Looking ahead to the Eighth Sunday in Epiphany: Matthew 6:24-34

 

With our reading today, Matthew 6:24-34, we end our readings from the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus said, "No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

Well, I have known some people of very great financial means who were extremely responsible about their resources, and went to a great deal of care to help all sorts of people by means of those resources: hospitals and schools and churches and a wide variety of charities. And also institutions that make beauty – music or art.

When I went as a very young priest many years ago to be rector of a parish on the edge of urban Boston, in a blue collar industrial town area, Bishop Burgess said to me, do not romanticize poverty. There are people of limited financial resources who can be stingy and mean and generally human just as much as rich people.  And as a priest of long experience I would note that human beings get sick and die and love in much the same ways whether rich or poor or in between.

And I have known people of both great financial resources and limited financial resources who had rich gifts of soul and mind. In the words of Harry Emerson Fosdick’s hymn “rich in things and poor in soul” – we are called to be rich in soul, and all kinds of people are equally called to that.

You can be a servant – or slave – of wealth, or you can be a disciple of Jesus who is a steward of financial resources. The money can own you, or you can be a steward of how money is used.

The next section of this passage, through most of the years of my ministry, was the Gospel appointed for Thanksgiving Day – and I remember a memorable occasion in Trinity Church in Boston when there was a service of thanksgiving for the long ministry of Bishop Sherrill (who had been rector of that church, Bishop of Massachusetts and Presiding Bishop) and the propers for Thanksgiving Day were read, including this Gospel.

I have always found this Gospel fascinating because I have been a great worrier. And sometimes there are things to worry about – parish and pastoral concerns and kids.

I guess it is true that worrying has not added an hour to my life. Worrying probably takes a few hours (or more than a few) off of our span of life.  

It pushes me to think what it means to give myself into God’s hands.

I do the best I can, and then it is God who gives the outcome.  

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you-- you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, `What will we eat?' or `What will we drink?' or `What will we wear?' For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
"So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today."

(Raymond Webster)

Sermon preached on the Seventh Sunday in Epiphany

 Seventh Sunday in Epiphany: Leviticus 19:1-2, 19-18; Psalm 119:33-40; 1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23; Matthew 5:38-48

Further down the road, a young man who wasn’t around for the Sermon on the Mount will ask Jesus, “What good deed must I do to have eternal life?”  And this isn’t just any young person, your average twenty-something off the street.  The man who approaches Jesus and asks this question is well-dressed, composed, and pious.  He’s the sort of guy who doesn’t have to be told to go to synagogue, or say his prayers, or keep his fasts.  He works hard, he pays his taxes, he makes his sacrifices at the temple.  He’s exemplary, but Jesus doesn’t cut him any slack.  “What good deed must I do to have eternal life?”  the man repeats.  Jesus looks at him, pauses, and shrugs: “You know just as well as I do.  Keep the commandments: don’t murder, don’t cheat, don’t steal, don’t lie … you get it.”  So the young man comes back at him, “Yeah, I get it.  I know all that.  I do all that.  But isn’t there something big I could do – something that’ll put me head and shoulders above the rest – something that’s really hard to accomplish.”  “Oh,” Jesus nods his head, catching on, “I see.  Well, if you want to be perfect, you can sell everything you own, give it to the poor, and follow me.”  And the young man is crushed.  He turns and walks away.  We have no idea what he ends up doing – but we do learn something else about him.  The young man is crushed because he does, in fact, have a lot of possessions.

This story sticks, and it goes down in history as part of Jesus’ teachings on wealth.   But Jesus hasn’t actually made a blanket statement here about what everyone should do with their things.  What he’s done is put his finger on something that’s going to be hard for a person like this to do: give up his possessions.  And to me, the interchange between Jesus and this guy is about much more than things.  Just look at what the guy is asking Jesus – what more can I do?  This is a story about success, accomplishments, striving to be the best.  It’s a story about perfection.

When Jesus hits the nail on the head and asks the young man, “So you want to be perfect?”  you’ve got to hear echoes of today’s Gospel reading and the baffling statement at its conclusion, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  The type of perfection that Jesus is talking about here, in keeping with the whole Sermon on the Mount, is a kind of moral perfection, a term that most of us register and probably don’t have too hard of a time shaking off.   We think about the morality we learned as kids: murder and theft we’re good on, but we don’t always honor our elders, or tell the truth, or refrain from gossiping or playing cards, or eating and drinking to excess.  And those things, as troubling as they can be, don’t really keep us up at night.  We understand that mistakes like that happen.  

If you’re anything like me, though, there’s another kind of morality that you learned when you were growing up.  Alongside not smoking and not swearing, you may have learned to excel.  You may have learned to get good grades and be involved in good activities and make good connections in order to be rewarded with good opportunities.  You may have learned that if you wanted something, all you had to do was try – and if you didn’t get it, you had to try harder.  And some of us, like this young man here, learned to never stop, to never be satisfied.  Once you accomplish something, you push on to the next level – our own version of ‘going the second mile.’  You could call this type of morality perfectionism, a whole movement in the direction of excellence, only perfection denotes a completeness, a maturity and wholeness and rest that is not a part of the young man’s morality. 

Now, should we be 100% against this sort of striving for what is best?  Well, yes and no.  Personally, I enjoy working hard, and trying to improve.  And I’m thankful for having accomplished certain things.  I even know people who wish they’d been pushed more to succeed in life, or to develop high standards.  A lot of you spend your time in communities where achievement and drive and accomplishment are the norm.  And so you know that striving for perfection – or striving in general – can make people creative and productive, and can open the mind to new thoughts and new experiences.  It can have a positive impact on the whole world.  One researcher’s striving for perfection, for instance, might result in a vaccine or a miracle drug. 

So what’s wrong with perfectionism?  Well, like in the young man’s story, it can be the thing that trips us up.  It can be the thing that gets between us and God.  Because unlike wealth, it’s a lot harder to take away behavior that becomes so ingrained in us.  Even if we had the most gracious parents in the world, we learned to settle for nothing less than perfection in school, in peer groups, in the workplace, even at church.  And its drawbacks are serious.

 

For one thing, it makes the world a pretty unforgiving place to live in.  We find ourselves always thinking, always doing, always working toward.  Again, this can be exciting.  But it doesn’t allow us to be still, to listen, to notice where love is and where love needs to be.  It doesn’t allow us to make mistakes.  And it causes us to forget that we are already holy, and that being holy is our chief purpose in life.  We are created to house the flame of God’s love within our hearts and tend that one fire, the fire of God’s Holy Spirit.  We are meant to experience the creative, productive, exciting freedom of grace, which cannot be achieved because it’s already been given to you, for nothing. 

Furthermore, the kind of moral perfection we’ve been taught to seek is not the sort of perfection that Jesus is talking about.  Jesus’ ‘perfection,’ is nothing that we can attain on our own.  It belongs to God  – be perfect as God is perfect – and it consists in loving as God loves.  It’s not a morality of perfection, but of love.  This love is marked by humility: love your enemies, love people you don’t know, pray for those who hurt you, give unconditionally.  And frankly, humility – complete self-giving – is a hard thing to come by when you’ve been trained to be perfect.  Because there’s a lot of pride, a lot of competitiveness, and a lot of dependence on self that you’ve got to cultivate in order to accomplish certain things in this world.   But just as Jesus asks the young man to give up his possessions, God asks us to di-vest ourselves of … our selves … and start looking at our lives not as projects, but as these holy temples, these sacred havens of God’s spirit, these chosen subjects of God’s love.

The young man walks away from Jesus, hanging his head, because he can’t imagine what happens after he gives up his morality.  He doesn’t know how to be a holy temple, and he’s not sure he wants to figure it out.  Jesus’ friends watch this poor guy go and turn to him, asking, “What was that about?”  Jesus says these famous words, “It’s easier for a camel to pass through a needle’s eye than for someone with a lot of things to enter the kingdom of God.”  And you can hear him saying what we’ve just talked about.  The young man’s particular challenge is going to be how he can disentangle himself from the trappings of his achievement, of his idea of perfect, in order to receive God’s perfect love.  Jesus’ friends, knowing that they’ve got their own problems, their own entanglements, look about as optimistic as the young man did.  And so he speaks again, more famous words, “You don’t do it on your own.  You ask for help.  For people to be free, for people to love like this is impossible.  But for God all things are possible.” 

Sermon preached by the Rev. Danielle Thompson at St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church in Chicago, IL on on Sunday, Feb. 20, 2011 at 8:00am, 11:00am, and 5:15pm.

(photograph from the town of Perfection, NC found at this blog:http://bydianedaniel.wordpress.com/)

Looking ahead to the Seventh Sunday in Epiphany: Matthew 5:37-48

(at left: a fragment of the Gospel of Matthew from Egypt, early 4c.)

More fun with words!  I’m on a roll with my Greek New Testament.  If I had any energy left after toddler-fest each evening, I would even start declining sentences again (a great thing to do while watching Top Chef – sort of like crossword puzzles)! 

This week the word “perfect” in our upcoming Gospel lesson caught my attention.  It’s actually been on my mind throughout our reading of the Sermon on the Mount, since the fifth chapter of Matthew culminates in this statement: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48).  I don’t want to reflect too much right now on why I think this phrase holds within it something special for our church – I’d rather save that from the sermon!  However, it seems that trying to open up Jesus’ idea of perfection here would be a good exercise for a high-achieving group of people.  My guess is that most of us don’t hear Matthew 5:48 and assume that Jesus wants everybody to be faultless – but I could be wrong.  The Sermon on the Mount can be pretty startling and confusing.

Perfect is the Greek word teleios.  It’s only other usage in the Gospel of Matthew is in the nineteenth chapter at verse 21: “Jesus said to him, ‘If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money^* to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’”  This is the story of the pious rich man who pressed Jesus for an answer to the question, “What good deed must I do to have eternal life …. What do I lack?” (Matt. 19:16, 20). 

Teleios has some pretty predictable meanings that feature more prominently in other New Testament passages.  The epistles, particularly James’ letter and Paul’s letter to the Romans, use it in the sense of meeting high standards.  In other places, Paul uses it to express the idea of being mature, or fully grown.  Throughout the Bible and other ancient literature, teleios suggests completeness, or wholeness.  One interesting use that gets at that meaning is the cultic definition of teleios: it can be used to refer to a member of a Greco-Roman mystery religion who has completed all of the rites of initiation.  Paul plays on this sense of the word in his letter to the Colossians, a group of people who may have been dabbling in mystery religions.  Paul’s point is that by virtue of our baptism, we are already ‘perfects’ who are “mature [teleios] in Christ” (Col. 1:28). 

What we’re talking about in Matthew 5:48 and 19:21 is being fully formed in a moral sense, a use of teleios that is applied only to humans and not to objects or ideas.  Though the word describes people, in the particular context of the Sermon on the Mount it is a quality or a characteristic that belongs properly to God.  So when Jesus tells us to be perfect, or tells that poor guy to sell all of his belongings, he’s not asking us to sink into our best inner selves and rise again to the task of unblemished living.  He’s asking us to be a part of something that belongs to God, to share in the life of God that is being offered to us, to seek to know the heart of God and make our home there.  A terrible (terrible!) analogy is this: it’s the difference between being told, “Play tennis like Pete Sampras” and “Take tennis lessons with Peter Sampras.” 

And now, in addition to knowing a little more about the Sermon on the Mount, you also have an idea of when I was last following tennis.  

(Danielle Thompson)

Sermon preached on the Sixth Sunday in Epiphany

John Milton, artist uknown, ca. 1629.

Sixth Sunday in Epiphany: Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Ps. 119:1-8; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37
  

On Marriage: A sermon by the Rev. Raymond Webster

 

Looking to St. Valentine's Day tomorrow, the Guardian of London had a list last Wednesday, of ten favorite love poems - compiled by poet John Stammers.  I enjoy the Guardian's literary lists of ten -- but I was especially moved reading John Milton's great sonnet about his late wife, "Methought I saw my late espoused saint ..."

I think have read to you before the passionate words Milton gives Adam in Book Nine of Paradise Lost, when Adam says he would give up paradise rather than be parted from Eve. 

Well, this is rather different. In the poem he dreams of his late wife coming to him, dressed in white. He trusts he will see her in heaven “without restraint” – fully – but in the dream she comes veiled. 

The force in the great last line is that Milton at the time he wrote this poem was blind – so when his dream ends at daybreak, he awakes into his own night. With a tip of the preacher’s hat to Valentine’s Day and Holy Matrimony, may I read it to you:  

    Methought I saw my late espousèd saint

    Brought to me like Alcestus from the grave,

    Whom Jove's great Son to her glad husband gave,

    Rescu'd from Death by force though pale and faint.

    Mine as whom washed from spot of child-bed taint

    Purification in the Old Law did save,

    And such as yet once more I trust to have

    Full sight of her in heaven without restraint,

    Came vested all in white, pure as her mind:

    Her face was veiled, yet to my fancied sight

    Love, sweetness, goodness in her person shined

    So clear as in no face with more delight.

    But O, as to embrace me she inclined.

    I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.

Ah, a great memory of how “Love, sweetness, goodness in her person shined …” 

 

Marriage in today’s Gospel

 

Jesus speaks of marriage in today’s Gospel. We are reading from the passages in Matthew commonly called the Sermon on the Mount. Today’s collection of verses are an austere and challenging sermon. Jesus gives us these great challenges to be honest and direct and transparent and authentic – let your yes be a yes – to be reconciled to one another, and to commitment in marriage.  

 

Well, the image comes to mind of a having a dinner (Valentine’s dinner) all set and the candles lit and – the window opens to an icy blast. Good to have challenges sometimes, and Jesus always challenges us in the Gospel to not run away but face what comes in self-giving love, as he did not run away, and faced the evil done to him in self-giving love, in which we see the very nature of God who is love.

 

I believe Christ calls us to follow him as his disciples and friends on his way of self-giving love, making ethical choices as mature free men and women, in a free society and a free church, an ethic based on commitment and the taking of responsibility, on a humble sense of our fallibility, with a sense of openness and honesty and authenticity, seeking to reconcile and forgive and show mercy and make peace. 

 

And in a broken world there are occasions when we make mistakes, when we fail and we ask forgiveness, and move on from the past to the future.  

 

Luther always said to read Scripture in the light of Scripture, and today’s passage should be read in the context of Jesus’ call to us to ask forgiveness and be forgiven – his great unforgettable story in Luke of the father’s welcome home to the prodigal child. And as we read Matthew this month, remember this Gospel is named for the disciple who once was a tax collector, in effect a collaborator. Jesus not condoning what he had done wrong, but calling him to a new life, a new start. And Jesus who forgives us so much – who is God’s Word of forgiveness to us – calls us in today’s Gospel to forgive and be reconciled. 

 

A word about marriage and divorce

 

So let me in the light of that say a word about marriage, and about divorce. I believe marriage is a sacrament, one of the sacraments of the church. And I also know that sometimes marriages die. I have been a priest for a long time now, and I have been married a long time. I have never been divorced. I come from a family which has a great many divorces in it. Some of my clergy colleagues like to have couples preparing for marriage do charts of family relationships – I think I block the name even – because mine when done looks like a train wreck. My point is I am not throwing stones. I think most people if not everyone I know who have gotten a divorce found it painful and difficult. 

 

I do also know that there are times when it is better for a couple to part than to continue together – and the staying together can be destructive and harmful and thus itself sinful, sometimes even involved in something illegal or sinful. Sometimes it is in the best interests of the children. Not always, mistakes happen all over the place. 

 

But I know there are times when a marriage has died, and the words of Jesus elsewhere come to mind to let the dead bury the dead. I love history, it is good to know the past, learn from the past, but sometimes it is good to let go of the past. We are not to be shackled to the past. We ask forgiveness and are forgiven and go on. 

 

So the Episcopal Church in its pastoral wisdom, allows a divorced person to marry again in the church. With a clear understanding that the couple have read the vows in the marriage service and intend to be married with those vows and intend to live out those vows. Indeed, the couple are asked sign what is called the Declaration of Intention stating they have read the vows and intend to be married by them. And there are people I know, strong marriages, who have done just that. 

 

Marriage is a sacrament and sign

 

I started by saying I believe marriage is a sacrament. A sign – like the bread and wine in Communion – of God’s presence with us and love for us in Jesus Christ. 

 

Indeed, in our Book of Common Prayer, every time there is a wedding, we read the words about marriage, that -- 

It signifies to us the mystery of the union between Christ and his Church …  

Book of Common Prayer, page 423 

 

Not a new thought either. I looked up the phrase in the 1662 English Prayer Book and found the words that marriage is -- 

… an honourable estate, instituted of God in the time of man's innocency, signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church …                                   

1662 Book of Common Prayer 

 

These familiar passages are quoting from Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, speaking of marriage and how a man leaves his mother and father and joins his wife, and they became one flesh. And Paul says: 

 

This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church.                                (Letter of Paul to the Ephesians 5:32)  

 

Need I say that “church” does not mean the building, it is not the union between Christ and the building, nor the union between Christ and the organizational structure – although structure should have, better have, some relationship to Jesus and his loving servant ministry – but to the people who are the community of faith, who are the church. To you and me. 

 

What this is not saying is you have to be married to be united to Christ. In no way. One can be single or widowed or a monk or nun. Young or old, married or single, what is offered is offered to all. 

 

The mystery of the marriage of two human beings is a sign of the mystery of the union of Christ with a human being that is offered to each one of us. 

 

God sent Christ to speak to us God’s Word that God is present with us and loves us in him. That love is entirely gift, all grace. And God calls each person to accept that love and trust that love and return it. The love of any human being for another is gift, to be trusted and returned, always gift and grace – and so is a sign of God’s gift. 

 

I note that in American Protestantism, it is very widespread, in modern times, to speak of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I daresay for me it means the same thing. “Personal” and “relationship” are not Biblical words but modern words. The Bible is packed with stories of relationships, they had relationships in Bible, some rich and wonderful and some destructive, but the word comes from our self-conscious modern times. But yes a couple in marriage are united, and in a personal relationship – just so we are given the gift of union with God, of friendship and love.  

 

We live out the gift of God’s love in Christ – friendship with God in Christ -- in worship together and in loving service in the world. May we follow Jesus on that way. 

 

(This sermon was preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster, Rector, in St. Chrysostom’s Church, Chicago, Illinois on Sunday, February 13, 2011, the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany at 8:00am and 11:00am)  

Sermon preached on the Fifth Sunday in Epiphany

Fifth Sunday in Epiphany, Year A: Isaiah 58:1-12; Ps. 112:1-10; 1 Corinthians 2:1-16;
Matthew 5:13-20

Six years ago yesterday I sat in the front pew of Saint James Cathedral a very scared and jumpy fellow. It was noticeable by Bishop Persell as he noted in his Sermon that he hoped I made it through the service. One may wonder why I was nervous. I had completed a 3 year journey of every other Saturday of all day classes and written over 20 12 page papers and read over 140 books on preaching, theology, old and new testament, pastoral care, ethics, and church history to name a few of the many topics. I wanted to be ordained but new it was not over until the Bishop laid his hands on my head. This was a great expectation and I was in the midst of feeling the Holy Spirit as I had never felt it before. That moment brought me back to my childhood when I substituted to teach my mothers Sunday class because she was ill only to return from church at age 16 to find out she had died. It also brought to mind my dad and best friend who died 1 month after I started deacon school. I knew at that moment and today and always Ms. Jimmy Ellen and Cornelius are proud of me I wish they could have been there but actually they were. God does this to you. I have learned a lot in my 6 years of being ordained a deacon most of all to take it slow during the proclaiming of the gospel and when preaching. This I owe to our Rector Rev. Raymond Webster. It actually took 5 years for him not to say take it slow. Deacons have a great voice to preach but some of us preach less frequently than others. My brother in Christ and fellow class mate deacon Steve Lowe at Saint Marks Geneva preaches at about the same frequency as I do and he always tells me remember we must hit a home run.  I want to thank all of my friends for your continued support of my outside ministries at Youth Guidance, Umoja, and supporting the Bishops Challenge. This year our bishop is asking us to build wells in 3^rd world countries as we join Episcopal Relief and Development in this mission. It cost $5000.00 to build a well. I am asking that if all of our people can write a check for at least $15.00 we can get close to building a well. I have gift cards that you can send to a love one that you made a donation in their name. This is what diaconal ministry is about helping those in need. 

In Today’s Gospel the Lord Jesus tells us that true Christians are to be in the world like "salt." "Ye are the salt of the earth." Now salt has a peculiar taste of its own, utterly unlike anything else. When mingled with other substances it preserves them from corruption; it imparts a portion of its taste to everything it is mixed with. It is useful so long as it preserves its taste, but no longer. 

Does your life reflect the light of Christ to others?

As a deacon I have reflected the light of Christ through my youth ministry both in and outside the walls of Saint Chrysostom’s. I have worked with over 50 young people here and more than 400 outside these walls. I guess it goes back to my Childhood in Canton, Georgia And Zion Baptist as a Sunday School teacher and vacation bible school instructor. These are all wonderful ministries and it provides the salt to help preserve the innocence of our youth by giving the great adult guidance.

Then let us see here our office and our duties!

The Lord Jesus tells us that Christians are to be in the world like light. "Ye are the light of the world." Now it is the property of light to be utterly distinct from darkness. The least spark in a dark room can be seen at once. Of all things created, light is the most useful: it fertilizes; it guides; it cheers. It was the first thing called into being. ( Genesis 1:3.) Without it the world would be a gloomy blank. Are we  Christians? Then behold again our position and its responsibility!

Surely, if words mean anything, we are meant to learn from these two figures that there must be something marked, distinct, and peculiar about our character, if we are Christians. It will never do to idle through life, thinking and living like others, if we mean to be owned by Christ as His people. Have we grace? Then it must be seen.--Have we the Spirit? Then there must be fruit.--Have we any saving religion? Then there must be a difference of habits, tastes, and turn of mind, between us and those who think only of the world.--It is perfectly clear that  Christianity is something more then being baptized and going to church. "Salt" and "light" evidently imply peculiarity both of heart and life, of faith and practice. We must dare to be singular and unlike the world, if we mean to be saved.

These verses teach us, in the second place, the relation between Christ's teaching and that of the Old Testament.

This is a point of great importance, and one about which great errors prevail. Our Lord clears up the point in one striking sentence: He says, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill." These are remarkable words. They were deeply important when spoken, as satisfying the natural anxiety of the Jews on the point; they will be deeply important as long as the world stands, as a testimony that the religion of the Old and New Testaments is one harmonious whole.

The Lord Jesus came to fulfill the predictions of the prophets, who had long foretold that a savior would one day appear.--He came to fulfill the ceremonial law, by becoming the great Sacrifice for sin, to which all the Mosaic offerings had ever pointed: He came to fulfill the moral law, by yielding to it a perfect obedience, which we could never have yielded,--and by paying the penalty for our breach of it with His atoning blood, which we could never have paid. In all these ways He exalted the law of God, and made its importance more evident even than it had been before. In a word, "He magnified the law and made it honorable." ( Isaiah 42:21.)

There are deep lessons of wisdom to be learned from these words of our Lord about "the law and the prophets." Let us consider them well, and lay them up in our hearts.

For one thing, let us beware of despising the Old testament, under any pretence whatever. Let us never listen to those who bid us throw it aside as an obsolete, antiquated, useless book. The religion of the Old Testament is the germ of Christianity. The Old Testament is the Gospel in the bud; the New Testament is the Gospel in full flower.--The Old Testament is the Gospel in the blade; the New Testament is the Gospel in full ear.--The saints in the Old Testament saw many things through a glass darkly; but they all looked by faith to the same Savior, and were lead by the same Spirit as ourselves. These are no light matters. Much infidelity begins with an ignorant contempt of the Old Testament.

For another thing, let us beware of despising the law of the Ten Commandments. Let us not suppose for a moment that it is set aside by the Gospel, or that Christians have nothing to do with it. The coming of Christ did not alter the position of the Ten Commandments . If anything, it exalted and raised their authority. ( Romans 3:31.) The law of the Ten Commandments is God's eternal measure of right and wrong. By it is the knowledge of sin; by it the Spirit shows men their need of Christ, and drives them to Him: to it Christ refers His people as their rule and guide for holy living. In its right place it is just as important as "the glorious Gospel."--It cannot save us: we cannot be justified by it; but never, never let us despise it. It is a symptom of an ignorant ministry, and an unhealthy state of religion, when the law is lightly esteemed. The Christian "delights in the law of God." ( Romans 7:22.)

In the last place, let us beware of supposing that the Gospel has lowered the standard of personal holiness, and that the Christian is not intended to be as strict and particular about his daily life as the Jew. This is an immense mistake, but one that is unhappily very common. So far from this being the case, the sanctification of the New Testament saint ought to exceed that of him who has nothing but the Old Testament for his guide. The more light we have, the more we ought to love God: the more clearly we see our own complete and full forgiveness in Christ, the more heartily ought we to work for His glory. We know what it cost to redeem us far better then the Old Testament saints did. We have read what happened in Gethsemane and on Calvary, and they only saw it dimly and indistinctly as a thing yet to come. May we never forget our obligations! The Christian who is content with a low standard of personal holiness has got much to learn.

I would like to end as we do at the 9am service by reciting the first verse of the hymn that we use at the end of the service and this Hymn I want to walk as A Child of the light was also sung at my ordination 6 years ago.  “I want to walk as A Child of the light, I want to follow Jesus, God set the Stars to Give Light to the world, The Star of my Life Is Jesus, in him there is no darkness at all The Night and the Day are both a like. The lamb is the light of the City of God.

Shine in my Heart Lord Jesus.

Sermon preached by the Rev. Deacon Larry Green at St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church in Chicago, IL on on the sixth anniversary of his ordination to the diaconate, Sunday, Feb. 6, 2011 at 8:00am and 11:00am.

Looking ahead to the Fifth Sunday in Epiphany: Matthew 5:13-20

 This upcoming Sunday’s Gospel reading is an introduction of sorts to the core of the Sermon on the Mount, the weighty chunk of ethical material that Jesus will deal with in Matthew 5:17-7:12.  Here Jesus touches on issues relating to marriage, giving to the poor, prayer, fasting, and judging others.  All of this teaching is directed toward one end: the kingdom of God.  What does it look like, substantially?  If we want to live there, how must we comport ourselves – how do we bend our hearts and our bodies to follow its course?

Jesus’ disciples weren’t clueless about what God wanted from them.  They had the Law, which God had given to their ancestors.  And the Law was not merely ceremonial.  From the very beginning it was understood that the sincere foundation of the Law was love of God:  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deut. 6:5).  So what new thing were the disciples looking for from Jesus, and what could it mean for him to say that he came to “fulfill” the Law?

 A couple of ideas come to mind when we ask what the disciples might have been looking for.  First, they probably weren’t looking for anything too different from what we are looking for each Sunday when we settle back to hear Scripture read and expounded upon.  These disciples had sacred writings that they believed to be true.  They sought out authoritative teachers to help them break into and explore the inexhaustible meaning of these texts.  Jesus was such a prophetic teacher, and as with all prophets, the power of his words depended on the power of his person.  But Jesus was more than a divine mouthpiece – he was the Son of God.  His teaching revealed the will of God and his life enfleshed the love of God.  So a second way of approaching the question, “What were they looking for?” might be that they weren’t necessarily looking for anything until they met Jesus.  And just as he broke the Scriptures to his disciples, he broke his disciples open to the Scriptures. 

To say that Jesus fulfills the Law, particularly in the context of Matthew’s Gospel, does not mean that he eradicates it, or that he stands over against it.  We might say that Jesus  fulfills the Law in the sense of keeping it, and in so doing he honors the Law (another way of fulfilling it).  M. Eugene Boring, in his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, notes that the book’s author views all of Scripture (the Pentateuch and the Prophets) as prophetic, and therefore future-oriented.  Another word for this is eschatological, or having to do with ultimate things.  Jesus, therefore, doesn’t supplant or replace the Law, but is the person (the event?) that the Law has been moving toward, or longing for.  Again, the foundation of the Law is love of God and Jesus is God’s love.  He represents the Law’s end in the fullest sense, then: its ultimate purpose and its ultimate goal.   

(Danielle Thompson)

Sermon preached on the Fourth Sunday in Epiphany

Fourth Sunday in Epiphany, Year A:
Micah 6:1-8; Ps. 15;
1 Corinthians 1:18-31; Matthew 5:1-12

There are two major players in our Gospel reading today.  The first one is obvious: Jesus.  For the last few weeks we’ve followed his birth, his baptism, and the beginning of his ministry.  In the church, we call the season where we remember all of this “Epiphany,” because with each new thing that Jesus does, he reveals himself, he unveils something important about himself.  He causes revelations, epiphanies, to happen all around him and we discover who he is and what he shows us about God.  Today, as Jesus begins his famous Sermon on the Mount, the epiphanies continue. 

At this point we know that Jesus is a preacher and we know that he is a healer.  And because he’s been helping so many people, and speaking so powerfully, crowds are following him around.  It’s not like he’s a celebrity, or a politician, or even a guru, because he’s actually in the middle of all these people – he speaks directly to them, he walks among them, he touches them and affects them immediately.  He doesn’t have bodyguards or minders, so even when he does something sort of seemingly-introverted – like going up on this mountain here, away from most of the crowds – he’s followed by a group of disciples.

 And this is where the next epiphanies happen, where the next revelations take place.  Jesus reveals to us that he is a rabbi, an authoritative teacher.  Beginning with these sayings that we just heard about blessedness, Jesus will take the ethical principles that people are taught to live by and break them open to reveal the beating heart at the center of each of them.  In doing this, Jesus will reveal to us the will of God, what God’s heart is like. 

But the more striking epiphany, the revelation that’s new in every generation – the revelation that is new every day – is the identity of that other major player in the Sermon on the Mount.  The crowds have been following Jesus, that’s true, but the crowds don’t follow him up the goat path to this place where he sits down to teach.  His disciples do, literally, his “learners.”  They peel off from the regular flow of things to be set apart on this day, with this person.  Just as you peeled off of Lakeshore Dr. and onto our street.  Just as you stepped off of the bus and into this church, or walked down the steps of your building and turned toward an altar, and not a breakfast table or a newspaper stand.  The epiphany is us.  The veil is lifted on the disciples, and they are revealed to have our faces.  This church is revealed to be our mountain, and the whole dynamic of our being together, everything that happens when we break bread together, when we hear Scripture read and when we sing and pray together is revealed to be Christ himself, his presence among us, embodied in our worship.

But for each one of us there’s a further personal epiphany, something to be unveiled that we can’t get at just by reading the story and talking about it.  We see that a group of disciples takes that deeper step and follows Jesus up the mountain to hear him teach.  We see that several of us have made it here this morning with some intention.  But why?  What is it that we’re looking for?  What does being on this mountain mean for us?  Because it’s not the easiest thing in the world to do.  In fact, if we borrow a line from St. Paul this morning, it may even appear foolish.  Even these first disciples, who had the living proof of Jesus in front of them, had a rough time.  For starters, they actually, physically followed him, climbing mountains, walking for miles, being tired and thirsty.  Jesus’ sayings about blessedness give us clues to what they experienced, because our Gospels were, after all, written down for them, and read to them in their worship services.  So we hear that they were poor enough to be excited about what they hoped to gain; they were grievous enough to want the whole world to rejoice; they were hungry enough to sense their own constant needs; they were single-hearted enough to be able to hold up Love as the single most important thing.  And they were willing to be thought foolish – by others, and most importantly by the voices of doubt in their own minds – in order to deal with all of these challenges and to not lose heart.  They had to have a sense, then, of why any of it mattered. 

And us, we the disciples, have a hard time of it, too.  Some of our problems are the same as the first disciples’: churches have always had to deal with money, from the very earliest times.  Churches have always depended on the time and talents of their members, who’ve always had a lot of responsibilities to juggle.  Churches across the ages have weathered political crises and cultural shifts.   Really, these are problems that any group, institution, or association might encounter.

But we live in a time that makes some of this harder.  Disciples have always been busy, it’s true, but I think more than ever it’s hard for us to be single-hearted, what Jesus calls “pure of heart” in our Scripture today.  We have just as much to do as any person ever did, but our lives are so fractured.  We’re pulled in so many competing directions that it’s very hard to devote ourselves wholly to something like discipleship.  And especially when the payoffs aren’t so obvious, so external.  In our day and age, going to church doesn’t guarantee you the things it once did.  Our culture doesn’t require churchgoing in the same way it once did, so your parents might not be watching to make sure that you’re here.  Plus, the social benefits of belonging to this denomination or that denomination are much more muted than in past generations.  You may have friends and neighbors and co-workers here, but your friends and neighbors and co-worker aren’t necessarily here.  All of this means that you are here for another reason. 

And so this other epiphany, this thing that is to be revealed in your heart, is that question.  Why are you here?  Why have you come up this mountain to sit with this teacher?  What do you want from him?  What will finding the heart of God mean for you and for the people you love?  In the weeks leading up to Lent, as we read the Sermon on the Mount, let’s sit with this question and let’s enjoy being with one another in the presence of Christ.  And then, let’s be ready to live into a new epiphany about who we are, about who we are here, in this place, and about who we are with God.   There is hope here, and there is promise. 

Sermon preached  by the Rev. Danielle Thompson at St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church in Chicago, IL on Jan. 30, 2011 at 8:00am, 11:00am and 5:15pm

Posted by Danielle at 9:21 AM