The Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany

The Love of God, Lived
Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18
Matthew 5:38-48

Today is the Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany. Many years we don’t even have a Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany, but as you probably know, Easter is very late this year. Most years, therefore, we would not hear the Scripture lessons appointed for this day (at least not at this point in the calendar). When we do, though, I’m thinking we should subtitle this Sunday “Commandment Sunday.” Both the Old Testament Reading and the Gospel are all about God’s commandments or ethical teachings.

The passage from Leviticus is a variation on the theme of the Ten Commandments. This is not the clear articulation of the Ten Commandments that we find in Exodus and Deuteronomy, but it should have sounded very familiar. “You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely or lie to one another. You shall not swear falsely, profaning the name of your God. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” This is how God’s people live in relationship to one another and to God.

Then in this morning’s Gospel reading from Matthew, Jesus gives very clear ethical instructions to his followers. This passage is part of the Sermon on the Mount. With the Ten Commandments brought to mind by the Old Testament lesson, as I read the Gospel I found myself wondering why Christians are not clamoring to have these commandments of Jesus posted in courthouses and public places. These are Jesus’ own words to us. This is Jesus’ teaching on how we are to live as Christians, what code of behavior should govern our lives as followers of Christ. Why are we not fighting to have these posted in our halls of justice and public squares?

“If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well.” I think that one should be posted in our halls of justice. “If anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you…. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

Why is there no movement to display these commandments of Jesus in our public places? Probably because most of us really don’t want to follow them. It would be difficult, certainly, to actually live our daily lives according to these precepts.

But this is how Jesus lived. These statements are not so much guidelines or commandments or a set of ethical precepts. They are not instructions or abstract ideals set down to govern our daily lives. These words are descriptive. This is how Jesus lived. These words are not prescriptive, they are descriptive. This is what the love of God looks like when it is lived by a human being. This is the love of God, lived.

We are the Body of Christ today. We are the human shape of God in the world today. In John’s Gospel, over and over Jesus says to his followers: “Abide in my love.” He invites his disciples then and now to share and live in the love of God in the same way that he does. So maybe these words from the sermon on the mount describe how we are to live. We are the Body of Christ; we are called to abide in and live God’s love. We are to be the love of God, lived.

When we think about the love of God, I wonder if most of us would very much like to receive God’s love, but we are a lot less enthusiastic about sharing it or giving it to others. We like to be the recipients of God’s love and to know its peace and comfort. We yearn to be loved by God. But it feels like work, and often unpleasant work, to be the donors of God’s love to others.

We think of receiving God’s love and giving God’s love to others as two different things. And we probably say to ourselves, “Well, if I just received a lot more of God’s love, then maybe I’d be better at sharing it.” Or, on our better days, or if we happen to be deeply steeped in the Protestant work ethic, we may say to ourselves, “Maybe if I work really hard at showing God’s love for others, then I’ll receive more of it for myself from God.”

But as I consider this morning’s Gospel, I have come to think that we go seriously astray when we try to separate receiving God’s love from giving God’s love. I’m not sure they are two different things. I don’t think they can be separated. I don’t think you can have one without the other. I don’t think we can even think about receiving God’s love or giving God’s love. There is only living God’s love. There is only God’s love, lived. The receiving and giving are completely woven together in the living.

So how do we become people who are the love of God, lived? Prayer. Listen again to this morning’s collect. “O Lord, you have taught us that without love whatever we do is worth nothing….” We can be the love of God, lived, or the alternative is being nothing more than a bunch of worthless actions. “Send your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts your greatest gift, which is love, the true bond of peace and of all virtue, without which whoever lives is accounted dead before you….” There it is again, without God’s love we are virtually dead. So let us pray this collect over and over again. “Send your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts your greatest gift, which is love.” So that our human lives may be the love of God, lived.

The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany

Identity
Matthew 5:21-37

I have preached in the past on the difficult Gospel passage we just heard. And sometime in the future I will preach on it again, but not today. Like many of you, I expect, I have found the events in Egypt and the Middle East grabbing a good bit of my attention these last few weeks. I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a news junky, so I’ve just seen bits and pieces of coverage, and probably not the same bits and pieces that you’ve seen.

As I’ve watched and followed the stories, I’ve been very much aware of how all the news we get in this country is interpreted. Everything comes to us interpreted, from decisions on how headlines are written to which clips to show on TV, never mind the actual commentary. Everything is interpreted. And, as with many other stories, interpreting the events in Egypt has become fodder for journalistic extremism. In the midst of all this, I urge you to pray a prayer I think everyone can share for the people of Egypt. Pray that this time may be for the people of Egypt a new beginning, not just an end. Pray that in these events they will find a new beginning that offers new life, new creativity, new liberty.

I actually want to talk about us, not Egypt, this morning. The revolution in Egypt is ultimately about identity. (For this insight, I’m indebted to an editorial I read in the on-line Christian Science Monitor.) It is about the people of Egypt determining who they want to be, what their identity will be. This broad search for identity is relevant for us, too. As individual human beings, as Christians, as Episcopalians, even as members of this parish. With respect to the people of Egypt, many commentators have noted that, at least up to now, the people of Egypt have been much clearer about who they did not want to be, and not at all clear about who they do want to be. They have clearly rejected their past identity, but have yet to form a vision of who they do want to be in the future.

And that aspect of the issue of identity has meaning for us as well. Figuring out who you are not, who you don’t want to be is very important, and it is often the beginning of a wondrous process of transformation. But it is only the beginning. To grow into, to claim the identity God has in mind for us, we need to move beyond a self-identity that is based on who we are not, to one that lives and celebrates who we are.

I may be particularly aware of this because of my experiences at my last parish. As some of you remember, I was Rector of St. Patrick’s in Brewer, Maine, before I came here. St. Pat’s is a small parish; Brewer is a small town. Brewer is right across the river from Bangor, a considerably larger small town. And in Bangor there is a lofty Gothic stone Episcopal church, called, coincidentally, St. John’s. The people of St. Pat’s were faithful, had a rich character and good ministries. But much of their sense of their own identity revolved around not being St. John’s. They were not a Bangor church; they wanted to not be St. John’s, which was perceived, I think, by the folk of St. Pat’s to be a hoity-toity place and rather rigid.

Knowing who you are not, knowing who you do not want to be, is important, and often the beginning of growth and transformation. But to really be who God calls us to be we need to perceive and claim an identity that celebrates and lives into who we are.

As individual human beings, I think psychologists call this the process of self-actualization. It begins with the clear affirmation, “I am not my mother,” and grows into a sense of who I am. This process is an important aspect of maturity and mental health.

As individual Christians, the journey into identity begins at baptism, when we say, “I am not subject to the powers and principalities of this world.” Then through prayer and study we grow into the particular vocation that God desires for us. “This is the character of the life I am called to live as part of the Body of Christ.”

What about our identity as Episcopalians? If I were to ask you to describe our Episcopal identity, what would you say? You might look to our history. You might feel like you should be able to talk about our particular theology, if only you were clearer on what it actually is.

It seems, as Episcopalians, we are often more clear on who we are not. For example, we are not mindless fundamentalists. At least we perceive fundamentalists to be mindless and we know we do not want to be that. A while back there was an advertising poster for the Episcopal Church that said. “You don’t have to check your mind at the door.” Or, we are not like those emotional, flash-in-the-pan, weepy personal-relationship-with-Christ evangelicals. We do not think of Jesus as our best bud. Or, in more modern lingo, Jesus is not my BFF. We’re not Roman Catholics, whom we certainly perceive to be faithful, but enslaved by the institutional church.

So who are we, in positive terms, as Episcopalians? I offer you two very important qualities of our identity that you might not have on the tip of your tongue. This is far from a comprehensive description of Episcopal identity, but it is something to hang onto.

First, we are people who pray together. The most important activity that unites us, that we do in common, is prayer. Some of you might have said, as individuals, that the Book of Common Prayer is something you cherish about the Episcopal identity. But the Book of Common Prayer is much more than something you or I may like; it is what we do. This has been true since the time of the English Reformation when differences of politics and even theology were seen as subordinate to the activity of common prayer. The activity of kneeling side-by-side, sharing the same words in prayer, is more important than anything that might seem to divide us. The most important thing we do together as a community is pray. Any liturgical church could say this about its identity, but we are people who pray in common.

Second, as Episcopalians, our life of faith is pragmatic. At a diocesan meeting yesterday, Bishop Lee reminded us that Episcopal scholar John Booty identifies us as pragmatic. And by this, he doesn’t mean “pragmatic” in the sense of “practical,” he means rooted in “practice.” Look at our baptismal covenant, the most powerful and focused articulation of how Episcopalians see ourselves living as Christians. It begins with an affirmation of faith in the Trinitarian God. Then comes what Bishop Lee calls the “so-what” questions. So you believe in the Trinitarian God… so what? What follows are five clear practices. It is not a theological confession that identifies us, not an emotional experience of God; it is what we do. We continue in the apostles teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers. That is, we go to church and participate in the life of the parish. We persevere in resisting evil and practice reconciliation (as today’s Gospel commands us to do.) We practice evangelism. We practice service and compassion towards others. We strive for justice and peace. Our identity is wrapped up in what we do, our practice of faith. We are pragmatic.

What is our identity as a parish? I’ll admit I hear parishioners, from time to time, talk about our identity in terms of who we are not. We are not IJP. I think people mean by that primarily that we are not Roman Catholic, rather than focusing on any particular feature of IJP as a parish. We are not Community Church. Sometimes that is said with relief; sometimes with a twinge of envy. Perceiving the size of their budget or the abundance of their programs to be enviable. And I expect there are one or two parishioners who can only see us as “not what we used to be.”

All of these are really OK. Even these “nots” are a part of our identity. And they can be a starting point for transformation and discovery of the identity that God calls us into now. In seeing who we are not, we begin to get a vision of who we are.

Who are we? Remember that the qualities of our Episcopal identity that I described earlier are ours as a parish as well. We pray together. A diverse and disparate group of people; we share common prayer. We value our shared life of prayer as a very important part of who we are. And we practice our faith. We are a pragmatic parish. If you haven’t read my annual report, do (earlier post). You’ll see faith identified through practice.

I would add one more quality of our identity. As a parish, we are a place defined less by our programs (although we have good ones) and more by our relationships. Individual relationships, nurtured over the years through caring and Christian companionship. We have lots of what congregational development gurus call relational groups. Formal and informal groups in which connection and communion flourish. And we do fellowship well. Fellowship doesn’t just happen. It is a particular charism of this parish; it is part of our identity. Maybe you have other thoughts on our identity as Episcopalians or as a parish. I’d be interested to hear them. We are richly blessed, both in who we are and in who God calls us to become.

Rector's Annual Report

The Body of Christ.

A parish community is both a place to find the Body of Christ and to be the Body of Christ. I am grateful to be a part of a parish community in which the life of the Body of Christ is so richly shared, both within the parish fellowship and beyond.

For example, just in the last month or so:

Before Christmas the children who participate in the Little Hands ministry invested their spirit, time and creativity to create and deliver Advent gifts for some of our less mobile parishioners. They decorated cookies and made cards and bags which proclaimed both the love of Christ and the care of the children towards the recipients.

Christmas services were full of glory. We welcomed and celebrated the remembrance of Christ’s birth in the majestic and reverent liturgy of the church. The children’s Christmas pageant was the “Best Christmas Pageant” ever. We had the largest number of children participating that we’ve had in recent years. But even more importantly, the children were both happy and proud to be a part of the pageant, to be the evangelists sharing the story of Christ’s birth with the parish. At the late service on Christmas Eve our worship shone brightly in the night like the star that proclaimed Jesus’ birth. Music is surely one of God’s greatest gifts to us. As the choir makes music so richly within worship—especially on Christmas Eve—they enable us all to share in celebration and praise of God’s gifts and presence with us.

Christmas Eve falling on a Friday this year, it just happened to be St. John’s night to staff P.A.D.S. at St. Agnes’ Catholic Church in Chicago Heights. So at the same time that Christians everywhere were celebrating Christ’s birth in a dingy stable because there was no room for the holy family at the inn, lay ministers from St. John’s were helping to offer shelter, in Christ’s name, to individuals in our own community. The Body of Christ reaching out.

For the last several years in early January the vestry has offered a Feast to the parish. The Feast of St. John the Evangelist began out of the vestry’s desire to thank the people of the parish for being the parish, for being the Body of Christ. It is wonderful to see individual vestry members give so generously of their time and creativity, to exercise their ministry of leadership in acts of service. The event itself certainly highlights the gift of fellowship… what a gift it is to share fellowship as the Body of Christ across a wide range of ages and backgrounds.

Over the last six months the vestry has been methodically working to address needed improvements in the physical accessibility of St. John’s. There should be no barriers to participation in the life of Christ. In early January requests for bids were sent to architectural firms. This manifests a care, not only for those within our current congregation who may have various physical limitations, but also a desire to welcome others whom we do not yet know who may be seeking the Good News of God in Christ.

As 2010 ended and 2011 began we also hosted two funerals. Like many others, they were “good” funerals. Good because the Body of Christ was very much in evidence. They were times of sadness and loss, both within Adrienne and George’s immediate families, and within their larger parish family. But the individual faith each of them lived was a lively example to all and worthy of celebration. And the hands and voice of Christ were definitely present within the parish in the many acts and words of kindness shared, in the many individuals who offered their time and help with the receptions, and in the voices and hearts of all those who prayed, and continue to pray, in the confidence of eternal life given by God and shared with the saints in light.

Several new parishioners have become a part of the parish community recently. Again and again they say how strongly they feel at home within this parish community. This speaks both to the welcoming nature of parishioners and also to the presence of Christ, made real and made known among us here. Christ, who yearns to welcome us all home into his presence.