From Christianity Today online.

The Diocese of South Carolina announced on Wednesday (Oct. 17) that it has disaffiliated from the Episcopal Church, escalating a long-running skirmish and setting the stage to become the fifth diocese to secede from the denomination.

South Carolina said the split was triggered by disciplinary action taken against Bishop Mark Lawrence, its conservative leader. The diocese passed a resolution on Oct. 2 stating that it would immediately secede should the Episcopal Church “discipline, impair, restrict, place on administrative leave, charge, derecognize” or otherwise inhibit the diocese or its leaders.

Twelve lay Episcopalians and two priests in South Carolina brought the charges against Lawrence. The denomination’s 18-member Disciplinary Board for Bishops found him guilty of abandoning the Episcopal Church and renouncing its rules in September.

If you want to know one of the reasons why the Episcopal Church is dying–besides its wholesale abandonment of the gospel–look no further. While not surprising, this is sad, in part, because it gives the Church and the Christian faith another black eye. This, in turn, gives enemies of the cross more ammunition to spread their lies.

Pray for +Lawrence and the Diocese of South Carolina, that God will lead them to a new affiliation and safe harbor. Pray for Mrs. Schori and her minions, that God in his mercy will rescue them from their darkness.

Read the whole sad story.

Sermon delivered on Sunday, Trinity 19B, October 14, 2012, at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Columbus, OH.

Lectionary texts: Job 23.1-9, 16-17; Psalm 22.1-15; Hebrews 4.12-16; Mark 10.17-31.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

In this morning’s lessons, we are confronted with some hard truths about God’s judgment and our relationship with him. We also see some of the difficulties involved in living faithful lives. Simply put, following Jesus is not for wimps and so I want us to look briefly at what we really can expect when we give our lives to Jesus, both in this age and the Age to Come.

We can all relate to Job, the psalmist in his lament, and the man in this morning’s gospel lesson. In one way or another each represents some aspect of the human condition. As we saw last week, Job had fallen victim to Satan’s evil but wasn’t let in on the original joke and so he thought God had caused the calamities that befell him. In today’s lesson, Job wants to protest his innocence to God and yet we see him waver. On the one hand, Job is convinced that if he can get an audience with God, God will acquit and maybe even vindicate him. On the other hand, we see Job wavering in his request, presumably because he is aware of God’s perfect holiness so that even though Job knows he is blameless, he comes nowhere near the holy perfection that characterizes God. Blamelessness is not the same as sinless perfection and Job surely knew of God’s zeal for righteousness and his hatred of evil in any form. It is therefore not unreasonable for us to conclude that this might have given Job good reason to pause and wonder if his blamelessness would really be good enough to pass muster in God’s presence. And if we stop and reflect on our own faithfulness to God, we too might have the same reason to pause and wonder how it will go for us when we stand before the Lord’s judgment seat, even as we desire an audience with him, just like Job did.

Then there is the psalmist who laments God’s absence and fears that God has abandoned him, perhaps permanently. He cries out to God in his need and distress but God does not answer him. This perplexes the psalmist because he knows about God’s reputation of coming to the rescue of his people when they call on him for help. So why is God not answering? Why is God absent? We all speculate on the answer, even when the Bible refuses to give us one, because if we have been at this business of praying long enough, we too have felt keenly God’s absence at times and it makes us wonder if God has finally gotten fed up with us to the point where he has given up on us for good. It’s not a pretty thought to contemplate. And then we read passages like the one from Hebrews this morning where the writer describes God’s word as a two-edged sword capable of cutting to the chase—literally. This makes us wonder further what God is really seeing as he looks at the deepest depths of our heart and it tends to make us even more afraid. If these fears are true, then we really are people without hope. No wonder the psalmist reports that his heart is melting with fear and his mouth is dried to the bone.

Finally there is the man in today’s gospel lesson who approaches Jesus and asks how he might inherit eternal life (Matthew and Luke identify him as a young ruler). We are eager to hear Jesus’ answer because if we are honest with ourselves, that question is vitally important to us too. But before we look at Jesus’ answer, it is important we understand what the man was asking. He was not asking Jesus how to go to heaven. The Greek for eternal life can be rendered as the Age to Come so the man was essentially asking Jesus how he could be part of the reindeer games in God’s promised Messianic Age in which God’s space (heaven) would come down to earth and put to rights all that was wrong in God’s good but fallen world. In other words, the man was asking Jesus how he could be part of God’s promised new creation.

Jesus responded by reciting the need to keep the commandments but the commandments Jesus cites surprise us because they deal with how we interact with others, not God. Where are the first four commandments, especially the first two that command Israel to recognize that God is the only God and worship no other god but him? The man tells Jesus that he has indeed kept all the commandments Jesus has cited. He does so, evidently not in a proud or haughty way, because Mark reports that Jesus looked at him and loved him, not the typical response to someone who is all about himself. But we recognize what’s going on here because in the midst of our fears about how God will ultimately respond to us when we meet him face-to-face, we too try to reassure ourselves by recounting all the good things we have done in Jesus’ name. We think surely that has to count for something in God’s eyes. We just hope our good deeds outnumber our bad ones!

But then we hear Jesus’ response. Sell all you have and then come follow me. Say what? Are you crazy, Jesus? How can I sell all that I have and follow you? That means I would have to give up everything in my life that possesses me to make room for you. Now it is important for us to understand that Jesus does not call every one of his disciples to a life of poverty because some of us do not let money possess our ultimate loyalty and affection. Money never was the issue for Jesus in terms of being his disciple, except in cases like this where Jesus saw clearly that the man’s possessions were his god and possessed his ultimate loyalty. And so Jesus calls each of us to ruthlessly search out those things in our life that are competing with him for our ultimate loyalty and to get rid of them. Like the disciples this astounds us as well because we suddenly realize that we cannot earn our way into God’s presence and ultimately his promised new creation because none of us measure up to God’s holy and sinless perfection. Neither will our money or power or prestige or status be of any use to us because they only tend to distract us and pull us away from loving God with all of our being. And for Americans, this is doubly irritating because we are all about rugged individualism and self-help. We want to do things our way and we don’t want (or think we need) anybody’s help in the process. But at the end of the day, Jesus is reminding us that our possessions and talents are not going to be of much use in helping us to inherit the Age to Come. Only he is, and as we think about this we are astonished to realize that in saying this to the man (and us), Jesus has essentially equated himself with God. Jesus is telling us that he is the ticket to God’s new creation. So that’s why Jesus didn’t mention the commandments about God when he ticked the others off to the man. Jesus is telling us that if we follow and obey him, we are following the first three commandments pertaining to God and we are also following the Shema, all wrapped up into one!

And when we reflect on all this, we begin to realize our fears about God are rooted in ignorance because the assumption behind our fears is that God is essentially a God who dislikes us and wants to punish us when we disobey him. But that is clearly not the God of the OT or NT. To be certain, God does and will judge our evil and wrongdoings, but not because God hates us. No, God judges our wrongdoings because like any good parent realizes with his/her children, God knows our wrongdoing serves to separate us from God and will lead us down destructive paths and dehumanize us. God does not want that for his human creatures, especially those in Jesus whom he recognizes as his children, and so God warns and judges us, not to destroy us but to heal us and help us live as the human creatures he calls us to be.

And if we doubt that, we have to look no further than Jesus, as both our gospel and epistle lessons remind us. While it is impossible for any of us to be saved on our own merits, nothing is impossible for God. That is why he became human and suffered and died for us so that we could be reconciled to him and begin to enjoy real life in the manner for which God created us. As we saw last week, a suffering God is hardly an angry or apathetic God who does not care about us. But God also knows the only path to real life and that is why when he came to us in the person of Jesus, he insisted that we deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him. We must purge everything in our life that competes for our ultimate loyalty and affection so that we can prepare to live in the promised new creation following Jesus’ example. Of course, we cannot do this on our own. We need God’s help and we have it both in the persons of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. When we sincerely desire to become like Jesus, we can go to him in prayer because he is Lord of this universe. We have confidence that he hears us and sympathizes with our human weakness because he still possesses our humanity even as the risen and ascended Lord. That’s one of the points of the second half of our epistle lesson. And so in answer to our prayers, he sends his Spirit to dwell in and among us to further help us in our human weakness so that we can grow to be fully human and be ready to enjoy God’s new creation.

This, of course, is the reward Jesus was talking about in today’s gospel lesson. As we grow to be more and more like Jesus, our heart will naturally want to be with him, much like we want to be with our best beloved. The new creation with its new work and opportunities to love and serve God will itself serve both as context and ample reward for doing so. Think about it. Something is only a reward if we perceive it to be. If we remain hostile to God and stubbornly rebellious toward him, how would living in God’s direct presence ever be a reward for us? Does not compute.

And so we live by hope in this current life, even with all its ambiguities, hardships, and uncertainties, which make us afraid. The way we overcome our fears is to keep our eyes on Jesus through prayer, regular Scripture reading, the sacraments, and fellowship to help keep us from being distracted and forgetting that God loves us and created us for relationship, not destruction. As we get to know God better, we realize that God uses even the hard times to open us up so that he can heal us. But this takes faith and knowledge of God on our part. Are you ready for this challenge? If so, you are promised the resources you need to help you in your struggles. That’s the hard part. There will be struggles. But we are ultimately promised an eternal rest from our struggles and great reward when we persevere in our discipleship so that when we stand before Jesus’ judgment throne, we can have confidence to hear the blessed words, “Welcome, good and faithful servant. Take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.” We will hear those words, not because of who we are but because of who Jesus is. And when we really know that, we will know what it means to have Good News, now and for all eternity.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon delivered on Sunday, Trinity 18B, October 7, 2012, at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Columbus, OH.

Lectionary texts: Job 1.1, 6-22, 2.1-10; Psalm 26.1-12; Hebrews 1.1-4, 2.5-12; Mark 10.2-16.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

This morning I want us to look at the problem of evil. Taking our cue from today’s OT lesson from Job, I want us to look at the vexing problem of why evil of all kinds sometimes falls on good people. I suspect if I polled the room, everyone here would be able to tell a sad story of how evil has befallen someone you know and love—and if you doubt that, take a look at our weekly intercessions. So what does the Bible tell us about what God has done, is doing, and will do about the problem of evil? How can we live faithfully in a world created good but in which sometimes things go horribly wrong? I do not claim to offer a definitive or even comprehensive answer to these questions. I don’t have the time or expertise to make that kind of promise. In fact, at the end of the day, sermons like this may leave you more frustrated than edified. But what God is doing about the problem of evil is a massively important issue for anyone who calls him/herself Christian because it can be a faith-destroyer, even as we are called to live as people of power in the Spirit. So it is worth our best faithful thinking and reflection, and I will leave time at the end of the sermon for Q&A to address issues I might raise but didn’t cover in the sermon.

Before we look at what Scripture says about the problem of evil and what God is doing about it, it is important for us to remember to meet Scripture where it is and to grapple with it on its own terms, not the agenda set by those who are inherently hostile to the Christian faith. Enlightenment thinking and scientific advancement have simply not solved the problem of evil. Sure, we have great new toys. But with every new invention, we create new opportunities for evil people to use them in wicked ways. There is nothing wrong with airplanes, for example. There is everything wrong with flying airplanes into buildings to commit mass murder. Science gave us the airplane but science and the thinking that surrounds it have not addressed the problem of evil and we must acknowledge this before we attempt to look at what the Bible says about evil. The myth of human progress remains precisely that: a myth. Yes, our standard of living has definitely improved. But our ability to use the tools of our improved standard of living wisely and morally (end of life issues created by technology, anyone?) hasn’t always kept pace and those who remain hostile to the Christian faith have no moral high ground or inherent authority on which to stand or berate us as we seek to find biblical answers to the problem of evil.

In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus responds to a trap the Pharisees set for him regarding divorce. This trap is itself an evil act, considering it is about divorce and Jesus is back on Herod’s turf and Herod had John the Baptist beheaded, in part, over John’s criticism of Herod’s marital arrangements (cf. Mark 6.14-29). In responding to the question about divorce, Jesus reminds us that Moses gave divorce laws because the human heart is hard and this was God’s way of accommodating our hard hearts, even though his original intention about marriage has remained unchanged from the time of creation (cf. Genesis 1.27, 2.24). This alerts us to the fact that somehow human sin is inextricably and mysteriously linked to the problem of evil. Apparently as long as human sin remains, so will evil remain. And just as our original sin resulted in God’s judgment on it and got us booted from paradise, so God continues to oppose evil and works to keep it in check in the context of his good but fallen creation (cf. Genesis 3.1-19; Psalm 26.1-12).

But evil is not tied exclusively to human sin as our OT lesson reminds us. In this morning’s texts—and I added some passages that are not in the lectionary so we can reflect on the entire story—the curtains are drawn back (much like they are in John’s vision in the book of Revelation) and we are given a glimpse of God and his heavenly council in action. We see the sovereign God and his angels at work, closely monitoring the affairs of God’s creation. This challenges at once the deist lie that argues God is an absent landlord who really doesn’t care about his creation or creatures, and who therefore allows evil to run its course unchecked.

Yet even as we are given a glimpse of God’s heavenly council, there are deeply puzzling and mysterious questions. Why is the accuser (Satan) there? Why does God ask Satan if he has considered righteous Job? And why does God apparently encourage Satan to test Job’s righteousness? There is much at stake here but we are not given any answers to these questions. From Satan’s perspective, if humans (represented by Job) only love God for what God gives us, then the whole project of creation is a failure because we are only in it for ourselves and cannot possibly love God or reflect his image out into the world as God intended when he created us. God would therefore be forced to give up on his project of creation and start over instead of working to redeem his project, ultimately in and through Jesus the Messiah.

From the writer’s perspective (and ours), we see the age-old question being asked. Why does God let bad things happen to good people? But again we are not given an answer. God does not let us in on the joke as to why he allowed Satan to take from Job everything he had to test his faith and righteousness. That’s why there was a second round of testing because Satan argued that if being deprived of his possessions wasn’t enough to push Job over the edge, being deprived of his health and well-being would. We are therefore witnessing an escalation of the tests. But if God is omniscient, why the need for tests in the first place (and Scripture makes it consistently clear that God does test us)? We are not given an answer to those questions either. Instead, we are reminded in no uncertain terms that there are unseen forces of evil behind the evil that besets us and tests us, but it is not God’s doing.

And despite the unanswered questions that we might have regarding this, we are also reminded in no uncertain terms that God remains sovereign over the forces of darkness and evil. Satan was not allowed to have carte-blanche control over Job. He was (and is) always under God’s sovereign control and we need to pay attention to this, even in the midst of our unanswered questions. God is not absent and God is in control, even in the messiness of the evil that sometimes afflicts us. Do you believe this? The extent you can answer yes is the extent you begin to have the ability to confront evil that afflicts you or those you love with the power of God. More about that in a minute.

Of course, on one level, much of this narrative is unsatisfying. We want our God to be strong, to swoop down and destroy the evil in our midst in some awesome and spectacular way, not unlike the ways superheroes do in movies. But in wanting that kind of resolution we often forget that we are part of the problem of evil. Remember those hard hearts and the sin they produce and the evil they encourage that Jesus talked about in today’s gospel lesson? It seems that if God were to use shock and awe to zap away evil, most of us would be zapped in the process and God is working very hard to prevent that outcome.

So what has God done about the problem of evil and what is he doing now? We see part of the answer in this morning’s epistle lesson. The writer of Hebrews reminds us that God has defeated evil in the death of Jesus. We have seen before that God has chosen to rescue his fallen world and its creatures through his people Israel but that they were part of the problem instead of part of the solution. So God became human to represent Israel in the person of Jesus the Messiah to atone for our sins and rescue us from the power of evil and death (cf. especially Colossians 2.13-15). In language that is designed to remind us Jesus is Lord, the writer of Hebrews tells us that after Jesus overcame sin and death on the cross, he ascended into heaven where God has put all things in creation under his authority. To be sure, Jesus’ victory on the cross is not yet fully consummated. We will have to wait until his Second Coming and the promised new creation for that. But that day is coming and in the meantime, Jesus is no absent king who has gone into heaven to enjoy a well-earned rest from all the dirty work he had to do while he walked on earth. No, Jesus is Lord and the powers and principalities are under his authority and control, just like Satan is under God’s control in today’s OT lesson.

To be sure, this takes great faith on our part. But this is the biblical answer to what God has done, is doing, and will do about the problem of evil. Yes, there are deep mysteries and ambiguities involved. There are many unanswered questions about why bad things continue to happen to good people. But the biblical answer to these questions is this. God judges evil and works to prevent its spread in the context of creation. But the God who has defeated evil is a crucified God who has defeated the powers and principalities by condemning sin in the flesh and nailing it to the cross. And he calls his redeemed people, those who are in Jesus the Messiah, to be his light-bearers and visible signs of new creation to bring healing and hope to the world to signal that while evil still exists in the present creation, its day is ultimately done because Jesus is Lord and the God who reigns is a sovereign God, not an absentee landlord.

And in the meantime until Jesus returns to finish his redemptive and rescuing work, we are promised God’s Spirit to live in us so that we are given hope and strength and power to confront evil in the way Jesus our Lord did. Do you believe this? Do you believe this even in the midst of all the ambiguity and unanswered questions about evil and the messiness of God’s solution in defeating evil through his Messiah and his people? If you do, are you living your life like you believe it? Are you living as visible signs of Jesus’ light and new creation? Don’t misunderstand. I’m not talking about putting on a hap, hap, happy face in the midst of evil. There is real sorrow and affliction when evil strikes us. But even in the darkest valley, we remember in the power of the Spirit that Jesus is Lord and the love of God will never abandon us if we do not reject it–that was the test of Job. And so we have real hope that not even evil can overcome. And if you don’t agree with how God is dealing with evil (or believe he is dealing with it at all), what is your solution to the problem of evil and what gives you the moral and intellectual high ground so that you are able to claim you know better than God in these things?

Of course there are some things we can do to help us bolster our faith. I have given you a very broad overview of what the Bible says God is doing about the problem of evil. But I’ve also left out huge chunks of the story, including the story of God’s people Israel and God’s prophets. Learn the story of how God is rescuing his world and us from evil, sin, and death. Get on a reading plan and start reading the Bible to learn the particulars of this overarching story.

Second, pray everyday for God’s kingdom to come on earth as in heaven and ask the Lord to show you how he wants to use you in that fight (and make no mistake, if you are serious about following Jesus, you are going to be in for the fight of your life because the powers and principalities want to destroy you and your faith so that you will curse God and cut yourself off from the Source and Author of all life). So get to work. But don’t fight alone. Fight alongside your fellow Christians and let God use you to encourage and support each other. If you don’t have a story of how God’s people have come to your aid in real times of trouble, either we are failing you as a church or you have not trusted God to work in and through his people to help you confront evil with hope and Jesus’ light in the power of the Spirit. Think of the good the Church has done over the ages, things like building hospitals and advancing education and feeding the hungry, and how in doing so Jesus has used his people to fight evil of all kinds. And then think about the good that we as a parish do. Think on these things and remember–and then get to work. Don’t ever hesitate to ask for the prayers and tangible support of God’s people and if you need help above and beyond that, come see one of the priests and we will anoint you with oil that has been consecrated to drive away the evil that besets and dehumanizes you. Take advantage of the power of the Spirit in and through God’s holy Church.

Last, come to the table every week and feed on our Lord’s body and blood. Not only will you be taking in Jesus in a real way, you will also have a tangible reminder of the Table that awaits you in the new creation where you will feast with Jesus and his saints and where there will be no more suffering, sorrow, sickness, death, or any kind of evil. I would love to offer the eucharist everyday so that you would never have to go a day without it. Perhaps that will be a reality someday for St. Augustine’s, but in the meantime, come to the table each week!

Think on these things, then. Remember that God is sovereign and intricately involved in his creation and creatures. Look for signs of God’s love in everyone, especially in God’s people. Believing that God has defeated evil by becoming a crucified God is not an easy thing to do. But when by God’s grace we are also given the wisdom and faith to see that God is sovereign and Jesus is Lord, and when in faith we believe we are given the power of the Spirit to help us fight evil in Jesus’ powerful name by following him, we will know what it means to have Good News, now and for all eternity.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.