Ending Matthew (Ray's commentary on our Nov 20 readings)

TODAY’S GOSPEL (Matthew 25:31-46)

Ending a church year – ending our reading from Matthew

Sunday, November 20 is the end of the church year. A new church year begins on the First Sunday of Advent, the next Sunday, November 27. So on November 20 we end our year long reading from Matthew’s Gospel, and turn in Advent to begin reading from Mark’s Gospel.

The story of the first Palm Sunday is told in Matthew’s Gospel in chapter 21. This fall we have been reading the stories of what Jesus said and did in Jerusalem immediately after the first Palm Sunday. Near the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel, the teachings of Jesus in chapters 5 through 7 are so familiar and well-loved they have a popular holy nick-name, “The Sermon on the Mount.” One might call chapters 21-25 in Matthew the sermon in Jerusalem, or the sermon facing the cross.

The story of the cross begins in the next chapter

For in chapter 25 (from which we read on both November 13 and 20) we are on the threshold of the story of the cross of Jesus. That story begins in chapter 26. Bach opens the St. Matthew Passion with the anointing in Bethany, and then the Last Supper and then the arrest.

Christ the King asks us a question

We end our year long reading from Matthew’s Gospel on a high note, a very grand chord is sounded. It is Judgment Day, and Christ in Glory (which is always the glory of his self-giving love) asks us when did we feed the hungry and clothe the naked and give water to the thirsty and visit the sick and the prisoner, and welcome the stranger?  And he makes the great statement that when we do it one of these, we do it to Jesus himself.  

We feed the hungry at our Neighbors in Need dinner on Tuesday, November 15. Christ comes to dinner. Or making a meal for those at Deborah’s Place.

The kids in the parish through through the Heifer Project gave a camel to a family to give milk as well as transportation in a place where other kinds of animals might not survive.

We clothe the naked, bringing clothes to the church to give to Cathedral Shelter or St. Leonard’s – giving families and individuals Christmas gifts through the Cathedral Shelter. 

We help people out of prison through St. Leonard’s Ministries in our diocese.

We welcome the stranger into St. Chrysostom’s.

We visit the sick at Northwestern Hospital – we send the clergy to bring prayer and the Holy Communion. 

A quotation from Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997) often quoted this Gospel. My favorite quotation from Mother Teresa is this:  

In Holy Communion we have Christ under the appearance of bread. In our work we find him under the appearance of flesh and blood. It is the same Christ. ‘I was hungry, I was naked, I was sick, I was homeless.’                                                                                                  Malcolm Muggeridge, Something Beautiful for God, 1971, page 74

In the middle ages, Christians loved to make lists of things – the Seven Deadly Sins, the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit. These six things – feeding the hungry, giving water to the thirsty, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, visiting the prisoner, welcoming the stranger – with the addition of giving a decent burial to the dead became known as the Seven Works of Mercy, or the Seven Works or Corporal (physical) Mercy.

Holiness of life is life lived close to Jesus

Holiness of life is life lived close to Jesus, in Holy Communion and in helping others – in loving servant ministry of others. We live close to him in reading his story, in coming to his table to be fed, in times of quiet prayer and in ways we serve through our volunteer work, our work, our giving. Welcoming others into the church.

OUR FIRST READING (Ezekiel 34: 11-16, 20-24) is the prophet’s great vision of God as the shepherd of the people of God. The prophet hears the voice of God saying God will seek the lost. There is also the vision of giving David as king, who be the people’s shepherd and feed them. At the time of Jesus, all Israel was looking for the coming of the new king sent from God, the “anointed one” (in Hebrew the Messiah, in Greek the Christ) the descendant of David. This for us was and is Jesus, born in Bethlehem, the city of David.

IN THE SECOND READING from the Letter of Paul to the Ephesians (1:15-23) Christ is head of the church. 

The parable of the entrepreneurs (Danielle's Nov 13 sermon)

Computer geeks have ruined us.  I mean that seriously.  Bill Gates has ruined us.  Steve Jobs has ruined us.  Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, has ruined us, and not because we now spend all our free time looking at pictures of our high school friends' children's birthday parties.  All of these insane geniuses have ruined us because our popular perception of them, the stories and legends we've created around them, the amazing scale of their specialized intellects, define for our culture what it means to be entrepreneurial.

Now it's always been the case that societies hold up their best and brightest.  Our tradition has saints, after all -  and if you think it’s hard to emulate them, when you consider our cultural saints, it gets downright overwhelming.  Somebody like Bill Gates started writing code as a little kid and grew a company so big it ran up against anti-trust laws.  Somebody like Jobs so revolutionized the way we process information that many of us can honestly look back two or three years and say that the way we think and act has been transformed by a cell phone.  If that's what it means to be an entrepreneur, then we've got our work cut out for us.  And this matters, because entrepreneurialism - the creativity, adventuresomeness, and fruitfulness that we associate with tech giants and designers and business moguls - is something every person of faith is called to. 

Look at the three people in our parable today.  Just as in the angry story about the wedding banquet that we read earlier this fall, Jesus tells this story to illustrate what the kingdom of God is like.  And here the kingdom of God is like an investor who gives three entrepreneurs some seed money, some creative license, a vague deadline, and maintains high expectations.

You know now how it all cashes out: the first entrepreneur makes it work, just like the investor thought he would - that's why he was given the most capital.  The second does fine, as expected, and is duly rewarded.   The third entrepreneur caves.  He crumbles.  He doesn't have any good ideas, he doesn't have any training, he doesn't have time to do any research and can't think of anything game-changing to do with the seed money, so he defaults to maintaining the status quo and buries his talent - and his head - in the earth.  The investor returns, and after he's oohed and aahed  over the innovative and productive things entrepreneurs one and two have placed in his lap, he’s presented with a dirty bag of money that looks disappointingly familiar.  Entrepreneur three can tell things aren't going well, so words start tripping and falling out of his mouth, "I was afraid, Mr. Investor!  You're a little bit sketchy and everybody thinks you're kind of scary, so I thought if I just didn't risk the money, then we could all be happy - nothing ventured nothing lost, right?" 

Wrong.  Entrepreneur number three misunderstood the creative task he was handed in the same way we are prone to misunderstand it.  He misunderstood what it means to be a faithful entrepreneur.  In an atmosphere like ours of professionalism and expertise, not only can doubt about our fitness for ministry, our resources for ministry, and our God-given gifts run rampant, but we can misidentify what ministry and what gifts actually look like.  We imagine that entrepreneurialism is about producing flawless things.  Without fail.  With great élan.  Fearlessly.  Our popular culture has it that entrepreneurs look like the three "saints" mentioned earlier - the brains, bucks, and bossiness behind Microsoft, Apple, and social networking.  Or we might acknowledge that entrepreneurialism happens on a smaller scale, but with no less astounding, complex things that require specialized intelligence, like that really great Dyson vacuum cleaner that can pivot around corners.  The inventors and investors behind all of these things are entrepreneurial and all of them are smart and imaginative.  But none of them are unique.  Rather, they are working hard at tasks that belong to all people of faith, tasks that are the essence of entrepreneurialism: creative problem-solving, shared risk-taking, and partnership.   

Creative problem-solving begins with a perceived opportunity, challenge, lack - or maybe even with something really good that could be made better.  In the church family, faithful entrepreneurialism could be as simple as this: Scripture has to be read every Sunday.  The communion must be prepared every Sunday.  Children need to be taught every Sunday.  So you enlist yourself in one of those rotations.  Opportunity, challenge, lack ... solution.  There’s more to add here, because there's more at stake than just signing up - that's a first step.  But let’s look at other potentialities in our parish life that call for a spirit of faithful entrepreneurialism.  Ray preached about stewardship last week and mentioned a time in the church when a beloved tutoring program moved to a new location and the parish wanted to continue serving others in our space.  Neighbors in Need was born, with creativity, shared risk, and parntership.

We have another feeding ministry here that has been launched into the entrepreneurial moment.  Over a decade ago a dedicated group of people saw an opportunity in the desire for an outreach program, in the challenge of women struggling with homelessness, and in the needs of a neighborhood agency who serves them.  The creative solution they arrived at was Cooking for Deborah's Place, where members of our church shop for, cook, and deliver a Friday meal once a month to an overnight shelter where local women sleep in safety.  As with any group a community developed around the ministry, and the woman at the center of it, our friend Noma Cave, died a little over one month ago.  In the wake of her death, creative problem-solving, shared risk-taking, and parntership are the name of the game as the people who love this mission come together and explore questions like, "How do we move forward, practically?"  "How do we deepen relationships with our companions in this work, and how do we meet the precious challenge of building new relationships, inviting new people into the ministry in a busy, time-challenged parish?"   There is spirit and energy in this discussion.  There is openness, welcome, and imagination. There is flexibility, as the group thinks about its mission and methods, and generosity as people who have served in the past come forward to help and as others, like the Neighbors in Need crew, lend support and thoughtfulness to their Deborah's Place friends. 

But there’s a still more-important feature of this conversation that magnifies the character of faithful entrepreneurialism: the tools being used to do this are not tools of expertise, professionalism, or insane genius.  They are mystical, but they're not mystifying.  They are the fruits of the Spirit - the gifts of the Holy Spirit that we celebrate in baptism and that flourish in our baptismal ministries.  Deborah's Place is named for the female judge, Deborah, whose story was proclaimed today, not because she was a brilliant strategist, but because she was courageous, decisive, and wise.  And the ministry of Deborah's Place will continue at our church because our church is tenacious, compassionate, relationship-oriented, even sacrificial.  These aren't things you learn in school.  These aren't one-of-kind assets plunked in your cosmic piggy bank before birth that stack your deck ahead or behind of anybody else's.  These are habits of virtue, patterns of a redeemed life that grow as a body grows - our body of Christ in which we discover holiness with one another. 

But all of these fruits, gifts, virtues, and habits are not generic, either.  In each life, some of them are special.  Some of them are talents.  Among us today are people who are remarkably good listeners.  Some of you are remarkably patient.  Some of you are driven to be kind.  Some of you are unfailingly diligent.  Some of you are peace-makers, bridge-builders, consensus-seekers, and some of you are agitators.  You become a lector because you read well, and you join the altar guild because you want to help, but is it really about your voice and how well you clean a chalice, or is it about your deep appreciation and reverence for word and sacrament?  Is it about your sensitivity to holy things?  Have you ever been told that you are hospitable, patient, incisive, perceptive, detail-oriented or good at big-picture thinking? Gentle, assertive, passionate, or dedicated?  Those are your talents.  Those are the things that make us all human, that make us a good creation.  In a eulogy for one of those famous entrepreneurs, Steve Jobs' sister didn't share that her brother was great at algorhythms.  She said, "He loved beauty."  Bill Gates doesn't work for Microsoft anymore ... he was receptive to criticisms of his charitable giving and established a transparent philanthropic foundation.  So he's generous, but maybe his talent is really openness.  And Mark Zuckerburg could use his abilities toward any number of ends, but he says again and again that what he really wants to do is connect people with one another.  So yeah, he's smart, but his smarts make a difference because of his talent: an abiding interest in people.  These are the kind of talents we're all given to some degree or another, and they're the things we're called to draw out of one another. So if nobody has, in fact, told you that you are discerning, or loyal, or curious, then you deserve to be told.  We have to be able to listen to our own lives, but we’re bound to listen to each other's, as well - at the very least because we need every talent in this place to be a whole body, with all its members. 

And the kingdom of God needs it, too.  The kingdom of God is people by faithful entrepreneurs.  It is a community of talent, where self is offered as the creative solution to the opportunities, challenges, and lack we encounter.  It is a community where risk is shared and rewarded and partnerships are built in support and discernment.  And where these things do not take place – where talent is buried and creativity, risk, and relationship founder, there is loss.  We suffer the loss of each others’ talent and we suffer the diminishment of our own.  So our true partner, our foundational relationship, must be with the One creator-problem-solver who risks loving us enough to leave this earth and this family to our care, to leave each one of us to the other’s concern, and who trusts our talents to build a kingdom.  Let us pray.

Almighty God whose loving hand has given us everything.  Grant us grace that we may honor you with our substance and be talented stewards of your kingdom of love.  Through Christ our Lord, Amen.  

Happy All Saints! (Ray's Nov 6 sermon)

We celebrate today the feast of all the saints of God. Those of heroic virtue, the classic definition, whose name everybody knows like St. Francis. And the special genius of this day is to remember everyone, perhaps especially those whose names are forgotten by the world, who are known only to God. In the New Testament the word “saints” refers to the whole community, and today we celebrate the entire community of those who followed Jesus on earth as his disciples in their day, and who are now with him in heaven.

A day to have baptisms

Today is one of the four days of the Church Year the Prayer Book specifically asks us to have baptisms – along with Easter Eve, Pentecost and the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus.

And today Danielle will baptize Paul Anthony Saunders.

And the day we offer our pledges

And in our parish family life, today is the day we offer our pledges to support St. Chrysostom’s in the coming year, in 2012. May our pledges be a tangible sign of each one of us renewing our own baptismal promises – a tangible sign of our yes to follow Jesus as his disciples – to accept, trust, follow, obey.

In a few minutes in the baptismal rite we will all renew our baptismal promises to follow Jesus – to accept, trust, follow, obey God’s call to love, to loving service – and we will all promise to support this child in his life in Christ. May our pledges be a sign of that promise, an investment in carrying out that promise. . 

What have you done?

The road between Chicago and the hills of western Massachusetts has been traveled many times. Early in the new year Eve and I will drive it, to move to our new house, when I retire as rector here.

In 1858 a farm boy, 21 years old, came to Chicago from the village of Northfield, Massachusetts. His name was D.L. Moody. In later years he founded the high school I went to, and my son went to, back in his home town. I love D.L. stories. Someone asked him in later years how he dared to preach since he had so little formal education. Mr. Moody said, “I did the best I could with the advantages I have had. What have you done with the advantages you’ve had?”

Just the question for today.

I want to speak very personally today about how much I love this parish. Oh, maybe an element of saying goodbye. But more, this is my personal list, from my heart, of what I love about this community of Christ’s in this place, this koinonia. You make your list in your heart and prayers.

Hospital: My life as a priest has been woven in the lives of parishioners as I have visited in the hospital, or at nursing homes, or at home. I remember many years ago Dr. Ferris at Trinity Church in Boston saying he felt most useful in the sickroom – that has been my experience. It is a great honor to bring prayer and Communion and to be there. 

Children: And there has been the enormous gift of so many children and young families – here at  weekly worship, coming for Communion or a blessing. There is nothing I love more than a baptism! The gift of so many children in parish and school calls us to work together, calls us to make it a win-win situation.

New: I have loved some new things we have done -- things that weren’t in anybody’s mind or soul and then the idea came and we tried it. When some years ago tutoring moved to the new LaSalle Cornerstone building there was a clear wish to have a hands on outreach project in these buildings and we came up with Neighbors in Need which we started at Thanksgiving 2005 with a dinner for the good Gospel number of 12 guests. And Noma from heaven is saying remember also Cooking for Deborah’s Place. Then there was the time Mary Ellen had the music person from the Episcopal School in Manhattan come and that sparked Charles’ songs. And my doing a weekly email letter and all the connections that has brought. A reminder to me and to all of us to be open to the Spirit and the new.

Friends: Clergy friends in this diocese have meant a great deal to me.  Bishop Lee was here Tuesday for Ben’s ordination to the diaconate and how much our seminarians have meant – two of whom were sponsored for ordination by St. Chrysostom’s. And then my colleagues as associate rectors – what diverse and rich gifts of mind and heart and soul they have brought! That you, Danielle, have brought!

And I am grateful for my other colleagues on the staff here. Audrey Williams is a combination of efficiency and tact – how I value both her advice and her discretion. It is a measure of her gifts that during her time here, while working full time, and being a mom, she has earned both her bachelors and master of fine arts degrees. 

Music: Eve and I have loved living in Chicago, and one thing we both love about the city is the banquet of music available. Both at Orchestra Hall – one of my favorite places in the world – and in this parish church with Richard and Roger. If somebody said to me, quick, give me three examples of excellence: I would shoot back, Rudolph Serkin at the piano and Pablo Casals on the cello at Marlboro when I was in high school, and Richard playing Bach.

Sacred space: I am mainly talking about people and ministries, and rightly so, for they are St. Chrysostom’s. But a lot of people have taken part in a real labor of love in restoring and maintaining these buildings. We have gone over five million dollars raised for renovations since the capital campaign began in 1998. This tally does not include additional sums raised by the Day School, for instance for their lovely new class rooms. There have been several wonderful bequests (important to remember the church) but a clear majority of these funds are from living members. There have been both things seen: saving the bell tower, the new courtyard, re-facing the wall on the south side of the courtyard, restoring the stained glass and lighting fixtures. This great organ. And things not visible to you here: We should have a behind the scenes tour some Sunday of the new boilers and the electrical system. And this year there is the challenge of the clean up after a surprise flood. Not a penny of this has ever been spent that was not voted by the vestry, nor has any check ever been signed except by the lay leadership.

The bell tower in scaffolding.

This is to speak of capital expenses by the parish, by you, but the annual giving of course is needed for heat and light and cleaning and repairs.

We sent to you something called a narrative budget this year. Danielle and I and stewardship chair Craig Korte figured out how much each staff person costs to be here – and then broad brush what we do with our time. Then we asked what the building costs and what is done in it. Craig crunched the numbers to give you a simple chart of how your gifts of money are spent in worship and education and pastoral care and outreach and so forth. I don’t particularly love pie charts but it is a pie chart of some things I do love and care about deeply and so do a lot of other people. Your gift of money heats an apartment so a non-frozen priest can be there to visit in the Intensive Care unit at Northwestern. Your gift of your gift of money pays for electric lights and plumbing for a twelve step program to meet.

Worship: I deeply love the worship in this place, and specifically this service of worship at this hour today: Baptism and Eucharist and Sermon – Word and Sacrament -- this is the very best we have. The Book of Common Prayer in action. It is the same at places of worship far bigger than we are – and far smaller -- almost word for word at the National Cathedral in Washington or Trinity Church, Wall Street or all sorts of places. Indeed when our pilgrimage was at Canterbury Cathedral several years ago the liturgy was almost word for word the same as today’s (there did not happen to be baptism). Almost word for word except the words in Spanish and Mayan – Tseltal -- in Yochib under a tin roof. This is not ours only, but this is us at our best, our heritage at its best, the best we have to offer, the best evangelical tool we have. To speak to people who have a deep hunger and thirst for the spiritual life.

Eve and I went to Symphony last Thursday evening, and as I was about to leave I picked up a small notebook, which happened to be from a conference called CREDO I attended some time ago – a conference for clergy which was very helpful and meant a great deal.

I just had it with me to jot down thoughts – perhaps I got the idea because we’ve happened to sit near our two different Chicago music critics recently.

Anyway, there I was

sitting in row F at Orchestra Hall

Thursday night just before 8

and I opened the notebook to a quotation

in my handwriting

someone at the conference must have had me write it down.

And I read these words from St. Anselm –

part of a prayer he wrote to God:

… admit me into the inner room of your love. (intra cubiculum amoris tut) .

                          St. Anselm of Canterbury 1033-1109  

God does – does admit me --

God welcomes us in.

Water and bread and wine are signs of it –

God welcomes me into God’s inner room of God’s love,

And I am washed and welcomed and fed.

And so are you.

And the door is opened for every one.  

Poverty: My own experience of poverty –

Ray Webster’s own poverty of spirit in today’s Gospel –

at this moment in my life

is what isn’t finished or didn’t work

or didn’t get tried

or went off track.

And there are those I mourn. .

God puts a small piece of bread in my hand

to be a sign of that body given in love for me

on a day in our history,

the body of he who experienced poverty of spirit –

a small piece of bread is put in my hand

to say God is here

and loves

and it is OK, it is OK,  

and those I mourn are safe with God.

And my hunger is met by the blessed feeding

God gives me, gives you, each one –

And I am fed

by the abundance of God’s love in Jesus Christ.  

(This sermon was preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster, Rector, in St. Chrysostom’s Church, Chicago, Illinois on Sunday, November 6, 2011 All Saints’ Sunday and Stewardship Sunday.) 

"Il y a moi-meme" (Ray's Oct 23 sermon)

Beginning with an invitation

It is an honor for me as rector of St. Chrysostom’s to invite you to Sunday, November 6 which on the calendar of the church is All Saints’ Sunday. All Saints’ Day is November 1 when our bishop will ordain Ben Varnum to the diaconate. The Prayer Book allows us to keep the Sunday after as the great festival – one of what the Prayer Book calls the Major Feast Days of the Church Year. All Saints’ is a majestic liturgy, when we celebrate the whole company of those who have followed Jesus as disciples, who believed in the Lord Jesus and followed him, in all the centuries and around the world, and who are now with him in heaven, held in the safe keeping of his love.

I invite you to make a pledge

All Saints is just the right day to invite you to make a pledge to support the ministry of Jesus Christ in this parish church in 2012. It is an old parish custom to invite the congregation to bring their pledge cards up to the altar along with those already received, to be offered to God with the bread and wine for the Eucharist. 

November 6^th will also be a combined service. Our last on May 22^nd was such fun and joyous that we all thought we should do a combined 9 and 11 more often and we will on November 6th.

This will be the 19^th time I have been honored to invite this congregation to offer our pledges. Of course, I am inviting you to give for a year I will not be here -- I will be for two months of 2012 and then no longer rector and 900 miles away. The ministry of this  great parish is far larger than any one of us, and will go on long after all of us in this church today are no longer here. 

I am going on to a new chapter in my life and am very excited about that. I am sad at cutting old ties, but it is in the natural order of things. The parish is also going on to a new chapter and may that be marked by generosity and love. It is an honor for me to invite you to be a partner and stake-holder, a supporter, in that new chapter.  

I invite you make your offering on November 6^th out of love for God, in thanksgiving, first and last for God’s love for you in Jesus Christ, for the riches of God’s grace, for all that is good and true and beautiful in your life. 

Nothing I enjoy more than a baptism

Out of love for God. In this past day, in the past twenty four hours, I have had two baptisms. Nothing I enjoy more than a baptism. One of the greatest honors a priest has, is to baptize people. The majority are infants, although we are all delighted to baptize an adult and you will recall that a year ago in the summer I had my first baptisms by immersion – two adults I was to marry the next day. The Prayer Book not only allows baptism by immersion, if you read the fine print, it is choice number one!

Each candidate is presented by name to the Celebrant, or to an assisting
priest or deacon, who then immerses, or pours water upon, the
candidate, saying …

Given this picture of God

This past day’s baptisms were both infants, lovely little lives. I said the baby’s name and I baptize you in the Name of the Father – with a pour from my hand -- and of the Son – and again a very small sprinkle – and a third as I said and of the Holy Spirit.

Here in these names is the picture of God we are given in the Gospel of Jesus Christ – I mean as I say those words, or Danielle says them, or they are said in any of the languages of the world or have been said over two thousand years – we are given a picture of God in these names.

In the Name of the Father

“Father”, that incredibly human name, and as someone who is both a dad and a son I know precisely how human and fallible the word is. The word is meant as a sign of a relationship that our human loving of dads and moms mirrors. It is a deeply human name that means we are invited into a relationship with God that our human loving – made in God’s image and likeness – mirrors. 

It is a deeply human name that is a sign that God loves you – not all human parents do, or are capable of doing that, or choose to do that. God always chooses to love each life. 

and in the Name of the Son

We cannot see God. God so loved the world, that God sent God’s only begotten Son to show us what God is like. And what we see is God’s love for every human being born into this world. Every one.

Father and Son – these human words, these incredibly human words – speak of a love that is given and returned and Jesus shows the way, is the pioneer in showing us how to return love to the God who loves us.

Jesus did that completely on the cross, laying down his life for us. And Jesus calls to follow day by day on his way of love – loving God and loving others. 

and in the Name of the Holy Spirit

The picture of God given us in the Gospel of Jesus Christ is incomplete without all three names. The Holy Spirit is the name of God living with us and within us – making our interior selves God’s temple and dwelling place. Giving us something of the love we see in Jesus so we may give it away. Paul wrote in the Letter to the Romans, the love of God is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Not a discrete Anglican sprinkle but poured, splashing in. And the Holy Spirit gives us rich gifts for loving God.

You are loved by God with a boundless immensity – loved by God whose Son laid down his life on the cross on a day in our history out of love for you – you and every single human life.

God calls us to glimpse that love and trust it – not completely understand, not know everything (although one of the great gifts God has given us is the human mind and we are to love God with our minds) – but trust and love.

It just took a minute for me to touch these small new lives with water and say these ancient words given to me to say:

I baptize you in the Name of God who is love in action, love that has come and taken on flesh in human history, love that is present with us, and given to us to give, love that is like wind that fills our sails, and like fire that melts our frozen hearts.

And these children and you and I are given rich gifts, immense gifts all sorts of gifts, often quite unexplored gifts, for loving God in worship and prayer and for loving other people.  

That love is given to you. God gives it to you. God calls you to accept it and trust it and return it. You. And every single one.

Not one forgotten …

… even if the whole world has forgotten.                                        

Thursday evening Eve and I went to the Chicago Symphony, and got there early – for a radiant performance of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony – and there were very few cars in the part of the garage where I like to park. “Il n’y a personne” I said to Eve. And she remembered years ago I said that when we went into a subway station in Paris and I had said, “Il n’y a personne” – nobody here – and a voice came “Il y a moi-même.” Hey, I’m here. 

“Il y a moi-même.” Hey, I’m here. Yes you are.

And God sees you

The great message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that there is a God, who does see each human being – who is present with each one, and sees each one and loves each one. In my time here at St. Chrysostom’s how often have I said how much I love the story in John 9 where Jesus, walking along the road, saw the blind beggar by the roadside – he saw him, he did not look the other way, the beggar was not invisible. Human beings make other human beings invisible in all sorts of ways, Ralph Ellison’s “The Invisible Man”-- God sees each one, even perhaps especially those forgotten by the world (in the Prayer Book’s phrase), those invisible to the world, those on the margins, those on the other side of the fences we human beings are always putting up. God’s eye is on the sparrow. Even the littlest. Especially the littlest.

And may someone who has been a priest a long time say that sometimes there are people who in the eyes of the world have every advantage, and in every sense are on the in of whatever one is to be in, in this city  – and find themselves poor inside and empty inside and on the outside even from those they love. Oh it happens. And sometimes unable to see. Unable to see where to go, how to go, certainly unable to see God’s love for them. 

God so loved that person and every other one in the world of God’s making that God gave his only begotten Son, to be born among us as a human being, who we could see and remember, whose story we could read, and hear the record of what he said and did, and in that hear and see the love God has for each one. For you.

Let us pray.

Come, Holy Spirit and give me light,

To see the love of God for me

And for each one, everyone, in Jesus Christ.

Come, Holy Spirit, help me hear

God’s call to follow Jesus day by day

On his way of loving God and others.

Give me wisdom and light to see the

Rich and special gifts you give each one of us

For loving on his way.

Give me trust in God’s love

At the very center of my life,

Give me wisdom to trust even when I cannot see.

And may I make my offering of love –

In love and thanks and joy –

The offering of my heart. Amen. 

(This sermon was preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster, Rector, in St. Chrysostom’s Church, Chicago, Illinois, on Sunday, October 23, 2011, the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost.)

Ray's Oct. 23 commentary

The first reading is Deuteronomy 34:1-12

We began reading the story of Moses, back on Sunday, August 21, from the first chapter of the Book of Exodus. Today we come to the end of the story of Moses – to the story of the death of Moses – in the last chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy.

This is the ending of the fifth book of the Bible – the ending of the five books which are the Torah for our Jewish brothers and sisters.

In the timeline or chronology of the first five books of the Bible, the people of Israel have been out in the wilderness for forty years since they were freed from slavery in Egypt.

They are within sight of the promised land, about to enter the promised land.

Moses, who God called to be the leader of the people, who God made use of as God’s instrument to bring the people into freedom, is not going to enter the promised land. That will be for another leader, Joshua.

The people of Israel had been slaves in Egypt, and over the forty years in the wilderness they had been formed as a free people. Not a perfect people. Not a people who didn’t make mistakes. But they had learned the skills needed to survive and be free. They were formed as a people.

So God will form you and me as disciples of Jesus – our primary identity.

Moses laid hands on Joshua, the leader who would bring the people into the promised land. The bishop will ordain Ben Varnum to the transitional diaconate on November 1 here in St. Chrysostom’s. The moment of ordination is when the bishops lays his (or her) hands on the ordinand’s head. This is the ancient custom directly out of the Hebrew Bible.

Joshua is described as full of the spirit of wisdom. So may we all be. I remember that in Thomas Aquinas the first gift of the Holy Spirit is wisdom. This comes from Isaiah 11:2 where wisdom is the first of the list of gifts of the Spirit, the list which became the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit.

The last verses of the first lesson are a wonderful tribute to Moses. For me the most moving phrase is that the Lord knew Moses face to face: Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face is the translation in the King James Version.

When we come before God, God is unseen, as though hidden in the cloud, that great image from these readings from the Hebrew Bible. Yet we know the face of God in Jesus Christ. And a great theme of these readings is the presence of God with us – unseen but with us. Who loves us.

Today’s Gospel reading is from Matthew 22:34-46.

We are coming close to the end of our reading from Matthew’s Gospel. Our last reading will be on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, the Last Sunday after Pentecost from Matthew 25, the great passage that when we feed the hungry or give water to the thirsty, or visit the sick or the prisoner, or welcome the stranger, or clothe the naked, we serve Christ himself.

And in chapter 26 we begin the story of the cross of Jesus. Johann Sebastian Bach began the St. Matthew Passion with the first story in chapter 26, the anointing of Jesus. Then comes the Last Supper and the prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane and then the arrest of Jesus. This is only four chapters away. Three chapters to our final reading from Matthew (in Advent we begin reading from Mark).

In today’s great passage Jesus is asked which commandment is the greatest and Jesus gives the summary of the law, quoting two verses from Deuteronomy. I know by heart the King James translation, found in the Book of Common Prayer, page 324:

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with
all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great
commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments
hang all the Law and the Prophets.

And here is a clear call to us to follow Jesus as his disciples on his way of self-giving love: loving God and loving one another.

God's things (sermon on Matthew 22)

If you got your hands on one of the oldest prayer books, put together in the sixteenth century, you would find a service of baptism with these instructions: “The pastors … should oft admonish the people, that they defer not the baptism of infants any longer than the Sunday, or other holy day, next after the child be born ….” (Gibson, The First and Second Prayer Books of Edward VI, 242).  In other words, for many, many years in our church when you had a baby you were expected to bring him or her to the font the very next time that the congregation gathered publicly – no more than 6 or 7 days later.  Now there were practical reasons for this in Elizabethan England: infant mortality was such that people were encouraged to baptize their children swiftly.  And also, parish registers, the big books where we still keep track of all of your baptisms, were the primary way of recording any birth in a given town.  But … in the hearts and minds of those people, and in our imaginations as we read those old instructions years and years since, there’s a spiritual reason far surpassing the practical.  It’s put best by a new mother I know who said, “I wish we could go straight from the hospital to the church to baptize my son – I just want to give him back to God.” 

As the parent of a toddler, I now think about that mother’s moving words in an entirely disillusioned way – I would actually like God to do some babysitting for me every day around 5:00 PM.  But what she was trying to express – and I think you all know this and have felt it in some way about some person or thing in your life – was a deep sense of thankfulness.  More than that, though.  What this new parent felt, what somebody newly in love feels, even what somebody who experiences a loss, tragedy, or has to adapt to any kind of “new normal” might feel, is a life-altering sense of gratuity.  That everything we have right now, right this minute, is an astounding, shocking gift.  That we don’t merit anything: we can’t earn the right to be loved just as we don’t deserve to be unloved; we can’t earn the right to do work that suits us just as we don’t deserve to be jobless or without a calling in life; we can’t earn the right to health just as we don’t deserve to be sick or injured.  We can’t earn the right to be alive, and we certainly don’t deserve to have our lives diminished by the powers of sin.  All of this is kind of a mind-bender, I realize, but the point, again, is gratuity.  Grace.  We are creatures surrounded on all sides by beautiful and terrifying gifts that come our way whether we want them or not.  There is nothing we can do to change that; what we can change is whether we know it and what we do about it.  And that’s what Jesus and his opponents are talking about today. 

There’s no friendly conversation between these two parties.  You hear it right there in Matthew’s telling of the story: the legal experts and the teachers who hate the empire get together with this other group of people who have befriended it in order to trap Jesus in the perfect riddle – a riddle we still don’t know what to do with today.  One of them poses the question: is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not?  If Jesus says ‘no’ he offends the Herodians, the friends of the empire.  If he says ‘yes’ he offends the Pharisees, its critics.  Both groups can make his life miserable.  Being divine and all, Jesus knows what’s going on, so he gives the perfect response to the perfect riddle.  “Show me the money,” he says.  And then he looks to the mark on the coin, the imprint that the money bears.  “That’s Caesar’s face on this coin.  So I guess it’s his.  Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” 

So the takeaway here could be that Jesus is too clever by half.  He effortlessly avoids the trap, making these people look silly in the process.  And in doing so, he gives anyone who wants to dismiss this story the answer that they need: Jesus is dealing shrewdly with troublemakers and is not trying to tell us what to do with our money.  End of story – let’s move on to the next parable. 

 If that’s your take on it you would be sort of right.  Jesus isn’t telling us what to do with our money here … because he’s telling us what to do with our entire lives.  His response to his opponents operates on a couple of levels.  One level is a statement that is smart and gets him out of a bind.   The other level is a challenge that can inspire attraction, repulsion, or curiosity in those who hear it: give to the emperor what belongs to the emperor.  Give to God what belongs to God.  And whose, by the way, are you? 

We could spend an entire morning talking about what it does or doesn’t mean to belong to an empire, or what an empire looks like in our time.  But a more important question for at this moment is do we belong to God, and what does that mean for us?  This is where the knowing and doing enter the picture, because the definite answer is, Yes.  You belong to God.  And there are two ways we can talk about that.  First, you exist.  Everything that lives, everything that has breath is part of God’s ongoing creative process that has never, ever ended.  The seven days of creation aren’t finite – they’re eternal, and we are as fresh and as surprising to God as Adam and Eve when they were brand new.   You are one of God’s things in the same, immediate sort of way that they were.  You belong to God.

Second, some of you were given back to God – when you were too young to take vows or make promises for yourself, the people entrusted with your care acknowledged in a public ceremony who the author of your life really is.  A few of you out there did this on your own – you came to the waters of baptism as an adult and spoke for yourself, publicly, stating, in effect, “I am not my own.”  And what happens to us in baptism?  What do we do to drive that point home?  We name you, we wash you, but we also seal you: we mark you as Christ’s own forever, making a sign on your forehead that represents the permanent, indelible mark on your soul that can never, ever be taken away.  Just as Jesus asked to see the coin, if he were to ask to see you – if you stepped forward and he asked whose mark was on you, he would see his own cross shining back at him.   You belong to God. 

So it’s not up to you to decide that – it’s up to you to know it.  Then it’s up to you to live like it.  And what does that entail?  Again, there are two ways to talk about this.  Knowing that you belong to God and living like it entails both a loosing and a binding.  It is freeing and it is obligating.  Think about all of the things that want to claim us: work is often the first thing that comes to mind.  Right behind work is money, and hunkering over money is empire – not nation states, per se, but the coalescence of all of the forces in the world that seem irresistible, and all-determining, and trap people in ways of life that are unsustainable.  And on a micro-level, each of us has some other Caesar vying for us: unhealthy relationships, addiction, perfectionism, anxiety, or indifference.  Those things are real, and your experience of them is real, but their claim on you is a lie.  It’s an illusion.  You belong to God, with no option for lease or mortgage.  You are marked as Christ’s own.  He sets you free to walk through this world not as a captive, but as a child of God.     

Yet freedom isn’t the same thing as independence.  You belong to God and so you do God’s work, which is to take care of all of these amazing gifts.  Again, it’s as though we never left the garden, and God is showing us this new world, every day, entrusting it to our care.  All of this hit home for me in a big way this past summer, when my son and I visited parishioners high up on the top of a nearby apartment building.  Joshua was supposed to be swimming, but was running laps around the roof, and as I chased him around the corner of the poolhouse for the first time, I stopped dead in my tracks: all around us I could suddenly see the city shooting up toward heaven, so solid; so magic; so crawling with life, stretching out one side as far as a person could see while on the other side this magnificent lake, this primeval body of water that used to cover the very earth beneath our feet right now spread itself out to unseen shores with more cities where more human lives were moving and changing and beginning and ending, and then in the middle of all of it was this one little child, and  I realized, “Oh my God.  None of this is ours.  These buildings, the very work of our hands – none of it belongs to us.  These beaches, these planes, these cars and churches and hospitals.  These trees and fish and people.  All of this is such a gift.  All of this is pure gratuity.  Even this little boy, this little person who consumes my life – even he doesn’t belong to me.  I am just somebody God is using to hold him right now.  It all belongs to God.” 

When you know that you are God’s – when you can really feel it - the only response is to care.  To care for God’s gifts, to steward God’s city, to hold God’s people.  And that is what living like you belong to God entails.  You treat everything that surrounds you – this place, this earth, the people you’ve been given, and your own body – as though you were holding it all lightly, like you hold a newborn baby, tending to it all for God.  Confident but gentle, seeking only the good, recognizing in all else a fellow creature, or a fellow creation, undeniably aware that you and all that you behold are God’s things. 

Let us pray:  O God, whose gifts surround us and whose grace is the very breath in our lungs: open our eyes to the truth about our lives and to the depth of our calling in you so that the good things you have made might be yours and yours alone, for all the world to know.  In God’s holy name we pray, Amen.

Sermon preached by the Rev. Danielle Thompson at St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church in Chicago, IL on Sunday, Oct. 16, 2011.

Our angry God?

God is not all sweetness and light.  This week’s story of the Golden Calf (Exodus 32) and the Parable of the Wedding Banquet (Matthew 22) feature an angry God and an angry king who represents God.  Passages of Scripture that depict God’s “wrath” appear throughout both the Old and New Testaments – and Christians have never had an easy time grappling with them!   

Biblical scholar Gary A. Herion puts the two classic questions around our angry God well:

1. In the “wrath” stories, is God really mad, or are the biblical authors just using figures of speech?
2. If God is really mad, is it a part of God’s personality, “co-equal” to Love, or is it a passing phase?

Here’s a few guidelines to help us puzzle through these issues:

Passion v. Pathos: Passion describes loose, uncontrolled, radiant emotion that we might call “irrational.”  Pathos is emotion directed toward a particular situation, and is related to ethos, which has to do with moral norms.  In Scripture, God’s anger has the character of pathos and is provoked mainly by covenant-breaking: human straying and acts of injustice.  In Exodus, God’s pathos is directed toward Moses when he initially refuses to stand up to the Egyptians, and toward the Egyptians when they persecute the Israelites.  More than any other Ancient Near Eastern deity, the Hebrew God is no capricious, nor is Yahweh inherently wrathful.

Angry Kings: God is often depicted as a king in the Old and New Testaments, not only because the metaphor is apt (God is Lord over Israel), but because metaphors themselves allowed pious Jewish people to avoid using the divine name.  Ancient Near Eastern kings often expressed their “wrath” formally, in writing.  When a king wrote that he was angry, he was being provoked by an external event – something that required him to exercise his power and express his displeasure in a way that offered no apologies.  Wrath was his “royal prerogative.”  Could the same be said for God’s wrath in Scripture? 

Wrath in the New Testament: In Matthew, which we will read in worship until late November, God is never depicted as wrathful.  John the Baptist does, however, mention a “day of wrath.”  This day, ironically, is when God will conquer all wrath.  The adversity that humans experience just by being alive – not because God, in God’s wrath, punishes misdeeds – will be no more. 

New Testament wrath is more at home in Revelation, where, again, it is associated less with God and more with a coming day of judgment and setting-right.  Wrath, therefore, is never some free-floating thing but is occasioned by injustice and broken relationships. 

Bibliography: Freedman, David Noel, ed. The Anchor Bible Dictionary, v.6 (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 989-998.  

(Danielle Thompson)

Bread that the Lord has given (September 18 sermon by Raymond Webster)

Exodus 16The people are free. In our first reading today (Exodus 16:2-15), we find the Hebrew people on the other side of the Red Sea. Free.

We have been reading these past Sundays the stories of how God acted in history to deliver the Jewish people, to save them slavery. It is the Passover story, the formative story of Judaism. We have been remembering these stories, and they echo in all sorts of ways in the stories of Jesus, which we also remember. And as we remember, God draws near to us and speaks God’s Word.

We have remembered how God spoke from the Burning Bush and sent Moses to stand before Pharaoh and say, “Let my people go” – those words of such importance in the history of Chicago and Illinois and our country -- biblical words fundamental to the abolition of slavery. In classic Christian theology, we believe God has created each human being and each is of infinite value – and the church is called to be a voice for the value and God given rights – “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” As Moses spoke God’s Word “Let my people go” the church in our time is to speak that Word, God’s Word of the value and dignity of each one.

And then how Pharaoh refused to let the people go, and God sent the ten plagues on Egypt.

And then how God had them sacrifice a lamb and sprinkle the blood on the doorposts so the angel would pass over the houses of the Hebrew slaves the night of that most terrible of the ten plagues, the last and most terrible, the killing of the first born in Egypt. And then Pharaoh let them go.

And then changed his mind, and went after them, and the Hebrews found themselves at the shore of the Red Sea – trapped, stuck – and God parted the waters and they walked through on dry land. The Egyptian horsemen followed, and the waters closed over them.

And the people stood on the further shore, free. God had delivered the people. We read this story last Sunday, the great passage we read every year at the Easter Vigil (the one lesson we are required to read at the Easter Vigil) for it looks to how God acted in history in Jesus Christ to save us from sin and death. And last Sunday we also read the great song of thankfulness of Moses and Miriam – I love the detail that Miriam took up her tambourine to sing -- God has thrown the horse and its rider into the sea.

And today we come to the very next story. The people are free. Saved by God. Safe. Free. And what happens?

They wake up to the fact that they are out in the middle of nowhere, totally ill equipped to live in the wilderness, unprepared for this survival exercise they find themselves on.

And they complained. OK, they were hungry. Always good to begin with our real needs and who we really are and what we really need. They were human beings who were hungry, and had no food and not a clue as to how to get any.

They would learn how to get food. Over the next forty years wandering in the wilderness they would learn. A whole new generation or two would be raised up who learned how to survive. Their parents had learned how to survive as slaves. Never downplay the skills and sacrifices needed to survive in what must have been often degrading and terrifying situations. But now they were embarking on a whole new training course as a people.

For the moment, where they honestly were was scared and angry and clueless and they complained.

And God who saved them, provided food. I have no idea how God did this – I know what quails are, and they appeared all over the place at night, but the manna is a mysterious substance. Well, what manna was, this was not the way God was going to do it over the long run. This was a miracle of feeding just for the moment. There is a detail in the story that I love -- the detail that if they tried to keep the manna – take a doggy bag home for the next day – it would go bad. I love the earthy King James Version that someone kept and it bred worms and stank. (Exodus 16:20) This was not something to store into barns, there weren’t any barns, this wasn’t for the long run, this was not how it was going to be.

The miracle for the long run would be the people learning how to feed themselves, how to be free and feed themselves. God would inspire them to do that, inspire their leaders to learn how to do that – maybe Moses’ long time as a shepherd precisely out in the middle of nowhere gave him knowledge and skills for teaching the people how to get food, how to take care of animals who would provide food.

And God who provided food in the wilderness would also provide the deepest feeding we need – the rich bread of the Word we find in all the ensuing stories and poetry and hymns of the Scriptures. God would feed. And form God’s people by God’s Word, by feeding them, feeding us, feeding us today.

God who had acted in history to free them and save them, would now form them.

God will form us as disciples of Jesus

Just so, God who has acted in history in Jesus Christ to save us, will form us as disciples of Jesus.

You may well say, whoa, wait a minute. Did you just say I am a disciple of Jesus? I thought that was Peter and John and Matthew, two thousand years ago.

Yes, it was. They were the first disciples. Jesus called them to follow him.

And I believe deeply God calls you to follow Jesus just as truly.

God calls us to follow Jesus day by day on his way of self-giving love, as his disciples.

By the Holy Spirit dwelling in each one of us, God gives each one rich gifts for discipleship. Gives you rich gifts.

I always remember that in Thomas Aquinas the first gift of the Holy Spirit is wisdom, the wisdom to know we are loved by God, the wisdom to know how to love.

What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus?

I am trying to make a list of what makes a disciple. Perhaps it is my French Cartesian side.

There is a whole movement in parishes of our diocese at this time to make a simple list of the basics of being an Anglican. I am a big fan of this movement and the clergy and parishes involved and of the Rev. Clarence Langdon is who is sort of godfather of this movement! And this list is my contribution, although I am quick to add that what is on the list is from the Bible – the Bible is on the list! – and from the Prayer Book and our tradition.

Making a list, checking it more than twice, in order to invite you to the discipleship God call you to embrace. The mission of our parish is to make disciples. So what does discipleship mean?

Being a disciple means listening to the Word of God. Listening to the Bible read here in church, listening to what the preacher hears, listening to what you hear within you. I believe the Holy Spirit dwelling inside you (that inner place within your mind and heart is the Temple of the Spirit) will light up images and words and passages. Or give you things to wrestle with, like Jacob wrestling through the night with God.

One of the great principles of the Reformation was to put the Bible in the hands of the laity, to read and meditate on and pray about, and listen for God’s Word to you of how much God loves you. May the Holy Spirit give you light and wisdom to glimpse that and trust it. And offer God thanks and love in return.

Being a disciple means coming regularly to Holy Communion. Here God feeds us, both in the bread, and in the entire liturgy – music and prayers and word. Here the bread is placed in our hands as a tangible sign that God is with us, present with us, loving us with the love we see in Jesus – the love that is the bread of my life.

Being a disciple means regularly asking God’s forgiveness which we do in the prayer of confession and being forgiven.

On this day we remember the Hebrew people out in the wilderness without a clue as to how to feed themselves, we remember the great theme running through the Hebrew Bible and into the Gospel teachings of Jesus and the New Testament, the consistent theme of helping those who are hungry, feeding the widow and orphan, feeding the helpless. An essential part of being a disciple of Jesus is helping others – serving Christ as we serve those in need (Matthew 25). May we have wisdom and vision to broaden that to the myriad ways human beings can be helped, from shelters to hospices to hospitals to schools.

One of the mysteries of human life is that when we help others we are fed ourselves.

Discipleship means our ethical and political choices. In our tradition we value freedom to make those choices as a positive spiritual value – we are called to be mature free disciples, with consciences formed by worship and prayer and reading the Word of God. The Holy Spirit living within us will guide our consciences. In a modern democracy, it is not for the church organization to tell people who to vote for, but it is for the preacher to say that these decisions are part of our discipleship. Part of our responsibility. And our tradition tells us we are free to make those decisions. This obviously opens us to diversity of opinion in the church which I believe is healthy in a free society and church.

Being a disciple means discerning, listening for, looking for what God wants us to do and to be. How am I obedient to the call to follow Jesus on his way of self-giving love as a free and mature person?

Being a disciples mean taking our share in building the community of the church – gathered by God here around Jesus’ table and altar. Sharing joys and sorrows, welcoming the newcomer.

Being a disciple means our giving.

It means building a home, whether single or with four kids – a place of refuge and renewal, a place of hospitality. (When I say that, I am using “home” in its widest sense – many urban people practice hospitality within their residence, others elsewhere – that is simply a personal choice). May the place we live be sometimes a place of prayer. Remember that in the Sermon on the Mount here in Matthew Jesus said when you pray go into your room and shut the door.

Being a disciple means finding places to be still and quiet and pray. It can be anywhere. God will be there with you, hidden as though within the cloud, yes. And truly there.

Being a disciples means taking care of oneself – discipleship can be a long distance run (and I pray it will be for you). Discipleship may mean laying down our life, as Bonhoeffer did, like a fire fighter. If that hour comes may God give us courage and strength. God may also call us to the long distance run. On the way we need to find the things that feed us – the things we have a sense God makes use of to feed us. The beauty of the world – art, music, poetry – sport, running along the lakefront in the early morning. You are free to make your own list, find your own things, free to be open to the Spirit leading you to what feeds, to things that feed you, to things by which God feeds you.

How much God loves you. Loves you and me and invites us to a way of life – our mission is to extend the invitation to this way of life. To follow Jesus as his disciple day by day. And to trust at the very center of who we are – faith at the center -- God’s love for us in him, love which nothing can break.

(This sermon was preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster, Rector, in St. Chrysostom’s Church, Chicago, Illinois on Sunday, September 18, 2011, the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost.)

image found at http://fineartamerica.com/featured/3-bread-from-heaven-nigel-wynter.html)

A Moving Talk (August 28 sermon by Ray Webster)

Rabbi Herman Schaalman is the dean of rabbis in the city of Chicago, rabbi emeritus of Emanuel Congregation up on Sheridan Road. Rabbi was a Lenten speaker several times here in St. Chrysostom’s, and on a memorable occasion he spoke in the church about how he was speaking as a rabbi – not as a convert – but as a guest who we respected for who he was.

I am glad and proud that could be said of St. Chrysostom’s Chicago, although it can also be said of other of our neighbors at this time in history. Rabbi Schaalman led a Jewish service for Cardinal Bernardin in Holy Name Cathedral.

It is important to me that we respect and honor Jewish people. I think it is being true to the best of who we are – to try to understand and listen to and respect people of different Christian communities and also people of other faiths, Jewish and Muslim and Buddhist. The best of who we are is tolerant and understanding.

Rabbi’s talk left our community deeply moved, sitting in the church in silence. Complete silence. I have heard about that happening at musical concerts although I am not sure I have ever experienced it. At concerts enthuasiasts normally are ready to applaud and shout the instant the final note sounds. But this was an authentic moment of being deeply moved, and there was simply silence. I thought to myself, well, let it just be for a while, and then I suggested we read the 23^rd Psalm together.

The students took off their shoes

Before his talk, when I introduced Rabbi Schaalman, I remembered the story that when James Muilenburg the great teacher of the Hebrew Bible, of the Okld Testament, gave his last lecture at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, the students from Hebnrew Union across Broadway who came took off their shoes at the door, for where the Word of God was being read and studied and commented on and listened to was – and always is – holy ground.

That comes of course from today’s story of God telling Moses to take off his shoes before the Burning Bush, for where he was standing, on the mountain, on Mount Sinai, was holy ground: the place of encounter with God, the place of hearing the voice of God, the word of God.

Where we read the Bible, where we tell the stories of Jesus – it can be here in church, it can be at a service in the lobby of a senior residence, it can be by a hospital bed, it can be in our living room, we are on holy ground. And we listen for God speaking to us. The United Church of Christ has a motto, God is still speaking. God is. Not normally, I believe, in an audible voice. But normally by means of the ancient words of Scripture. Not all of them, not always, but by means of the words and images of Scripture.

When we hear how valued we are, how loved by God, it is holy ground.

When we hear how each person, each human being, each human life is valued by God, it is holy ground.

When we break human dividing lines – when we say let my people go, let this person go, let me go, it is holy ground.

When we see a human need and try to help it is holy ground. I believe God the Holy Spirit dwelling in us lights up our understanding to enable to see a need, and then to look for ways to help.

When we go to the quiet place of prayer, which can be anywhere, it is holy ground.

When we love someone, it is holy ground. When we love God and trust God loves us, it is holy ground.

The encounter with God can be anywhere. Moses was out in the middle of nowhere when God encountered him in the Burning Bush. This long unfolding story of the Old Testament and into our New is about God’s presence with human beings and love given to us – to everyone, no one left out.

The message God had for Moses was that God was sending him back to Egypt to stand before Pharaoh and him to let the people go.

It is to Moses’ credit, that when Moses heard this, he stayed put in his bare feet before the Burning Bush . When Jonah got a similar message – to go to Ninevah – Jonah promptly bought a ticket on a boat headed in the opposite direction.

Moses asked a question

Moses asked a question. The Bible is full of questions – it is never wrong to ask questions, to seek and inquire. Indeed the place of inquiry and learning and discovery can well be holy ground, where something beautiful or something that will help people is found.

OK, if I go back to Egypt to the Hebrew people and say God has sent me to lead you into freedom -- what , God, is your Name? Who shall I say is, er, calling?

God answered with the majestic mysterious words “I AM who I AM”, “I AM.” There is a vast literature of study about these words over the centuries.

It is important to be who we are, not to try to be somebody else. It is important to remember where we came from, ands also important to be true to the rich gifts God has given each one of us. For oh yes, God has indeed given you those gift. .

If we are true to the gifts we are given, of course we may end up somewhere quite different from where we started. That is the American way!

When I was a teenager I picked up an Anglican devotional book, a book of prayers. It had advice about preparing for saying one’s confession, and one of the sins listed was moving above or thinking about moving above one’s station in life. Very Victorian English. Not American at all (not modern British either for that matter).

Bishop Wylie – my rector who some of you knew later as Bishop of Northern Michigan – asked to see it. He said most of these things including that one were not sins and more or less told me to get rid of the book, which I did, and stick to St. Francis de Sales. .

It is important to be true to who we are. And what each person is, is greatly loved by God – for that is who God is by God’s eternal nature.

Jesus had to be true to who he was

Jesus told his disciples that he must go south to the city of Jerusalem. He could not run away from his mission. He had to be true to who he was, his very nature – for both nas Son of God and as a human being, he could not run away, he had to face what came in self-giving love, trusting in the love of the Father holding him, sending him, receiving him back.

Just so we who are so loved, are to face what comes in self-giving love. That is who we are.

The decision Jesus had to make was a real decision – a deeply human decision. Today’s Gospel crackles with the tension of the decision and when Simon Peter tried to talk Jesus out of it, he got a famous and very humanly angry response from Jesus not to tempt him. Not to tempt him to run away.

(This sermon was preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster, Rector, in St. Chrysostom’s Church, Chicago, Illinois on Sunday, August 28, 2011, the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost.)