Sermons

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

On Friday, All Souls’ Day, I was reminded again about the degree to which, for the Christian, life and death are held in an uncomfortably close tension, a tension which I’ve said before from this pulpit that our culture tries to defuse by simply, and dishonestly ignoring the latter. I took a trip down to Marion, Ohio to act as the bishop’s deputy, consecrating a new columbarium where those formerly interred at St. Paul’s Church in that town are now committed. Sadly that parish will be declared extinct at diocesan convention next weekend. So we were not only doing fulfilling our obligation to the departed on Friday, but mourning the death of a congregation. Yet even in the grief over that death, we were called to celebrate the truth of Christ’s promise of new life.

It is that same tension with which we wrestle today, which is why the Church, in its wisdom, observes All Souls’ Day (the commemoration of all the faithful departed) the day after All Saints’. The miracle of the Resurrection doesn’t mean anything unless we appreciate its counterpoint- the reality and tragedy of death.

To return to a theme which I try to bring to light at least to some extent every Easter (much to the consternation of our natural impulse to focus exclusively on the bonnets and lilies and other happy things that accompany that joyous day), the Resurrection is only an amazing, life-transforming thing because death is so hard and inscrutable. Because death was not God’s original plan . It never was. Creation was perfect and deathless until sin entered the world. Death is an aberration. It is a tool of the enemy, and has only by the Grace of God been transformed into something greater and more mysterious and more hopeful.

I wonder sometimes if the real distinction between the capital “S” Saints whom we commemorate today and the lower-case “s” saints whom we commemorate tomorrow has less to do with the Church’s process of canonizing particularly special people, and more to do with what the former have to teach us about death. Specifically, I think it has something to do with how they held on to their own lives (their own plans and desires) loosely, while holding on tightly to life in others.

The apostles and martyrs did not give up their lives because life was meaningless or temporary or tenuous. They gave up their lives because they cared so much for the lives of others. Ascetics and virgins did not avoid attachment to the pleasures of this world as some sort of denial of ordinary life. They took on that lifestyle to work and pray for others, that they might enjoy all the good gifts which God had bestowed on the earth.

In this way the Saints serve as examples, but Christ Jesus himself is, of course, the greatest example. Notice in this morning’s Gospel, Jesus did not tell Mary and Martha that it was going to be okay. Jesus didn’t say some fool thing about God needing another angel when he took Lazarus. Jesus wept. Even when he presumably knew how things were to unfold, we are told that he was still “greatly disturbed” when he approached the tomb.

Christ gave life to the dead man, but he did not treat his death as if it were a minor inconvenience. He treated it as the tragedy it was, as the affront to God’s final plan that every death is- whether shocking or expected; whether tragic or a bittersweet relief from suffering. God is not a murderer.

Jesus cared deeply about the death of Lazarus, but he held on to his own life loosely. This is not to say that he treated his life as if it meant nothing. He knew it was a precious gift from the Father, and that’s why he asked if the cup might be passed from him. But he also knew that his life, though precious, was not his own, but belonged to God and could be poured out for the life of the world. So it was with the Saints, who did not give their lives because their lives were worthless, but because they were precious, because they knew they had come from God and were going to God and were willing to spend what time they had in service to their master.

So it should be for us. We can do certain things to help us have a good death. We can plan and pray and have the hard conversations with those we love before the practical matters surrounding death become urgent. Even more importantly, we can live, as Christ did, as the Saints dis, in self-giving service to others. That, my sisters and brothers, is what it’s all about: loving each other as Christ loved us. Caring more for others than ourselves, not because any of us is worthless, but precisely because each of us is infinitely valuable to God.

God did not put us on earth because heaven needed a waiting room. Only a very silly, capricious God would waste time creating such a world. God did not put us on earth to test us, to see if we were good enough to get into heaven or lucky enough to have the right beliefs or say the right prayer or use the right theological language to “be saved.” Only an evil God would leave our ultimate fate to moral luck, to some sort of cosmic roll of the dice. God put us here because this life is worth something. God put us here because we have an opportunity to become Saints ourselves- to recreate and share the love He has for us with each other, not just as a preparation for eternity, but because this life itself, this contingent, temporary life provides us with something even heaven cannot. We have a chance to be God for each other. We have a chance to learn more about love in preparation for the life of the world to come, so that we can appreciate perfect love when we finally experience it.

So, I think maybe this life is less a waiting room and more a classroom. We have an opportunity to learn and grow and live in love, just as Christ loved us, an offering and sacrifice to God. Be Christ for those around you who mourn. Allow others to be Christ for you. Feed on the Grace of our Lord and Savior at this altar, and then go forth to be bread broken and wine poured out to bring nourishment and joy, life and peace, to a community and a world that needs you, Christ’s own body, now and until Christ’s return.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

One of the nice things about both the college and the seminary I attended was that we always seemed to have relatively impressive people come and give public lectures. Occasionally I was able to endear myself sufficiently to the people in charge that I got to assist in transporting these VIPs from place to place and even to entertain them during their down-time. For the most part, these speakers didn’t have much time for anything but the most cursory pleasantries, and I couldn’t blame them. They had come to give a talk to a full lecture hall, and I was just the lowly undergraduate or seminarian they’d been stuck with.

This was not always the case, however, and I was particularly impressed with one speaker who came to the seminary during my middler year. I don’t know how I got to be Desmond Tutu’s escort, especially considering my size (granted, I am much larger than he is), but it was an opportunity I would have been crazy to pass up.

In any event, it ended up being one of my more frustrating tasks during my time at seminary. As I struggled to get him from point-A to point-B around the seminary’s campus and on the streets of Manhattan, always staying uncomfortably close to him, he was constantly distracted by people who recognized him, and we always ended up arriving late to our destination. You see, everyone who approached him had his own story or problem or prayer request, and never once did the elderly archbishop say “I have to be on my way to stay on schedule.” He heard everyone out, he always had something appropriate to say, and it was clear that he was paying attention and that he truly cared about each and every person who approached him.

Too often we think God is less like this and more like the aloof VIPs. Too often we say, “God’s got more important things to worry about than my little problem.” We sometimes think of God as the “big-picture guy” who is more interested in the full lecture hall than the curious fellow on the street. But, the truth is really quite the opposite.

Consider the story of blind Bartimaeus. Jesus had been on his way to Jerusalem for several chapters. He’d been on his way to the site of the biggest show of his career, the largest lecture hall on earth with his last lecture. He had been traveling inexorably to his fate, death on the cross. In fact, after this morning’s Gospel, the very next thing we read in Mark is that Jesus has arrived, he’s got his donkey and he’s entering Jerusalem to die.

But what does Jesus say when he learns that Bartimaeus is calling out for him? “Sorry, but I have to go die for the sins of the world now.”? No. He says “call him here.” We are told that there was a large crowd surrounding Jesus, and even amidst the busy-ness and noise of that great procession, he hears the faint cry of the poor blind man, and he gave that Bartimaeus his sight.

This is tremendously good news for all of us. We need never think that our problems are too small to trouble God about them. We need never worry that we’re taking up Jesus’ precious time when we go to him in prayer.

That’s the good news, but here is the challenge which accompanies it: “Go ye and do likewise.” You see, each of us is on his or her own journey to Jerusalem. Each of us is, if we are following the commandment of our Lord, walking the way of the cross. Bartimaeus figured that out without having to be told. Jesus simply says “Go, your faith has made you well”, but Bartimaeus does him one better. “Immediately,” Mark tells us, “he regained his sight and followed him on the way.” He immediately understood what took the disciples so long to grasp, namely that the proper response to Jesus’ healing, saving work was to follow, living a life of sacrificial service to mirror Christ’s own.

Let us, then, follow Christ, seeing opportunities to serve in small ways neither as distractions nor nuisances, but as the fortuitous prospects that they are. Perhaps, like blind Bartimaeus, we need to be given eyes to see such opportunities, but God will grant that vision if we only ask Him.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

There are several volumes to which I generally turn in order to gain a more fulsome understanding of the Sunday readings, and one of these volumes had the following to say about the Old Testament lesson: These verses have been the inspiration for some of the greatest sermons ever written. These are not comforting words, and needless to say, this will not be one of the greatest sermons ever written.

It is exceedingly hard to know how to approach the prophet Isaiah’s words, for they summarize more poignantly the whole mystery of our redemption than perhaps any other passage in the Old Testament. Perhaps these words benefit from Handel setting them to magnificent music, but it is hard to see how they would benefit from me opining about them for ten minutes.

Perhaps a little history will help, though, or I should say a little historiography, which is the history of how history itself has been interpreted. Over the course of centuries, people have tended to hold what is called a “deuteronomicview of history”, so-called because the writer of Deuteronomy, who probably also wrote Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings, seemed to hold something like this view. Such a view generally holds that there is a neat correlation between good and evil acts, and divine reward and punishment. Do nice things and God will be nice to you; do bad things and God will do bad things to you. This is a helpful way to interpret history if you’re doing well, but no so much if you yourself are suffering. Indeed, the assumption that this is how history unfolds has led far too many people to utter the popular lament “what have I done to deserve this?” and to really believe that they must have done something horrible, even if they didn’t.

By the time we get to the 6th Century before Christ, when today’s Old Testament lesson was written, such a view of history was found to be clearly lacking. The best and brightest Jews had been taken by King Nebuchadnezzar into exile in Babylon, leaving the poorest to live in the wreckage of Jerusalem. Deporting and scattering the leading citizens of defeated nations was a standard tactic in those days, and usually the deportees didn’t have that hard a time of it in their new location. The people were not enslaved, nor were they subject to forced military conscription; they were simply removed to a more neutral location so as not to incite rebellion in their homeland. Thus, the tactic had not caused too much pain and grief to deportees from other peoples defeated by the Babylonians and Assyrians and other major empires of the day.

But this was not so for the Jews, for the land had not only been a useful means of security and livelihood for them. The Jews believed, and they were quite right, that the land was a gift from God. So to have that gift revoked, would have made a number of people believe that they must have done something awful indeed to deserve it.

The God-given, inspired insight of the prophet was that this is not how the judgment of God works. “All we like sheep have gone astray,” he says, “we have turned everyone to his own way.” But God is not in the business of meting out particular punishments for particular sins. Rather it is “the man of sorrows” God-incarnate Christ himself, who was “despised and rejected of men” who “hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows”. Christ, we are told “bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”

This does not mean that everything is peachy under the sun. Suffering is indeed ubiquitous because of our condition, because we still sadly live in a sin-sick world. It is not my particular sin which causes me to suffer, nor your particular trespass that causes you to experience a world of pain, but we encounter the dreadful reality nonetheless.

Walt Whitman is certainly not a thinker to whom I would normally make recourse, but he sometimes got it right, and he recognized the reality of the ubiquitous, indiscriminate suffering he saw. He wrote:

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame;
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done;
I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate;
I see the wife misused by her husband–I see the treacherous seducer of young women;
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be hid–I see these sights on the earth;
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny–I see martyrs and prisoners;
I observe a famine at sea–I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be kill’d, to preserve the lives of the rest;
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
All these–All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out upon,
See, hear, and am silent.

There is indeed much suffering in the world, and many have suffered in ways that I cannot imagine. Many suffer, not because they did anything to deserve it, not because God is punishing them, but because of harsh reality of original sin. Even so, there is exceedingly good news in the sacrifice of the suffering servant; there is remarkable hope thanks to our Lord, the man of sorrow. For we can be assured that the pain we may come to experience in this life is not a punishment, and that even the most intense sorrow is fleeting when seen in the context of eternity.

We are given the promise not only of eternal life, but of new life. “The righteous one,” Isaiah says, “my servant, shall make many righteous.” We are not only assured salvation, but given a means of achieving saintliness. We too may come to experience suffering, but thanks be to God, that we, like Christ, can offer up both our pain and our pleasure, both our sorrow and our joy, to become ourselves servants of the Gospel. As the hymnwriter, John Bowring put it, “Bane and blessing, pain and pleasure, by the cross are sanctified; peace is there that knows no measure, joys that through all time abide.” May we then all come to appreciate our own lives, our own joys and sorrows, not as rewards and punishments, neither as meaningless phenomena, but as realities which can find purpose and meaning in the light of the cross.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.