Sermons

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

There are very few things I lament about our liturgical tradition as Western Christians in general and Anglicans in particular, which is probably why I am generally grumpy when some colleagues perceive the need for liturgical experimentation. That said, there is one thing which I wish were more a part of our inheritance and which Eastern Christians may do a bit better, namely prayers addressed to the Holy Spirit. Most of our prayers are addressed to the Father and prayed in the name of the Son and in the power of the Spirit, but there’s no reason why we can’t pray directly to the other persons of the Trinity. In any event, the work of the Spirit is nonetheless featured in many of our prayers. One of them, which I use at the beginning of each vestry meeting gives us what many take to be two of that same Spirit’s most important activities in our lives – “strengthen the faithful [and] arouse the careless.”

On this feast of Pentecost, when we celebrate the coming of that Spirit and his abiding presence with us, we must be careful to keep both of these divine missions in mind. Our lessons appointed for this morning all focus on the latter: the apostles are given the miraculous ability to preach the Gospel to the nations in various tongues, Paul outlines the variety of gifts given to the faithful to do the work of the Gospel, and Jesus breathes the Spirit onto the Apostles, empowering them to absolve sinners.

I guess I understand why this is our lectionary’s focus; it speaks to a cultural reality of comfortable, nominal Christianity in which we so often need the Spirit to lift us out of complacency and give us power and passion to do God’s work in the world: whether that is the work of evangelization or service to the needy or exercising leadership within the church, or any one of a host of other active vocations within the Body of Christ to which that same Spirit calls us.

But, I’m not so sure that this is really our prevailing reality anymore. Maybe comfortable, nominal Christianity was the primary concern fifty or sixty years ago, and it’s not to say that we don’t ever need the Spirit to roust us out of our complacency today. But I personally grow tired of sermons that tell me that we need to do more–sermons that are, as I said several weeks ago, strong on the Law and weak on Grace. You see, the problem in the Year of our Lord 2023 (at least as I see it, from the perspective of a priest of a parish whose people cannot be accused of not doing enough as far as I can see) is not that the faithful are complacent. I don’t think nominal, cultural Christianity should be our biggest concern. The culture no longer seems to reward that. We might lament the statistics which suggest continued secularization in our society and throughout the West (and I do). But we should also take that with a pinch of salt, remembering that those who do identify as Christian these days are probably a lot more likely on average to actually believe and do what Christians are called to believe and do, the expectation of church attendance for the sake of respactibility no lonmger being terrribly common.

Perhaps this Pentecost the more important focus is that which is absent from our appointed lessons, then, but fully present throughout Scripture-namely, to comfort the afflicted and strengthen the faithful. In the midst of our fallen world there is no doubt that we should pray for and permit the Holy Spirit to stir up in us the will and means to take faithful action. Even so, I think we must first ask that same Spirit to comfort and console us, lest our action be motivated by something other than literal inspiration (the Spirit dwelling in us to guide us).

So today, perhaps, our prayer should simply be that the charismatic activity which our lectionary omitted be forthcoming. Jesus promised this during his farewell discourse, recorded in John’s Gospel, particularly in the fourteenth chapter of the same:

And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of Truth … I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you … [T]he Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, I give unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

The word Jesus uses here is παράκλητος (Paraclete), which we might render more literally in English as “the one called alongside.” You see, the Spirit of God, the Church teaches, is not some phantasm or mere force (hence more modern bible translations and liturgical texts preferring “Spirit” to “Ghost” for the third person of the Trinity, though I don’t know whether or not that choice actually succeeds in clarifying the point).

The Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost is, rather, a person, just as much as the Father and the Son, and he comes along side us just as he dwells in us, to help us when no other helper can be found. And St. Paul tells us, in his Epistle to the Romans, that even when we cannot pray–when we are so sad or angry or frightened or exhausted that we cannot even put our feelings into language–the same Spirit prays in and for us “with sighs to deep for words.”

Come, then, Holy Ghost to us now. Pray for us when we cannot pray. Comfort us when no other comforter is near. Give us strength and courage to meet the days ahead. Help us to trust in the Father’s will, in the Son’s intercession on our behalf, and in your own abiding presence with us now. Give us those gifts that have been promised to aid us in our work for the Kingdom and hope for the Kingdom that has yet to be revealed. At the last, bring us to that pace where with the Father and the Son, you too live and reign to the ages of ages. Amen.

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

This week I attended our annual diocesan clergy conference. I always enjoy the opportunity this provides to reconnect with friends and colleagues, though I’ve often found the programs to be lacking in depth and substance. Not this year. We had trainers from the College of Congregational Development, invited by Bishop Jolly, with the expectation that it would be a sort of preview for programming for clergy and lay-leaders in the upcoming years in this diocese. It was the best program we’ve had at clergy conference in my seven years in this diocese, and it is yet another way in which I’m excited about Bishop Jolly and the new staff she’s in the process of hiring shifting our focus back to the really important work of parish life and vitality, which (as far as I’m concerned) is the primary reasons to have a diocesan office and staff rather than just having a roving bishop who shows up to do confirmations and ordinations and nothing else.

As excellent as our program was this year, I am a little envious of a couple of my friends for their annual clergy conference. They are priests in the Church of England under the oversight of the Bishop Suffragan of Fulham. He took his clergy to Rome this year for their conference. That said, there was one element of their gathering I am grateful not to have been a part of. Namely, they caused a bit of an ecumenical incident. You see, they were given permission to celebrate the Eucharist at the Basilica of St. John Lateran, which serves as the Cathedral of the Diocese of Rome. St. Peter’s in the Vatican, for all its grandeur is not, in fact, technically a Cathedral. A Cathedral is, by definition, the church in which the Bishop of a Diocese has his or her official seat (called a cathedra). So, the Bishop of Rome’s church is St. John Lateran. The Bishop of Rome is the Pope. And here, a bunch of Anglicans came in and used it. When some of a more radically traditionalist Roman Catholic disposition got wind of this there was a bit of a flap about it; I saw some folks even suggesting that the space needed to be reconsecrated, having been desecrated by an Anglican Mass. The Archpriest of the Cathedral (equivalent to what we’d call a Cathedral Dean) had to come out and apologize, saying that there had been a breakdown in communication. Perhaps this was the case; maybe the language barrier played a role, and whoever approved the use of the space didn’t realize “Chiesa d’Inghilterra” meant “The Church of England” not “the Roman Catholic Church in England”, though I kind of doubt it.

In all events, this all reminds one of the sad situation in which we find the church, divided over the centuries into so many communions and denominations. It seems so unhappily in contradiction to Christ’s last prayer, his final request before his suffering and death, which we heard in this morning’s Gospel:

Holy Father, keep them in thy name, which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.

I would humbly suggest that Christ’s prayer went beyond sentiment. That the unity, the one-ness, to which we as the body of Christ are called, is not about some vague, half-hearted acknowledgement of each other’s existence.

The really sad thing is not that we happen to go to different buildings on a Sunday morning. The really sad thing is that our divisions impair our witness. Later in the chapter from which we just heard, Jesus says the following:

I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.

Church unity is not an end in itself, but a means by which others are brought into the fold. In a world of political and cultural division, the unity of Christ’s Church could be a powerful sign of the Gospel’s reconciling power. We’ve done pretty well at welcoming people of other Christian backgrounds into our parish, people who are curious about the way Episcopalians practice the faith. This is a good thing. But how many once totally uninterested people have come and said, let me check out this Christianity thing? Some, certainly, but not as many, and I think that part of the reason is because divisions in the church are a scandal. The Gospel is compelling, but if we’re not living it, nobody will know that it is.

All of this can seem awfully discouraging. There appears to be little for us to do individually, as real, tangible church unity is a matter discussed at the highest levels of Church governance and among professional theologians. This is as it should be, the terms of such conversations revolve around weighty debates about what is essential to Christianity and what is not, issues which are delicate and may seem intractable. We can be charitable about the choices friends and loved ones may have made about being a part other churches, but the larger issues of church unity seem to be outside our sphere of influence.

Even so, there is one thing we can do, and which I myself need to do, as difficult as it sometimes is. We need a change of heart. We can say “we’re all in the same business” a thousand times without really believing it. I can state my own appreciation of the work of other churches until I’m out of breath, while still secretly seeing those other churches as “the competition”. We can in one moment give lip service to ecumenism, and in the next moment be snide about how weird and out of touch those “other Christians” seem to be. I’m frequently guilty of this.

The most important thing to remember, though, is that Christ’s prayer for unity was not about being politique or delicate with those with whom we think we have so little in common. Christ’s prayer for unity has its basis in genuine love, as he says in the final verse of the chapter from which our Gospel is taken:

I made known to them thy name, and I will make it known, that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them

Through our love of Jesus we come to love one another, even those whose religion seems to us strange or over-the-top. Again, none of us is in a position to effect the institutional unity of the church to a great degree, but we all have a part to play in bringing about its unity in love. Ultimately, that sort of unity is a necessary precursor to the other. Unless we truly love our brothers and sisters, unless we have that invisible bond of unity, visible unity can never exist. Far from being a matter for only the highest levels of church leadership, church unity must begin with each of us, setting aside our discomfort, and “living in love as Christ loved us.” This is easier said than done, but it is our charge. May we be given the charity to accomplish it.

+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.

It will be no surprise to you that I’ve never been of the opinion that all religions were just paths up the same mountain, because I believe with all my heart that Jesus Christ is not only the fullest expression we’ve ever seen of godliness, but that he was and is none other than God (full stop). But Paul’s sermon to the Athenians strikes me as providing an important caveat to this view.

“Men of Athens,” he says, “I perceive that in every way you are very religious.” Of course, he could be speaking ironically, and no doubt “religious” meant something very different in Greek–and in English before the nineteenth century, for that matter–than it does today. Specifically, the definition of “religion” had to do with one’s practice of piety rather than any particular set of doctrines and practices which constitute distinct faiths; this is an important distinction.

But then Paul uses several Greek words which should give us pause. They’re all translated imprecisely in our English versions, a testament to the fact that the act of translation is always an act of interpretation. “[I] observed the objects of your worship” the RSV says, but in Greek it’s “I beheld your σεβεσματα” that is “devotions”. The RSV says “what therefore you worship as unknown”, in Greek is “what ignorantly you ευσεβειτε” or “are being devout to”. While the RSV gives a weak translation “served by human hands”, the Greek uses a word with stronger religious significance: “θεραπευται” meaning something like “attending to”.

Devotion and attendance. These are the actions of sincere worship. This is the language that would have been used for priests of God’s temple in Jerusalem, and they are still used (if, sadly, less often) to describe what we do in church. They are words implying a response of love and commitment and genuine conviction. I try, sometimes, to model a language of worship. It is not preciousness but precision; not meaningless grandiloquence (I hope) but appropriate care for that which is, I believe, sacred. So, we don’t just put on a church service, but we devote ourselves to prayer. We don’t just “serve Communion,” but we attend to the holy sacrifice.

Now the problem with the Athenians was not that their love and commitment and conviction (their devotion and attendance) was insincere; rather, it was simply misplaced. They were devoted to objects unworthy of devotion; they attended to pagan idols rather than to the ministrations offered to the God of Israel. They are not being let off the hook. Nonetheless, Paul’s language acknowledges what might be fairly called heartfelt religion. We can see in the Athenians this nascent desire to reach out to what is greater and truer than their ordinary lives. In other words, they have an inherent disposition to religion, and it’s more a matter of directing that devotion and attendance to its rightful recipient. Paul even goes so far as to suggest that some have felt inklings of this truth before having heard the Christian Gospel: “Even some of your poets have said, ‘For we indeed are his offspring.’”

Critics of religious studies as a discipline with whom I became enamored as an undergraduate suggested that “religion” was not a category into which we could place the various paganisms outside Christendom, and this was the position I held for some time in my more callow youth. What Paul suggests, though, is that things are not so clear-cut. The seeds of faith, of true religion, may well be innate. We are disposed to worship the one true God who created us and to worship Him rightly; we just need to be told about the Way.

This is good news for we who are called to labor in the fields of the Lord. The fields are more ready for harvest than we might have imagined, because God has given all His children a keen disposition to seek Him out even before they know his name. When we, like Saint Paul, share the hope that is in us, when we point to the statue of the unnamed god and say “I know his name, it is the blessed name of Jesus, which has been exalted over every name”, then we may well be surprised to find an audience open to that very possibility. We may well find an audience that has been eagerly waiting for that Good News without even having realized it.

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