the village to find a cult that's never been ridden before and to untie it and bring it to him.

The disciples don't know the larger picture of what's going on. They don't ask him why he wants them to do that. They just do it. Jesus is setting events in motion that they don't yet understand. And I'm not sure their hearts could even handle it, to be honest. But it's this ordinary faithfulness and the simple things Jesus is commanding, the next right thing to do that brings about God's plan in a way that they can't begin to comprehend.

And Palm Sunday then reminds us that God brings these new creation realities. He orchestrates things to bring about his cosmic renewal along a road of ordinary daily faithfulness. And so in those moments, we're usually not given the larger picture of what God's doing.

We just do the next right thing that he asks us to do. And Palm Sunday reminds us that the larger picture is our redemption that God's bringing about for us. It is life with God. It's new creation where Jesus is king. But God, I think in his kindness, only gives us the next right thing to do, the next right thing to desire, because the larger picture of how to get there is often too much for our hearts to bear. So the disciples do what Jesus asks.

They bring him a colt. And those who are following Jesus, they place their clothes onto this donkey as a makeshift attempt at a saddle for Jesus. The image of Jesus riding in on a donkey into the city is one of hope. It's one of longing that the people have. And it would have certainly stirred up their imaginations for this Old Testament passage in Zechariah 9:9, where the prophet says, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion. Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem. Lo, your king is coming to you. Triumphant and victorious is he. Humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

This is in the back of everyone's imagination. And the people are seeing this Davidic ruler come in on this donkey into Jerusalem. And they put their clothes down in front of them. They put palm branches in front of him, in front of him, rolling out the red carpet for their king who is coming. And this king would drive out the evil empire that was over them, so they thought. He would destroy their enemies.

He would overturn injustice. He would bring them back to God, this physical liberation, the spiritual renewal. All their hopes are in this king who is riding on a donkey.

Last week I had mentioned Psalm 118, which is a really important psalm peppered throughout St. Luke's Gospel at key points. And last week it was a reminder to the chief priests and scribes, as Jesus is already in Jerusalem, we're actually going back in time this week, that the cornerstone that the builders rejected would become the chief cornerstone. That's Psalm 118.

It was a rebuke to the unfaithful leaders in Israel. This week, Psalm 118 is used again, leading up to Jesus's entry into Jerusalem. And it's a psalm about explaining Jesus's kingship. The people here believe that Jesus is the anointed king. And St. Luke makes that clear as he quotes Psalm 118 and alludes to it. And he does so by calling him the king who is coming.

And St. Luke's Gospel doesn't mention the hosannas. Interestingly, the other gospels do. But the hosannas are actually part of this original psalm, Psalm 118. Hosanna is just a transliterated word in English. Originally it was transliterated into Greek, but it comes from Hebrew. It's a phrase, actually. It's a prayer. Hoshiana, which means like, “deliver us”. It's a command.

Lord, deliver us. Hoshiana (הושׁיע נא). And so it's this prayer that we actually pray, hoshiana (הושׁיע נא), every single week when we celebrate the Eucharist.

 It's a reminder that Jesus alone can deliver. Jesus alone can save. From the various things that war against our soul, that war against the image of God in us, us becoming fully alive in him.

And so adults and children, in the passage this morning, joined in these chants for this royal procession. Hosanna, blessed is the king who's coming. People were singing songs of praise for a victory that went much deeper than any of them actually understood.

At the same time, there was this group of religious leaders, the Pharisees, who were not the same as the Sadducees. These ones were sowing seeds of doubt that were more insidious than they were probably aware of. They were the group that helped implement faithfulness to the Torah, that's a good thing, for a people that were dispersed.

And as such, they had a certain authority among the people to adjudicate the meaning of scripture, to make decisions about how to apply law to life. And what makes them nervous is that if Jesus really is the king, then their power is gone. They have to hand it over to him as Lord.

And it's like they're saying, it's fine to have someone overthrow secular authorities like Rome, we are all about that, as long as I get to keep my little fiefdom. I don't want to give up control. But the problem is, Jesus is king.

And if he's king, then he is Lord of all. And that's really hard for us sometimes, just like the Pharisees. It's often easier to cling to what's familiar, what we feel like we have control over, some nostalgic memory, no matter how broken it is, than to risk going into the unknown, where we trust that Jesus is Lord, and where the things that feel really hard might actually be redemptive for us.

 And so this movement from the triumphal entry into the passion narrative invites us to look at our own desires, what faithfulness looks like when expectations go unmet, when we're really disappointed at how things have turned out, and what trust looks like when brokenness and nostalgia feel safer for us than stepping into what's unknown for the sake of experiencing new creation in the resurrection. It's fun and exciting to get whipped up into the frenzy of the crowd, to lay down your palms and to join the celebration when things are good, but what are we going to do when things don't turn out as we hoped they would? And so the Pharisees look like they want people to follow God, but at the end of the day, they'd rather have a broken fiefdom where they are Lord, than the kingdom of God, which is unknown to them, where Jesus is Lord of all. And the kingship of Jesus is won, as we've said at several points today, through the road to the cross.

His throne was a cross. And those who are going to take up the mind of Christ, that are called to follow Jesus in his sufferings, trusting what feels terrifying and unknown, are still going to be filled with the presence of Christ as we go into those places. What feels like shame can be acknowledged, and it will eventually be redeemed.

What is an upset or unmet expectation, a small death of sorts, is actually the road to life with God, and it is not an accidental blip along the way. Are we going to be those who follow Jesus only when we feel like it, when it's exciting, when we're swept up with the emotion of the crowd? Are we going to walk with him when it is difficult on the way to the cross? Will we hold so tightly onto the parts of our life, people in our life, those little moments of nostalgia, no matter how broken but comfortable? Or are we going to recognize Jesus as King of kings and Lord of lords and entrust ourselves to him, even though it feels costly to walk into what's unknown? This is the question posed to us on Palm Sunday. If God were to give us a glimpse of the totality of our story and our journey of our lives, we probably couldn't handle the load of it.

It would be too much. If you're talking to a five or a six-year-old, it would be completely inappropriate as you enter some sort of scenario with them to enumerate all the ways it could go wrong and all the ways that they might suffer as they grow up and move into years and years ahead. It's too much for their little hearts to handle.

So what do we do? We fill their hearts with truth. The truth of what is true around them, whether or not they feel it. And we tell them what is next.

We tell them a little bit of what to anticipate, but not the greater narrative of what could be. We remind them of what they can do, what might feel new, what might feel scary, and we help them take the next step forward. We don't need to give them more to be fearful about in the future.

Some kids are good enough at figuring that out themselves, and many of us are too. And so we help them hold on to what's true and good and just take the next right step forward. And Poem Sunday reminds us that the larger picture is our redemption and it's our life with God.

But God in his kindness doesn't give us the full glimpse of how we are going to get there because it's too much for our hearts to handle. He just gives us the next right thing to do, the next right thing to desire, because the greater picture might be too much for us. So as we enter Holy Week together, I want to encourage us to consider whether we find ourselves like the crowds or the religious leaders or vacillating between either one on any given day.

How does following Jesus feel difficult, terrifying, or threatening to our sense of control? What do we need to hand over to him, to his control? And will we still follow him into the next step of faithfulness as he leads us into the hard places that we never wanted to go? As we prayed in our collect together, I think that this is the way of the cross where we discover that the cross is the way of life and peace. That phrase has always been challenging and mystifying to me, that the way of the cross would be the way of life and peace. The way of the cross is the place of life and peace because that's where Jesus' presence is found.

We don't always have answers, but we do have his presence. And the cross is the means by which he disarms the kingdom of darkness and the means by which he is Lord of all. And so this Holy Week, I want to invite us to take up the mind of Christ together to discover the love of God in the way of the cross so that we might find it none other than the way of life and peace.

Let me pray for us. “Almighty God, whose son went not up to joy, but first he suffered pain. And entered not into glory before he was crucified. Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

 Transcribed byTurboScribe.ai. Edited by the Author.

Lent 5 (Passion Sunday): The Veiled Glory in the Way of the Cross

TranscriptioN

Well, good morning again everybody. It is good to see you this morning. I am delighted to be with you on this fifth Sunday of Lent. As I mentioned before, this is Passion Tide, and during our weekly emails that come out on Wednesdays, if you don't get those, let me know and I'll make sure you get them. 

I tried to put a little article on what is Passion Tide, these two weeks of which one is Holy Week, this short two-week season where we shroud the crosses and the icons and it focuses our gaze on the road to Jesus's crucifixion and the glory that will later be revealed but right now is veiled. In our Gospel passage today, we encounter leaders who have forgotten that they had a delegated authority. These are the chief priests and the scribes.

They wanted to hold on to control for themselves of speaking for God through an authority that they thought belonged to them, and it's an easy trap to fall into because power is intoxicating and the idea that Jesus might just be the Messiah threatens to undo the thing they're trying to hold on to. Our passages today encourage us that God's marvelous works of redemption would be done through humility and through the power of what's going to happen on the cross. And so we involve ourselves in the work of Jesus's ministry, this kingdom that is here and to come, when we bear fruits of repentance and when we invite other people to come and taste and see the goodness of the Lord along with us.

And 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 Parable

So today's parable from Jesus, we find him teaching in the temple courts, and his authority had been questioned by the religious leaders, the chief priests and the scribes, and Jesus is now teaching them through a parable about a vineyard.

A man planted a vineyard, who represents God in the story, and the vineyard itself represents the state of blessing and peace and rest for the people of God. And in this vineyard that the man plants, the vineyard is going to bear fruits. The vineyard owner has tenant farmers that he lets tend the vineyard and cultivate the fruit, do the hiring and firing, etc.

There's a delegated authority to steward the vineyard, and he sends a servant to go collect the produce from the tenants, and then they send him off empty-handed. The tenants of the vineyard have a delegated authority to collect the produce, but it actually belongs to the owner of the vineyard. So the tenants beat this servant, and then they send them back empty-handed.

The owner then sends a second servant to go and collect the produce. They beat, and then it adds, and they insult the second servant, so it's a little bit of the same but more, and they send this second servant back empty-handed. A third servant comes, and he's sent by the vineyard owner, and it's worse.

He's cast out, and he's harmed violently. The word where it says wounded in our translation is the word we get trauma in English. It's a Greek word trauma.

It's wounding, and so you can think of this person having been left wounded and traumatized from the experience of going to collect the fruit for the vineyard owner. The idea here is that God, as we heard really well read by Janet in the book of Isaiah, God has been forming a people for his glory and praise, right? They've gone into subjugation over and over again, and God has freed them and liberated them over and over again, but what he's doing ultimately is forming a people for his praise and his glory to live under his kingship, and so God has continually over and over again sent his messengers, the prophets, to once again call them back to covenant renewal and faithfulness, but those who have this delegated authority, the religious leaders, come from a long line of leaders in history who are under the delusion that they held on to control for themselves and that they spoke for God, despite the fact that their hearts were actually quite far from him, and then they turned the people's hearts away, and the result is that the owner of the vineyard did not receive the fruit of the vineyard. So finally, in this parable that Jesus tells, the owner sends his son.

There's no greater authority than if the father were to actually go himself. Certainly they're going to respect my son, and so the vineyard tenants come up with this absurd plan that, you know, if we kill the son, maybe we can inherit the vineyard. That's ridiculous, right? That makes no logical sense.

That's what you're supposed to feel when you hear Jesus tell this parable. That's illogical, it's nonsensical, and that's the point. So these people, these people with a delegated authority, the tenants, tenant farmers, they have no real authority over the vineyard.

Even if they were to kill that son, it's not like they would have authority over it, and they don't have any right to the fruit that comes from it. So at the time, Jesus speaks this parable in the temple, and the specifics at this point are veiled. They're unclear.

People don't know that he is going to go to a Roman cross to die yet. The story hasn't unfolded, and so this is a good, helpful parable for this Passion Sunday, where we have the crosses and the icons veiled, because we've got glimpses of the story, but we don't have the fullness of what's going to happen yet. The plan of God is veiled, and it's going to be made clear.

So the tenants in this parable, they take the son, they take him outside the vineyard, and they kill him. And in response, the vineyard owner is going to come, and he's going to destroy the tenant farmers, and he's going to give that vineyard to other people. And so Jesus asks the scribes and the Pharisees, what do you think of such a parable? How does that strike you? And they use this phrase that you find in Paul, may it never be! Right? And so it was sort of obfuscated in the ESV a little bit, but the idea is like, may it not be so! We don't want this to be the case.

And so Jesus then, he says, okay, well what do you think about this psalm? What does it mean? Psalm 118. How would you interpret it? Psalm 118 addresses a nation that's been rejected. It addresses a king that's been rejected before the nations, but the psalm reassures the people that the rejected people are going to have an exalted position before God, that the rejected King will have an exalted position before God.

And Psalm 118 comes to its fullest expression in the person and work of Jesus. And that's why as St. Luke is writing the gospel in the book of Acts, Psalm 118 is actually peppered throughout Luke's gospel at really key points, because he's interpreting it through the lens of Jesus's ministry. And so the imagery now moves from the vineyard in the parable to a construction yard in Psalm 118.

Building yards, builders yards, were where people would find the stones they needed to make their buildings. And once the project is near completion, the image here is of finding the stone that would finish off the building, the cornerstone, that it would, it was perfect to finish this off. But the idea here is that this stone that was perfectly ready to cap off the building had been rejected by the builders in Psalm 118. 

So the workers, which here symbolized the scribes and the Jewish leaders, they might cast off Jesus as unimportant now, but he is going to come to be honored and vindicated as the Lord's Messiah. There is a timeline to the end of their delegated authority, because his needs to take over. And that's what Psalm 118 is talking about.

And I think what's neat is I was reading several of the church fathers about this passage. They often connect this with Daniel chapter 2. And in Daniel chapter 2, if you'll remember, there is a rock cut out of a mountain. And this rock is going to destroy the clay feet of the statue, which represents the kingdoms of the world.

And then it says in Daniel 2, the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. And so they're bringing together this beautiful imagery of the stone, the cornerstone of Psalm 118, and the rock out of the mountain in Daniel chapter 2. And that connection works together to talk about, then, the rejection of Israel's leaders, because Jesus himself is going to be the true authority. He is King. He is Lord. Their authority is delegated. It is not theirs.

And they find themselves in a long line of authorities who misappropriate delegated authority as though it's their own. But his rule and reign as king is going to fill the whole earth. His rule and reign of new creation.

And so how do we join the work of the vineyard and cultivate fruits from this vineyard? There's three things I want to think about with us this morning.

Avoiding False Securities

We involve ourselves in the work of tending to the vineyard and offering the fruits to God by avoiding false securities. The chief priests and the scribes, they understand the implication of the And as a result, at the end, it says they want to lay hands on him, but they fear the crowds. 

They're afraid of the people. And it's a good reminder for all of us, whether one holds public office or ecclesiastical office, that all authority in heaven and on earth is the Lord's and it is not ours. Whatever authority or responsibility we have, it is a delegated authority.

We're just stewards who are tenant farmers in the vineyard of God. And so if you're a parent, it's also a good reminder as a parent that your children belong to the Lord. Ultimately, they don't belong to us, which is really hard, right? And if you're an employer, your employees don't belong to you.

These people belong to the Lord, not even to our company. If you hold public office or ecclesiastical office, your responsibility is to uphold the welfare of people, not to hold on to power by coercing constituents or gaining favor amongst your side. All authority in heaven and on earth belongs to the Lord.

But the taste of it can be so intoxicating. And so it's a good reminder that power in and of itself can be used for good, as long as we understand that we have a delegated authority. But power can turn into evil when it outpaces our character and we don't live a life of virtue and understand that our end is to the glory and praise of God.

And that is the kind of power that will corrupt us and those around us. And so the religious leaders of Jesus's day, they had forgotten that. It's easy to forget how our responsibilities and our stations, our callings, the platforms that we have, are our stewardships.

They're platforms for the work of God, the miracles of God that he does in the human heart. And they're not marks of status in the kingdom. That's really important.

Cultivating in the way of Jesus

So Jesus is calling us to offer the fruit of the vineyard to the Lord, that all things belong to him. And this is done by cultivating the work in the same way that Jesus does. Joining the work of Jesus is a work of sowing with tears.

We read one of my favorite psalms today, Psalm 126. This is a pilgrim psalm where there's a leader leading up a group of pilgrims to Jerusalem. And the theme of God making streams in the desert is something that came up both in the psalm and in the Old Testament reading, if you were listening.

It's a common theme. This renewal that people anticipate is God making streams in the desert. It's an analogy for the hope that people have that God will give them new life.

And so the psalmist prays that those who would sow in tears would reap with shouts of joy. That those who go about weeping and bearing seed for sowing would come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves. And so similarly we read in St. Paul in chapter 3 of Philippians that he wants to know Christ and the power of his resurrection, but notice it's not empty triumphalism.

He says, and I want to know the sharing of his sufferings being made like him in his death. So the means of the power of the kingdom and the authority of the kingdom is the work of it is done through the means of the way that Jesus cultivated the work of the kingdom, which is to know the resurrection through the sufferings that led to the cross. So the hard work of weeping over the ways that we in our world is broken will return a harvest of beautiful praise to the Lord.

Because God's at work in us. Like it's easy to take the easy road and manipulate people for our own ends, to not care about them, to be unreflective, to be dismissive or callous to the needs of other people, or disadvantage other people to our own benefit. That would be the easy road.

It's easier to do those things than to recognize the places where we've been wounded, where we might have wounded others, to do the hard work of giving language to those things, teasing out those implications, and tearfully asking God for his grace, and to die to those places that are unbecoming of his life and glory. The ways that we've tried to hold on to control in our delegated authority as though it were ours to hold on to. We're really good at trying to curate our own narratives and control our image to other people.

And so Passion Sunday invites you to be undone before others. It invites the church to be undone with one another. If you feel like you're a mess, you're in the right place with the right people.

Thanks be to God. And so Passion Sunday invites us to the tearful cultivation of the heart in repentance, to let God have his authority and not take it on ourselves, to walk the way of the cross with Jesus, even though the glory might be veiled so thickly right now that we just can't see it. And we're involved in this marvelous work of God of redemption, and we involve ourselves in it when we bear fruits that are in keeping with repentance, when we invite other people to come and taste and see the Lord's goodness with us.

Bearing fruit through command and promise

So third, bearing fruit through love and desire, God would eventually rip away the authority from the tenant farmers to cultivate that vineyard, and then he would give that delegated authority to others, which has in it, in this parable, a veiled reference to the new covenant and the inclusion of unexpected people, tax collectors, sinners, Samaritans, and even as far as the Gentiles, right? This has in it this veiled expectation that God will give the vineyard to others. And one church father said about this vineyard being given to the apostles after the Jewish leaders, he says, they are sowing the seeds of piety to Christ in the hearts of believers and making the nations entrusted to their care into beautiful vineyards in the sight of God. That is the apostolic work, and it's the same one that we're called into as well.

And so what seemed like a catastrophic tragedy on the hill of Golgotha at the cross and the rejection of the Messiah was actually in the plan of God the means by which cosmic renewal would begin. There's the thing that brings the kingdom. And so there are so many subtle distractions that are seeking our attention, and lies, and the disorder, the things that we love, and the things that we desire.

If you think about the chief priests and the scribes, there were a thousand subtle shifts and decisions that these leaders made to make authority their ultimate goal. They didn't get into leadership to hold on to inappropriate authority. There were a thousand subtle shifts and decisions that brought them to that point.

And so on this fifth Sunday of Lent, we remember that it's God who brings into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners. Because we find ourselves in that place often where we've made lots of decisions and choices and things have happened to us that make our affections and desires feel unwieldy and unruly, and we trust in this God who brings them back into order. And so we need God's help to do what the poet prays for, which is to love what he commands, and to actually desire what he promises.

God commands a life that is committed to his lordship and kingship, his rule and reign, to love him and our neighbor, and ultimately to be formed for his praise, as we read in the Old Testament today. And he promises new creation. That's his promise to us, and it is an alternative amongst many false alternatives that are before us that may look attractive, but he offers us new creation in his kingdom.

But we need his help to ask for the desire for what he promises. And this passage is a great reminder to ask God for help, to love the things that he commands when that's really hard to do in the minute everyday moments of the things that we walk through, and to desire what he promises when we just can't see it because we're crowded out by all the things that are in front of us, and all the things that we're hoping for which may be slightly under the standard of the kingdom of God. And it's a good reminder that this delegated authority involves not just the glory of the resurrection, but also sharing in the sufferings and the humility of Jesus.

 Conclusion

So the path of the kingdom is paved with the tears of cross-bearing saints that go before us. The glory might be veiled right now, but we're called to cultivate a field of repentance, to hand God a harvest of praise. So there's hope today as well, because he's the one who makes streams in the desert. He makes a way in the wilderness. This is the God that we serve. And he's the one who gives us this vineyard.

He's done all that he needs to to prepare the soil, to tend it, and we are these tenant farmers on the land who give him what is rightfully his amongst our households, our labors, our stations and offices, our children, the relationships he's put as our stewardship, so that by the end of it all, in him, our hearts are fixed where true joys are to be found. Let me pray for us. Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners.

Grant your people grace to love what you command and to desire what you promise, that among the swift and varied changes of this world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited by the Author

Lent 4: The Parable of the Compassionate Father

TranscriptioN

Well, good morning again, everybody. It is good to see you this morning. I'm Father Morgan Reed, the vicar here at Corpus Christi Anglican Church, and you've come on one of the two rose-colored Sundays this morning. This is Laetera Sunday, which is kind of like Gaudete Sunday during Advent.

The word Laetera is a command, meaning to rejoice, and we wear a rose to signal that this season of Lent is coming close to its end. So next week will be Passion Sunday. We'll have the crosses and the icons veiled, and then we'll enter into Holy Week.

So we are nearing the end of Lent. And today's gospel passage is beautiful. In some ways it's been an undercurrent of all of the weeks of Lent. I haven't made it explicit, but the compassion of God is the foundation of repentance. And so today it is explicit in our passage. It is often called the parable of the prodigal son, and so today some have argued that actually it should be the parable of the running father, and I like that. 

We have two pictures of two brothers here, a younger brother and an older brother, two different kinds of pictures of rebellion, and the father here is pictured as being this compassionate father who addresses them both in their unique ways. And so this passage is an encouragement to people who feel like they're not worthy of God's love. It's an encouragement to those who are listening who would have been tax collectors and known that they were considered sinners by the religious elite.

It's an encouragement for you and for me, because we often find ourselves in the place of the child who's run far. And so it also offers a challenge to the self-righteous, the older brother, and to those who are sitting and feeling satisfied in their own sense of righteousness and worth before God. And most important though, no matter where you are in that spectrum this morning, it offers us a glimpse into the compassionate character of the God who loves us.

That's the most important thing to take away from this parable. Our New Testament passage this morning that we read from St. Paul talks about us being ambassadors of reconciliation, where we're the ones who are showing the world what it means to be reconciled to God and those who are inviting others into the same. And so this parable is actually left intentionally open, but if we could fill it in, we would be the ones who are reconciled and who are inviting people to the party, so to speak.

And whether we're running, whether we're self-righteous, the Father is inviting us into new life. And this invitation, and his invitation into his compassion, is what we are called to invite other people into. So I want to just look at the parable this morning.

 The First Son

The first son, the younger son, I want to look at and the father's reaction to him. Jesus is opening this parable with this son who is asking his father to share his share of the inheritance right now, which is equivalent to wishing that his dad was dead, right? Because normally you don't get the inheritance until your parent dies, and so it's insulting. He's asking his dad to sever his relationship with him, to take ownership of property, which he's going to then liquidate for cash and go off somewhere and spend that cash.

So he would rather have cash and the inheritance now than a relationship with his dad, his brother, and the rest of his family. The son takes the land and the property, and he does exactly that. He sells it off for cash, he takes that cash, he goes off into a far country with cash in hand, severed from his relationship with his family, and he wanders off and he spends everything on carnal pleasures.

And then a famine comes, and so he's left without food, without money, without any connections, and he looks to a local pig farmer, which if you're Jewish, this would make you unclean. And so he's at his lowest point, but not quite his lowest point, because now he's envious of pigs. He's saying, if I could just eat what they're eating, I'd be okay.

But he's not even allowed to eat what they're eating. So now he's hit rock bottom. He sees how low he's fallen, and it says that he came to himself, and he remembers that his father's day laborers have it better than he does at this moment, so he's not asking to be a son again.

He decides, I'm gonna go to return to my father and repent, and maybe he'll just hire me as a day laborer. All he's carrying with him is his own awareness and sense that he needs help. Without knowing the type of response that he's going to encounter, he goes back to his father, because anything is better than where he's at at the moment.

And Jesus says, while he was still far off, his father saw him, and his father was filled with compassion. He ran, and he put his arms around him, and he kissed him. So think about this. When the father sees his son far off in the distance, he knows there's been a change of heart. The father runs after him, which is a very potentially embarrassing posture. It's not something becoming of a father.

Lots of commentators point out that it's a little bit embarrassing to show this man sort of girding up his loins and running after his son. It's a boyish behavior that his dad is doing, but his dad, his compassion compels him to run. And so he meets him, and he embraces him, and he kisses him before the son even says a word to him.

 If we think about what he should have done in their culture, the father should have cut him off. He should have rebuked the son, but that's not the character of the father that is in this story. And so what strikes me is that the father's compassion in this story comes to the son before the son even says a word. 

Like the son has his confession all prepared, but the compassion of the father meets the son before the son even gets a word out. And it shows us something about the character of God, that God sees the deep intention of the heart, and often his compassion meets us before the words of confession even exit our lips. And that's amazing.

And so this is meant to be an encouragement for those who are listening, like the tax collectors, those who think, gosh, you know what, I've missed the boat. Like I am not worthy of God's love. I'm not worthy of being a part of this community.

Everyone hates me. Like this is for them. God sees the intention of their heart before any confession leaves their lips. And if you think of these individuals, they have a whole lifetime of dysfunction, trauma, bad decisions, false narratives that they've held on to, misplaced trust in unsafe people and relationships, other parts of their lives that form complex stories that make them what they are now, which other people would describe them and give them the label tax collector and sinner. But these are images of God, made in, you know, people made in God's image. But they're starting to believe these stories for themselves.

And it's easy to see them as they hear the story from Jesus, how they would identify themselves with this son who squandered all of his wealth. And maybe they're wondering things like, what do I have to say to get God to love me again? What do I need to do or say to be accepted amongst my family again? What do I need to do or give up to earn God's love because I've squandered it? How do I get rid of this nagging sense of guilt in my heart? And the answer from this story is to just do the simple task of turning towards God with nothing but your own awareness that you're in need of his help. That's the very first thing.

And then what happens is God comes to meet you with his compassion, to fall on you and embrace you and kiss you before the lips ever utter a confession. And his kiss and his embrace come and meet you before a word comes out. And so this is such a hopeful passage.

And you can see why this is something that people often cling to. It is good news. We should turn from false hopes and narratives that are unhelpful, dysfunctions that are part of our story, the multitudes of poor decisions we may have made, the sinful dispositions, the longing for autonomy from God.

We should turn and look to God. Repent. That's what turn means. We should repent of those things. Turn towards God with just the recognition that we need his help. And then he comes to meet us with his compassion.

It's like one of the call acts say in the prayer book, God is always more ready to hear than we are to pray. It's one of my favorite sentences. God is more ready to hear than we are to pray.  

He is more ready to lavish his compassion on you than you are to turn. So it doesn't take much. Praise God.

The Second Son

And so we've seen the younger son, we've seen the father's compassion, and now let's look at the older son because he's also a very important character in this story. The father has been overjoyed at the younger son's return. It's a taste of the resurrection.

Kind of reminds me of like why we're wearing rose today. It's a little taste of resurrection before we get to Easter in a few weeks. And this son of mine, he says, was dead and now he is alive. And now we're introduced to the older son. The father had begun this celebration of the son he returned. They're having a party.

There's music. There's dancing. They've killed the fatted calf, which is now part of the English vernacular, right? This is a very exciting time.

And the older brother is out working in the field. Nothing wrong with that. It's just what he's been doing every day since his brother left.

And he hears this music and he hears this dancing and he's wondering what's going on and he hears that his brother has come home and now his father is throwing a party to celebrate his brother, who is really not his brother in his heart anymore. Now imagine the older brother's internal dialogue with me for a second. Again, this is from the Gospel of Morgan. It's totally apocryphal, but in my mind's eye, this is where his heart is, right? What do you mean that he came home? He should know better than to come back. He should stay where he was. He sold off the family's property.

He rejected us. He rejected me as his brother. Who does he think he is to come back after doing all of that? Why would my dad throw him a party? He's not worthy of a party.

He's never thrown me a party. I'm here day in and day out. I'm working hard to support this family and I'm not going to support any of this. It's not fair. I've worked way too hard. I've sacrificed too much. 

And the pain of my so-called brother is just too much for me to come inside. And so notice that the father meets the older brother and he says, why don't you come in? He is beckoning the older son to come in and to celebrate. And it says in verse 28 that the father comes out and he pleads with his older son to come in.

He pleads with him. He's begging him, please come in and rejoice with what is happening. The father has compassion to meet both of his sons where they're at in their different places, their unique places.

 I was reading a commentary on this passage and it had reminded me of a story of something in my own story that reminded me of this parable. I was working at a church serving and we had a cleanup day at a local stream and we had gotten our boots on. We got our trash bags and our gloves and we were walking through this stream along the hills.

It was pretty muddy and I was just looking for trash. Like I was going up and down these hills, going across the water, looking for little pieces of trash that I could put in this trash bag. And I was looking for garbage step after step.

My eyes were down. I was focused. I was going to clean this stream and then when we were done, I threw away the trash bags and then I stepped down and I watched as kids were enjoying the stream.

They were throwing rocks in it and I couldn't be helped but just be stunned at how beautiful the scenery was. I had missed it as I was looking for trash. I was sitting there going, wow, thank you Lord.

Like I got to be a part of the beauty of this place that kids get to enjoy. But I totally missed the creek's beauty for the sake of the garbage that I was focused on. And that's a bit of what's happening here.

The older brother is missing the greater picture of the compassion of the father because his fixation is on the brother's sins, his rejection, his own pain, and his own shame. And so if his father can have this kind of compassion on the younger brother, the good news is that the father can have this kind of compassion on the older brother as well. And that's the larger picture that he's missing.

Sometimes God does grant to some people more material success than their character can handle. And as a result of that, we find people joining the prodigal son. That success leads to walking away from God because that person forgets their need from him.

They come under the illusion and delusion that I can do this myself. Look, I've done all this stuff and I'm doing it well. God must be blessing it.

And I think of people who have really public platforms, who are way too young, or their character is just not ready for the responsibility of it. Like the money, the success, the fame, they often turn out to be their downfall in the end. Hitting the lowest point is often what draws people to repentance, to turning.

It doesn't have to be. Thanks be to God when it's not, but it often is hitting that lowest point. And so the joy of repentance is found here in the Father's words.

We had to celebrate. It was a compulsion that we couldn't not celebrate. We had to do it because this brother of yours was dead and now he has come back to life.

He was lost and now he is found. There is a joy in the kingdom over this little resurrection. And there's a parable about the kingdom of God.

It's an invitation to those who know their their sense of need and who are drawing near to Jesus. It is good news for those of us who know that we have need and long for the compassion of God. For those who struggle with envy like the older brother, who sit in self-righteousness judging others with a sense of superiority, this is also an invitation to the gospel to come to the table and to rejoice with God's new work of creation in those that we have deemed so unworthy.

And so this story, if you'll notice, it's intentionally left open. And it's done so for you and I to imagine who we are in this story. Are we the younger son? Are we the older son? Are we something else? It's left open for us.

All of us have reasons for why it's difficult to repent, to turn towards God, why it's hard for us to express our need to accept the compassion of God. But this story compels us to look to the Father and to discover his compassionate embrace over and over again. And if somebody else's actions have resulted in resentment and shame, the kind that has distanced us from God, part of our healing is to long for the repentance of those people that we can't imagine God would love.

And for God's compassion to do a work of new creation in them. I think another part of healing is to join the banquet by taking part in the community life of the church. The Eucharist reminds us of this every week, where we sit together, we stand together, we sing together in this gallery of portraits of prodigal children.

And as you see the image of God restored in one another, you see a little bit of a taste of the resurrection in the lives of those that you're sitting next to. You have all been dead and you have been raised to life, and you get to see this weekend and week out, maybe more than weekend and week out, if you take the opportunity to get to know each other over coffee or a meal. This is the opportunity to build that muscle memory of rejoicing over the work of God's compassion in other people, so that you can see what God can do in your own heart and life.

And so we need to long for the Father's joy in finding the dead come to life. And on this Laetare Sunday, let's rejoice in the compassion of God that's found in Jesus Christ, who came to bring the dead back to life. As our New Testament passage reminded us this morning, in Christ the old things have passed away and all things have become new.

And so you and I are ambassadors of the kingdom of God, ambassadors of Christ, and we've been entrusted with this good news of reconciliation, like the prodigal son, like the older son, who, you know, if the story had ended the way I wanted to, he said, okay, I'm going to see what you can do in this prodigal son of yours. In Jesus forgiveness of sins is possible, and new creation is the reality, and reconciliation with God that we all enter into through the death and the resurrection of Jesus. And so in Christ our wounds are redeemed, and we're restored to life.

And so are we the older brother today, or are we the younger brother? Part of this Lent, what we need to do is take some time to ponder what God's compassion might look like in our own repentance, and why we find it so hard to turn to God and to accept his compassionate embrace. That helps us avoid the besetting sins of the younger brother, but also ask to discover God's compassion, and what it might look like for those who we wish weren't actually part of our life and our story. And that's really hard, and it's also the beginning of healing, and it keeps us from the besetting sin of pride that's found in the older brother, and envy.

And with whichever brother you identify with this morning, remember ultimately that this is a parable about the Father and his compassion, that God longs to come and meet you with a compassionate embrace before the words of confession ever exit your lips. Let me pray for us. O Lord our God, accept the fervent prayers of your people.

In the multitude of your mercies, look with compassion upon us and all who turn to you for help, because you are gracious, O lover of souls. And to you we give glory, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited by the Author.