Sermons: April 2009

Sermon, April 11, 2009

Easter Vigil

Grace Episcopal Church, Bakersfield

The Rev’d Vern Hill 

Genesis 1:1-2:4a [The Story of Creation]  
Exodus 14:10-31; 15:20-21 [Israel's deliverance at the Red Sea]   
Isaiah 55:1-11 [Salvation offered freely to all]   

At The Eucharist

Romans 6:3-11  Psalm 114 Mark 16:1-8 

At the Renewal Service for the Diocese just last Saturday morning at Holy Family Church in Fresno, we engaged in a very powerful and memorable liturgical moment.  Within the Bishop’s introduction to the Reaffirmation of Ordination Vows for the clergy present were these words – “the ministry we share is none other than the sacrificial ministry of Christ, who gave himself up to death on the cross for the salvation of the world.  By his glorious resurrection he has opened for us the way of everlasting life.”  These two thoughts – death, life – joined together, are the whole truth about tonight.   

We first met tonight in darkness, a darkened world where Christ gave himself up to death on a cross.  This is a story about evil, a story about human creation completely lost from itself, a world engulfed by and embraced by darkness. And within the pages of this story is carried our own moments when we visit and participate in the dark places, when we participate in raising the cross of Christ.   

This cross is raised when the quest for power, control, and wealth drive human desire to forget its beginnings in God’s creative Call.  The cross is raised in the violence against children shredded by fragmentation bombs or crushed by falling masonry.   The cross is raised in the marginalizing of the weak, the unique and differing, those who challenge how it is.  The cross is raised in justice without fairness, in judgment without mercy, and in righteousness without humility.   

Since last Sunday we have spent Holy Week remembering this dark side of the Gospel.  This is good because if we do not remember the darkness, if we do not confess our moments in the darkness, we cannot receive the grace of new Light, the good news despite that fatal hostility. 

Tonight makes understandable this notion of a meaningful death on the cross and what that might have to do with salvation.  By “the way of the cross” we come to resurrection. That is the path.  Liturgy, the story within worship, is about making symbolic actions.  As we were in the parade last Sunday and at the trial too,  we are engaged in another one of these actions tonight.  We began in darkness.  A new fire was struck - the birthing of a new Light, a bursting forth AND shared out among the many of you gathered here this evening. We banged and shook our bells because this birthing and bursting is instinctively part of what we know is the truth to life in God. 

The story of salvation is the story of what we are to be as creations in God’s image, of what it is to be a human being and to live within God.  With one voice, the three readings of the Hebrew scriptures spoke of this, the goodly birthing of our world and its earthlings, the birthing of a people out of the darkness of slavery to a land of promise, and the birthing of true righteousness of the heart. 

The Gospels speak of the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven.  Or as the writer of John speaks, Eternal Life.  It is life within the Light, life within God.  The Resurrection of Christ, this birth of new living beyond earthling life, is life in God perfected in love.  Our connection to this new life comes by our Baptism, our rising to life in God from the waters, the birth beginnings of all life.  This new life, this resurrected life, is as natural as the planting of a seed in the ground, which returns as something quite splendid.  May the joy of the Resurrection, the comfort of where Christ leads us in God, be with you this evening and all your days.  Amen.   


Easter Sunday (RCL)     Grace Episcopal Church

April 12, 2009 

Acts 10:34-43      Psalm 118:1-2, 14-2   
1 Corinthians 15:1-11     John 20:1-18 
 
A number of years ago, more than I care to calculate, Joyce and I had a sort-of guerilla ministry in Bakersfield. Many of the good people we ministered with also happened to be gay and lesbian. Living in Bakersfield, being gay and Christian made them—and us--de facto guerillas.  

God loved—and continues to love—this community, each and every one of these persons, with every breath that he takes. As Holy Week has again reminded us, God loves us with every drop of blood that he bleeds. 

One day I went to one member's home to help her leave her abusive husband while he was away at work.  

That is, I went as a priest of the Church not only to carry out boxes and help protect her; I went also to bless her act of leaving, to sanctify her getting out. Scaredy-cat that I am, I could just envision the headline in The Californian: IRATE HUSBAND SHOOTS PRIEST OVER WIFE. 

What a strange place the Kingdom of God is where priests need to help abused women leave their husbands! 

But it's important for us to remember that the Kingdom of God is not just a pre-pubescent boys' choir, processing into Canterbury Cathedral at Christmas, ethereally singing "Once in Royal David’s City."  

In our reading from Acts today, Peter makes this perfectly clear:

  
 

You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ . . . .  

Like Jesus, we too are called to preach peace. 

Peter continues: 

God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; . . . he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the Devil, for God was with him.  

We, too, like Jesus, are anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power. We are anointed at Baptism—and, every day thereafter. 

Think about that a minute: every blessèd, God-kissed day, we awaken with the Holy Spirit, rejoicing. 

Being anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power, like any real intimacy, is a covenant. A covenant just as God-given and powerful —and binding—as the covenants God makes with Abraham, Noah, Moses, and David. 

A covenant is essentially a spiritual contract: God promises us something and we promise God something. 

The covenant we co-sign with the Holy Spirit is the baptismal vows we take and the promises we make. We re-enacted this covenant at the Holy Saturday service last night, and will do so again on Pentecost at the end of May. 

Celebrant  Will you proclaim by word and example the Good

              News of God in Christ?

People  I will, with God’s help. 

Celebrant  Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving

              your neighbor as yourself?

People  I will, with God’s help. 

Celebrant  Will you strive for justice and peace among all

              people, and respect the dignity of every human

              being?

People I will, with God’s help. 

Four members of Grace—Aida, Amanda, Curt, and Misael—honored their Baptismal covenant this past Good Friday by working at the homeless shelter. This chapel we’re in was stripped bare on Good Friday—no icons, no crosses, no crucifixes, no Holy Eucharist. Jesus wasn’t here, but Christ was very much alive: he was working at the homeless shelter. 

Peter reminds us today—the homeless, the poor, the unemployed, the tortured, the war-ravaged always remind us—that our covenant with God, just as a covenant with a beloved spouse, does not guarantee us a life-long honeymoon: 

“We are witnesses,” Peter says, “to all that Jesus did, both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree . . . .” 

Marriage with God, anointing by the Spirit, dying and rising with Christ—these will not bring some kind of euphoria or bliss that annihilates death; they will not wish away the addicted, the dysfunctional, the abusers—that is, all those “sinners” out there—and leave the rest of us sitting warm and cozy by one of those pretend fire places: faux fire places offer heat, but there’s no fire. 

The Holy Spirit is heat, warmth, and fire. Fire in the belly, a heart that burns with compassion, a mind white-hot and flaming for justice. 

As all these metaphors that I’ve used today attest, metaphor offers one of the best ways to talk about God. Jesus uses them all the time. 

So—with apologies to Jesus—I would like to offer my own parable this Easter day about who we are, and who God is: 

A woman is lying on the sidewalk. People are passing by. We don’t know her name; we don’t know why she’s there. Is she homeless? Drunk? Drugged out? A victim of some crime? 

We don’t know. 

Through the grace of God, and with the grace-filled help of one person—the help that each of us, empowered by the Holy Spirit, has to offer—she suddenly gets up and manages to walk. 

What's more, to our amazement, through the love of God, she now begins to dance!   

But it doesn't end there—and that makes all the difference. 

While she's dancing she sees someone else lying on the pavement. She stops. She goes over and helps him up. The two of them now begin to dance.   

While they dance they see that others are lying on the ground, helpless. Together, the two of them help up other people; these in turn help up others, one by one.  

Now all of them are dancing together and singing; even the passers-by and bystanders are now singing: “Alleluia, alleluia. Christ is risen.” 

(Congregation: “The Lord is risen, indeed. Alleluia, alleluia!”) 

Amen.

Sermon, April 19, 2009

Easter 2 – Thomas Sunday

Grace Episcopal Church, Bakersfield

The Rev’d Vern Hill 

 Acts 4:32-35 
Psalm 133  
1 John 1:1-2:2  
John 20:19-31

Forgive me please, but there is clearly something spooky about the risen Christ.  What we are given in the stories is that the risen Jesus is not a resuscitated corpse NOR is he some kind of spirit or ghost.  Which leaves us in unfamiliar territory that is rarely spoken to if my brief survey by Google of Easter sermons over the past 10 or 15 years is any indication. 

What we are given in the appearance stories about the resurrected Jesus tells us a few things; tells us – he can be touched, but then he also can’t be touched, at least not YET.  He apparently is hungry and thirsty because he eats and drinks, but he is not recognizable even by those who were a part of the inner circle, both men and women.    He is often confused for others.  When Mary meets him in the garden she supposes he is the gardener.  This is Mary, remember – how could that be?  Jesus walks for some time with a few of the disciples and they don’t know who he is – at least until he spends the evening with them and they are breaking bread together.  But then he disappears from their sight.    And there is that mysterious occasion when Jesus gives them breakfast on the beach.  Again they realize who he is because of something he does but they don’t really recognize him.  So then,  he is recognized in a way under certain circumstances.

Today’s Gospel draws together all of these strange threads – the disciples have gathered at night, in secret, in a locked room.  They are hiding, fearful of the Roman or Temple authorities, and perhaps even of what they have heard about a morning Jesus appearance.  Jesus stands among them, speaks a greeting of peace, but it is not until they see the wounds that we are told the “disciples rejoiced.”  And don’t forget there is this strange business of Jesus entering into a locked room. 

Of course the center of attention for today’s Gospel reading falls upon Thomas, mistakenly called doubting Thomas because the Greek word for “doubt” never appears in the reading.  Thomas we are told was not present when Jesus first appeared and simply asks to see Jesus for himself, a demand which is fulfilled a week later.  The section ends with Jesus’ admonition – “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."  

The simple meaning to the passage is it questions how the story of Jesus will continue to be spread.  Remember that John is writing sometime after 100 AD which is some 60 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.  With the loss of the eye witnesses by death, particularly by increasing persecution, John is stressing the importance of believing the testimony received from the witnesses as it is passed along in letters.  He sees belief in the truthfulness of the testimony as the source for future faith.  And that is another whole sermon.

There is a much more complex set of problems and things to be interested in here.  By now you may have noticed that there is a double sense of “seeing” in this Thomas story.  Let’s follow this for a bit since “recognition” is a key issue in most of the other appearance stories as well.  What John develops is the notion that there is a difference between “seeing someone” and “seeing that it is Jesus.”  It is one thing to look and see, to have sight, to take in the sights and then there is the recognition that is truly “getting something” as in comprehension, understanding, grace at the end of discernment, one of those turn the corner and nothing is ever the same again moments.

The problem with Jesus’ resurrection in terms of testimony to what had happened is that it moved the testimony outside the vocabulary of Jewish religious expectation.  None of the words really worked any longer. How to comprehend this?  The resurrection creates a paradigm shift.  It forces the invention of a whole new vocabulary beyond Jewish redemption hopes for a political Messiah or the expectation of an end of the age.

In one sense the only thing left for those like John was to simply report on what was experienced – what they touched, heard and saw. And for that reason we need to pay attention to the descriptions and let them speak for themselves.  The irony is that in some strange ways we are almost more able to understand the meaning of what happen than they were, participating within the events.  Part of the reason for this is that we are beginning to embrace an understanding of reality significantly different than a reality that celebrated changelessness and absoluteness.  We are slowly beginning to construct a new understanding from science that recognizes that creation is a continuing process, not a once and for all time event.  In the past the resurrection has been understood as a special time out from how things are,  an exceptional event with Jesus leading the faithful into paradise from the disaster called “the present evil age.”  That may not be the best understanding.  Resurrection or transformation or metamorphism is very much a part of the natural, evolving world.  Even Paul and John both use simple, nature metaphors to explain the resurrection.  John speaking across 2000 years offers, with what I think is amazing success, his attempt to speak about what took place in Jesus. 

John uses the image if not the language of “birthing” to explain the ongoing perfection of human creation – human being is under construction still.  He embraces the belief  of Hebrew scripture that our beginnings are the goodly birthing of our world and its population of earthlings.  Earthling existence by nature (kind of a consequence of) involves sin and death – sin, the darkness of evil – the evil of the cross we visited a week ago or the Holocaust which we remember today, those times when humans lose their way so completely, lose what it is that they were created to be as creatures in the image of God; and of course death, that physical living is bound by time and matter.  John places the Word made flesh before us in the life and teachings of Jesus that we may find our way in earthling life.  To understand the Jesus who John believes is the Truth about Life, listen carefully again to first John –

“what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life-- this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us.”

We were created in flesh to have eternal life, to live our days, BUT to live these days within God.  That’s some of John’s special vocabulary.  For John, it is eternal life; it is life in the Light, life in God that is our true habitat; it’s where we thrive.  The character of that life for us is found in the Gospel values in Jesus’ teachings and in the parables.  In Jesus we see what God wants for us. In Jesus we hear the continuation of that first creative Cry at the genesis of our world, a Birthing Cry laid before us again and again and again.  It is the Cry to recover the divinity of our humanity in creation,  to believe in the Light that is reflected back to us in Jesus and to be embraced in that light.  Here is what God has created us to be and what God is creating us to be in this moment.  Salvation is alive, active, moving like the wind, filled with a fire-like energy, embracing, inviting, urging at us, drawing us onward.  

Into this setting comes Jesus’ resurrection.  For John the resurrection is a new birth moment, the birth of a new living beyond earthling life.  It is moving beyond what you see and recognize now into something very different, well beyond this present location within our village of sin and death.  It is life fully in the Light.  When Thomas confesses - “My Lord and My God.”  he has complete recognition beyond simple seeing.  He understands the very heart of God – that God is with us and that we are united in him.

I cannot tell you anything else about eternal life beyond what we can experience in the partiality of this time now.  In a sense the question becomes unimportant once it is understood, comprehended, digested - that we belong to God and that God will not let us go, that we will continue in God beyond what we have now and that life in whatever form we may continue to greet it may best be described as “perfected love.”

One final thing – notice that Eternal Life becomes present in the breaking of bread, in fulfilling basic needs like drinking from a cup, in simple gestures, in honest words of greeting – “Mary”; in what we should call sacramental or holy moments.  Here Christ appears.  His eternal life surrounds our lives, supports our struggles, and strengthens are hope.  Amen.


3 Easter (RCL: B), April 26, 2009   

Aaron Conner

Acts 3:12-19       Psalm 4, Page 587 BCP

1 John 3:1-7       Luke 24:36b-48 

      Don’t tell Tim or Vern, but I got off fairly easy this Sunday. While I was preparing for this sermon, I was amazed at the broad list of things I could potentially speak on from the readings appointed for today. The readings all give the same message: God, love, Jesus, death, repentance, forgiveness. But it would be too easy to just leave it at that. And I can’t disappoint Tim and let you all off the hook that easy either.  

      The readings I want to focus on this morning are the lessons from Acts and the Gospel of Luke. Again, they both carry the same message and mirror each other quite well. That would be because Luke’s Gospel and the Book of Acts were originally written as companion volumes for a Gentile audience; they offer an account of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection and a history of the early church in relation to what was written in the Old Testament. Luke’s writings were split into two different books when the Ecumenical Councils decided to organize the canonized books of the Bible.  

      Luke is a great story teller. In fact, the Gospel reading is actually Luke’s account of Jesus’ appearance to the eleven disciples which we read in Johns Gospel last week. Mark had nothing to say on the matter. John does a little better, as we read last week. And all Matthew had to write was “Now the eleven went to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted” (Matt 28:16-17). Luke was probably that annoying guy at work who likes to tell you how the clock was made. He likes detail. He likes to engage his reader and is an excellent narrator.  

      In Acts, the story picks up right after Peter heals a crippled man outside the Temple. You could almost confuse Peter for John with how many times he says the word “You” in reference to the Israelites and their leaders. And that’s exactly what I want to focus on. Not anti-Jewish comments. But the distinctions made in Luke’s writings.  

      First off, Peter makes the distinction between himself and Israelites. He distinguishes between those who wanted Jesus dead, and Pilate who wanted to release him. Between God, and those who wanted Jesus dead. He next differentiates the “Holy and Righteous One”-Jesus- to the murderer who was released instead. Then between Peter and John who as was with him at the Temple, to those who wanted Jesus dead. Alright Luke, we get the picture. Then to appeal to the Israelites to repent, he addresses them as “friends” or as the Greek has it. “brothers” instead of those darn Israelites who wanted Jesus dead as verse four started out.  

      Luke’s Gospel gets a bit more interesting and this time Jesus does more of the distinguishing. Prior to this in verse thirty, two of the disciples who had just broken bread with Jesus went to go tell the news to the other disciples that he was alive. Jesus now makes his third and last appearance in Luke’s Gospel before his ascension. Poor Jesus. I can’t think of a worse way to be welcomed back from the dead. Jesus greets his disciples as friends, “Peace be with you”. But they reply-probably as we would-with, “Ah! It’s a ghost!” Being taken as Casper the unfriendly ghost forces Jesus to explain his physical scars and body are that of a resurrected body. Casper does not have such a body. Even after seeing his hands and feet they are joyful, yet disbelieving. And Jesus, in his understanding that they are afraid and do not understand that he is really alive, eats with them to prove his physical body and perhaps bring reality that his is risen indeed and confirm he is not Casper the Holy Ghost.

      All the things just mentioned could be interesting sermon topics. We could think about ghosts and the paranormal as it is a personal interest of mine. We could talk about atonement for sins through God’s grand clean up plan for the world and our mission to

evangelize. Or how Jesus is revealed to us as the risen Lord when we gather at the Altar for the bread and wine as he was revealed to the disciples when he broke bread and ate fish. Or we could ponder the possible significance between Jesus eating fish and Jesus breaking bread back in verse thirty. To stay in continuity with Vern’s sermon last week, I’ll stay with the doubting hearts and joy of the disciples.

      It’s moments like this in scripture where I fully understand that God works through most mundane and odd things. At times, I’d really like to give the disciples a break and play the “we’re only human” card. Then, at other times I’d rather like to see humanity get a break from its own ignorance and stupidity. We can’t be that dumb to miss the risen Lord. Are we? I suppose we do have the advantage over the disciples in that we do believe without seeing. As Vern pointed out last week, the disciples didn’t recognize Jesus. At least not until Jesus revealed himself to them and “opened their minds to understand the scriptures” as the Gospel states. Sure, they were human. But even more, they were willing and obedient to be appointed Jesus’ witnesses of his love and passion to all the nations. The Gospel doesn’t bluntly say that the disciples finally get it now. But when foot-in-the-mouth Peter testified that they were Jesus witnesses later in Acts and astonished the people with the healing of the crippled man, I’m pretty sure they do get it now.

      One common theme which I feel link these two readings together is the reactions of the people who witnessed the healing at the temple and the disciples who saw Jesus resurrected. The “it’s too good to be true” complex. Doubt versus joy. Jesus poses the question to his disciples “Why do doubts rise in your hearts?”  I’m sure we could give the answer, “Well, Jesus. It all has to do with this or that”. And I’m sure he would respond back to us, “Well, okay. Now, really…why do doubts rise in your hearts?” It’s easier to talk about doubt. One doesn’t have to look very hard to find it. However, one thing we can conclude from the lessons: in the mist of doubt, there is always joy. A good Anglo-Catholic friend of mine advised me once during my own doubtful months last year “We are meant to seek out joy in doubtful times. Its an advantage we have as spiritual beings”. Joy is more than simply making the best of it or faking it until you feel it. Joy happens in the moment where Jesus reveals himself to us. Joy is accepting that all the doubtful things which surround us can be used for something greater than we can imagine. It is an acceptance which transcends all doubt and assures us of God’s hand at work among us.

      In all our individual experiences we have come to this point where Jesus has revealed himself to us in prayer, the breaking of bread, in service to others, in facing our own fears and doubts which set us back. We have our ghosts which haunt us, fingers that we point, doubts, fears, and joys. Jesus met the disciples as they are. As people who doubted, had fears, and were sometimes a little less than bright. And Jesus continues to meet us just as we are. As people who doubt, have fears, and who are sometimes a little less than bright. In our own journey, like the disciples, many of us in our past isolation from the Episcopal Church doubted that we would ever serve in such a faith community as Grace. In a world of uncertainty we have all lived in fear, leading us at times to run off course contrary to what would be best for us.  Jesus continues to not only reveal himself to us, but also to assure us. And that assurance can transcend all doubts in us leading to joy. And of this we are certain. And we are ourselves are witnesses to this. Amen.