Uncovering God’s Kingdom Where Chaos Seems to Reign

Luke 21:5-19

cONTENT

Introduction

         Good morning everyone. I’m Fr. Morgan Reed, the Vicar here at Corpus Christi Anglican Church. Today’s passage is the apocalypse as told by Jesus. In English, we use the word apocalyptic almost synonymously with destruction. For example, “the devastation of the city looked apocalyptic”, or people joke about a zombie apocalypse.

This doesn’t do justice to how Christians have used this word historically. Apocalypse means “revealing” or “uncovering” and apocalyptic literature was hopeful for the Christian because it demonstrated the slow unfolding of the victory of God over chaos and the victory of God’s people over death and evil. I think of it a bit like a movie. There are some shows or movies where at the beginning we see a snapshot of how the story will end. The rest of the movie is about showing you the process of how it got there. Apocalyptic literature is a bit like this.

         We know the end: “For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”[1] We know now that what awaits us is the great day where the unjust encounter God’s judgment and the righteous will be brought into the fullness of new creation where they experience God’s inexhaustible divine life and presence which they’ve only known in part now. It can be easy to lose hope as we watch the world and people around us devolve into chaos, or to see the wicked prosper. I wonder how many times we’ve said “I can’t even” or “I have no words for this” in a given week. Perhaps it feels incalculable and so we compartmentalize the “I can’t evens” and the “I have no words” moments right now with hope that someday Jesus will make things better. Jesus, in our passage today, gives us a glimpse of what is coming in order to reorient us when the present reality is chaos.

         As we look at this passage together, 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.”

A. (21:5-11) Apocalyptic stability: non-anxious people

         The first point I take from Jesus’ apocalypse is that hope in Christ creates stability and a people who are non-anxious. Second, because of our apocalyptic hope, we should live soberly and endure so that we experience salvation. Let’s look at the first point: apocalyptic hope creates stability and a people who are non-anxious. In Luke 21:5-11, Jesus is with his disciples and while Luke’s Gospel doesn’t tell us where the dialogue is happening, Mark and Matthew place this dialogue on the Mount of Olives. In Mark’s Gospel, those with Jesus are identified as Peter, James, John, and Andrew — This passage is often called the Olivet discourse.

         They admired how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God. This had been the building project of Herod the Great, who had built up the temple significantly after it’s destruction as part of a national reconstruction program. Jesus is basically telling them not to get too excited because it’s just temporary.

         Feel the gravity of that for a second. One of the things my son and I love to do is ride our bikes into DC, ride by the reflecting pool, and then head into the WWII memorial and stick our feet in the water. While we are sitting there, it is amazing to look up and to be surrounded by all the monuments which ground us in the history of what it means to be American. Imagine someone sitting next to us who looks at us at that moment and says something like “Yea, don’t be too impressed. This is all going to go away someday. They are just a bunch of stones.” You would probably scoot a bit further away from this person.

         I would imagine that this is a little bit of the angst that the disciples are feeling as Jesus begins talking about the temple being destroyed. But since they know Zech 14, they also know that if the destruction of Jerusalem is coming, then then the Lord will come from the Mount of Olives and conquer and reign from Jerusalem over the whole earth. Destruction is the anticipation of salvation and those two things, in their minds, are not separated by a great length of time. Their question makes sense: When are the events that bring about the temple’s destruction going to take place? And are there going to be signs that this will be the case?

         Jesus answers their question in a reality that was true for them and is still true today. There will be people who will come claiming that they’re the Messiah, or at least that they are your only hope for salvation. Don’t believe them. There will be wars, insurrections, scandals, and human sin will seem to reign corporately, individually, and systemically. There will be natural disasters, famines, plagues, earthquakes, and more. These will be signs that creation is groaning, the same creation that has hope that “...it will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.”[2]

         The apocalypse of Jesus is the stabilizing and reorienting vision we need. The depravity of others and the calamities of the earth are the slow revealing of the glorious plan of God to make all things new. You and I, like the Psalmist can still praise God for his goodness and complain to him when what our experience does not meet the standard of what we expect of his character and faithfulness.

         There are wounds where God brings healing; and each time there are moments of redemption, we see God’s kingdom breaking in now as a foretaste of what is to come: healing, answered prayer, the ability to be reconciled, the ability to walk out of dysfunction, a move towards God’s love for you and others, a deep sense of God’s nearness. Rather than running from the suffering toward those who promise us salvation, we run to the God who frees us from the ultimate captivity that creation itself longs to be freed from. The apocalypse, or revealing, of God’s plan in Christ, is the foundation of a church that is reflective and non-anxious.

B. (21:12-18) Apocalyptic hope: Live soberly, endure, and be saved

         Second, the apocalypse of Jesus is our hope, which calls us to live soberly and endure if we want to see God’s salvation. As a reminder, when we’re talking about salvation, we aren’t talking in categories of ultimate heaven or hell. In the time of Jesus they are discussing a present evil age and an age to come. The present evil age is filled with human bondage to sin and rebellion and its effects on creation. The age to come is the one where God rules over all things. These two ages overlap and interlock. Christ inaugurates the new age in his ministry. In the church we see the new age break in now through the work of God as a taste of what will be the end of the story where God does ultimately shepherd His people, lead them to streams of water, and wipe away every tear from their eyes.

         The word “saved” then would refer to something more like deliverance from bondage to the ruler of the present evil age to be delivered into the kingdom of the Beloved Son. It is a healing from the chaos within. It is the overturning of the brokenness we have brought about in ourselves and others. It is the supernatural work of redemption in the places of wounding and brokenness we have deemed unredeemable. And all of this is to the aim that we join creation in the renewal of Jesus’ work of new creation. The end of all these things is to grow perfectly in a knowledge of God’s love, to join God in His very life. The deliverance now is a revealing, or apocalypse of what is to come.

         In verses 12-17 Jesus tells his disciples of the persecution that they will undergo as they follow him. In the book of Acts you have Christians being killed for following Jesus. The book of Revelation itself, even after Jerusalem and the temple had been destroyed, is an apocalyptic hope for those churches mentioned in the first few chapters who are undergoing trial both inside and outside the church. Jesus was teaching his disciples ahead of time that the destruction of the temple was a promise of Christ’s return, but it wasn’t a guarantee that ultimate rescue would happen right away. God would uphold them in the interim, even giving them the words necessary, but they weren’t to be surprised when opposition came because of the name of Jesus Christ.

         Jesus says “By your endurance you will gain your souls.” When Jesus talks about souls, he means something like their most very human selves. If you and I, like the disciples, want to discover who we are in this new age, as sons and daughters of Christ our King, then our endurance in trial will be the apocalypse, the unfolding of God’s plan for who we truly are. To do anything less is to become less human and less than fully ourselves. As this revelation unfolds, we can hold onto hope that what Jesus has started, he will complete and that the road to following Jesus might be long and complicated, but it leads to that place where the good shepherd restores our very being and wipes away every tear from our eyes.

Conclusion

         I was encouraged last week by an old homily by John Keble that mentioned two important mysteries at work. There is a mystery of iniquity where the enemy of humanity is at work to ruin humankind and creation. Yet there is another mystery, which is the mystery of godliness in which God is at work in Christ to save and deliver humankind and all creation![3] The apocalyptic hope is discovering when the mystery of godliness clashes with and overcomes the mystery of iniquity. So while the apocalypse of Jesus, the revealing, might feel strange, it is beautiful. As God’s plan unfolds in unexpected ways, we ought to follow the disciples in being non-anxious. We do not need to run to false saviors and idols who promise only a shadow of salvation. We can provide relief in the disasters without having to explain every calamity since we know that every hardship is one more aching groan in the process of the birth of new creation. We know the end of the story and so we can join in prayerful reflection and hope that by enduring we will come to know the love of God in Christ more deeply and that we will be delivered from wayward affections, disordered desires, the wounds of human brokenness, and will  become more fully ourselves as sons and daughters of God. We pray that the Lord will come soon, but in the waiting, continue to follow where he leads, knowing that one day we will all come to the one who leads us to still waters, restores us, and will wipe every tear from our eyes.

Let me pray for us:

Most loving Father, you will us to give thanks for all things, to dread nothing but the loss of you, and to cast all our care on the One who cares for us. Preserve us from faithless fears and worldly anxieties, and grant that no clouds of this mortal life may hide from us the light of that love which is immortal, and which you have manifested unto us in your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

[1]                Rev. 9:17

[2]                Rom 8:21.

[3]                John Keble, https://archive.org/details/sermonsacademica00keblrich/page/104/mode/2up

All Saints’ Sunday: The Help of God and the Nearness of the Kingdom

Luke 6:20-36

TranscriptioN

Well, good morning again, everybody. It is good to see you this morning on our All Saints Sunday. This morning, I put the marker in the wrong page, and I read the right passage from the wrong Gospel. So actually, if you have your Bible, go to Luke chapter 6, which is also the Beatitudes, but I'm gonna be preaching from the Lukan version of the Beatitudes this morning. But I wanted you to get it all. So you got both Gospels. We're all about the synoptics here, so, you know, thank you for listening to both and dealing with both Gospels this morning.

So, as we get started, I know that there are many of you for whom this is your first All Saints Sunday because you've come in from other traditions, and so I'm so glad that you get to experience this feast day. It is one of my favorites in the church's calendar. For those of you who don't know me and are new and visiting, I'm Father Morgan Reed. I'm the vicar here, and I'm really glad you're here. Afterwards, please stop me and say hello, or I'll try and find you and say hello. I would love to get to know you, but thank you for being here this morning.

This day reminds us of those who have gone before us—those that we remember and those that we may not remember. And so I was telling somebody one of the things I love about All Saints Day, and I chose this art intentionally because there are so many saints for whom we don't know the names and faces of, and they are part of our journey whether we realize it or not, and this day calls attention to that very fact.

And if you look in our Book of Common Prayer, which is what we use in our liturgy, there are different reasons why somebody might be commemorated as a saint. There are those who are remembered as martyrs—those who gave their lives for the testimony of Jesus Christ. There are missionaries or evangelists, people who have pioneered a place for the gospel among those who haven't heard it yet or experienced the grace of God. There are pastors, people who show us the shepherding care of Jesus. There are teachers of the faith, also called doctors of the church—people who brought clarity to really complex topics in really complex times. There are monastics or religious people we commemorate for their deep lives of prayer, the deep well from which we draw all the time, and their intentionality. There are ecumenists—people who worked toward the unity of the body of Christ among disparate parts of the church around the world. And there are reformers of the church, people who either saw corruption in the church or something that needed to be changed, and they worked toward changing the church, moving it toward holiness and the holiness of God. And there are, finally, in our Book of Common Prayer, renewers of society—people who show us the goodness of Jesus and the profound examples of God's justice and mercy in their lives and what they call people to in the societies in which they lived.

All of these categories of people show us something of the goodness of the work of God in the person and life of Jesus Christ. And so these people form the roadmap as we are figuring out how to live out God's ideal for creation, how to live out God's plan for us as we become more like Jesus. All of these people who have gone before us become a roadmap for that.

And so the Beatitudes are commonly read on All Saints Sunday in the church. Essentially, what Jesus is teaching in these passages is that those who would follow him—his kingdom is seen best in the lives of those who know that they need God's help the most. His kingdom is seen best in the lives of those who know that they need God's help the most.

And as we look at this passage, let me pray for us.

“In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. God, the maker and redeemer of all believers, grant to the faithful departed the unsearchable benefits of the passion of your Son, that on the day of his appearing they may be manifested as your children, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.”

Well first, just to name what's different in Luke's gospel than in Matthew's. In Matthew's, it's all about blessed, blessed, blessed. I think there's nine categories of those who are blessed. In St. Luke's gospel, there's only four. And he has counterpoints of the four opposite categories who are accursed or woe to those. He says, blessed are you and woe to you, in four different categories. And so if you have your Bible, again, I encourage you to look at Luke 6. But in Luke's account, Jesus frames the Sermon on the Mount with those four blessings and woes.

It feels a little bit like if you read Psalm 1, and it begins blessed is the person who does not, stance it, etc. And then later on it says, and not so the wicked. So there's this blessing and cursing in Psalm 1, and when that's taken together with Psalm 2, the kind of function is like the doorways by which we enter into the Psalter.

It's the wisdom by which one enters into the life that the Psalter is painting a picture of. And so similarly here, the Beatitudes are like the doors that help us enter into the portrait of life in the kingdom of God.

And so first, I want to look at these blessed ones. It's a little different than Psalm 1, because these aren't commands. As though Jesus is saying, you know, you should aim to be poor, that should be your goal, or you should aim to be sad or weeping, or aim to be hungry, or aim to be hated by people. Those aren't goals.

They're not in and of themselves virtuous, so that if you're like, well yeah, everyone hates me, I must be doing something right. It's not, that is not a good indicator that you are necessarily following Jesus. But the reality is, as you do follow Jesus, and you become more holy, more like him, the reality is, you follow him into his death and resurrection.

And so suffering will be inevitable. But in Christ, suffering is meaningful. But suffering will be a reality.

And so when we think of the poor, the sorrowful, the hungry, the despised, those who have this very real bodily sense that there is a need, there is something going wrong, that the awareness of something wrong attunes us to the spiritual realities that we are in need of God's divine help. So what's true in the body is true in the soul as we follow Jesus.

And when you think of the audience Jesus is preaching to, these are the people longing for the kingdom of God, and they're not the well-off, they're not the well-fed. These are the people who are are looking for a Messiah to come and restore all things. And so these very much are the people Jesus is talking to, and so we will find ourselves in those places when we follow him as well. And when you do, when you find yourself knowing your own need for good companionship to be taken care of as you're following Jesus, then what he's saying is consider yourselves fortunate, consider yourselves blessed. That's the sense of what blessed means here. Consider yourselves fortunate when that happens.

In Eugene Peterson, he's a famous pastor who passed away a while back, but in his biography he was saying that when he translated the Message Bible, he originally wanted to, instead of Makarios here being blessed, he wanted to translate it lucky, because that's the sort of sense of like, “Hey, consider yourselves lucky if you find yourselves in this place.”

And his editor wisely said, “That's a terrible idea. No evangelical publisher is going to give you the time of day if you put lucky in your Bible translation.” So he wisely took that part out. But the point is still true, this idea that when you find yourselves in need as you're following Jesus of material resource, of friends, of food even, of finding comfort, then count yourselves fortunate when those situations come. It's really countercultural, and the reason why is because at those moments when you're attuned to the need of the body, you're closer to seeing God's kingdom than when you weren't aware of your need.

I remember some time ago, a few years back, I was getting food for our family, and I was holding our son who at the time was probably three, and I was holding him in one arm and the food in the other, and there was a curb that I was walking down to get to the car, and that curb was bigger than I had expected it to be, and so I have these terrible rubber band ankles, and when I stepped off this curb, my ankle just went out from under me and popped. It was the most horrible feeling, and I fell to my knees, somehow by the grace of God did not drop either my child or the Chipotle, but I get back. I had to drive home with my left foot and then go to the hospital and get x-rays, and I had indeed fractured a bone in my ankle. It was a terrible feeling, and I get up the next morning, and I look at my foot, and the whole bottom of my foot had turned black, and I thought, oh no. So I call a friend who knows more than I know about these things, and I said, “Here's what's happening.” And they said, “Oh that's great. That means you're on the process of healing.” But there is no way. This is so ugly. That can't be what healing looks like. Why is this good news that my ankle is so awful, and I hated that healing looked like that for the next few weeks, but you know I was thinking of this phrase like, blessed is that sprained ankle whose foot was bruised profusely because it was in the ugliness of that foot that I knew that healing was at hand.

It would be worse if I hadn't. The worst cuts are when you don't bleed initially, because you know that bad things are coming after that, but you know, think of it now in the spiritual realm, like poverty, sadness, hunger, exclusion for the sake of following Jesus and being faithful in the kingdom of God. These aren't the goal necessarily, but they are sometimes an inevitable reality for the one who's following Jesus, because we don't get to lavish ourselves with all the comforts of the world all the time, and so when those things come as we follow Jesus, those, when we're attuned to them and recognize them, those can be the very holy moments where we see the signs of God's nearness as we're following Jesus, and when we follow him, sometimes things are gonna get really difficult.

I hardly have to tell any of you that, but when they do, Jesus is encouraging us to count ourselves amongst the fortunate, amongst the blessed, because we're actually in a long line of people who have gone before us, who have suffered in the likeness of Jesus, who are among the fortunate, and because their hope for seeing the kingdom is our hope as well. It's countercultural today as it was back then, because back then, seeing somebody well-off was a sign of divine favor and prosperity. We haven't moved that far in our culture either, and so we look at our own society, we might have alternate beatitudes, or we would think, you know, blessed or fortunate are those who find themselves at ease because they've worked really hard to earn what they've got.

Blessed are those who achieve everything they wanted, no matter who they had to hurt in the process. Blessed are those who attain some amount of celebrity, those who benefit economically off the backs of the poor, those who avoid suffering because God must be pleased with them. Blessed are those who don't acknowledge the reality of their own mortality, but instead they're allowed and they can whip up a frenzy and get people to surround them with their ideas, and they must be showing us a sign of God's favor if they can draw a Jesus is calling us to follow him in our experience of suffering the loss of all things in order to see the realities of the kingdom come in our lives, because he's bringing about the realities of the kingdom through a people who are following him into his death and his resurrection, but the precursor to resurrection is death. And so, the need of our body attunes us to the need of our souls as we're following Jesus. And when we recognize that need for God where things aren't as we expected them to be or hope they would be, then we can count ourselves fortunate in those moments because we are intimately closer to seeing the realities of Jesus's nearness where his kingdom is coming and where he is good.

And so in contrast to the blessed, the fortunate, Jesus gives us the four categories of woe, you know, like not like “whoa”, but like woe to you, right? These are, in my Old Testament class we used to joke about these being called the woe-ricles, because you have the oracles of blessing and you have the woe oracles of cursing. Like these are like somebody lamenting the loss of something. It's I wish, like if you're at a funeral, it's almost like, “I wish this person had done it differently;” like there's a deep-seated woe about the state of the individual. And that language in the Old Testament was associated with funerary rites. And so, when we think of the woes in this passage in Luke, he says woe to the rich, woe to the well-fed, woe to those who laugh now, and those who are influential and well thought of. Now there's nothing inherently sinful about any of those things.

If you find yourself well-off, money is a tool, right? It's not a name. And again, just as none of those other things were aims of virtue, poverty, hunger, etc., none of these things are aims of vice, or are a result of vice necessarily. There's nothing inherently sinful about being well-fed or well-known, but what he's saying is if you find yourselves in a state where this is your constant reality, it's something you've aimed for, it's something you look for, it's something that takes up a lot of mental load in your life, and your life is then as a result of that characterized by satisfaction and ease, fame, the kind of laughter that you might associate with like toxic positivity, where you're ignoring the realities of how hard things are, then woe to you, is what he's saying.

You're at a complete disadvantage in that state from seeing God's kingdom come, because the shallow veneer of the view of God's kingdom is obscuring your vision for the love of God and for the real purpose of creation and why you're here. And so, this is the person who believes that they actually have no need of God's help, because they've arranged their lives in such a way that their body can't indicate to them anymore their need for God's help. And as a result, they're desensitized from the breaking in of God's kingdom in their lives. They run past it. They don't acknowledge it. They can't see it. Material success isn't always kingdom success, and we often get that confused.

So Jesus warns those who are listening to him, he would warn us as well, that in Israel's history there were this group of people who find themselves in that state constantly, and people thought well of them.

And does any of the older kids here, do you know who he calls those people in Israel? Or adults? Anybody want to guess? What? They're within Israel, yeah. The people who like would be well fed, well taken care of, all that. Anybody want to guess? Caroline. Close.

The Old Testament equivalent, false prophets. So he says, “Yeah, if you find yourselves amongst these, you're in good company with the false prophets of old, of Israel.”

And so, you know, so if you find, to find ourselves amongst those people, the curse, those who have, those who are in the woe category, when you find yourself there, you're overlooking what's broken for the sake of keeping up appearances. That's what is kind of at the root of the problem here. We're ignoring what's gone wrong to make sure that we can project a picture of what feels totally right. There's a false sense of peace, a false sense of tranquility, and you know what? We're culturally primed for that.

So imagine seeing a happy family photo on social media, maybe for the holidays, but then discovering that in that happy family photo, there was a day-long process of tears, and moaning, and groaning, and weeping, and gnashing of teeth, and protests of, I don't love you anymore, and all the sorts of things that go into a happy family photo. The photo is a curated facade. It's an aspirational reality, and sometimes, by the grace of God, it does actually become, you know, an ontological reality, but sometimes those family photos, they just mascot all that process that was going into this, tells us nothing of the conflict involved, and it's not a bad thing, it's the reality that we're in, but I'm starting to say that we're primed for this.

I remember seeing on social media a friend of mine from Bible College who had posted a really happy photo of him and his wife, and then like a month and a half later, it was taken down, and I found out that they were at the time almost separated, and they were going through a divorce.

The curated reality was just this veneer, and it had no substance behind it, and it's so easy to do that with our lives, and how we project ourselves on the internet, and then that trains us for how we do it with one another, and so this is a permission to be undone, right? This is a permission to take down the veneer and the facade.

The one in these Beatitudes who is cursed, he's cursed because they're keeping up appearances without the actual health and divine, they're keeping up appearances of health and divine prosperity without any of the substance of the reality of the kingdom of God, and so Jesus is setting up these blessings and the curses as these categories, like a doorway entering into a vision of the kingdom of God, which is to follow him in his example, and so he's going to go on for chapters in the Sermon on the Mount to show how the disciples can understand the world rightly when they learn to love as God loves, and we're not going to get into all that, but this is where he goes. If you want to understand the world as it is, learn to love the world as God loves it, which is entered into by this category of blessings and curses, and so one author says this about loving the way that God loves. He describes it as glorious, uproarious, absurd generosity.

Think of the best thing that you can do for the worst person, and then go ahead and do it. Think of what you'd really like someone to do for you, and then go do it for them. Think of the people to whom you are tempted to be nasty, and then lavish generosity on them instead.

So Jesus isn't just giving them a list of do's and don'ts in this passage. What he's giving them is a helpful picture of the subversion of the brokenness of the world by death and resurrection as they follow him. And so, as Christians, I'm going to use some of the language from St. Augustine of Hippo. He talks about “We're to hate the fault that's in the world by loving its true nature as God intended it to be”, which I find helpful as we learn to love as God loves in this uproarious, absurd kind of generosity and mercifulness.

Then we start to see the world as it is and hate the fault and the brokenness while loving it for the ways that God has intended it to be. And so Jesus, as we close, he is inviting us to follow him in this long procession of people who have gone before us for centuries. And each of us has been uniquely made with our unique stories, and we have a unique story to tell about the grace and the mercy of God in our lives and of his kingdom, as we're learning what it means to follow him. And so, when we follow our Lord, we do so into that death and resurrection that Jesus experienced, knowing the goodness that Jesus is with us.

The suffering is purposeful in order to make the world right again, to order what's been disordered. And so, when you're following Jesus, those moments of suffering aren't something to be passed over, but there's something to remind us that we are in need of God's help. His kingdom's seen best when we're most aware of our need for God's help.

And so, we can be encouraged in our time of need that that's when Jesus is closest to us, that he's pleased with us as we're following him. That this isn't his judgment to castigate us in the realm that we've done something wrong, but there is something for us of his goodness in this hardship. And that we can count ourselves then fortunate in those moments to be primed to see his kingdom, just as those who have gone before us, because those who have experienced his death and resurrection in life, their ultimate hope is our ultimate hope as well, as we look for a better country of which the Saints show us.

So as we close this morning, let me pray again this call for us from the Feast of All Saints.

“Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son. Give us grace so to follow your blessed Saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.”

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited using ChatGPT.

Becoming Acquainted With Our Need for God’s Mercy

Luke 18:9-14

TranscriptioN

Well, good morning again, everybody. It is good to see you this morning. I'm grateful to see some new faces. Those of you who are new and visiting, welcome. We're so glad that you're here. I'm Father Morgan Reed. I'm the vicar here at Corpus Christi Anglican Church, and I am really glad to be here with you worshiping our Lord this morning.

So each year around this time, I'm reminded of something I used to do before I was planning on being ordained. Back in my old life, I was planning on going into academia, and every year around this time, I would go to—it's called SBL or the Society of Biblical Literature—and those meetings were really fun for me. We get to travel the country to wherever they had it each year, and we would have lovely discussions about things like the Dead Sea Scrolls, Aramaic paleography, Syriac and like a headstone inscriptions, you know, all sorts of really interesting things that are interesting to everybody, right? And so this was fun for me, and one of the interesting dynamics about Society of Biblical Literature is that—you may not know this, but academic jobs are really hard to come by.

So imagine 10,000 people coming to a conference center jockeying for position, who are trying to either further their academic careers or who are trying to find an academic job for the first time. It was sort of a weird thing, but you know, each session would have four to five talks, about 20 minutes each, and each was followed by a Q&A session. And now there were people who were very secure in themselves, and they would go to these sessions, and they would ask a very thoughtful question that was engaging with the talk.

But then, inevitably, there would be somebody who would then raise their hand, and they would say something like, well, I guess this isn't as much of a question as much as it's a statement. And then you could feel the room go, oh, here we go, you know, what's gonna happen? And so there was one paper I went to, and there was somebody in the audience who was well-known. He's like the godfather of Old Testament textual criticism, which means something to about like three of you.

And so I was in there, and I knew this guy was there. And then when the person gave this talk, this guy raises his hand, and he does one of those, okay, I don't have a question, this is more of a comment. I thought, oh no, what's gonna happen next? And for the next like five or ten minutes, which could have been its own talk, this guy proceeded to disagree with this poor graduate student who was kind of pouring themselves out after pouring themselves into a paper.

It was humiliating, and you felt the collective response of the group in there lose respect for this scholar as time elapsed, and this person was just berating this young graduate student. It really didn't matter at that point what this man's brilliance or achievements were. His hubris was starting to overshadow his good work.

And we all can think of times where we know people who, because of pride, it's begun to overshadow the good things that they've done in their lives. And so the questioner who says, well, you know, this is more of a comment than it is a question, reminds me a little bit of the hubris that we find in today's gospel passage. And it reminds us of the kind of humility that we need when we're approaching the Lord in prayer.

This passage is this warning against pride, against self-justification. It's a passage about the difficulty of repentance and contrition because of the honesty involved, and then it's a passage about God's disposition to those two different kinds of attitudes. So as we look at our gospel text this morning in Luke 18, 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.”

So Jesus tells us a parable in Luke chapter 18, and he actually tells us who he's talking to in this passage. He says, to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt. So this first man in the parable is a Pharisee, and this isn't to say that all Pharisees are like this, but there were certainly Pharisees who in Jesus's day prided themselves in their discipline, self-discipline, and their ability to keep the law, even going beyond the law. There were set hours of prayer in that day, and you can imagine that this man is making it every single day to those prayer times.

In the passage, he sort of waltzes right into the temple, you can imagine into the holy place, with a bit of a smug air of contentment with himself and a little bit of entitlement, and he opens his mouth, and I'm gonna paraphrase what he's saying. ‘God, I thank you, not for your grace, but, or of the good things that you've given, but I give you thanks for me, because I'm really great. I go way beyond what you require in your law. I fast twice a week. You didn't even ask me to do that. You didn't, but you know what? I'm really great, and I thank you for that. You know, I give a tenth of my income. Did I mention how grateful I am for how great I am? Thank you so much, Lord, that I am not a bad person, like thieves, people who cheat on their spouses, people have no sense of justice, or worst of all, that guy over there, that tax collector.”

So we get the sense that this Pharisee comes to the temple multiple times a day, if not per week, to thank God about his own greatness. He truly believes that he is God's gift to humanity. What would you do without me, God? Sort of his disposition. Meanwhile, the tax collector in the parable is standing far off, probably in the court of the Gentiles, and he comes every once in a while, hoping not to be really noticed by anybody, and worse than being noticed in this case, he's pointed out by this guy who's known as being pious in the community, and he's now the object of the contemptuous gaze of the righteous person in the community.

So I hope as you hear my paraphrase and my retelling of that, that none of that sits right with you. It's not supposed to sit right with us. It's supposed to feel really icky, and it was supposed to when Jesus said it as well.

That person, the Pharisee, was doing all the right things on the outside to make them look right before God without any of the substance to actually do what was to make him right before God. It was a form of avoiding the reality of his own brokenness, his disordered loves, his dysfunctional attachments to the world, which those things are sort of the nature of sin. One of the church fathers, St. Augustine, says this about the passage, he came to the doctor.

It would have been more worthwhile to inform the doctor by confession of the things that were wrong with himself instead of keeping his wounds secret and having the nerve to crow over the scars of others. It's not surprising that the tax collector went away cured, since he hadn't been ashamed of showing where he felt pain. And so I really like how he puts that in a medical frame, thinking of the doctor and healing.

I can imagine the kind of person that goes to the doctor just to brag about how healthy they are, to check the box, and you know, look at all the things I'm doing in my life, doctor, but they fail to inform the doctor of those lingering headaches that keep persisting or the pain they're having in their foot. They sort of ignore those things in order to, well, they brag about the things that are going well in order to ignore the things that might be causing them harm. It's easier to brag about our accomplishments and credentials than it is to confess our sins or to be honest about our brokenness.

As you think through the last week, there are places that have invited us into examining our brokenness. What emails gave us a rise this week in our spirit? As you think of the conversations you had with co-workers, friends, or family, which one of those caused a disproportionate amount of angst, contempt, anger, envy, sadness? What meeting are you dreading coming up this week? Who is it and why? Those are the moments that are invitations to examine ourselves and to ask the doctor for health. I think we move through those things too quickly without reflection because those are the places that point out to us where brokenness is, where disordered loves or where loves have become disordered, where attachments might be to this kingdom of darkness.

Sometimes we define sin just as this overarching category of rebellion against God, and it's not wrong, but it needs more definition. When you get down to it, sin is rebellion against the goodness of who God is. It's rebellion against the goodness of how God created the world, which he calls very good. It's rebellion against them being truly human because we were meant to be God's good image-bearers on this earth. And so, disordered loves, attachments, and pride make us less human. So the way that the monastic tradition in the past has talked about these things is disordered attachments or disordered loves.

And I find that helpful to give specificity to this overarching category of rebellion against God because to rightly order loves and rightly order attachments with the kingdom of God is to rightly order the world, is to understand the world as God intended it to be. So somebody might come to church regularly, they might say or not say certain things because they know it's right or wrong, they might pray at certain times, they might hold very public ethical positions, and they might do all those things to avoid dealing with the humiliation of living comfortably with a secretly disordered interior life. It's possible.

And the Pharisee shows us that. They might not even know what they're doing when they're doing that. And that's exactly what Satan wants. That's the very thing that makes us less human, holding on to a secret life, bypassing the brokenness, ignoring the disorder through our spiritual achievements. The very thing which could save us, which could be spaces of redemption, then become traps through religiosity. And so the Pharisee, he's also, it's interesting to me, he's characterized not just by pride but by other-centered contempt.

And I wonder then if the flip side of the coin of pride is other-centered contempt. So contempt for others and pride being flip sides of the same coin. Because if I can name the faults of other people really well, sometimes I can do that in order to avoid the humiliation of looking at my own brokenness. And like a doctor, naming those things for which I need forgiveness and healing. And so we can see in the Pharisee the dangers of pride, self-justification.

Now we want to look at this tax collector and the difficulty of repentance. Remember why tax collectors are so hated in the time of Jesus. People in those days purchased rights over a territory. They had to collect taxes to pay to some municipal leader. And so private, the tax collection was almost like a privatized industry, where individual tax collectors had to collect enough taxes not only for those that they owed money to, who were paying off the land, but also to make an income. And so it was really common for somebody who's a tax collector to charge extra fees. And what those fees were was up to the tax collector.

So in a society like that, extortion is commonplace. In fact, it's not just commonplace, it's actually acceptable. It's just common. Everyone assumes it's going to happen. And so, for any Jew who's going to become a tax collector, they're already on the outside of society. They're considered a traitor. Somebody who doesn't really trust that Yahweh is king, they're a tool of Caesar.

And so, imagine the amount of self-hatred in the life of the tax collector. He knows exactly where he stands in the community, what everyone thinks of him. He's viewed with suspicion by everyone he meets, and he probably doesn't choose that job for himself. Unfortunately, because of his life circumstances, that job has found him. We don't know what they are, doesn't matter.

The point is, no one who is self-respecting says, I aspire to the place of tax collector, right? He is so aware of his own brokenness and sin as a tax collector, he hardly needs anyone to tell him how broken he is. And so hearing the voice of condemnation from the Pharisee is only echoing the very thing that he feels about himself. He says, yeah, you're right, that's exactly who I am. It's just echoing the shame voice. We all have one of those. We all have a shame voice, and what echoes it for us? He knows that he has nothing to approach God with.

But maybe, just maybe, if he can get close to God's presence, then he's gonna rediscover some semblance of his humanity, and this relationship with God that he longs for. Contrition is really difficult because it requires us to join the tax collector in risking humiliation to express our needs to God, to admit that we have, that we are not the one who God needs to build his kingdom, that we need God more than he needs us, right? And the tax collector, he wants to know that God is in control. He wants to know if there's somewhere that he can go where all the poor decisions in his life that he may have made aren't going to define him, where he finds somebody who's going to attune well to the sorrow of his heart, and discover the delight in him and the love that he's longing for.

That's what he's hoping for. And so, he approaches the temple cautiously. He takes himself to the most unassuming place, the edge of the temple in the court of the Gentiles, at the edge of grace, where he hopes to meet the grace of God, to find answers, to find love, and to hopefully reframe his own world.

And the incredible truth of this parable is that it's that man who's on the edge of grace that's actually at the center of God's delight and God's pleasure. And so as we think about the Pharisee and the tax collector, as we close, I want to look at God's disposition towards these two people. Jesus says that it was the tax collector who went home justified, who went home right in the sight of God rather than the Pharisee.

And I can imagine in my mind's eye that the Pharisee walks smugly back out of the temple with no knowledge that he has gone from the temple unjustified and looking poorly and not at the center of God's pleasure. So what Jesus invites us into in this passage is a life that is in search of the mercy and grace of God to rearrange the disordered loves and attachments that have formed for us, and then to become truly human because of that in Christ. And I've said this before, but I love, there's a patristic quote, I think it's attributed to St. Irenaeus, about the glory of God is a human fully alive. The glory of God is a human fully alive. To become fully human, we have to seek out Jesus and we have to constantly keep our need for God's grace in front of our eyes.

The humble don't compare with others, but they're keenly aware of their own brokenness and their own need of God's work of restoration in their own heart, their own need for the death and resurrection of Jesus in their own specific places of wounding.

The self-righteous, by contrast, are constantly comparing. They're known for bypassing their own dysfunction and they're coasting through life on a wave of other-centered contempt. And they can often find themselves amongst very religious people, but this person finds themselves very far from the pleasure of God.

So I want to encourage us from this passage to make a habit of being needy. Make a habit of being needy. Specifically, to recognize our need for God to reorder our world, to make us new in the person and work of Jesus. And so, come with your need and reflect deeply on the grace of God. And whenever every opportunity comes up for you in prayer, come in stillness and quietness to notice where we are longing for God's grace to make the world new again. Let me pray for us.

“Almighty and everlasting God, you govern all things both in heaven and on earth. Mercifully hear the supplications of your people. And in our time, grant us your peace. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.”

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited using ChatGPT.

In Returning and Rest We Shall Be Saved

Luke 18:1-8

TranscriptioN

I remember telling some of you that during my ordination, I got to swing the thurible, and it was a funny experience because we swung the thurible to the procession song Oceans by Hillsong. And today I have just done a gospel reading under a disco ball. Thanks be to God.

Yeah, these are the moments. This is church planting right here. I'm so grateful. What a joyous weekend we've gotten to share together. I am so grateful that we've gotten to spend all this good time together sharing meals, a long hike, and other things. And it was a joy to have Reverend Summer Gross with us for the last few days. Grateful for her ministry among us.

And the theme for this weekend has been creating space for God, and part of beginning that desire is coming out here for a whole weekend to Front Royal—to set everything down for an entire weekend, which is very countercultural in the NOVA area. And this is such a great start to honoring such a desire for space for the Lord. And so I hope you'll take some of the material that you've had from the weekend.

I hope you take some time to reflect on the experiences that you've shared with one another this weekend and to utilize that to frame your life by prayer. Because what often I am tempted to do is to frame prayer in the context of my life—so that life happens and prayer is some subsection of it—but rather making prayer the frame for where life happens.

And so, in line with several of the themes this weekend, I wanted to look at our passage today—this exhortation from St. Paul in the Second Epistle of Timothy—to Timothy, I should say. So he is calling Timothy to remain in the tradition that's been handed down to him and that’s shaped him. And that tradition includes scripture—not as a body of proof texts, but as something, a tool of discovery, a tool of training, something to be lived, something to be preached and lived out and modeled for others.

Timothy's call is to fulfill his ministry. I've heard another translation say, "discharge the duties of your ministry," and I love that too. The point is, he's sort of at a swan song here. If you had some last words to give to somebody, what would you tell them? And these are St. Paul’s words to this young bishop, overseer.

It reminds me a bit of the prayer that the bishop prays over us when we're confirmed or received or renew our baptism vows. He'll pray:

"Almighty and ever-living God, let your fatherly hand be upon these your servants. Let your Holy Spirit ever be with them, and so lead them in the knowledge and obedience of your holy Word, that they may faithfully serve you in this life and joyfully dwell with you in the life to come, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

And so you and I have this call on us as those who are in the Church, living out life with Jesus—to follow Jesus and walk with the Holy Spirit, to grow in the knowledge and obedience of God's Word, to grow in what that even means for us as unique servants of God—to serve God faithfully, to discharge all the duties of our ministry, whatever God’s called us into. And fulfilling the duties of our ministry is hard. It’s really hard. It’s hard because we face daily derailments—maybe hourly derailments—endless crashing waves of unmet and upset expectations. "Lord, I thought things were gonna be this way. Where are you? Why haven’t you shown up yet?" We talked about that last week or two weeks ago.

And so this weekend, one of my hopes is that this weekend would be a reminder to us that you and I require rest, silence, and solitude at various points to experience the salvation of God—that if we're immersed in chaos, we will not experience this transference from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of the Beloved Son—but it requires intentionality. No matter how small, right? I know that silent time with young children is prime real estate, but the point is that there is an intentionality built into our lives of experiencing the salvation of God in silence, solitude, and rest.

So we have to know the sweetness of the gospel, the goodness of it, before it paints a compelling picture of the kingdom of God for others to experience. If we want them to experience it—if that’s our desire—then it has to be sweet and good for us first. And so Timothy is struggling here, and he needs encouragement. It’s why the letter is written. And I don’t know about you, but I can relate to him, and maybe you can this morning as well as you think about the struggles that Timothy is facing.

So as we look at 2nd Timothy this morning, let me pray for us.

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

Well, first we have to create space for understanding the tradition that's been handed down to us. St. Paul has spent time in his letter mentioning how things around Timothy are gonna go from bad to worse with regards to persecution—the level of apostasy around him as people turn from the faith. He shouldn’t be surprised when those things happen because they're going to. But he's called, in the midst of that, to deeply root himself in the tradition in which he was discipled. And what tradition was that?

We know from earlier in the letter that Timothy grew up with a faithful mother and grandmother. So Lois, his grandmother, and Eunice, his mother, had raised him up in the faith—these two godly women that he was to learn from. He was also shaped by the community that he'd been baptized in. What lessons were there for him as he thought about the people that he knew? And then Paul himself, who was being an example of carrying on a life of faith—what was he supposed to learn from Paul as Paul had dealt with persecutions and sufferings? Timothy was certainly no better; he would go through similar things.

So take time to consider what shaped you. It’s really important to make space for that. Who has invested in the deposit of faith in your life? And if you can’t think of people in your biological family background, I can tell you that people in this church are part of that family who are depositing that in you. Every meal that you’ve shared, the conversations as they go deeper—these are deposits of the faith as people are investing themselves in you and vice versa. I actually care for your well-being, and I know that you care for mine, and this is true in the Church. We care for one another.

And so, what’s the nature of the faith that's in us? The answer, St. Paul says, is found in Holy Scripture. And in that time when he talked about Scripture, there was no New Testament yet. He’s talking about what we would refer to as the Old Testament. Most of the New Testament books hadn’t yet been written by the time he’s writing this, or they hadn’t all been yet recognized as Scripture by this time.

So he’d been taught the Scriptures—the Old Testament—as a young man. And Scripture, this Scripture that he knew of, was pointing him to the Jesus that the Church is following. And so he’s supposed to examine people who are causing opposition, potentially heretical ideas, by the standards of the Scriptures which he has been trained in, that he’s been discipled in. Again, the point is to understand Jesus in the Scriptures, but we need the Scriptures to understand this Jesus whom we follow.

And so, note the Scripture’s purpose: it’s not just a handbook of proof texts for the refutation of ideas, although it can do that. But according to verse 16, it says, “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God might be proficient and equipped for every good work.” There’s a proficiency and an equipping involved in understanding the Scripture.

And so within a hundred years of this time—in St. Timothy’s day, St. Paul’s day—within a few hundred years, the Church would discern through the Spirit which writings had the mark of the Holy Spirit, as the process of the formation of the New Testament canon would take place. But note that Scripture is both inspired and profitable—two things. It’s inspired, and maybe because of that, it is profitable.

Many of you took the opportunity to hike yesterday, and what an incredible hike it was. Various groups made it various distances. I was really impressed with the five-year-olds who climbed a thousand feet up switchbacks yesterday and hiked almost four miles. Ten would have been—I would have been super, super impressed. I would be impressed with adults who did that too! But yeah, I mean, wow. It was a stunning time on the Appalachian Trail.

And if you think about the Appalachian Trail, you can read books about it, right? There are books written about people taking a year to go hike this thing, and those stories are incredible. But reading about going on the Appalachian Trail is a fundamentally different experience than actually going out there and seeing beyond what’s just on Google Maps or Apple Maps, right? It was a beautiful 75-degree day. Some leaves were falling as the wind was blowing. There were steep inclines; you felt those switchbacks in your calves, and we were surrounded by beautiful fall colors. And doing it with friends is a whole different experience.

So Scripture, similarly, is not a book just to be read and comprehended like some other book to understand something about something. It’s something to be experienced. Scripture is something to be prayed, something to be sung, something to be meditated on in the quiet—for the Holy Spirit to read us through it. It’s something to be read multiple times, something to take in, something to experience and be trained in. It’s formative. It’s useful.

So we've got to create time to abide with God in His Word—as a tool to invite us into the life of the kingdom of God that He wants to bring us into.

Spending time with the Scriptures—reading it with the Church—is so helpful. One of the things I find really helpful is reading the Bible with the Church—finding some ancient writers. It could be a hundred years old, could be fifteen hundred years old—read with other people outside modern American whatever—and that can be a really helpful discipline: to read with the Church across time and geography. Note the holiness, the examples of people who have placed Scripture so central to their lives and have had to live it out in different contexts. But make space for that, because that’s the time we need to be grounded in the Word of God and to become the person that God is shaping us into. It frames our formation; it frames our life when we create the space to abide in God's presence with His Word.

And then next, we need to create space to name the story that God is telling. What story is God telling in your life, and how does your story fit into the greater cosmic story that He’s telling? St. Paul gives Timothy this charge: to proclaim the message—or preach the Word, in some translations—in any season, to convince, to rebuke, to encourage. And the first two of those, when I say “convince” and “rebuke,” sound a little harsh, right? It sounds strict. But the third one, “encourage”—we’re kind of like, okay, I can breathe easy. Encourage, got it, yeah.

But all three are necessary, I think. Encouragement helps us understand that the aim of those things is healing. Timothy is not rebuking in order to be right, to prop up his own ego, to show his own theological training. His care is for the salvation of someone’s soul. It is for the healing of somebody in their brokenness and their sin.

So these things are necessary—the reproofs, the rebukes, the exhortations, and the encouragement—all at various times. And we all have to name this distortion in the brokenness of sin in our own lives and our own unique and distorted loves and brokennesses—to discover the ways that God's grace comes to meet us and heal us in our own uniqueness. Because each of us have different stories, different proclivities—like, you know, a priest who overfunctions and decides at 6 a.m. to try and set up most of the altar stuff when we have an altar team. We all have our own unique proclivities.

People don’t want to do that today, right? They don’t want to name their own unique brokennesses. And they didn’t want to in Timothy’s day either—so it’s not new. It’s easier to blame-shift, to excuse ourselves, to bypass brokenness than it is to hold on to that little feeling of humiliation that we get when we have to admit that something might be wrong, or that we need help, or that we did the wrong thing this morning at 7 a.m. You know that little feeling of humiliation, right?

It’s easier to bypass those things, smooth them over, and walk away from them than it is to own it and to be curious and invite the Holy Spirit into those moments. But it’s sort of the scandalous part of the kingdom of God that it comes through admitting that our little fiefdoms—our broken fiefdoms—don’t measure up to the goodness of the bigness of the kingdom of God, where Jesus is Lord and we are not.

It’s easier to settle in my brokenness than it is to accept what I don’t understand about what God wants to do in His grace. And so the reason why Paul has this charge to Timothy is that there’s going to come a time where people are not going to want to hear what’s true. That must have only happened back then.

They’re going to believe whatever they want—what makes them feel good and comfortable—and then they’re going to make sure to surround themselves with people who think just like they do. That doesn’t sound familiar, right? Nothing is new under the sun.

And so Timothy is called to keep on preaching tirelessly, to hold out the gospel for people, to do the work of an evangelist—which isn’t just proclaiming the Four Spiritual Laws; it’s holding out the compelling nature of the goodness of the kingdom of God for people who don’t want to hear it—and to carry out the fullness of his ministry. And that call is not different for each one of us.

And so when people say they want to get back to doing things like the early Church, I often wonder what they mean—because don’t they realize that this was the early Church? The same problems then, the same problems now.

If you read Galatians, St. Paul has to correct Peter and say, “Hey, you really blew it. Your theology is great, but your table fellowship is not following in line with your theology.” Right? And he has to call him out publicly in a letter that is now in Scripture.

And so St. Paul has to undergo persecution by different schismatic groups. Later on in this chapter, he’s going to talk about Alexander the coppersmith, who caused him a lot of trouble. And this is not new.

And so it’s not like after the Apostles died, heresy stopped and—great, we got the deposit of the apostolic faith, there are no problems anymore! When did the early Church not have problems? Each successive generation had to deal with innovations of heresies, how people misunderstood Jesus, how they denied the fundamental goodness of creation—whether that’s people denying that Jesus was physically resurrected, or just spiritually, or that the spirit of the Christ came on Jesus at a certain point and left Him.

This denial of the fundamental goodness of the created body—that God wants to bring that body into His kingdom—is not new. All sorts of errors crop up over time.

So the task of the Church leaders like Timothy was to hold forth the goodness of the truth of the gospel without wavering, to do the hard work of examining the good deposit that had been placed in him in the face of all the opposition around him, to be grounded in it, to remind his people of the cosmic story of salvation that God is telling in Christ.

And that’s our call too—to this story that the world is broken, that it’s bound to the kingdom of darkness, that God in His love came to humanity in real flesh—not an apparition—to raise up what was broken and bound by sin in each of our lives by His death and resurrection, to raise it up—our lives, our whole selves—to the life that is found in God.

And that all creation, what we experience together in our lives, is a foretaste of what the cosmos are going to experience—that there is hope for the world around us because of what each one of us undergoes in this cosmic story of salvation—and that life is available to all who look to Jesus for their salvation.

This One was really crucified. He was really risen, and He was really ascended. And so in the midst of the kingdom of darkness, those who follow this Christ are like little lights of the kingdom of heaven right now. And as we live out the gospel, the transformation that’s brought about in our lives is a foretaste of what God is doing in the rest of creation.

It’s good to create space to think about that while you’re in creation. So go enjoy some fall foliage and think about the death and the resurrection in the context of colorful trees.

The story that God was bringing about in Timothy is the story that He’s bringing about in our healing and our salvation—as this foretaste of the greater narrative that He is doing in heaven and on earth.

And so Timothy reminds us that our call, our work, our call takes adequate retreat time—space. We need to be intentional about this. I was thinking, like, we need to create functionally—not ontologically—little monastic cells through the Daily Office, times of prayer. We talked about breath prayers—those are really helpful. Visio divina, lectio divina... I don’t mean like really create a monastic cell (unless you really want to, and then tell us how you did it), but create a monastic cell in your heart. Think of your household as a monastic cell where you retreat to carry on the rhythms of attuning yourself to the grace of God—where God attunes to you, where you listen to what He’s doing.

We need to create space for those times and those rhythms. We can’t fully discharge the duties of our ministry without the stillness and the silence that are so necessary for our rescue and our salvation from the kingdom of darkness, which is a daily experience.

And so I want to encourage us this weekend to hold fast to the deposit that's been invested in us. All of us are a part of this redemption plan that God is telling—the story that He’s telling—and in our uniqueness, God has gifted us and placed us where He has, both individually and as a Church.

And so, know the scripture not as a book to assent to a body of knowledge, but as an experience to taste and see that the Lord is good. Take time to name and be grateful for the people that have placed a deposit in you and are investing in you. In this deposit of faith in your life and who have done so with integrity. And as you go from the retreat, this weekend may encourage you to examine your own rhythms and insert the stillness and the silence that you so desperately need. The things that are going to carry you through the turbulent waves of this troublesome world, which is what our baptism liturgy talks about.

So I want to take a minute here to just pray in silence before I close us with a final collect. So I'm giving you a little bit of stillness and silence this morning, relative, of course. But take like a minute to just pray in silence and I'll close us with a collect.

“God of peace, who has taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and in 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 using ChatGPT.

Trusting in a Great God and Not in a Great Faith

Luke 17:5-10

TranscriptioN

Good morning again, my friends. It is good to be with you this morning. I'm Father Morgan Reed. I'm the vicar here at Corpus Christi Anglican Church, and it is a joy to celebrate the Lord with you this morning.

Today's passage is about the relationship of faith to following Jesus, and the nature of relationship is really important as Jesus pushes back on the hubristic type of approach of thinking that there is a transactional approach to having a relationship with God. It reminds me a little bit of a book I was reading a while back on marriage, where it pointed out an unhealthy pattern in some couples, where one spouse would deeply long to have their spouse meet a desire for them. It could be physical, could be emotional, whatever it is, and whether they name that need or not, they would start doing extra things for their spouse, not out of a sense of love, but to obligate their spouse to meet their need, right? There's this ulterior motive, and along those lines, I once heard a pastor somewhere say, you know, if you give your husband a crown, you'll make him a king.

In other words, what he's saying is if you fake it, and you treat him better than he is, then he'll rise to the occasion. Ew. First of all, it's terrible advice. It doesn't work. And second, it's just placating immaturity in your spouse. But also, what's interesting about that transactional approach to marriage is that it makes the actions of the wife suspect at any given time.

You know, is marriage then a big transaction of each other trying to have their needs met by doing kindnesses to one another? It brings in this ulterior motive, and that's just not the nature of relationship—true, authentic goodness. So similarly, in our walk with Christ, we have to watch that we're not obeying out of this desire to obligate or try and obligate God to having our needs met or having certain outcomes arise as a result of our faithfulness.

And this morning, in our gospel passage, we're encountering Jesus giving his disciples instructions about what the life of faith looks like. What does it look like to have a relationship with God as our King in the kingdom of God? And this passage has really two important descriptions of the nature of faith. First, it's that the presence of faith shows how great God is, not how great our faith is. Good faith shows how good God is, and not how good our faith is. And second, faithfulness is given because of who God is and the grace that he's given to us, not to try and obligate God to anything, as though we could even do that. So as we look at our gospel passage this morning, let me pray for us.

“In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Lord, I love that psalm where if we delight in you, you give us the desires of our hearts. And so it is a work to grow in delighting in you, so that what we want is to see you in all of our doings and in all of our goings and all of our words and thoughts. So, Lord, be with us and help us to desire you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.”

We start the gospel reading this morning with this really enigmatic phrase that Jesus says about, if you just have a mustard seed amount of faith, then you could take a giant mulberry tree, uproot it, and go plant it in the sea—which is sort of a silly image. Mulberry trees don't grow in water. And that's the point. It's impossible to uproot this mulberry tree and to plant it into the sea. But that's also the point here—that God does the impossible. It's not dissimilar from when Jesus says, you know, it's impossible for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, but with God, all things are possible. Here it points to this reality.

Jesus isn't interested in having his disciples go around figuring out how to uproot mulberry trees and throw them into the sea. Nor is he worried about them going around wondering if they have enough faith in each moment. That is not his concern. The point is that the effectiveness of faith to accomplish the work of the kingdom isn't about the greatness of somebody's faith; it's about the greatness of the God in whom we have faith. It's not about adding more; it's about just the presence of it. And so the whole reason Jesus brings this up is he gave them a really hard saying before. He started talking about, you know, as you're my disciples, you're gonna have to rebuke one another at times.

There are times where somebody's going to get out of line, believe something erroneous—whatever. You're gonna have to rebuke somebody for something. And when that happens, if that person who follows me turns and repents, then you need to be prepared to forgive them.

And so that is a hard thing to do once, but Jesus goes above and beyond and says, as many times as they repent, you're to have the disposition of forgiveness. And this prompts them to ask, well, Jesus, can you add to our faith? Because that is a lot. And presumably, then, they believe that they don't have enough faith to accomplish that thing that shows them to be followers of Jesus.

And so Jesus begins to talk about not the amount of faith, but just the presence of it. Because if it were the amount of faith, then it would be up to each one of us to muster up something in ourselves, and it would depend on our greatness. But instead, this is a miracle.

It comes from the power of God. It's not my ability to accomplish something; it's God's power to do it. And so it's the presence of faith, as small as a mustard seed—not my ability to move God.

And so God calls us to pray and to trust. He isn't waiting for us to hit some arbitrary goal, like, you know, if you're fundraising or something, and you get the red line up—you know, it's not that you have a faith chart. And eventually, once you hit that goal, God starts answering your prayer.

That's way too transactional. It's not how God works. But he invites us to prayer, which is a mystery—not as a transaction, but as an invitation into participation in what he's doing. And so, in a real way, then, prayer is more for you and me than it is for God and his sake. And as I make a habit of seeking God, knowing the desires of God and the love of God, and aligning my loves and desires with the love and desires of God, listening for what God's doing, paying attention, then I start to begin to participate in God's work.

So you can see how these sorts of phrases in the Psalms work, like, I want to grow in my desire for you and your desires, and give me the desires of my heart. Because there's this interplay of growing in the desires of God so that we can truly say, God, give me the desires of my heart—which are supposed to be growing in alignment with yours. I'm invited into participation in what God's doing.

And so we're not just looking for mulberry trees to go uproot and plant into the sea, but we're looking, in the slowness of relationship, we're learning what our great God can do in us and through us, as in the daily operation of the Holy Spirit, we're seeking God's kingdom in the everyday stuff of life that he puts in front of us. So as we follow Jesus, seek his kingdom, and live lives of prayer, God sometimes does, in fact, change our outward circumstances.

This is one of the mysteries of the economy of grace—that he, in fact, does hear our prayers and relieve our pain, as the confession liturgy says. And sometimes he does a work in our hearts to bear the outward circumstances that aren't changing. Sometimes he uses us to pray with someone and change their outward circumstances.

Sometimes he uses us to speak a word of encouragement that helps them endure the situation that's not changing. All of those scenarios are equally miraculous, as the Holy Spirit is doing his work in our hearts. And so Jesus's point is to normalize a life of faith.

Normalize ordinary faithfulness. We have to cultivate this life of faithfulness and trust in him as we walk, and not look for extreme, ecstatic moments all the time, but live lives that are curious and discovering the kingdom of God in that everyday, ordinary stuff of life—and what God's doing in us and the people that we're in relationship with. It's learning to be curious and discover the kingdom of God around us.

And so a growing disciple also understands, in this parable, he moves from mulberry trees to an analogy about servanthood. A growing disciple understands and grows in this idea that we can never put God into our debt. We can't obligate him to certain circumstances.

And he illustrates the point with slavery, which in their culture was a common institution. Everybody knew about it. And so if somebody had a slave who had just come in from working in the field, the owner's not going to sit the slave down at the table and say, I made a meal for you, come sit and eat with me.

But instead, the slave's going to come in from the field, they're going to make dinner, and then at the end of the meal, then they can eat and drink. And does the master even give him a thank you in this parable? No. And again, parables are not like a one-to-one correspondence.

So we don't want to think that God is some cruel slave master. That's not his point. His point is that servitude in this parable is just assumed.

There's not this expectation of, oh, what a great job you've done all day. God's not doing this for us either. He's not saying, oh, look at how wonderful you are, right? But no, the servitude is just expected.

And so we serve God because of the things that he's done for us in Christ—the grace, all the goodness of the work of the Holy Spirit has been—the Holy Spirit himself has been poured into our hearts. And so St. Ambrose, the one who is responsible for St. Augustine's conversion, says it this way: “Grace must be acknowledged, but nature not overlooked. Do not boast of yourself if you have served well, as you should have done.” And I think what's helpful about understanding this nature of living into grace without expecting a thank-you all the time is this: there are two things I think it speaks to.

First, our tendency to try to obligate God to our success and to successful outward circumstances. And second, to frame our success as God's blessing. These two things may not be true.

In the first case, imagine somebody, you know what, today I need to start obeying God so that things get better in my life, so that things get better overall. And at the root of this is the prosperity gospel, right? This idea that if I just change my behavior and act better, God will give me outward prosperity and I will be fine. God, I'll stop smoking today if you heal my lung cancer right now, right? It's that sort of idea that's trying to obligate God to outward circumstances and success.

But instead, in this day-to-day life, we are expected then to name brokenness, to turn towards the God who longs to give us grace, and seek to amend our lives because of what he's done for us—whether we're in a season of trial or whether we're in a season of flourishing. That's the everyday stuff of faithfulness. Marriages might get better as a result, parenting probably will get better as a result, you know, but the motivation is different.

I'm not obligating God to anything. We are just servants, and we're doing the hard work of naming brokenness and naming grace to discover what God has made us to become and what his kingdom should look like in our lives. And so we leave the outcomes to God because whatever those outcomes are, we can discover the kingdom in them.

The second error is thinking that success is necessarily a sign of God's favor. A few years ago, in our community lawn in our townhouse subdivision, I saw these beautiful flowers that sprung up in the community lawn, and I thought, oh, those are great, I should put those in my yard. So I went out with a shovel, dug them up, put them in my yard, googled, hey, what are these things, and discovered that these are wildly invasive.

I think it was called Star of Jerusalem. And not only do they seed, they also spread through their roots. And so I was like, oh no, I have made a huge mistake.

Even though this thing is beautiful, I'm gonna dig this out and throw it in the trash. So I threw it in the yard waste. But what's interesting is every year now, I have to re-dig them out because they keep coming back. And as I look at the community lawn, they have just flourished out there, untended.

And so it's a helpful reminder to me that just because something grows fast and something grows large and it looks pretty or successful does not mean that it is healthy. That Star of Jerusalem, whatever it is, is getting rid of the grass that should be there. Once it's dead, it gets brown and nothing lives there.

And so it's not healthy. And so just, you know, whether it's a church or a business, a podcast, a person—whatever—people with big platforms and followings may not be healthy. And their organizations might be incredibly fragile.

Just because something grows fast, large, looks pretty, does not necessarily make it healthy or indicate that God is blessing it. Again, there's a subtle type of transactional theology in this. And it's very American.

I think sometimes we evaluate someone's veracity by how large their following is. Hey, they have six million views. Doesn't make them more true than someone else, right? But this is how we judge things.

It's a transactional theology at work. And things seem to be going well, so I must be doing okay.

God must be blessing it. I am fine. And as a result, I don't do the hard work of naming brokenness, naming the grace of God, and discovering the kingdom when things are fine.

So that when hard things do come up, I'm totally unprepared for them. From our Old Testament reading today, we read my favorite Old Testament book—if I'm allowed to have one—the book of Habakkuk. Three chapters. Go read it when you get home. It's fantastic. Habakkuk, who's actually—I didn't put this in here—but his name, Chavakuk, means to hug. It's like an embrace. And so, in all of the complaint, remember that Habakkuk is like God's big hug for us.

So in the Old Testament, Habakkuk gives us this example of daily faithfulness. And he's complaining in the very beginning, saying, how long, Lord, do I have to cry for help and you're not going to listen to me? How's that? Does that scream faithfulness to you? But this is faithfulness in God's eyes.

And so his first complaint is about the injustice he's seeing around them as God's people are making a muck of the law, and everything is coming out perverted. And then God says, “Don't worry, I'm going to take care of it. I'm going to send the Babylonians.” And Habakkuk's like, “Is that a good idea? Because that's going to make you look bad, right?” And then chapter two is God addressing, “I'm going to take care of them too.”

And I call it the woe oracles—the waracles. It's like a funeral, basically, for the future Babylonians. And so in between chapter one, with Habakkuk's complaint, and the bulk of chapter two, where Babylon is going to be destroyed, Habakkuk is called to sit there at the watch post and wait.

And so he has to sit somewhere between “How long, O Lord?” and the woe oracles that signal the death of Babylon. And that prayer in that in-between is what is aligning Habakkuk's heart to God's heart and God's will. And as Habakkuk comes to terms with what God's going to do, he stations himself as this prophetic watchman to tell the people the prophecies that God is going to give him.

And in verse four, you have this famous phrase, part of which gets picked up in the New Testament: it says, “See, the enemy is puffed up; his desires are not upright, but the righteous person will live by his faithfulness,” kind of no matter what comes.

This is the character of righteousness—day-to-day faithfulness in the in-between. There's this day-to-day faithfulness that strikes me in the book of Habakkuk, where there's a capacity on God's part to hold our complaint in the light of unmet expectations. Because the reality is, we are going to feel that strain.

God, what are you doing? I thought things were going to be better than this. I had expectations, and it didn't turn out that way. And the good news is, God is big enough to hold that complaint.

And not only is he big enough to hold that complaint, but actually our voice of complaint in those moments is itself an act of faith, according to Habakkuk. So before you run and spew your rage on social media, spew your rage before the God of heaven, because that is an act of faith. And so when things don't go as planned, when we're tempted to think, hey, where did I go wrong that God's doing this to me—which assumes that my circumstances are an indication of God's favor—

Instead, note what Scripture talks about a lot: that whether in seasons of plenty or famine, success or perceived failure, God is at work doing something in us. And faithfulness is this invitation to say, God, how long am I going to cry to you for help, and you're not giving me an answer? And the resolve to sit at the watchtower and to wait for the revelation of God. God's present with us, showing us more of himself as we walk with him, as one pastor famously said, in a long obedience in the same direction.

And so as we close this morning, remember that our faith is in the greatness of God, and it is not in the greatness of our faith. It only takes a mustard seed amount of faith to see God do the miraculous works around us and in us. And let's remember that we can't obligate God to material success, the things that our hearts or wills are longing for.

But instead, we live life with him day to day in faithfulness, watching not just for what he's going to do around us, but what he's doing in us. And it's that kind of humble, daily faithfulness that's going to characterize the follower of Jesus. Let me pray for us.

“Oh God, by whom the meek are guided in judgment and light rises up in the darkness for the godly, grant us, in all of our doubts and uncertainties, the grace to ask you what you would have us to do, that the spirit of wisdom may save us from all false choices, that in your light we may see light, and in your straight path we may not stumble. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited using ChatGPT.

Feast of St. Matthew: Where Mercy Meets What Seems Irredeemable

Matthew 9:9-13

TranscriptioN

Good morning again, my friends. It is good to see you this morning. It's great to be with you on this feast day of St. Matthew. I'm so glad that you're here.

If you're new or visiting, sometimes we have a—well, we have a season called Ordinary Time, and we wear green, and it's a long time. And so whenever a feast day shows up on a Sunday, I love to take it and see what the Lord might give us out of whatever saint it is that day that we celebrate.

I was really grateful for the life and example of St. Matthew this morning as we celebrate what Jesus did in calling this person to follow him. He is one of the twelve disciples of Jesus, of those who followed Jesus for his three years of ministry before Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead. And Matthew is this really polarizing character in the story, because he introduces real complexity to what is otherwise a pretty tidy religious system in Jesus's day. Jesus confronts the Pharisees with a parable as they're talking about, you know, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” He gives them some parables.

One is about not putting new wine in an old wineskin, right? The old wineskin was useful as it helped the wine develop, but now that the wine's been fermented, if you put new wine into that old wineskin that's already been expanded, it'll break. It's not useful anymore. He tells them a parable about crying at a wedding, and there's—you know—tears are at a funeral.

Tears of sorrow are very appropriate in a funeral as you grieve what's lost. It points to the things you deeply care about, but it would be sort of in misalignment with what's happening in the joy of a wedding to have tears of sorrow, perhaps. But for the sake of argument, in Jesus's case, it would be. His point in these parables is not that you can find an exception, but that something new is happening.

He's telling them a story alongside what's happening. Something new is taking place, and Matthew is a stress test on the theological system of those that he's talking to. Can their theology contain Matthew? What do you do with this sinner, this tax collector? And so Jesus is—Matthew becomes—a stress test.

Can this hold Matthew? And all of us expand our theology over time. It's not a bad thing at all. I was remembering back a long time ago, at least over a decade and a half ago. I was in college, and my Greek professor—somebody in the class had asked about a famous pastor and their version, interpretation of a text—and my professor used to do these funny power stances where he put his leg up on the desk like this, you know, and lean forward and he goes, “Ah, yes, that pastor. If he's ever right, it's always for the wrong reasons.” I remember that moment, and I thought, oh wow, because that pastor that he's talking about had a lot of influence on me when I was a young Christian as a teenager. And I realized that as time went on, he was absolutely right. The things that I had learned didn't stand up to the complexities that I was running into as I learned more about the world around me, as I learned more about God's Word, and about the nature of humanity.

I would say that in those years, I went through a bit of a deconstruction process myself to ask, you know, what is the system I hold? Can it hold the weight of human suffering that I'm understanding to be around me? Can it hold the weight of academic rigor? Can it hold up women as equal image-bearers of God as men? Can it offer me something from the Bible that's better than just legalistic behavior change? And can it do more than blame psychosomatic problems on sin as some blanket category? Can my theology bear the weight of those things? And back then, the answer was no. The old wineskin was failing. And so, you know, I went through my own deconstruction-reconstruction process as I was thinking through this in community, in a church.

And, you know, what do we do when we are confronted with the complexity of the world around us? How do we look at the theological system that we've constructed and ask, can it bear the weight of what I'm experiencing right now? Today's feast, St. Matthew, I would invite us to think about as an invitation to engage with complexity, to name complexity, and to lean on Jesus, who is there with you in the complexity, because he's able to hold space for the brokenness around us more than we can. And he leads us in offering mercy that we didn't even know we needed. And so today's feast day is a great invitation to explore complexity, holding hands with Jesus as he's present with us.

St. Matthew is going to frustrate some people to no end. He's going to frustrate their system, the things that they care deeply about. But if they would walk with Jesus for what they don't yet understand, they would see in St. Matthew something beautiful as Jesus is doing something new.

And so, as we look at St. Matthew, this tax collector, let me pray for us:

“In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. Lord, give us understanding to know you, diligence to seek you, wisdom to find you, and faithfulness that may finally embrace you. Amen.”

Jesus's ministry today is in Capernaum. It's in Galilee, which is like the northern part of Israel, to the west of the Sea of Galilee. He's in Capernaum, and he's among the Jews there, and he's already called some fishermen to come and follow him. Fishermen are unimpressive, but they're not controversial. They're not a threat to anyone's system. They're just not like the dream team that you'd want to pick if you were trying to be an influencer. But he picks some fishermen to follow him, and now he calls Matthew in chapter 9 to come follow him in his Galilean ministry. And Matthew—or Levi is his other name—he is going to be potentially offensive.

Imagine if you are Simon the Zealot, who is a patriot for the Jews, and you are all about getting rid of Roman authority, and now Jesus says, “I'm gonna bring somebody who collects taxes for Rome into my entourage.” You are not going to meet that well, potentially. So in Capernaum, tax collectors would be responsible for collecting a variety of taxes that Herod Antipas was going to levy on the region, and they had to meet their quotas to pay somebody above them who needed to meet their quotas.

And as a tax collector on the bottom of the totem pole, it would have been really common to extort money. Why is that? Because not only did you have to collect what was owed, but think about the cost of your labor, your travel—and you need to—and you want to have a certain lifestyle. And so if you charge extra fees for your work, that is totally legal to do in this culture. And so it is very common for tax collectors to extort other people, because it is legal and part of the system.

It's expected. It is not virtuous or good, but this is why tax collectors and sinners get lumped into the same boat. So even if you're one of the good ones, you are still amongst this unclean group of tax collectors and sinners. You, by definition, are disobedient to God's law, and nobody wants to be around you.

You're the bad guy. And so the Pharisees were encouraging distance from these kinds of people, and Matthew, the tax collector, is our test case. They don't want anything to do with him or his friends.

Their posture is to stay ritually clean. Let's preserve what we have. We want God to bless us. Let's keep the law. A lot of those things aren't bad, right? But it's the disposition of isolation from the sinners that Jesus is going to challenge. Jesus's challenge—if I were to summarize it in like a quote—it would be: What if someone could change? What if? What if we see them in need of healing rather than in need of being shunned or dehumanized? What if? So the problem is one of disposition and understanding the grace of God.

And that's not even an option that they had entertained for themselves. No—instead, they wanted to be isolated and keep pure and clean, away from these people who are violating God's law. And so Matthew, you can imagine, has developed probably a complex of sorts.

You know, he's believed narratives about himself that others have told him. So I would imagine there's a level of self-hatred that he feels, because others have given him narratives that he has now believed. And when Jesus calls, he follows, because he wants to see what's going to happen.

I wonder if there might have been some hope in his heart that he would be free of the self-hatred that he was experiencing, or wondering if there were better narratives for his life than just, You'll never amount to anything more than this. You're not welcome here. All these sorts of things.

And so something new is happening. And in longing for something better, he takes the next step, which is to walk with Jesus wherever Jesus is going to take him. So Matthew then hosts a dinner.

And we have this imagery of reclining. They're sort of like lying down, sitting next to each other, having dinner. And imagining this scenario, you know, Jesus honors Matthew by coming to his house and having dinner with Matthew's friends, which, as you would expect, are these sinners and tax collectors.

This group of shunned individuals, socially. And I wonder if Jesus's other disciples felt really awkward at this point. They're in there having dinner with these people.

And again, I can imagine Simon the Zealot going, These people don't love Judaism. Why would I ever sit down and have dinner with these people? And these fishermen are like, Oh, I remember that guy. He was the guy who's collecting extra taxes when I hauled in that load last Thursday.

And so now they're sitting down having dinner, being reintroduced to one another as human beings and, you know, fellow followers of Jesus—potentially, people who are going to consist of the kingdom of God. And so Jesus hears this pejorative question from the Pharisees: Why is it that your teacher—you know, that's pejorative right there—your teacher's over there eating with tax collectors and sinners?

And instead of getting insecure and defensive, feeling some kind of way and responding out of his insecurity, notice the clarity in Jesus's vision. Jesus doesn't change. His ethics don't change. He knows exactly why he is among the sinners and the tax collectors, and he is so unanxious about this accusation. He says, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” And so there's something beautiful in that tension here.

We read in the New Testament passage in 2nd Timothy: there are all kinds of classes of people who are going to be disobedient to what God has intended for creation, and welcoming into staying that way is not good for them, and it's not part of the kingdom of God. But Jesus recognizes that people are sick, and he doesn't long for them to stay that way. It's a big welcome, and it's an invitation to something new.

And so, but at the same time, his disposition and posture is one of welcome and invitation. And so he sees what is broken, he sees what's sick, and he doesn't turn his back to them. And that's what's different in the Pharisees.

So there's a difference between judgment and condemnation, and people get this wrong all the time at a popular level. When our English translations quote Jesus saying, “Do not judge,” that's not what that word means. It means do not condemn, which is a totally different thing.

And a better translation would be for Jesus to say, “Don't condemn.” So when I go to the doctor, I want the doctor to make a judgment about what is ailing me. I want them to rightly discern the problem and name it accurately so that we can fix it. I can go get the right medication.

So Jesus calls these people sick, not to condemn them, not to turn his back and say, You're out, you're on your own, I'm only gonna be with these people. But he invites them to a deeper life than they can personally imagine for themselves. And that's the generous invitation. By judging them, what he's actually inviting them into is to rid themselves of self-condemnation and the false narratives that other people have put on them. There's a grace in his judgment, because others have heaped condemnation on their shoulders, and that often turns into self-condemnation.

And so you're welcoming people in, creating the context for naming what's broken accurately, and staying in relationship with others and with Jesus so that he can heal what's sick and broken. We're not the ones who heal people, right? We're not the ones who are responsible for their healing. That's what Jesus does.

And so we have to be careful that we're not standing in the way of what Jesus wants to do in somebody, and so we need to stay in relationship as far as is possible and healthy and good. And the reality is none of us are perfect, but being able to name things accurately and with the compassion of Jesus so that the outcome is that Jesus heals somebody—that takes a lot of time and trust and care and very secure relationships and community to get to that point. But what's important here, though, is that while the Pharisees are building this intricate house to bring people into to adorn the beauty of God, Jesus is creating a front porch to invite his awkward neighbors over.

And that's really important. This is a great paradigm for ministry. I was thinking back to the height of COVID, when our son was a newborn. We used to sit on our front porch all the time, and as our neighbors were passing by, we were longing for friendships, and we would invite them to hang out on our lawn, get to know them, let our son crawl around in the grass. Now only a handful of those neighbors actually made it inside the door, and even less of those made it to our kitchen table. But without the front porch, nobody would have made it to dinner with us.

And so the Pharisees had set the most beautiful table. They'd spent no time on building a front porch. And God calls us as a church to think well about both.

So I want to encourage us—and this is something I'm doing as well—pray about those places of the spiritual house. We think a lot about what happens here with our volunteering and our strategy and things, but how do we create the front porch where people not just see us, but where they get to know us, where they begin to trust that Jesus is good because they've had an encounter with us? And then as they do that, they have a longing to come in and sit and have dinner in the house with us.

And so if the Eucharist celebration together in this and being involved intimately in community is the banquet that's before them that's going to feed their souls as they come to learn and name their brokenness in community and learn to anticipate God's grace here, then what are the steps that we need to take to help people get there? I don't have an answer, but I've started with baseball. And so for each of us it's a different place, right? Like where is it that we're rubbing shoulders? I had somebody in the snack shack yesterday ask me about the Trinity. I don't know what it is for you, but how are we creating front porches?

There is a guiding principle here in Jesus's ministry, which brings clarity to how we prioritize God's Word with the complexities of society and our own stories. We heard a lot about obeying God's Word, listening to God's Word, those who are disobedient to it, and the question becomes, what is the guiding principle? In Proverbs it was the fear of the Lord being the beginning of wisdom. And here in the gospel texts it seems to be mercy that is the guiding principle for applying God's law to the complexity around us. God didn't give Israel a covenant in order to just make sacrifices.

That's not why. He gave the covenant so that Israel would come to know the loving-kindness of God in covenant relationship to him as their king. And then in knowing the goodness of God's rule and reign as king, other nations around them would see the goodness of their God and their relationship to him, and then they might long to be a society that is under the rule and reign of God with this compelling picture of God's love and his faithfulness.

And that's why Jesus in this passage quotes Hosea 6:6 where he says, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” It's a critique of the priorities of the Pharisees. Not that they're applying what their law is wrong, but they're misprioritizing what is first and foremost, which is the covenant faithfulness of God.

And so Jesus is like one of the Old Testament prophets here, calling out people for following these externals of the law while neglecting the guiding principles of justice and mercy and the mercy of God. So there are people who cannot come to the table. Like there is some element of that.

We heard it in the New Testament, and I'll give just one example from a long time ago. I had been working at a church. I met a guy at Starbucks. We got into a conversation. He wanted to come visit our church. I knew he was part of another religion that was not good, but I said, “You are welcome to come and visit.”

He would visit every time and bring pamphlets so that at the end of the service you could talk to all of our people to get them to join a cult. So we had to have a conversation, right? This is, you know, one example of someone who is not welcome to the table. We need to keep him on the front porch.

There are persons who, for a variety of reasons, are unsafe in a community, right? Whether this is abuse or something else. So we have to be wise, right? Not all people get the same level of vulnerability and trust. That's not wise. So it's okay for some to stay on the front porch.

I think that's really different than the person who has developed unhelpful addictions to cope with the harm they've experienced, or people who are at some place of deconstruction or questioning for reasons, you know, that vary person to person. Jesus was unanxious about this kind of person, about St. Matthew. He was clear, though, about what was broken, and he was kind in his invitation to healing and wholeness, which, by the way, Matthew wanted. Matthew longed for this, and he was unwavering in his mission to call people into what God has made them to be. And so Matthew is a stress test on the capacity of the Pharisees' system to knowing the mercy of God, and Jesus is essentially giving them a new container to hold it in.

So St. Matthew would live the rest of his life following Jesus. After the resurrection, he goes far and wide. There are multiple traditions. One tradition says he went to Africa and was martyred there. Another tradition says that he went to Persia, where he was stabbed to death.

There's a lot of different historical traditions around what happened to him, but at least one of them is that he wrote down the gospel of Matthew so that we could have the good news of Jesus and what it means to follow him. And he wanted the Jews to understand that Jesus is the fulfillment of their scriptures. So if you look at the genealogy in chapter one, or if you see the over 50 quotations in the gospel of Matthew, all of these are pointing the Jews back to their scriptures to show them that Jesus is the fulfillment of it. And this is the gift that Matthew gave to us as one of the eyewitnesses of Jesus's life and teaching.

So Matthew went from having no vision for his life, from others speaking condemnation over him, to being able to tell the story of Jesus that we are still telling today in the 21st century. And this is our invitation as well. As we tell the story of Jesus, we are reminded that he is among the sinners and the tax collectors, and he has found us, and he invites us to a different kind of life.

And as we learn to grow in faith, hope, and love together, let's pray that we could be a people who embody the welcome of Jesus as well, so that we can see the kingdom of God grow around us. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited using ChatGPT.

Feast of the Holy Cross: The Glory of Jesus in the Community of Faith

John 12:31-36a

TranscriptioN

Good morning again, everybody. It's good to see you this morning.

This is a special day. First, it's the Feast of the Holy Cross, which is always September 14th, and it just so happens that this year it's on a Sunday. And this week, one of the things that they have in our church calendar are called Ember Days. They're days to especially set aside to pray for people who are ordained or people who are going to be ordained. So, as you think about those who are ordained or those who are in the process, be praying for them this week.

This day focuses on the hope and the victory and the light that is found in the work of the cross of Jesus. And it's also our fall kickoff day. And so we're gonna have a cookout following the service. Would love for you all to be there. The barbecue team has prepared a brisket. And this kicks off a lot of our fall programming this week. So, the kids are in CGS, and we're gonna start formation groups this week. I love how Holy Cross Day frames the fall kickoff, because what it does is it says the work of Jesus is central to our life together as a community and becoming the body of Christ together.

All the things that we view programmatically are to adorn what we're supposed to become in our lives with Jesus. And so, God has made us for the life and love of the Trinity, and the cross is what makes that possible, as we were separated from him by our sin. And so, creation doesn't experience its ultimate end until it's restored by the work of the cross and the resurrection of Jesus as the means of that restoration.

Holy Cross Day History

So why is this day in our church calendar? This day is celebrated by us, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Eastern Orthodox. And we all celebrate it back in 326. In the 20th year of the reign of Constantine, he sent his mother Helena to Jerusalem to venerate the holy places there. And in the course of her journey around Jerusalem, it's said that she discovered the Holy Sepulcher as well as three crosses that were there, which were supposedly the crosses on which were hung Jesus and the two thieves. And she wasn't sure which one was which.

And as legend has it, there is a woman who is in Jerusalem at the time. She's near to death and she's sick, and she touches one of the crosses and she's miraculously healed. And so, at that point, this is why St. Macarius of Jerusalem is lifting up the cross, because as he's one of the ecclesial leaders in Jerusalem at the time, he sees that this miracle has been done and he exalts this as the Holy Cross on which Christ must have been crucified for the world's salvation.

And so, this is the history of the veneration and the exaltation of the true cross, this instrument of shame on which was hung the world's salvation. And so, beyond the exaltation of the true cross, what this day reminds us of is that in Jesus Christ, death has been defeated. Sin no longer has any power, or ultimate power, over those who are in Christ.

So, September 14th every year happens in the middle of Ordinary Time, and it's this nice time in Ordinary Time to commemorate the glory that the cross reveals of Jesus—the glory of Jesus being revealed in the cross. And the cross then is the light for the nations; it's the hope of our redemption, and it's the promise of victory over all the powers that are set against us. It's the tree of life that brings healing to the nations.

And so, in our gospel reading today, we read John chapter 12. In this passage, some Greeks had come to Jesus. These are probably God-fearing Gentiles who started following the law. They're in the city for the Feast of Passover. They've got some questions about the ministry of Jesus, if he is the Messiah. And this is anticipating in John's gospel the universal scope of salvation for the people outside of the Jews—beyond the Jews—this other flock as well that's being brought in. And they're wondering, what is God doing in this man? They don't ask him a direct question in the text, but in asking just to see Jesus, this prompts a dialogue that he has with them and others about his time not yet having come to be glorified, and what that means. The question they do ask follows on the heels of this: we thought that the Messiah was supposed to reign forever, and with the little knowledge that they have of who this Messiah is, they understand that he is supposed to reign over all, and that his kingdom will last forever.

And so, they're probably thinking that this is about to take place—sharpen your swords, right? But victory over death didn't require a sword; it required a cross. And it wasn't a victory over a human emperor—that would be too small of a vision for the kingdom of God—it was over Satan and over the rulers and powers of this world that were set against us, and their use of sin and death in the destruction of the good creation. And so, our ultimate enemy is both greater and more insidious than any earthly authority.

And Jesus had been preparing his followers for his kingdom not by sharpening their swords, but in naming their brokenness and preparing to follow him in suffering. Earthly power is too small of an aim for the kingdom of God. Instead, it's this renewal of humanity, and it's this renewal of all creation, of which our lives are a part. And it's seen now, breaking in one day at a time, in broken lives that are being transformed by the gospel of Jesus' death and resurrection.

Kenosis

The language that Jesus uses about being lifted up on the cross in the Gospel of John couches the crucifixion in a cosmic battle between God and Satan. And the crucifixion then, as it's couched this way, becomes the decisive moment of the transfer of power from the ruler of this world into the hands of the Son of Man.

And our New Testament passage today is a famous one from the book of Philippians, chapter 2. It's called the Great Kenosis passage, which means "the laying aside," and it forms this song that the church takes on about taking on the mind of Christ, letting go of all the things. In the form of God, he did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, right? This is the mind of Christ.

And I love, as I was reading about this, one writer describes this passage this way,

“He says, if creation's purpose was to make beings capable of union with the Trinity's love, then Christ would have to overcome our alienation in order to complete creation. So, he descended in Kenosis all the way down to Sheol, where he found Adam and Eve shackled by mortality, and he broke their chains, trampling down death by death, and he raised up human nature to ascend with him. It's a beautiful summary of the gospel—how the cosmic meets the personal. And so, this is the mind to which you and I are called—all of us—to take on, the mind of Christ. Do we look to go into the depths with people, to call them forth to become their new creation selves?”

I think the exaltation of the cross invites us to explore the mystery of God's grace in our broken stories. And then that invites us to explore God's grace in the brokenness of other human stories—our neighbors, our friends, our relatives. And that involves discovering, through the situations that we go through or our own reactions, what we believe about ourselves and what we believe about God. We all have our own proclivities and our besetting sins. I was just confessing mine to the music team this morning about my own triggers yesterday at a weird baseball event.

But we all have them, right? And I've discovered in my own story that I struggle with feeling like I am only as loved as my last success. And I really take it personally when things don't go well. Like, I'll be affected the next day, and it's something I'm continually working on—to know that God loves me even if something didn't go as planned.

You know, when a Sunday doesn't go well, the baseball game doesn't go well, when I make small mistakes that I just can't get rid of. Other people—it's a different thing, right? Maybe you don't feel loved if you don't feel validated, or if you don't feel needed or valued, or if people don't see you as having amazing intellectual prowess, if you're not seen as fun—whatever it is, right? We all have these places that are part of our story, and we get triggered by them, and it's really hard.

One of the things that I loved on our vacation was seeing the Ben & Jerry's factory in Vermont, and the reason why is they have a really cool graveyard there for the dead flavors that they tried and completely failed. It's an attraction unto itself. They have glorified their failures for the public to see day in and day out, and it inspired me to keep a record of failures and to celebrate what was good in my desire to attempt something that did not work, and then to move on and know that God still loves me, because even in that desire that was good, there was something unique in me that reflected something of the goodness of God—not because I can accomplish something good, but because of who he's made me to be, and he actually loves that, right?

And so, each one of us uniquely shows something of the goodness of the image of God, and it's not dependent on how much one accomplishes for the kingdom. So think of your own stories, your own proclivities, the things that you hold on to—consider what they reveal about what's broken, and the deeply held beliefs that we have about God and about ourselves—and then come to your new creation self by laying hold of the grace of God that's found at the foot of the cross. And as you take hold of that grace, learn to call that forth in other people as well by wondering with them with kindness and compassion and some curiosity. And as your neighbors tell you about their struggles—parenting, their bent towards workaholism, alcoholism, anger, perpetual anxiety, whatever it is—enter into that wounding with them and wonder with them if God's grace might actually be greater than the brokenness they're experiencing.

Half the battle is naming it as brokenness, the other half is knowing that God's grace goes deeper than that brokenness. And so, as people become more radicalized, as they become more tribal, it's all the more important to rehumanize one another—to rehumanize our neighbors, even those with whom we have disagreement. That's part of taking on the mind of Christ, because he became like us. He entered into the wounding to show us what new creation could become in us. And so, make space for someone's vulnerability, name and bless the goodness of their longings, the things they were trying to do, and then wonder with them about how the work of Jesus might be there to restore what's broken in them. And that's what happens in a healthy church.

As we name God's grace for one another, this is one of the things we are called to in taking on the mind of Christ with one another—naming the grace of God in one another when we struggle to name it for ourselves. That's how we discover the depths of the mystery of salvation through the cross, as broken people in community who are longing for God's grace as we grow together in taking on the mind of Christ.

Learning the Significance of the Cross in the Community of Faith

So, this is also the fall kickoff day, and that's really important. I wanted to highlight some of the ministries that happen on Sunday, even though these are just a sample of the larger life together, because we do other things outside of Sunday. But part of our Sunday life together is that we gather weekly and we're growing together as a church family.

So, I asked some of our different team leads about why they do what they do and what impact that's made on their walk with the Lord, and they gave me some really great answers. So, I want to read those to you as we think of taking on the mind of Christ in community and what that's looked like in a very specific way.

One person said, "I'm reminded of all the actions and efforts that can often go unnoticed in the preparation of a Sunday service, and it makes me really grateful for the generosity of everyone's involvement on a Sunday. In those moments, I'm reminded of all the imperceived ways that Jesus supports and sustains me. True love continues to give even without recognition."

Another person said, "Serving on the music team has given me the ability to help others worship the Lord using their talents that God gave them."

Another said, "Serving has deepened our understanding of the love Jesus has for his church by reminding us that hospitality is at the heart of community. Hospitality brings people together. Hospitality is love in action. But it also puts into perspective how much hospitality Jesus engaged in—feeding the 5,000 and the 4,000 and numerous other examples of bringing people together through hospitality in order to share truth through his teachings. Hospitality is where we get the opportunity to gather together and grow as a church body."

Someone said, "Helping with the barbecue team reminds me of Jesus feeding the 5,000. Getting to serve delicious food to my church family at these events reminds me that Jesus will always provide."

And then the last one: "Jesus demonstrated his love for his disciples when he served them, whether by teaching them, feeding them, or washing their feet. When I serve in the liturgy, I'm a conduit of his continuing love for his church as he feeds us through the Word and in the Eucharist. I'm a vessel that he uses to love his body, the church, during worship. I'm both loved by him as he uses me to fulfill his purpose, and a means to show his love to others."

And so, I'm grateful for the thoughtfulness of those who are spearheading the different things that happen in our life together in the church, and the ways that doing this—taking on the mind of Christ—shows you something of Jesus' love for you.

Conclusion

Serving on Sundays is just one way to grow in our relationship with Jesus. Consider your calendars. Consider opening your calendars up to the lives of one another to enter into each other's lives together. Have some conversations during the cookout. This is a good starting point. You can keep it light. Ask some questions like: What have you learned about yourself this summer? What's been good? What's been interesting? What's going well as you enter the fall season? What's causing you anxiety as you go a little deeper? What's bringing you joy right now? You know—keep it light. Pace yourself. Don't go too deep too quickly. But the point is, these are the moments where we open ourselves up into each other's lives as we eat together and we are together. We make space for one another.

These people around you, as you look around at one another, these are the ones who are going to help you discover the grace of God in the work of the cross. We're all here for one another for that reason.

And so, on this Feast Day, remember the glory of Jesus that's revealed in the work of the cross. He's reached far below the abyss of our brokenness to raise us up to the heights for which you and I are created—which is life with him, where we're perfectly known, where we're perfectly loved. And so, let's hold on to that grace together. Let's take on the mind of Christ and then live this out in community together.

Let me pray for us.

“O God of unchangeable power and eternal light, look favorably on your whole church, that wonderful and sacred mystery. By the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquility the plan of salvation. Let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited by the author.

What Must I Love to Be Saved?

TranscriptioN

Luke 14:25-33

Well, good morning again, my friends. It is good to see you this morning. Thanks for being here. In today's gospel passage, we're coming off the heels of where we were last week in Luke chapter 14.

Now Jesus moves from addressing the Pharisees to addressing the crowds, and here he's sharing how one is to follow him to enter the life that's present in the kingdom of God, but there's also some warnings for those who are going to follow Jesus about the costliness of following him and the risk that's involved. Think of him like a pioneer. Jesus is somebody who's blazing a path forward, and he's calling them into this journey, into new creation, into the kingdom of God, into all that God has made them to be, but he's also warning them that it's going to be a hard, hard road, and even though it's going to be a hard road, it's going to be worth it.

Remember that for the Jew listening to Jesus in the first century, salvation is a very temporal and earthly matter. It is not somewhere above the earth or out there in the future, another reality than what we have right now, but for them listening, salvation or deliverance is this entrance into this new age that they're expecting where God reigns over his people, and they are living in his kingdom, and while there is a future component to the kingdom of God, it is here and now. It is broken into our reality through the life in the ministry of Jesus, and so even though we can talk in some ways about the future of the kingdom of God, the good news of it is that it is right now.

It is currently happening, and so following Jesus becomes this lifetime of salvation work. It is not just saved for some future reality, it is delivered from a present reality and into a present reality. Following Jesus is a lifetime of salvation.

It's the hard work of daily deliverance from worldly attachments in order to rightly align our loves and rightly order them, and I know somewhere in the Gospels it says somebody comes to Jesus and they ask him, what must I do to be saved? And that it's almost like in this passage Jesus is functionally telling them the better question is, what must I love to be saved? How do I arrange my loves would be the sort of question behind this discussion, and that is a lot harder for the northern Virginian, because we are good at making checklists, knocking things out. There's a predisposition to a type of workaholism that is ingrained in this culture, but instead of what must I do to be saved, which in some ways is easier, what must I love to be saved? What do I have to love? How do I arrange my loves to be delivered from the present evil age? So what Jesus is calling us to in this passage is to follow him along this lifetime journey of rightly ordering our loves and to become attached to the things of the kingdom of God and not the things of this world.

The Call To Discipleship

Jesus starts with a really hard saying. He says, whoever comes to him and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and his children, brothers and sisters, yes even his own life, cannot be my disciple. And that's one of those ones where you hear someone say, the word of the Lord? I think? You know, it's a tough one. So but he's telling then he tells them to carry their cross and to follow him.

What does this mean? Then in verse 33 says, you can't be my disciple unless you give up all your possessions. What we don't want to do is read this as, go live naked in the wilderness and then you can be Jesus's disciple. This would not be the right application to understanding what Jesus is calling us to.

In fact, that would be a contradiction to some of the other things that Jesus told us to do, which is to love our neighbors as ourselves. And so these two things are not in contradiction, but they are juxtaposed in a helpful way. So this is a call to allegiance to Jesus as our Lord and King.

 And when we live in the allegiance to Jesus's Lord, it rightly arranges our loves in this taxonomy of affection for for who we love and what we love within this larger frame of loving Jesus first and all things being arranged in order around that, as he takes us along this lifetime journey of following him. It makes me think of my own story. So when I was 14, that's when I really started walking with the Lord, and I was awakened to the grace of God at that time.

And I was in a tradition that had a great divide between secular and Christian. Probably not a helpful thing to bifurcate as far as they did, but when I started following Jesus and taking that seriously, I knew that I needed something. I came to understand my need for Jesus, and to rightly understand the world around me, to rightly order my life around following him.

And that dictated how I responded to that need, which, as the 14-year-old boy in the context that I was in, was to sell off all my secular CDs. Kids, do you know what CDs are? Anybody know what a CD is? No? They're these cool little discs that look like mirrors. They have music on them.

Sometimes they hold data. It's back in the olden days. So, you know, if I look charitably on my little 14-year-old self, I bless that little 14-year-old's desires to unlearn the grammar of worldly attachment and disordered love. 

That was a good desire in order to learn what the church has taught about the grammar of love and attachment when you're following Jesus. Now, if I were to look back, I actually really enjoyed those bands that I threw away, and it's kind of a bummer that I got rid of those CDs for a time, but, you know, but I did. In doing that, I got some time to rightly order my life around following Jesus, learned to put him first in key areas, and then, you know, I could reintroduce those things later once they didn't have the same pull or framing around my life that they once did, right? This is how we rightly order our affections in our lives around following Jesus.

So, as we rid ourselves and reframe our worldly attachments and reprioritize our loves, what's at stake is virtue. Life in the New Age, the ability to bless the goodness of creation and to name accurately what's broken around us and in ourselves, and it's so much more than just behavior modification. God doesn't want us just to, you know, be well-behaved humans.

There's so much more that we were made for. He wants us to be his image bearers fully, to experience his deeply personal, life-transforming, healing work that he is doing. It's called, the Church Fathers often call it, union with God.

This word fellowship, union with God's life. This is what God's made us for. You can think again, back to the garden, this is the life we were made for.

To be a disciple is to experience salvation now, deliverance in these different areas of our life, in marriage, in our singleness, in our friendships, in our parenting, in our work and vocation, in the ways that we're generous, in our forgiveness, in our love of other people, in welcoming the stranger. All of these areas are contexts for salvation, where the Holy Spirit rightly orders our loves and attachments. So how do all the stations and vocations of our lives become part of the journey of following Jesus, in living a life of virtue, and becoming people that are fully alive? That's the question, and that is a more holistic view of discipleship than just being more religious, doing a little bit better.

It is costly, and it is hard, and it's not something easily accomplished. This takes a lifetime of following Jesus. It's a lifetime of reprioritizing the things that we love.

When we feel like we've figured it out, something changes, and we start fresh. It's like raising children. When we think we've got it, they turn six, and then you're learning how to parent all over again, right? And so, as we follow Jesus, you know, we think we figured out, but it takes this constant dependence on the Lord to ask what he's teaching us in these various situations that we run into each day.

Counting the Cost 

So Jesus tells the crowd about discipleship, and he's going to use a couple analogies. He talks about somebody who's intending to build a tower, and that person should figure out how much it's going to cost to complete a task. Otherwise, after laying a beautiful foundation, they're going to run out of money, and it's going to be this continual public joke that everybody drives by on their camel and looks at, and they say, oh, there's that lovely foundation where that builder couldn't finish what they started because they ran out of money.

And everyone in the town knows who that builder is, right? So what he's teaching us in this analogy is, it is so good for us to regularly take stock of what it's going to cost to be in allegiance, to live in allegiance to Jesus as Lord. If we're going to follow Jesus, and if we're going to go on this journey with him of putting away the things that we depend on, it's going to cost us putting away things that are broken and that are familiar. And he's going to bring us to places where we're going to have to trust him for what we don't really yet understand.

And I like this image of starting a building project, because I can imagine somebody sitting down, they've got this image of what they want to build in their mind, and they're asking the question, what do I need to get there? I'm going to create this budget, look at the different construction categories, the different phases of the project, how much cash do we have on hand, how much is coming in, and then we can consider whether this product is feasible. And this is compared to discipleship. So we need to regularly do some accounting work in discipleship, not QuickBooks, but like in our souls.

So think about what it looks like for you if you were a healthy follower of Jesus at the end of the day, at the end of the week, at the end of the month, at the end of the year, at the end of your life. What does it look like if you were a healthy follower of Jesus? Notice what habits have started to calcify, what's formed that's keeping us from being honest with ourselves and other people? Are there grudges that we're holding on to, places of self- contempt that we haven't explored, or things that have developed that we need to talk with somebody about? Are there places of immaturity that we're starting to become aware of for the first time if we've hurt other people and then we figured that out? Are we ready to do the hard work of attempting to ask for forgiveness and aiming for repair in those relationships? What's it going to cost us to be a fully mature disciple of Jesus? What does it look like and what does it cost? Those are the spiritual accounting that we need to take stock of. And our New Testament reading was from the book of Philemon, and it is a really interesting and helpful example of this.

So he's this well-off individual in the church, and he has this slave who's run away, Onesimus, and Onesimus has become a Christian because of St. Paul's ministry, and tradition has it that eventually Onesimus actually becomes the Bishop of Ephesus, and he was the first one to collect St. Paul's letters. He's a really interesting person. Now imagine Philemon is receiving this letter from Paul, and he has found out that his runaway slave, who has, you know, cost him so much grief, has now become a Christian.

How do you react to that? What's going on inside Philemon? To follow Jesus well, if we read this letter, he's now confronted with some hard realities. First, he needs to change his thinking about the virtue of holding on to Onesimus as a slave, even though culturally it's appropriate and legal. While the Roman system didn't see slaves as full image-bearers of God, he now has to imagine and realize that Onesimus fully bears the image of God with him, and to allow this slave who broke the law to be received by him as a brother, if he's going to follow Jesus and experience Christian life fully.

Even Philemon would need to submit eventually to Onesimus's ecclesiastical authority. Isn't that wild? He was my slave, now he's my bishop, right? This is what he's gonna have to go through internally. There are some very earthly attachments, and we read behind the letter to Philemon, that it's gonna cost him to get rid of, or to change, to find the full life that Jesus wants to bring him into. 

First, he's gonna have to change his mind, and he's gonna have to admit that he was wrong. That's hard. He's gonna have to give up his legal right to own another human as property.

That's hard. He's gonna have to let go of his desire to feel important as a man of status and wealth. He's gonna have to work through his feelings of anger about losing his investments. 

Now, that's what it's gonna cost him at a very practical level here, to follow Jesus, to be fully formed as somebody who is following Jesus as his Lord, and set those worldly attachments aside to enter fully into life and what the kingdom of God could look like. It's only in the kingdom of God where your slave becomes your bishop. That's amazing.

Assessing the Risk of Discipleship

So Jesus had told this parable about counting the cost, and next he tells a parable about considering the risk that of what you're gonna have to undergo when following Jesus as Lord. He tells this parable about a king who's considering going to war with another king, and that king has to take inventory of his soldiers to see if this war that he's going to start with another king is viable. Does he have an army, a sizable army, that can confront the other side? And if it's not possible, then he needs to readjust, and he needs to make other plans to send a delegation to make peace before he's forced into a war that he can't win.

And so as I think of that first parable about counting the cost, that has a lot to do with initially stepping into following Jesus, taking the initiative to go into it. This one is about as you're following Jesus, you're constantly navigating the battle, the conflict that you're in, the ongoing battles that are going to happen as you follow Jesus. It invites us into an examination of our own capacity, and a bit of reflection before we run headlong into things that we don't yet have the capacity for because of our spiritual maturity.

Youthful vitality often has an excitement to run into things that outpace their character, and their capacity, and their skill. I think of my early 20s and all the missteps that I made professionally, by saying the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time, and you know, wish I could go back 20 years and rectify those situations. But you know, I had to learn that stuff, and so praise God I wasn't a priest in my 20s.

So you need to build the capacity over time for the ways that you are following Jesus. He's not asking us to jump into the deep end when we don't know how to swim. So this passage about this king who's declaring war can be read as a grace to us.

No one expects a child to emotionally regulate themselves, articulate their longings clearly in abstract ways, and do the hard work of making repair when they've hurt each other when they're like younger than six. I know a lot of adults who have a hard time with this too, right? And so you know, but we don't expect a child to be to do that when they're not developed mentally, when they don't have the capacity yet. And these are skills that are developed over time in small ways, and our life like Jesus is a lot like that in the spiritual journey.

There's this kind invitation from Jesus to take one day at a time to grow, to build capacity in the small things, and to risk more and more and more reasonably as we move from the disorder of worldly attachments and disordered loves into the love of God and the life of the kingdom. St. Thomas Akempis said this well. He said, when a spirit of fervor is enkindled within you, you may well meditate on how you will feel when that fervor leaves.

So I take that to say, walk with Jesus, don't run. And I also find grace in this for myself, and I hope it's an encouragement for you this morning too. When you wonder why you're not further along than you should be, when I wonder why, why am I not as far along as I should be in my walk with Jesus? He's inviting us not into this unwieldy picture of perfection that we can't attain. He's in this life-changing image that's unattainable, but he's inviting us into just the next right step with him as we journey along this path of salvation.

Conclusion

Life is hard. Life is complicated. I hardly have to tell anybody that. If only it was as easy as asking this question, what do I have to do to be saved? But instead, Jesus is inviting us into something deeper, into rightly ordering our loves and affections and attachments, and asking this question, what do I have to love to be saved? He invites us into this lifelong journey of discipleship where we're daily counting the cost of what it means to be more like him each day. He invites us into his goodness and kindness in a life of following him in little things, more and more, so that we see more and more of life in the of God.

Life in the kingdom of God is where God's glory is shown when we become who God's made us each to be in our own uniqueness, and we can be honest and we can see God where we can repair brokenness in community, where the worries, the disorders, and the attachments of this world no longer have that same pull or power to draw us away from the goodness and the love and the presence of God. Let me pray for us. “Lord Jesus Christ, you said to your apostles, peace I give to you, my own peace I leave with you. Regard not our sins, but the faith of your church, and give to us the peace and unity of that heavenly city, where with the Father and the Holy Spirit you live and reign now and forever. Amen.”

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited by the author.

The Seat of Honor and The Seat of Welcome

TranscriptioN

It's good to see you this morning on this holiday weekend. I'm Father Morgan Reed. I'm the vicar here at Corpus Christi Anglican Church, and I am grateful to be with you here this morning.

One of the books that I read several years ago that had a lasting impact on how I view ministry and think about even the process of starting a church is a book called “The Gospel Comes with a House Key,” and it is all about the nature of hospitality and ministry together. The author of that book shares the story of her conversion to Christianity, where it wasn't a result of preaching or even going to a church, but it was the result of regular invitation to this couple's home for dinner weekly, or at least on a regular basis. The husband did happen to be a pastor, but it was over the course of those dinners that conversations were exchanged, that life was shared together, that trust was built, and because of all that, Jesus became trustworthy. And so, hence the title, “The Gospel Comes with a House Key.”

In today's gospel passage, Jesus is having a midday meal with a Pharisee, a ruler of the Pharisees, and he shares two parables about how humility and hospitality are supposed to be dispositions of the people who are going to follow Jesus as their Lord. It's part of what it looks like to be a citizen of the kingdom of heaven. They're characterized by humility and hospitality. And so, as we look at the nature of those two things—humility and hospitality—let me begin by praying 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.”

In the first parable that we read, Jesus tells this story about somebody who's invited to a banquet, and having somebody's seat in close proximity to the host or the organizer or the special guest is a place of honor. It's a measure of status in the company of all who are gathered. In attempting to put oneself at the seat of honor, someone risks something. You risk the embarrassment of misunderstanding how important you are and being reminded of the social ladder when the host comes and they bring you down some seats in front of everybody, and they make room for those who should rightly be there. Instead, Jesus says it's better to start by choosing the lowest seat, and then when the host recognizes you, they can say, “Oh friend, please don't sit all the way over there; come closer.” And they're invited into the seat of more honor in front of everybody. And on the one hand, it sounds like practical wisdom, and it is, but it's also a parable about the nature of the kingdom of God.

All of our passages have something to do with humility or hospitality this morning. We read one from the book of Ecclesiasticus, which, if you're new to the Anglican tradition, you may not have even heard of that book before. The book of Ecclesiasticus is also called the Wisdom of Ben Sira, and in the Anglican tradition, sometimes in our daily readings and in our Sunday readings, we're encouraged to read these books that are called deuterocanonical books or the Apocrypha. They're part of our readings as we live together and learn about life in the kingdom of God. And they give us wisdom, and they give us wisdom from a really unique perspective. These are Second Temple Jews who are living in the centuries leading up to the New Testament, and so we're given perspective on God's wisdom in those centuries in the Apocrypha.

And it was interesting, in today's passage from Ecclesiasticus, we hear about the nature of pride, and he gives some really tangible examples. He says that sovereignty passes from nation to nation because of injustice, insolence, and a lust for wealth. Also, sort of famously, today's king is tomorrow's corpse, right? And ultimately, this is continuing in the biblical tradition of wisdom as it reminds us that the beginning of human pride is to forsake the Lord.

To abandon the Lord is the beginning of pride. To move from dependence on the Lord to autonomy and to self-reliance is that soil that the seeds of pride are sown into. And I also love that Ben Sirah reminds us that pride and arrogant disregard for other people—those aren't things that were created for people. So when you see people acting in them, it's making them less human, not more human. As image bearers of God, we were created for fellowship with God, to be in the presence of God. If you think back to Genesis, walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

And pride and arrogant disregard for others are foreign to who we are. They don't help us to see ourselves rightly, to see God rightly, or to see creation rightly. They make us less human, not more human. And that's precisely because the nature of pride is to move away from the Creator, to move away from the God who's made us and loves us, and therefore to move away from wisdom. Wisdom begins with the fear and knowledge of the Lord.

It sort of reminds me of a child. This isn't my child; this is a hypothetical child. This reminds me of a child—it might have been even me when I was young—who receives for himself a model airplane. And having never built a model airplane in this child's life, and they can't read, they decide that they want to try and do it themselves. And they say, “I don't need those instructions, I can do it myself.” Now they tear open all the packaging, they start thumbing through all the parts, getting them out of all the places that they're being held, with their labels, the numbers that they are according to the instructions, and they start just gluing everything together according to how they think it ought to be. And then they start putting the decals on, because that makes the plane look really cool, but all the decals are in the wrong place, and what's left is a bunch of pieces that are still in the box.

Now imagine, as that child looks at their plane that they've made, they look back at the box, they get frustrated, because what they've just built looks nothing like what's on the box. And then they go to their parent and they say, “This is broken, it looks nothing like how it's supposed to look. The parent's gonna lovingly say, “Hmm, let me wonder with you for a moment. I think you're right. I wonder how that might have happened. I wonder how those instructions might have been helpful in showing you where all those pieces go to that model airplane, and where the decals go.” And that is the story of what we do over and over again when we give in to pride, which is foreign to us. And this nature of insolence or disregard for others—we say, God, I don't know how things ended up like this. This is not at all how they're supposed to look.

But we've moved from dependence on God, and we've said, I can do this myself. And I'm reminded again of Genesis chapter 3, when God is walking in the garden in the cool of the day, expecting to find fellowship with these image-bearers that he's made. This was their routine, to be in fellowship with one another, in dependence on their Creator. And he comes, and he asks them this question; He says, “Where are you?” The reality is, they've hidden themselves. They know that things are not the way they're supposed to be. They're realizing that they were the reason that it ended up that way. And God invites them in with this question: “Where are you?”

When pride has made a mess of things, God lovingly invites us back with that question over and over again, which is an invitation to ask what we were made for, which is fellowship with God. To forsake the Lord is the beginning of pride, and pride, autonomy, insolence, this blatant disregard for others—those things were not created for human beings. We were created out of love from God, for fellowship, for union with our Creator. And it's in returning to that fellowship over and over again that we learn not only who God is, but what we were made for, and what creation itself was made for. It gives us a right perspective and true wisdom.

One of the things that I've been reading lately is a book called “The Apostolic Fathers,” this collection of writings of people who came right after the Apostles died. So these were—some were the people that the Apostles ordained. Whether or not they were ordained by the Apostles, they were like the second and third generation.

And in the Letter to Diognetus, there's a lot of really interesting political theology in there, so if you want to look it up online, you can read through it. The author in that book touches on this connection between humility, and service, and rightly seeing the world. And he says this: by loving God, you will be an imitator of His goodness. And don't be surprised that a person can become an imitator of God. One can, if God's willing, for happiness is not a matter of lording it over one's neighbors, or desiring to have more than weaker people, or possessing wealth and using force against one's inferiors. No one is able to imitate God in those things.

On the contrary, these things are alien to His greatness. So he's continuing in this biblical tradition of humility—becoming humble, following the Lord, rightly esteeming ourselves in God's sight, taking the posture of serving others. That's going to be the way that the kingdom of God is revealed.

And we learn exaltation in God's kingdom when we learn humble service in God's kingdom. And so, along with this parable about humility, Jesus gives another parable in verse 14 about the nature of hospitality, which is the love of strangers. Hospitality is something that ought to be given in this parable, not exchanged.

There seems to be this problem that Jesus is addressing where people would throw a banquet, and there's sort of this transactional disposition behind it. In this scenario where you're showing hospitality in a very calculated and transactional way, you're expecting something in return. Doesn't this now obligate my guest to throw a banquet on par with what I've just done? Can I invite somebody who's going to return the favor in the future? And you're kind of looking in a calculated way at who you can invite so that you can benefit from them. Who can I invite that's going to return the favor?

Instead, what Jesus says is the one who follows him is the one who gives hospitality without reciprocity. That we give hospitality, we don't exchange it. And I'm struck then by the reading that was read in the book of Hebrews, where it says, let mutual affection continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. And that reference goes back to Genesis chapter 12, where Abraham is welcoming three strangers in, and he gives them shelter, some water, some food, and come to find out that these strangers that he welcomed in happen to be divine messengers who are giving him a message from the Lord for him and for his wife.

One of the keys from this book that I had mentioned earlier, “The Gospel Comes with a House Key,” is that hospitality moves people from being strangers to neighbors, and by God's grace from neighbors to the household of God. Hospitality moves people from being strangers to neighbors, and by God's grace from neighbors to becoming the household of God. And hospitality then, like welcoming the stranger, is a practice that is deeply rooted in the Christian tradition, and it's because of Israel's history, but also because of Israel's history, we find it in the teachings of Jesus. And so it's always been foundational work in the kingdom of God, because we don't know as we welcome people in who we're inviting and what we're going to learn of the kingdom as we invite them into our lives. So we make space for all kinds of people at our tables.

There was a previous church that I'd worked at. One of the things that we did at that church that was really helpful—for a season we had these weekly dinners, and we would invite our neighbors over to our household. And Ashley and I, back then, we lived in an apartment complex over on Columbia Pike in Arlington. It was a really diverse apartment complex, and so we started inviting our neighbors over. Some we had gotten to know, some we didn't. We met some neighbors who were Ethiopian Orthodox, some who had completely deconstructed from the faith, some who were Christians but going to another church, some who had moved here from Guatemala and they were going to another church. And in fact, I remember as we dinnered, the Guatemalan family had asked if I would come to their church sometime and teach church history, and he would translate it into Spanish for their small group, which I thought was such a cool opportunity as we got to know our neighbors.

All of us ate around the table, and we learned to make conversations and learned to get to know each other from our different vantage points. We eventually moved to Alexandria from there, and then Springfield, and we've met new neighbors. But I think back to that season as something so helpful and paradigmatic for moving forward as I think about how the kingdom of God moves forward. Hospitality opens us up to receiving God's kingdom work in other people, and when we open our tables, we open ourselves up to being surprised by the kingdom work that God's doing in others.

When you look at the website for the church, if you go to the "About Us" page, one of the first core values of our church is hospitality. And there are a lot of ways that we do this. I was even thinking this morning that big three-by-three-foot sign over there and hanging it up in the morning is an act of hospitality because I want people to easily find where they're going, right? We give a lot of thought to: how do people enter the room? What does it feel like? How are people welcomed when they're here by you? These are all really important things on a Sunday morning to show hospitality and welcome people into the congregation. I'm always grateful when we are not on a holiday weekend and we pack out these chairs and someone thinks, I should get more chairs so that other people can sit here. That is an act of hospitality.

So, to commend you all for doing a great job and to encourage you to keep on doing that as we move forward. And then beyond Sundays, there are ways that we want to show hospitality in these formation groups as we welcome people into our homes and eat together. And I'm always encouraged when I hear stories of you all getting together on your own without any prompting from me. I love hearing, “Oh I got coffee with so-and-so and we had a great conversation.” Those are acts of hospitality that welcome in the kingdom in surprising ways that we wouldn't have anticipated had we not taken the risk to get to know somebody. And it can feel a little bit like that.

And we do have to be wise and we have to have appropriate boundaries, of course, but there is a goodness to the risk of welcoming those who are not yet known with generosity and kindness, because that's one of the ways that the love of God is known in community. When you think of your own story, who welcomed you in and how have you experienced the love of God? And that's why I love celebrating house blessings. So to those of you who have just recently moved—I saw some nods like, oh yeah, we got to talk to Morgan about that. I love doing house blessings because it fills our imaginations for the ways that God can use the places that we live, the tables that we eat around, and the backyards that we play in. And so if you've never had a house blessing and you want one, please let me know. I would love to get that on the calendar and we can talk about that.

So humility and hospitality, as we close—these are challenging. They're challenging, but they're worth it. I love how one commentator framed humility and hospitality in this passage. He says, humility and openness to all are two major facets of following Jesus's ethics. For the disciple, service and meeting the needs of others is not an option. It's the appropriate response to Jesus's call to follow him. The church is not to worry about the chair of honor. Rather, it is to make chairs available to those who are looking for a place to sit—even for those who think there are no chairs for them.

Humility is challenging because it requires us to be secure in who God's made us without thinking of ourselves too highly. In other words, it's the constant work of rightly esteeming yourself in God's sight. And it also requires us seeing and loving the image of God in other people when they might be challenging. When there's that one neighbor that you wish wasn't your neighbor. Hospitality can be challenging for several reasons. It requires risk of opening ourselves up to receive other people into our lives. It costs us something to feed people.

I was realizing the other day that if we're gonna have people over, our bathroom door needs to be able to lock. So I had to go to Home Depot and buy a handle and replace it so that we could actually lock our bathroom. It's an act of hospitality. You're welcome the next time you visit. Right? It costs us something. It is risky doing life together when you see the ways that I am—I'm gonna use myself—when I am not a perfect parent, or in the ways that I don't keep my home as clean as I wish it were. And there's some risk of rejection when you invite somebody over or take the initiative to invite someone to coffee or a meal somewhere. That can be really hard. There's a lot that goes into that. But let's continue in mutual love as a community.

Grow in humility and answer God's call to come back when he keeps asking over and over again, “Where are you?” He is inviting us into his life. And because he invites us in, as we respond, we can invite others into that life as well. Learn dependence on him and live out of that deep place of abiding in God's presence. And then continue in hospitality to learn more about the love of God and the work of Christ in you and in others.

Let me pray for us.

“O God, who created all peoples in your image, we thank you for the diversity of races and cultures in this world. Show us your presence in those who differ from us, and enrich our lives with their fellowship, until our knowledge of your love is made perfect in our love for all your children, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited using ChatGPT.

Feast of St. Bartholomew: Greatness and Gospel Witness

TranscriptioN

Good morning again, everybody. It is good to be with you this morning. We had a really fun pool day yesterday. Thank you to those who came and enjoyed time together out in the sunshine and got roasted. It's nice to have a few hot days left of the summer.

I'm Father Morgan Reed. I'm the vicar here at Corpus Christi Anglican Church, and it is great to see those of you who are new and visiting. I'm so glad that you're here this morning. For those of you who have been here a long time, I am also glad to see you, too. So, thank you for being here as we celebrate this feast day of St. Bartholomew together.

I was mentioning to somebody during Ordinary Time, when the church calendar gives us one of the feast days of the apostles, I want to take it. So today we celebrate the feast day of Bartholomew, one of the apostles of Jesus.

This week, I was pondering a little bit on social media influencers and how the culture of influencers allows for this strange phenomenon where people can actually fake it until they make it. You don't have to be an expert; all you have to do is make a cleverly stitched reel and you could be an influencer—just to have the right ingredients. You don't have to be an expert, and you probably will have more influence than somebody who is well-trained and can craft a long essay, something that's a well-constructed argument.

In fact, I saw a show where this woman had built and started a restaurant. She opened it and was using social media to boost her presence, and she was actually marketing herself before having any experience as a celebrity chef. She even had her own line of cookware that she was selling to boost her income and sales. But on the ground, the restaurant that she had started was totally mismanaged. It was dirty, the food was bad, and when people came once, they just never came back.

But she could sort of create a false narrative about the restaurant because she was controlling the social media influence. And so, she was so focused on celebrity and greatness that she never actually did the hard work of learning the process of how to run a restaurant, to work her way up and have to go through that whole process of knowing the business inside and out. And one of the reasons that I wanted to take today to commemorate one of the martyrs of the church is that when we think of St. Bartholomew and other martyrs, it reminds us that following Jesus is not about chasing greatness.

There are a lot of Christians that chase greatness. They try to keep up appearances to garner influence. In fact, there are even now social media categories like “evangelical influencer,” or you've probably seen “Catholic priest influencers.” I'm not against that. It's the waters that we swim in. It's fine. But just to note the pitfalls—that one does not have to be an expert in subject matter to create a lot of influence. And St. Bartholomew's life reminds us that we need to focus on the process of following Jesus rather than amassing greatness or influence. So, as we look at the life of St. Bartholomew, 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.

So today we wear red because St. Bartholomew is one of the martyrs of the church, and the church often wears red on the feast days for its martyrs—those who have witnessed to the life of Christ to the point of shedding their own blood, giving their life to witness about who Jesus is and what he's done. And this is one of those feast days.

And so, in the history of the church's tradition, Bartholomew is actually the same person as Nathanael. Nathanael—we think his whole name would have been in Aramaic Nathanael Bartholomew, which would come into Greek as Nathanael Bartholomew. And so, if you'll remember the story back in John Chapter 1 (we didn’t read it this morning), Nathanael is the guy who, as he's sitting under a fig tree, hears about this guy Jesus, and he says, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” He's that guy.

And I really like the way Eugene Peterson captures this interaction in The Message between Nathanael and Jesus when he encounters him. It says:

When Jesus saw him coming, he said, “Ah, there is an Israelite. There's no false bone in his body.” Speaking of Nathanael.
Nathanael says, “Where did you get that idea? You don't even know me.”

And Jesus answered, “One day, long before Philip called you here, I saw you sitting under the fig tree.”

Nathanael exclaimed, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God, the King of Israel.”

And Jesus said, “You've become a believer simply because I said that I saw you one day sitting under a fig tree? You haven't seen anything yet.”

It's a great translation of what's happening in this interaction with Nathanael and Jesus. Nathanael was a straight shooter. No one was wondering what he was thinking. He was also humble enough that when he encountered the truth, he changed his mind about things. Humility, honesty—these are virtues that characterize St. Bartholomew, or Nathanael.

And he had to, along with the other disciples, learn really hard lessons. He's not exempt. He had to learn all the same lessons the other disciples did about humility and about power and the nature of the kingdom of God.

There are two traditions around what happened to Nathanael after the resurrection of Jesus. One has him going to Lycaonia and then Ethiopia with the gospel to preach. The other has him going through Mesopotamia and even into Parthia. And so, in the tradition where he goes through Parthia, he goes with Jude, who's also called Thaddeus. And so Thaddeus and Bartholomew take the gospel to Armenia, which is the first Christian kingdom. It becomes Christian before Constantine accepts Christianity.

And so, even to this day, Bartholomew and Thaddeus are the patron saints of Armenia. The rest of his life was spent following Jesus, witnessing to the power of Jesus in his resurrection. Not because he pursued greatness. Sorry, he was great, but not because he pursued greatness. It was because he pursued Jesus and he helped people see who Jesus is. And they helped people see the world as it is and what it could be. They helped people see themselves for who they are and what God has made them to be as his image bearers. And Bartholomew had to learn the same authority in the gospel passage that we read today as all the other disciples did.

In the gospel passage, Jesus is giving his final charge to the disciples. He's just told them that one of them is going to betray him. And immediately following that paragraph, St. Luke gives us this paragraph, where they're arguing about which one of them is to be regarded as the greatest in the kingdom. And so remember, in their minds, Jesus is going to reign over an earthly kingdom. Something like an empire. It's going to have this universal scope to it. It's going to be counter to the Roman Empire and all other kingdoms of the earth. And of course, you're going to need people to rule over various regions. And so the question in their mind becomes, how do we get a place of a throne in this kingdom? We've been following you. We've given up a lot. Is it going to be worth it? Can we have the authority that you have to rule over a slice of your kingdom? And now these are fishermen. They're tax collectors. These are other people who have no experience at all in governing over any municipality. This is not their career trajectory. But as they're thinking about Jesus and his kingdom, these thoughts of importance, comfort, notoriety—those things are becoming so alluring for them as they're thinking about the kingdom. And that's a really good reminder for us. It's a reminder to follow Jesus and do good work. It's simple. Follow Jesus and do good work. Do hard work. Hard work on yourself. Hard work on thinking about how Jesus is incorporated into your life.

If you're noticed, if you're honored by people, if you have seasons of relative comfort, that's totally fine. Take note of those things. Name them as they are. Give God thanks for them along the way because they're not going to be normal all the time. Watch for subtle shifts in yourself. There are these subtle shifts where honor, comfort, and notoriety move from being byproducts of your life to becoming aspirations or goals.

Watch for those subtle shifts. Dan Allender, in a podcast I had listened to, Dr. Dan Allender, said this little phrase that felt really appropriate here: “The more subtle, the more satanic.” The more subtle, the more satanic. And that really resonates with me. Notice the subtle shifts in our souls. Take notice of those things. That requires us to examine ourselves carefully as we're following Jesus. And to listen to the Holy Spirit in prayer constantly. And then to spend time discerning the movements of our souls as we're listening to the Holy Spirit. In those times of goodness or in times of trial, the goal is always a deeper knowledge of the love of God. The church has called those consolations and desolations—where Jesus is seemingly present, or where Jesus is seemingly absent.

In whatever season you're in, the goal is a deeper knowledge of the love of God. And as we think about the church, our goal is not corporately to, say, reach a region for Jesus, which feels very business-y. You know, “We're going to reach the nation, reach Springfield, reach Franconia.” But it's to see God's kingdom come in us, in our households, and in our neighborhoods. It moves from inside out. How you live your life is intertwined with the ways that we see the kingdom coming on a broader scale.

And there are things I can't control in my life, but what can I control? I can work on my own interior life every day with the Holy Spirit. I can work on showing up when my wife needs me to show up. I can listen to her. I can work on being present for our son, coach a baseball team, be the kind of manager that parents would love for their kids to have. I can control those things. That's something I can work on. It's within the realm of possibility. Trying to reach an area for Jesus is sort of like this product-orientation mindset. It's really out of my control.

So desiring to be great can potentially run the risk of clouding our vision for the opportunities that are right in front of us every single day. If you're a lawyer, defend justice. Write policy that accomplishes the welfare of the people that you're writing the policy for. If you're a teacher, come to class each day looking to help the kids in your class live life in the kingdom of God, to live out their lives as image bearers of God. If you're raising little ones at home, imagine your house as a kind of monastery where you're creating this school for the Lord's service in the everyday, ordinary stuff of raising little ones. There's so much that's out of our control, right? But the stuff of following Jesus we can do intentionally every single day. This is the substance of discipleship. Those are the subversive kingdom tactics that guard our internal life from subtle satanic opposition. And so that means that an influential product or a way of thinking doesn't justify a life of disordered loves.

I don't know if you're familiar with the theologian A.W. Tozer. He was a really well-known theologian, and he tried to adopt a life of rigorous poverty. Problem is, it's almost like he did it without considering the rest of his family, and he had seven kids. And so, when I think about this, his wife—to the point, his wife Ada Cecilia Pfautz—and she and her seven kids were forced to use public transit because he refused to get a car, even though he could. That's one example of many, but there was this disintegration with his study, his writing, and the life of his family. And so when he passed away, his wife remarried a man named Leonard Odom.

And somebody had asked Ada in an interview, “You know, what's it like to be married to Leonard after being married to the great A.W. Tozer?” And her response was, “I have never been happier in my life. Aiden Tozer loved Jesus Christ, but Leonard Odam loves me.” And I don't think Tozer set out to be a terrible husband, but there was this deep disconnect and there was this disorder to his love for Jesus and his family.

Seeking first the kingdom of God means that you have to rightly order your life with Jesus so that others experience the love of God through you, which means you have to experience it for yourself first. And it's really hard to integrate life with Jesus with our everyday chaos. But that is the substance of discipleship—naming things honestly, receiving grace for them.

To desire to be great is going to get in the way of seeing God's kingdom come. And so, seeing Bartholomew is a great example of someone who would carry on in Jesus's example of service, laying down his life for the sheep of God in a well-ordered, integrated way.

St. Paul, in our New Testament reading today—I hope you didn't miss this in First Corinthians—gives us another example of humility in his testimony about being an apostle. The Corinthians, they seem to be following these teachers who are making them feel superior. They're avoiding suffering, and these teachers are promising things like status and comfort, wealth and ease—almost like the Corinthians are little kings. And the impression that we get is these folks now seem to be looking down on St. Paul's ministry because St. Paul seems to be suffering, so they must be doing something right.

And so St. Paul needs to address the fact that they are misguided in their feelings of importance. And so how do you begin to address somebody who is so blinded by their inflated sense of self-grandeur? I'm not always sure how to do that right, but it's interesting to watch Paul here because his letter is just dripping with sarcasm. He essentially—this is my paraphrase—in 1 Corinthians 4:8ff, I would paraphrase it this way:

“Wow, look at how you all are so grown up. You're all doing so well. Man, you really look like you're living life as Jesus wanted you to live. You look like kings as you're reigning with Jesus. You didn't even need my help. Actually, you didn't even need the help of any of the apostles. JK. Honestly, I really wish you were kings. It would have been a lot easier if I could have just had what you have without having to go through all the stuff I went through—you know, like Jesus did.”

Then he drops the mic. This is St. Paul's address of these people who have an inflated sense of ego.

And in Paul's day, it's interesting—there was this practice where, as generals would be victorious in battle, they would come into a city through a victorious procession. Because there's no social media, how do you find out if they won? Well, it's a victory procession, and they're going to take all the spoils from their military exploitations and process them through the town. And they would come in, and at the back of this processional train are the captives of war, the prisoners. And at the end of that ceremony, all of these people who were captured in battle would either be given into slavery or they would be executed as part of the pagan liturgy.

And so Paul, in verse 9, compares himself and the other apostles to those captives who are at the back of the victory procession. They're being sentenced to death, he says, a spectacle to the world, fools for Christ's sake. So St. Paul has endured these afflictions through the power of the Spirit, not because he was seeking influence on a massive scale, not because he was trying to be great, but because the new-creation life in the kingdom of God doesn't come without the trials that are involved in a cruciform life. The way of the apostles is to focus on this substantive work of living humbly with Christ in all of life. It's this close walk and abiding in the presence of God.

It's the hard work of daily conversion—to watch the movements of our soul and to repent and then to receive God's grace often, daily, maybe multiple times a day—to name things honestly, to turn from the things that are not of the image of God, to look to Jesus to receive his grace. And it's the challenge of noticing others in their grief and struggle, to be able to offer them something of the goodness of the kingdom of God in their image-bearing selves.

So St. Bartholomew and his feast day—this is such a great reminder that if anyone is to be considered great, it's only because they've pointed people to the one who is truly great. The fruit of somebody's life is important, and it also can't be manufactured. So we need to make time to root out the subtle satanic shifts that move us from the grace and love of God in order to note where the Holy Spirit's at work, where he's moving.

The daily life of following Jesus is the witness that our households and our neighborhoods need. And as a church community, if you and I are following daily in that life with Jesus and his abiding presence, our mutual witness of life together is going to produce that substantive work of the kingdom of God together as we help people see what God can do in a community of lives that are being transformed by the gospel of grace and the power of Jesus.

As we close our time, let me pray again this collect for the feast day of St. Bartholomew:

“Almighty and everlasting God, you gave your apostle Bartholomew grace truly to believe and to preach your word. Grant that your church may love what he believed and preach what he taught, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.”

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Edited using ChatGPT.