Author: Rosemary Lovelace

1st Sunday of Advent – Katharine Armentrout

Asking Questions as We Wait

The lighting of that Advent candle on the wreath creates a light of love and hope that shines into our winter darkness. That light also shines into the beginning of our liturgical year. It lights our way into Advent – the time when we prepare for the coming of the Christ child AND we prepare for the coming of Christ at the end of the age.  

You see Advent carries both meanings. Advent means that we are not just waiting for Mary and Joseph to get to Bethlehem and the birth of the Christ-child, but we are also anticipating that consummation of the promise that Jesus will come at the end of time in Great glory. As one writer said: “[Advent] is a time to reflect on the unexpected nature of Jesus’ humble birth and join in the anticipation of when he will come again to reunite Heaven and Earth once and for all.”  

The very name “Advent” comes from Latin, meaning ‘a coming’ or ‘arrival’; and its concept comes to us from the earliest time of the church, before the gospels were even written. The early church was waiting, waiting for the “parousia”- for the promised second coming of Christ. For His Advent. And it is this waiting that is the focus of our Advent season.  

Now, for those of us old enough to remember, Advent had a definite penitential overtone…a worrying, almost a dread waiting for judgment. In fact, there was a time when fasts were called for during Advent; and until relatively recently, the color for Advent was the color purple – the color we use for the penitential period of Lent.  

But the Church, and we as people of faith, have come to focus on this time as one of hope. It has become less penitential and more about a prayerful time of anticipation and preparation; the hoped-for fulfillment of God’s promises. Advent now is not so much about being penitential, or, worrying about what is to come, as it is a time to prepare, both as individuals and as a community of faith, to be ready for the arrival of Jesus and His transforming call to love and ministry.  

Thus I think we can see this time as a season of hope, a chance for new birth and a renewal of our commitments as people of faith, as we await His coming. As a symbol of that sense of hope and deep spiritual waiting, we now use Sarum blue liturgically, a color that brings us a spirit of hope and inner peace.  

So the question becomes what do we do in Advent? Do we sit and passively wait? I don’t think so. What do you do when you are waiting for someone’s arrival? You prepare. Now I don’t have to tell you that the Big Box stores have been preparing for Christmas since the beginning of October!! And it is not just retailers who are jumping the season. Coming home from the prison last Monday evening, still in the month of November, Terry and I saw many houses that already had their Christmas lights on and their Santa Claus figurines out in the front yard.  

But I think they are not only rushing the season, they are missing the very important parts of preparation – what this season is all about. Preparation is not only decorating the house, buying presents and sending out our Christmas cards. Advent offers us important time to take stock. To take stock of how we are living out our lives of faith. Getting ready for the arrival of our Lord, I think, means that we need to take the time to assess just how He will find us when He arrives. Will he find us as faithful witnesses to His love, find us at work telling His story?  

I think Jesus paints a picture of what we need to be doing while we are waiting in our Gospel this morning – Together, together as a group, we are called to care for His household while we wait. Jesus says, “When the homeowner leaves his house, he puts his servants in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Keep awake.” I think Jesus is telling us that as we wait, we need to be about the tasks he has given to us as His church, and that we all need to be working together.  

In order to do that we need to look at how we are doing those tasks and how well we are using the gifts for those tasks that we have been given by the Holy Spirit.  

In other words, I think that Advent is the time when we are called to take an inventory of our faith-life. That may sound business-like but spiritual directors from earliest times have encouraged a faith-life inventory. Confession is one way to do such inventory. It is an important assessment for those of us who try to live out our baptismal promises. But confession is normally done individually. We try to look, as a friend likes to say, at “the ways we have fallen short of glory of God”.  

But I think we are also called at this time of Advent to look at ourselves as Holy Family, as Christ’s church in the community. We need to take a look at how we, Holy Family, are living out our call as witnesses to Christ’s never-failing love. I think we are called to examine how we are being “church” to our parishioners, and equally importantly, how we are being church to those in our community.…  

Paul, in most of his letters, was writing to the churches, not to individuals. It was the “church” which was to carry forward the Good News of Christ.  He counseled them on how to be church, how to carry the message of Jesus to others, and, at times, chastising them for the ways they were falling short. In other words, his letters helped the churches take a long look at their life as a community living out God’s love.   

So does Holy Family do something like that? Is there a way to take our spiritual inventory? Yes, at year’s end all the committees submit their Annual reports for the work that they have been given to do. Just a look at our Touchstone for this week tells you that we have many committees hard at work here, and there will be a new one that will work to incorporate new members. All of this is important to our functioning as “church”.  

But, and you knew that I would have a “but”, while the facts reported out by the committees in our Annual Report are one aspect of our life together and are very important, they don’t comprise all that we are called to be as “church”. As Church, we are called to be “the Body of Christ” in the world. To do that we need to worship together, learn together, to seek and serve Christ in all people. I think we need to be in conversation about what might the Holy Spirit have in mind for us? And how are we doing spiritually? Conversations are needed.  

The Holy Spirit is here to stir us up, to goad us into study, into asking questions and wrestling with what other things we, as Holy Family, need to be doing as “church” in this place. You might wonder what are some of the questions that might be asked when doing a spiritual inventory of our church. Some of the questions could be:   How close are we to living out our Mission statement? How are we following up with the ideas for “church” generated by our Small Group Input sessions? To enrich our spiritual lives, do we need to be more attentive to study and learning? Are there different ways we can do worship and prayer? Do we need to find ways to be more present to our older folks? Do we need to be connecting with other churches to help the needs in Jasper? In other words, what might the Spirit be calling us to do in the New Year as God’s people that might not be captured in a committee report?  

And I think our church teachings make it clear that each person here today should be involved in this inventory-taking. Certainly the Vestry and George, the Committee chairs, should be involved, but also each of us should participate. Just like our gospel today makes clear –  many are needed to take care of the Master’s house. You might ask: “Why should I be involved? I am not on a committee or on the Vestry”  

Yet each person here this morning is a minister of the church by virtue of his or her baptism. Did you know that? You are each a minister. Under the teachings of the church, found on page 855 of the Prayer Book, Lay people are listed first in answer to the question: “Who are the ministers of the church?” The answer reads “The ministers of the Church are lay persons, bishops, priests and deacons.” While George and Ted, and other priests and deacons, are called to serve at the table, it is you, “all you all”, who are also ministers of this church. With the privileges and also the responsibilities of that role.  

This comes from our teachings as the church. Look at page 855 of the prayerbook and you will see that I am not making this up: “The ministry of lay persons is to represent Christ and his Church; to bear witness to him wherever they may be; and, according to the gifts given them, to carry on Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world; and to take their place in the life, worship, and governance of the Church.” “To take their place in the life, worship and governance of the church”.  

I think Holy Family needs each of you faithful souls to be part of this inventory of how we are doing as the Church of the Holy Family and where God might be calling the church.    

And so, as we wait in this season of Advent for the coming of Christ, the season lighted by the Advent lights of love and hope, my prayer is that this time of waiting for the arrival of our Lord will be a time of intentional and prayerful waiting – a time of questions, a time of reflection, a time of wondering what God is calling each of us to do, and a time of dreaming about how Holy Family could be even more a beacon of Christ’s presence in our world. Amen

Proper 29A – Christ the King – George Yandell

Christ the King – an odd title for a peasant Galilean prophet, a sage. Messiah, yes, but king? Jesus pushed against the kings of his day because he saw they were corrupt, were extorting punishing taxes from the poor. Those kings had even turned the priests of the temple into pawns for working the program to oppress God’s people. So Christ as King must mean something more and different from worldly kings.  

Today’s collect invites us to entertain the future God intends for humanity: to restore all things in Jesus, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We pray that we all may be brought together under his most gracious rule. It marks the end of the Church year. Next Sunday is Advent Sunday. It begins the brief season when we prepare for the observance of Jesus’s birth. Today culminates and yet prepares us for what’s coming.  

The observance of Christ the King Sunday is a recent addition to the church calendar in western Christendom as Ted noted in his sermon last Sunday. It was instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925, when the world had been ravaged by the First World War. Pope Pius envisioned a dominion ruled by a King of Peace who came to reconcile all things, who came not to be served, but to serve. [This paragraph adapted from an article by Libby Howe in “Christian Century”, Nov. 4 2020.] The Episcopal Church began to observe it with the “new” 1976 prayer book.   These events took place in 1925:

• Benito Mussolini dissolved the Italian parliament and became a dictator.
• US president Calvin Coolidge proposed phasing out the inheritance tax.
• In Munich, Aldolf Hitler resurrected his political party and published Mein Kampf.
• Teacher John Scopes was arrested for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution in TN.
• As many as 40,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan paraded in Washington, DC. The Klan had 5 million members, making it the largest fraternal organization in the US.
• Immigration to the US from Italy dropped by nearly 90% and from Britain it dropped by 53%.
• The Spanish flu pandemic had ended just 7 years prior.

  Given those events, their context seems to have demanded the Pope’s innovation. But seeing the world then and now almost a century later, it didn’t work as he had hoped.  

The work of Jesus the Christ has been called “sanctifying life, time and space.” Begun in his ministry of ushering in the domain of God, continuing into his death and resurrection, the cosmic Christ reveals the nature of the invisible God. Everything was created and redeemed through him. He reigns supreme over all creation, and is also head of the Church, its origin, its source of power, its purpose. [This adapted from “Synthesis, a Weekly Resource for Preaching”, November 2004 issue.]  

Matthew’s gospel calls humanity to ‘decenter’ ourselves in the interest of meeting those in need with relief, compassion, comfort and dignity. Augustine and Martin Luther preached discipleship as renouncing sin. Sin was defined by them as ‘to be turned or curved inward on oneself.’ [ibid] Becoming centered on others in the outer world is the major thrust of our ministry in Jesus’ name. Centering on others renounces sin.  

It’s significant to note in the gospel lesson that the sheep and the goats are clueless. It surprised them to know that when they encountered the hungry, the thirsty, naked, stranger, sick and imprisoned, they in fact had encountered Jesus.   

Jesus taught his friends to pray to God “thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” God’s kingdom is not a place, but a condition. Kingship might be a better word- “thy kingship come.” Insofar as all the odd ways we do God’s will are at best half-baked and half-hearted, the kingship of God is still a long way off. As Frederick Buechner puts it, the kingdom of God is “a hell of a long way off, to be more precise and theological.” [Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, Harper and Row, 1973, p.50] We proclaim that the kingship of Jesus fulfills God’s dream for the world.  

Everything Jesus taught was a new creation. “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, he will sit on the throne of his glory, and all the nations will be gathered before him.” What does Jesus mean? The “glory” is the envelope of brilliant light that surrounds the deity in Hebrew scripture. In Hebrew, the glory is God’s ‘ka-vode’. Jesus intends that all the people will be bathed in the light of God’s presence. That all will be created anew as one people.  

The glory of God surrounds us and encompasses us when we turn ourselves as a people toward loving and serving those in distress. People reconciling with their enemies and those who’ve been cast off. This is the vision for the end of the age Jesus saw.  

As one curves outward, decenters oneself and practices self-sacrifice, the reward is encountering Jesus. Matthew promises that it’s inevitable. This is the gospel of Immanuel, God with us. He is not an abstract, distant king as the title today suggests. Jesus is the ultimate, living presence within our daily places, in our circles of contacts. Giving to God through the Church in our pledges moves us to be self-sacrificing in all aspects of our lives.  

Jesus is maybe at his best in describing kingship itself – the king made official at last and all the world observes his coronation. It’s like finding a million dollars in a field, Jesus says, or a jewel worth a king’s ransom. It’s like finding something you hated to lose and thought you’d never find again- an old keepsake, a stray sheep, a missing child. When the kingdom and its king really come, it’s as if the thing you lost and thought you’d never find again is you, your own true self. [ibid, adapted]

25th Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 28 – Ted Hackett

In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit…  

We are now just two weeks from Advent… And you can tell because our society is celebrating Christmas… At least in retail outlets…  

Advent….the season of preparation is only two weeks away… Advent used to be an odd sort of thing and it still is, really… Because it is the end of one liturgical year and the beginning of the next one…  

The Jewish sense of history went on a line…from creation to fulfillment with the coming of the Kingdom of God at the end… We still look for that in the big picture of history…

But the Church year can’t operate that way…we have to repeat the year over and over…till history is over… And as Yogi Berra famously said: “It ain’t over till its over!” So Advent celebrates both beginning and ending…  

The end is final, last judgement… The new beginning is the Birth of Jesus  

Around the fourth century Advent became more and more a penitential season…probably because the Church grew to become the religion of the Roman Empire and sin was more obvious  

By the Middle Ages Advent was called “Little Lent” and was very penitential… Clergy often wore black during Advent… It was, after all… The End of the World!  

And as also happened with Lent…there was “doom & gloom creep” the weeks before Advent became more and more gloomy… If you consider today’s readings… Zephania warns that the Day of the Lord…the day of judgment…is at hand. Paul tells us that the Day of the Lord is coming soon…like a thief in the night! The Gospel is also about Judgement…about the final accounting… And if you don’t do right by God…there’s no reward for you!  

Modern Christians have a much more optimistic view of things… Advent is rarely thought of as a kind of “Little Lent”… It’s a time for parties and the experience of the joy and fun of Christmas … It’s a good time…and I for one love it!  

But to make it even more complicated… Next Sunday…the Sunday before Advent… The New Lectionary marks the end of the Church Year with the up-beat feast of Christ the King… Instituted by the Pope in 1925 to remind secular Italians that Jesus was the real king… It was originally observed in October but in the 60’s it was moved to the end of the Church year…right before Advent… That way it says: “At the end of the world, Jesus will be King!”  

O.K…I can go with that triumphant idea… I can go with the idea that in the end… Despite the awful slaughter of innocent people in the Middle East and in Ukraine… Christians proclaim the ultimate victory of God over sin, suffering and death!… Yes…even as we go down to the grave we make our song… Alleluia…ALLELUIA!  

But if we get there too fast… If we get there without a deep sense of the sin of what we humans have done… Are doing… And will continue to do… Without knowing the terrible pain of the suffering… The hunger… the desolation… the hurting…  

The sins we will continue to do… In spite of sickness… Of homelessness… Of loneliness… Of terror… Of watching your kids torn apart by bombs… Or shot by thugs in the street…                

Unless we know these things… Unless we let our selves feel them… Unless we can hurt… And be angry for the victims…  

Our Alleluias will be shallow… Our celebrations will be thoughtless… Our joy…which ought to be real… Will be tainted by selfishness…. Will be soiled by denial… Will only be ways to kid ourselves…  

Jesus was born, we are told…in a manger… Stars and shepherds and wise men were there…rejoicing! But then… Then… He died in Agony… And before he rose, Transformed…  

Before he rose… He died…he died… Abandoned like someone in Palestine…torn apart by a bomb… In lonely agony… Blown up by a mine in Ukraine… Murdered at a music festival in Israel…  

Christianity is about a suffering God… A God who chooses to be a human… Chooses to know our pain… Chooses to die our death… Chooses to know our abandonment!  

That’s why Advent…the season before the birth of the King of Peace… Was once observed in black! The only way to Easter is through the pain and desolation of Good Friday…  

I don’t know what to do about Ukraine and Israel and Palestine… Or about homelessness and disease… Or about sin… But I know our dear Lord suffered as people are suffering All over the world… And God is weeping… And we have to take on some of that sorrow… Or the joy of the coming season will be hollow…  

But by God’s grace… Knowing sin but hoping through it… Knowing the sin of this world… But daring to hope anyway… Daring to sing Alleluia in the midst of the pain and death…  

That is our calling… That is part of our job as followers of Jesus… And that is also our gift! Our gift to an often hopeless world… Because it is Jesus’ gift to us!          

11-12-23 Proper 27A – George Yandell

The passage we heard today is Joshua’s last will and testament. He assembled all the people at Shechem and challenged them to choose whether they would serve Yahweh alone. The people had been worshipping Yahweh as well as other gods, and Yahweh wanted all or nothing. If the tribes chose to serve Yahweh only, there was no falling back to old gods.  

Joshua repeatedly warned all the tribes, their elders, heads, judges, and officers that if they chose Yahweh, Yahweh would not forgive them if they returned to their old ways. “God is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions or your sins. He will turn and do you harm, and consume you, after having done you good.” The people cried out loudly their desire to serve Yahweh. The people said to Joshua, “The Lord our God we will serve, and him we will obey.” So Joshua led the people to enter into a covenant with God, similar to the covenant their parents had entered into at Sinai. Joshua wrote their promise with God in the book of the Law of God. After the people dispersed to their territories, Joshua died.  

It is true of all believers – we need to renew our covenant with God regularly, else we fall off in our faith, and forget the vows we have made. That’s what we did last Sunday in both services. Each Sunday we recite the Nicene Creed which is included in our baptismal covenant. It’s most important to note how different from the Israelites’ our covenant with God is. The Great Thanksgiving makes reference to that Covenant, quoting Jesus: “This is my blood of the new Covenant which is shed for you & for many for the forgiveness of sins.”   

In remembering what Jesus did in his death and resurrection, we repeat the ancient Jewish tradition of remembering the acts of salvation God has wrought. A Jew was one who through holy remembering, had crossed the Red Sea and entered the promised land. The heritage and hopes of the Jewish people were the individual’s heritage and hopes. A holy remembering of the mighty acts of God was basic to Jewish blessings which reminded God of what God had done in the past. It was a dialogue that asked God to continue to act as God had acted in the past. [Adapted from pp. 366-7 from Commentary on the American Prayer Book, Dr. Marion Hatchett, Harper Collins, 1995.]  

When we hear Jesus say ‘New Covenant’, it is not only for his disciples to remember, but to participate NOW in entering the sacrifice of his life and his resurrection into new life. We are not simply to recall his actions, but to enter them as a present reality. We have entered the kingdom Jesus promised, tho’ it is not yet fully realized. [ibid]  

Where Joshua’s covenant reminded Israel how unforgiving God is, our covenant acknowledges that we do fall into sin, and whenever we repent, God forgives us. Where Joshua’s intends to keep Israel separate from the surrounding people, we state that we will seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves. Where Joshua’s covenant celebrated Israel’s domination of Canaan, we vow to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being. Where the covenant of Israel at Shechem confirmed Israel’s strict adherence to the law of Moses, we pledge to proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ.   

There are many in churches today who would push us back toward the judgmental, unforgiving, dominating, exclusive Joshua-type faith. They call themselves ‘orthodox’, and the rest of us ‘revisionists.’ To tell the truth, the great revisionist was Jesus, giving himself on the cross for all God’s people, then rising to carry us into the new life of grace. He spread disorder wherever he went, whenever he met people and told them of the coming Kingdom. He never pushed correct belief, but invited people to practice the Way God had opened, to do the things Jesus himself did. Jesus raised us all with him, putting behind us the fear of being cast off by God and he dismissed the need to besiege those who believe differently from us. Christ comes now with open arms, to embrace the sinner and love the world God created. He sows gratitude and grace among his followers.  

Renewing our covenant each Sunday does have this important similarity to Joshua’s: We need to witness each other’s statements of faith, and hold each other accountable. It is only as the people of Christ together that we can attain the lofty intent of Christ for us: baptized into the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, we will be Jesus for our world. There are no boundaries to the territories into which God sends us. There are no wars to fight, simply souls to lead, gently, by our example, into fellowship with God and with one another. And finally, renewing our covenant with Christ means we work, pray and give for the spread of God’s domain on earth. That’s why we’re initiating our annual pledge campaign. In that process we are transformed into Christ’s body. Transformed for action in God’s world. 

All Saints Sunday – George Yandell

I believe in the invisible. Some years ago in the Memphis paper, a leading nationally televised local preacher responded to a question about the appropriateness of Halloween. The preacher said, “The church appropriated the pagan observance of Samhein [Sow’an] and renamed it “Allhallowmass” and kept its emphasis on the dead. It is not an appropriate observance for Christians because it’s not biblical.”  

That preacher, and many Christians today, turn their backs on the invisible relationships that lie behind how we practice our faith. They want clear, handy explanations given to them. They want it simple, packaged. All hallows/all saints may be hard to understand. It’s all about connectedness. There have been only 69 generations of Christians since the resurrection of Jesus. At any point during those 1993 years the connections could have been severed. The church could have died.  

The word samain in Gaelic means simply “end of summer.” The ancient Celts observed the beginning of winter on this holiday in early November. A very old custom dictated that all folk would put out their hearth fires. Then families kindled a central bonfire and went from hearth to hearth, and from burial chamber to burial chamber, carrying the new fire. Each hearth and family burial chamber had its fire re-kindled from the one flame. The Celts made a communal effort to light the dark against the coming short days and long dark, cold nights. As they processed around their homes, they remembered their ancestors and told the stories of their lives. They kept their dead ancestors alive in the clan through their customs.  

When followers of Jesus came to the British Isles, the Celts learned the stories of Jesus. They immediately recognized that his death and resurrection extended their customs, and they happily converted. They praised the saints who had shown them the power of connecting with Christ and the earth. They recalled their dead friends, and dead enemies as well.   

The Revelation to John was written in the closing decades of the first century CE. By that time Paul and Peter had been executed by the Roman Emperor. Many congregations across the Mediterranean had experienced persecution. The throngs of people of all tribes and languages represent those early followers of Jesus who had lost their lives because of their faith in Him. Their assembly before the throne of the resurrected Jesus was joy-filled. They are the ones who have come out of the great ordeal- “they are before the throne of God and worship God day and night within God’s temple.”  

We live in unity with them as we worship on this All Saints Sunday. The life they experience now is our hope- it has been fulfilled in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. We are living in the dawn of the new age of justice and peace, although we haven’t yet cooperated fully enough with God for the new age of peace and justice to prevail. Jesus said it this way: “Blessed are you who are poor, hungry, weeping and are hated- rejoice! For your reward is great in God’s kingdom which is coming.”  

The capital S. Saints represent the new age of God’s love and peace on earth. We are living examples of the communion of saints reaching into a new generation of God’s people yearning for God’s peace to prevail. As our vows are renewed when we recite the baptismal covenant, we are linked with those who are being baptized today across the globe- they are the newest members of the Body of Christ.    

The communion of saints is invisible, but for the members of our kinship group gathered here for worship on this holy day. The communion of saints reaches back deep into our history and pre-history. It is all about connecting to power- the power of living in fellowship with one another, with the earth and the universe and our creator.   

The communion of saints honors all who have gone before us and who stand with us now. From the source of all light beyond the heavens, we carry the fire into the world and into the next generation.  Those who worship together with us are the communion of saints concretely for us. They help make the new age move closer.  

I bid you all nourish your curiosity for what lies below, above, within and among us. Let God bind us together in this moment. I bid you seek the invisible power of sainthood that comes from God, however God chooses to offer it. And I bid you seek the power from your spiritual ancestors and help build it your successors, and act in it together.  

All Souls Day – All Faithful Departed – Ted Hackett

Today we are celebrating “All Souls Day”… In the Prayer Book it is called “All the Faithful Departed.” I prefer the old, Medieval term “All Souls” Because I don’t believe that our eternal future all depends on how faithful we are in this life. I know that sounds a little…well…Heretical But for now… let’s leave it at being faithful certainly helps! More about that later…

All Souls’ comes the day after All Saints’ Day… Hallowe’en is All Saints’ Eve… It is the celebration of what early medieval people believed about the dead… They thought the dead who were in an “Intermediate State”… That is those who were not good enough for Heaven but not bad enough for Hell… Came back in ghostly form on All Saints Eve to beg for our prayers… And if we didn’t take pity on them…they would play malicious tricks on us! It started in Ireland in the 19th century and came to this country with Irish immigrants. Which explains my Irish grandmother’s Hallowe’en superstitions!

But we have moved All Saints day… One of the Church’s four main Holy Days…which comes on November first… To the next Sunday after All Souls to make it easier for folks to get to Church… So we’ll do All Saints’ next Sunday…    That’s convenient…but it disconnects Hallowe’en, All Saints’ and All Souls’ day… They really all go together… Because they all deal with the same thing… What is our destiny after Death?

We are not sure when the observation of All Souls started, but it became official in the 10th century when Benedictine monks made it a special day for prayers for those in Purgatory… Purgatory, of course, was a lot like Hell but it didn’t last forever. It was like a painful prison sentence… You went there and were tortured for a certain period of time till you had paid the price of your sins and then you would go on to Heaven….or at least to Paradise to wait for the end of the world when you would finally go to Heaven. That was in Europe… In the Eastern Church, those who were not in Heaven or in Hell were pointed to repentance by a feeling of intense longing and frustration… Like a kid with his nose pressed against the glass of a candy store… They sort of knew what the full presence of God would be like… But for now… Till they repented They were…Excluded!  

Hell in the Eastern Orthodox tradition by the way… Was final separation from God and the Saints… Not fire and brimstone!    Now I am sure you have all that straight… Even though I am a former Professor I won’t give an exam on it! It is kind of interesting though… Kind of like trivia… But does it mean anything to us?

Well…even today… In our skeptical contemporary world… It has a lot to do with death… The death of those we love… And our own death! And death….is inevitable!

But….there is something in us… A still, small voice inside us… A part of us that refuses to accept that death is The end… A part of us … That when we hear the voice of St. Paul in his letter to the Romans say:

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor a angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord!” We want to shout: Yes!…. Death will not be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”Yes!…YES!!! My soul says: “YES!”

Paul’s “US” here… Nothing shall separate “US” from the love of God does not mean Paul and me… “Us” means all of us… Everyone… Death shall not separate any of us from the love of God!

Wait a minute… Does that mean no one is damned? No one goes to Hell? That’s easy to swallow for…say my Uncle Louie…a roguish alcoholic who played sort of mean tricks on people… But how about Hitler?…Stalin?… How about Pol Pot…or Putin?

It’s hard to swallow for people like that… It means forgiveness for monsters… And we don’t want to do that… We don’t want to eat the heavenly banquet sitting next to Hitler! But the point is… Hitler…even Hitler will be changed… He will be spend enough time knowing the prospect of love…but excluding himself from it…

That eventually he will genuinely repent… Genuinely change… When I was a young priest, an older nun who I was visiting and I got into a theological discussion… I asked her if she believed in Hell… She nodded solemnly: “Yes Father…I have to…it’s doctrine”… Then she added slyly: “But I don’t have to believe anyone goes there!”

Here’s the thing Sister knew… God is love…That’s the Gospel of John… And God created us to love… To love God…And each other. And if anyone is sentenced to suffering and hatred for eternity… Then God has been defeated…  

And that is not possible! In the end…God is love…. And all shall be love. But what of now? What of death?

Paul says: “Death has no dominion over us…” Very early on, the Church understood that when we die we “Pass over” into death as the people of Israel passed over the Red Sea into freedom … And in death those beloved dead are waiting for us… Now they are unseen…but sometimes they can be felt…felt as present…  A feeling that is part memory…but more that memory…   We are still connected…  Unseen…they are with us… Because God loves them… And created them… And created us…    To live and  To love.

So in a moment we will toll a bell…and light candles. And read the names of those beloved dead…. Knowing that their souls are in the hand of God, Knowing that they are unseen but here… Knowing that we shall be united….

And then we will celebrate that Holy Meal… Knowing that attending at that table… Surrounding us…filling this church… Redeemed in love as we are being redeemed The whole host … All the company of Heaven… Singing and blessing us…. Blessed be those who come in the name of the Lord!     

As the bell tolls… As we come to the Eucharist… The promise of the heavenly banquet… Let us know the love of God… And the love of all the Saints… And know that in Christ Jesus… Nothing and no one… shall be lost… Alleluia!

Proper 25A – George Yandell

Today’s gospel has Jesus stating the great commandment of the Law: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ In short- Love God totally with your whole self.  He added, ‘A second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’ and summed them up, ‘On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’ It is striking that Jesus was asked for one command and delivered two. He doesn’t mean that loving neighbor is similar to the first command, but is of equal importance and inseparable from the first. To love God is to love neighbor and vice versa. [The 3 sentences above adapted from The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol.8, p. 426, Abingdon Press, 1994.] Love passionately.  

When Christians use the word love with reference to God, to the deepest of human relationships, and toward the world, ‘love’ comes from the understanding of God’s nature as made known in Jesus. As it is revealed in the crucified and resurrected Jesus, we come to know love as unmotivated and unmanipulated, unconditional and unlimited. This love is not a feeling, but is commitment and action. [ibid. p. 425]  

Loving this way is sacramental- love is to be the outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace-filled response to God loving us, and it’s demonstrated with actions of love to God and neighbor. If there are no outward manifestations of love, the sacrament is void.   

The word ‘sacrament’ comes from the Latin ‘sacramentum’, meaning ‘pledge’. Sacramentum in turn translates a Greek word, ‘musterion’ which meant ‘mystery.’ Our word sacrament holds both the Latin and Greek meanings side by side- mystery and pledge- the mystery of God’s grace combined with our pledge to love God and neighbor transforms us into living sacraments.   

St. Augustine once said, “The spiritual value of a sacrament is like light; although it passes among the impure, it is not polluted.” By Augustine’s simile and by our own observation, people today might talk about sacramental love, but rarely act it out- the inward and spiritual grace is missing, so loving actions are all too rare.   

Listen to how Paul addresses the fellowship of Jesus in Thessalonica both in last week’s reading and today: “Paul, Silvanus and Timothy to the Church of the Thessalonians: We give thanks to God for all of you, constantly remembering your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ… We were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the good news of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.” They were living out the sacrament of Christ-love, and had inspired the fellowship to do the same. They had lost their old lives and lived resurrection lives.   

“For many of us, the life we need to lose is life lived for self. The life we shall then find is that of the self embedded in community. A community that connects us not only to other people but to the natural world as well. No wonder resurrection is so threatening; it forces us to abandon any illusion we may have that we are in charge of our own lives…..accountable to no one but ourselves. Resurrection requires that we replace that illusion with the reality we all rise and fall together, that we have no choice but to live in, with and for the entire community of creation.” [from The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring by Parker Palmer, 1990, Jossey-Bass Press, p.156]  

Living resurrection lives means we come together to renew our pledge- our pledge to love sacramentally for God and neighbor. We put flesh on that pledge through our giving to God through the fellowship of Jesus. No wonder we call an annual estimate of giving a ‘pledge’ to God. In a few weeks, we’ll all gather for Pledge Consecration Sunday. Each of us will be offered an estimate of giving card for 2024. It is a resurrection action we take individually for the whole community- our pledges make concrete the sacrament of love Jesus summed up- Love God, love neighbor as self in community. We participate in the mystery of Christ-love. It is made concrete, and we are transformed into new life.  

George Yandell

In Jesus’ day the people of Galilee had only recently come under Jerusalem’s rule. Previously they had not owed tithes & other dues to the temple. The peasants in Galilee had borne the brunt of repeated Roman conquests of Palestine, with major massacres in the areas of Nazareth, Magdala & Capernaum around the time of Jesus’ birth. After Herod the Great died in 4 BCE, the Romans had imposed his son  Herod Antipas as ruler. He was the first ruler in history to live in Galilee. He pushed tax collections with rigor. He followed his father’s practice of massive building projects & constructed two new Galilean capital cities in a 20-year period. His construction efforts imposed a crushing economic drain on the peasants in Galilee precisely during the lifetime of Jesus. Radical Pharisees & other teachers spearheaded a refusal to render the Roman tribute, claiming that God was their true & only Lord & Master. These movements, along with the kingdom movement of Jesus, show that the ancient Israelite traditions of popular resistance & independence were very much alive in Judea & Galilee at the time of Jesus. (adapted from Jesus & Empire: The Kingdom of God & the New World Disorder, Richard Horsley, 2003, pp. 85-86.)  

Why don’t you pull out a coin or bill?  What do you see? [LIBERTY- & In God we trust] & [e pluribus unum= out of many, one] & whose images? // The inscriptions & images kind of tell our story as a nation, don’t they?  

When the Pharisees got supporters of Herod’s rule to join with them in trapping Jesus, they displayed the denarius used for buying & selling, & paying taxes- steep taxes. Carrying Roman coinage in the Jerusalem temple was forbidden. Roman money was supposed to be exchanged for Jewish temple money before Jewish worshippers entered the temple. The typical denarius of Tiberius Caesar’s day had his portrait on the front side with the saying “Great High priest” above his head, & the Latin inscription “Tiberius Caesar Augustus, Son of the Divine Augustus” on the reverse side. The coins of Rome told the story of their rule- the Emperor is God, & High Priest. That was the collision point.  The people with Jesus in the temple saw something much more than a coin. They saw the symbol of their oppression, their poverty, their lack of meaningful work. They saw the collusion between the Jewish authorities & the Roman occupiers. They saw Pharisees handling money poisoned by leaders who deserted the teachings of Judaism & grew rich with their Roman overlords.   

The Pharisees knew all that. Their movement called Jews back to radical observance of the laws God had given the Hebrew people. They wanted an intensified Judaism that could free the Jews from bondage under yet one more empire that diluted their radical faith in the one true God.   

In traveling with Jesus, his disciples had witnessed throughout Galilee & Judea the rapid Romanizing of the kingdom of Herod Antipas. Herod had built an entirely new city on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, called Tiberius in honor of the newly installed emperor. Herod Antipas had also expanded the town of Sepphoris, near Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth. Galilee had never seen any towns of this size or so pretentious. The Jewish backwater area of Galilee had small farms. The peasant farmers grew a number of crops with which they supported themselves. In order to support his massive development programs, Herod seized small farms for delinquent taxes & bound them together, displacing families. The large farming co-ops produced a select few crops for export, thus filling Herod’s & Tiberius’ coffers, making the peasants even poorer & hungrier. Before their eyes the disciples witnessed unheard-of change & increasing poverty for all the Jews in the region.  

So what does this mean for us?  Listen again: “The Pharisees went & plotted to entrap him Jesus in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, & teach the way of God in accordance with truth, & show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax.” & they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, & whose title?” They answered, “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, & to God the things that are God’s.” When they heard this, they were amazed; & they left him & went away.”   

Do you hear the saying differently? I know I do. We don’t hear the emperor’s title said out loud- it was the 1000-pound gorilla in the exchange.  The Pharisees meant to entrap Jesus against the supporters of Herod they’d brought with them.   

They were running a political action to push their cause of tax withholding, because they could worship only the God of Israel. & Jesus turned the whole scene upside down.  His followers didn’t have two coins to rub together, so they might have laughed when Jesus suggested they give their due to Emperor Tiberius. But more than that, he challenged the Pharisees & Herod’s supporters to examine where their true allegiance lay.    

The disciples of Jesus could quote the words he taught. They had seen his miracles first-hand. They knew the sound of his voice, saw the light dance in his eyes. They had seen his face do whatever his face did when he saw human suffering. They knew his touch. If they were at all perceptive, they knew his personality, the way he processed ideas, his sense of himself as a Jew. They knew far more than we will ever be able to know. Yet they didn’t begin to know enough. They had no idea what joining with Jesus would do to them.  

You & I are all too familiar with, & probably tired of, the politics of today: Cater to everyone with power, with suasion, & everyone who is undecided. The politics of Jesus means deciding to be willing servants for the whole culture, nourishing justice in all our relationships. That’s what I grew up hearing- people who undertake public office are servants, not people in league with the power-brokers. They are to serve the public good.  In Godwe trust.  

Former Bishop of Atlanta Bennett Sims says in his book Servanthood: “Jesus never coerces. Instead it is his concise insistence by word & deed that greatness lies in giving — superiority is embodied in serving.”   

Bp. Daniel Corrigan years ago suggested adding one more to the four dismissals at the end of the Eucharist — “Get up, get out, & get lost in the world!” He suggests we serve by listening. Listen to that colleague at work or home or ballpark who’s up to her elbows in misery, trying to figure out how to make ends meet. We serve by caring. Care for the one who gropes not for answers but for working solutions. We serve by persuading. Tell your next-door neighbor that you know about a place where she can get loved until she can discover how to love herself. Let her ‘in’ to the servant community called out to be ‘church.’ We serve by pooling our resources, pledging and giving for the work of God’s kingdom in our time and place. That’s how servanthood can work for us. It’s what Jesus intends.