Father Ric Bowser: The Spirit of Christmas

Sermon delivered on Advent 4A, Sunday, December 22, 2019 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH.

Father Bowser is still protesting against writing so there’s no text for today’s sermon. Click here to listen to the audio podcast.

Lectionary texts: Isaiah 7.10-16; Psalm 80.1-7, 18-20; Romans 1.1-7; Matthew 1.18-25.

Peering Into the Darkness: The Hope of Advent

Sermon delivered on Advent 3A, Gaudete Sunday, December 15, 2019 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH.

If you prefer to listen to the audio podcast of today’s sermon, usually somewhat different from the text below, click here.

Lectionary texts: Isaiah 35.1-10; Luke 1.46-55 (Magnificat); James 5.7-10; Matthew 11.2-11.

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

Today is Gaudete Sunday, the third Sunday of Advent. Gaudete is Latin for rejoice and like its Lenten counterpart, Laetare Sunday, signals a brief respite from the more penitential and apocalyptic season of Advent where we focus on everybody’s favorite topic, the Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. As we have observed previously, Advent is a season that begins in the dark. It begins during the darkest days of the year and Advent gives us the opportunity to peer into the darkness of the world in which we live, including the darkness of our own lives. Advent often comes as a shock to the system for those who are new to the season. Instead of the bright festive lights and general merriment of the Christmas season, Advent calls us to ponder the second coming of our Lord Jesus, with all its serious ramifications. But this isn’t necessarily bad for us because it forces us to come to grips with the presence of Evil in our lives and in God’s world, and it also helps us truly get ready of the joyous season of Christmas that will begin a week from this Tuesday evening. Without Advent and its focus on the end times, we Christians, like the rest of our society, would likely opt to gloss over the darkness in which we live as well as the darkness of our own lives, substituting instead all the mistletoe and glitter and eggnog and jingle bells celebrations we can muster. Don’t misunderstand, I have nothing against the bright lights and tinsel and Christmas carols and all the rest that we do during this time of the year. Our house is ablaze with the festive symbols of Christmas, both secular and sacred, and I love it. But to focus on all that glitters in hopes that the darkness of our world goes away is to live in La-La Land and it will ultimately prevent us from grounding our hope on Christ where it should be, and this is what I want us to look this morning.

What do we mean when we say that Advent begins in the darkness, or what do we mean when we say that we peer into the darkness? When Scripture speaks of the darkness it usually refers to God’s good world gone bad, corrupted by human sin and the power of Evil our sin unleashed, along with the fact that our sin brought God’s curse on his creation and us (Genesis 3.14-19). All of us here today know what the darkness looks like. We suffer from alienation and anxiety, along with a host of other physical, emotional, and mental disorders. We all have suffered the death of loved ones and we are all acquainted with the various forms of suffering that afflict us. We are heartbroken over cherished relationships gone bad or hopes and dreams crushed. If we have a sense of justice at all we are astonished at the injustice that swirls around us and the vicious and vindictive conversations we find on social media. We read about, or worse yet, experience young lives being snuffed out by drug or alcohol addition and are alarmed at the seeming rise in violence in our society. This is only a small sampling of the darkness with which we must deal and every one of us carries the burden of some form of darkness in our own lives. We know what it is like to fail, to betray, and to fail to live up to our own standards of Christian living, to name just a few. This is what we mean when we as Christians talk about darkness and living in it. Not all is bad and dark, of course, but there’s sadly more than enough to go around. This leads us to ask the classic Advent questions: How long, O Lord, before you act? Is the Lord with and for us or not? Why do you allow all this evil to continue, O Lord? As we peer into the darkness of our own lives and the world around us, we often wonder if God exists; and if he does, does God really care about us and his world?

This is why Advent’s focus on the End Times and Christ’s return is so important for us to reflect on because as we peer into the darkness of our lives and world, Advent reminds us that we have reason to have hope and even to rejoice. We start with our OT lesson. In it, the prophet Isaiah is given a vision of God’s new creation when God’s curse and the darkness of this world and our lives are swept away. The wilderness, a classic biblical symbol for the darkness of this world, is transformed into an oasis and all nature rejoices. Weak hands and feeble knees, i.e., human frailty, will be made strong once again. Deserts will become pools of water and nature will once again enjoy the harmony it apparently enjoyed before human sin brought about God’s curse. No evil or evildoers will be there and therefore no evil will exist. Neither will there be any more injustices to  blight our existence and cause hardship and suffering, presumably because human beings will be transformed to once again fulfill our function as God’s image-bearers who bring God’s goodness and justice to bear on God’s world so that all creation sings and praises its Creator. Sorrow and sighing will be replaced by singing and laughing and rejoicing and as the prophet reminds us here when he speaks of straight paths) and elsewhere, it will be God himself who wipes away our tears (Isaiah 25.6-9).

This is a compelling and wholesome vision of our future as God’s people. And what makes this bright future possible? God’s judgment on all that is evil, on all that is dark, both the spiritual powers and their human agents. Isaiah roars that God will come with vengeance to destroy his enemies and put all things to rights. This is the justice and judgment of God, and while there is obviously a punitive dimension to God’s judgment and justice, it ultimately is for our own good because in it, evil and evildoers are destroyed and God’s world along with our lives are no longer corrupted and afflicted by the darkness of Evil and Sin, our own sins included. Notice carefully here that Isaiah speaks of a warrior God who comes to destroy his enemies and all that corrupts and afflicts us. We are typically not comfortable with this language because it violates our idol of a God who is a kind, grandfatherly type who would never hurt anyone and who welcomes one and all. But this god is a lie and distinctly not the God of the bible, either in the OT or the NT. While it is true that God loves everyone, it is not true that God will fail to address the injustice and darkness that afflict his world and image-bearing creatures. How could we love and worship a God who stood by and did nothing to address the injustices, darkness, and evil(doers) of his world? What kind of loving God is that? 

Of course, the topic of God’s judgment can be a fearful one for us because none of us is innocent. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3.23). But as Christians, we are not to be afraid of God’s judgment, not because we are superior or more deserving than unbelievers, but because we believe that the terrible judgment of God has already fallen on Christ so that God himself has suffered his wrath on our behalf to spare us from his terrible judgment when Christ returns to finish his saving work. If we truly love others we must proclaim this truth to the world, both as a warning and as the joyous proclamation of the day when our God will finally make all things right and new in his new world. Many of us shy away from this because we fear it makes us look “judgmental,” a relatively new term that was certainly foreign to Jesus and the NT writers. Would we refuse, e.g., to warn a person to flee a burning building for fear of being judgmental? Would we fail to warn our kids about the dangers of drugs and alcohol or promiscuity or anorexia [name your favorite danger here] for fear of being judgmental with them? How loving is that? And if you are still bothered by this notion of God’s judgment and justice because it sounds too harsh, what kind of being do you believe God to be in the first place? Does God come to judge because he just doesn’t like us and wants to hurt us? To you parents out there, I ask this question. When you first laid eyes on your newborn child, did you wish ill on your new baby and want the worst for him/her? Of course not! What a ridiculous notion! It is ridiculous because you know you loved your child and wanted the best for him/her the moment you laid eyes on him/her! If we who are broken and fail to love so often can love our newborn babies like this, how much more does God our Father who loves us perfectly love us and want the best for us? Would a Father like this fail to warn us about the day when he intends to make all things right again so that we can be included in that new world and not excluded? God’s justice is simply a complementary dimension of God’s great love for us.

Neither should we be troubled by the language of a warrior God and God’s Messiah because the fact of the matter is that we are at war with Satan and the dark powers along with their human agents (Eph 6.12). These powers of Evil hate us and want to destroy us. They want to separate us from God, our Source of life and health and goodness, and they will stop at nothing make that happen. They are at war with us and the language of the OT prophets reflects that. We also see it in our gospel lesson this morning. The Baptist has been imprisoned by the dark powers and he is confused, despite the fact that he baptized Jesus. Are you really the Messiah, he asks Jesus? John asked this question because he expected a warrior Messiah to appear and defeat the powers and their human agents. Make no mistake. Christ knew he was at war. After all Herod had tried to kill him shortly after he was born and Satan himself waged war against him during Christ’s temptation in the wilderness. But Jesus didn’t wage war against the powers using conventional weapons. To use force and violence meant that the war was already lost. Instead, Jesus responded to John’s questions by pointing out signs of the coming kingdom of God on earth as in heaven: The deaf hear, the blind see, the dead are raised, demons are exorcised. This is what happens when God comes to rescue his people and establish his new world. This is what godly warfare looks like.

This is why Advent is such an important season for us as Christians. It reminds us that despite the darkness that swirls around and within us, we have a real future and a hope. God is waging war on our behalf to rescue us from the darkness and ultimately to destroy the forces that are responsible for the darkness. As St. James reminds us in our epistle lesson, God will answer our Advent questions. God has acted decisively on our behalf to rescue us from the powers of Evil and from ourselves by giving himself to us in a great and costly act. We are therefore to wait patiently and with real hope, the sure and certain expectation that God is good to his word and promises to us to make all things right. We are not to be afraid, nor are we to turn on each other when we do succumb to fear and the darkness because we are a rescued and redeemed people. Every time we forgive where forgiveness is undeserved, every time we love when aversion might be justified, every time we work to alleviate some aspect of the darkness in our lives and the world around us, we are engaged in the battle, not by our own power, but in the Lord’s power on our behalf. We may not see any progress being made. Things may (and often do) appear to remain unchanged, but looks can be deceiving. God uses our efforts and our faithfulness (as well as our brokenness) to accomplish his redemptive will and purposes for us and his creation. How do I know that? How do I know our future is bright and the promise of a new creation devoid of evil and suffering and death and sorrow and darkness of any kind is true? Because Jesus Christ is raised from the dead, thanks be to God! And because he is raised from the dead, I believe the promises of his cross and his Lordship are also true. I also see the faithfulness and indefatigable spirit in so many of you who give of yourselves and your resources to work on the Lord’s behalf. This is why I know the promise of Advent with it proclamation of God’s good justice coming to right all the wrongs is true. 

This is also why I can rejoice today on Gaudete Sunday and you should too if you have a real and lively resurrection theology and hope. This knowledge that God will usher in his perfect justice to right all the wrongs also prepares us to hear the Good News of Christmas, of God’s light shining in the darkness, not to be overcome by it but to destroy it. This is why we need Advent, my beloved. It reminds us that we are beloved by the Father, rescued by the Son, and sustained by the Holy Spirit, and therefore we have a future and a hope because of our warrior God’s promise to defeat the forces that corrupt and hate us, and he has done so in a most unexpected way. Let us rejoice in our Advent hope as we prepare to celebrate our Savior’s first coming and wait for that great and glorious day when he returns to make everything new and right again. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever.

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

Deacon Jonathon Wylie: Preparing for the Kingdom

Sermon delivered on Advent 2A, Sunday, December 8, 2019 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH.

Being a PhD, Deacon Wylie doesn’t have time to provide his sermon text for us little people to read, so you’ll have to click here to listen to the audio podcast.

Lectionary texts: Isaiah 11.1-10; Psalm 72.1-7, 18-19; Romans 15.4-13; Matthew 3.1-12.

December 7, 2019: Pearl Harbor Survivor: What I Saw Aboard the USS Arizona on December 7, 1941

Wow. Just wow.

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President Roosevelt was right to call it “a date that will live in infamy.” But for my fellow survivors and me, it also is alive in memory, like shrapnel left embedded in our brains because the surgeon thought it too dangerous to operate.

Those images remain with us survivors seventy-five years later. Sometimes they intrude into our day, a moment spontaneously combusting, and suddenly we are back in the flames that engulfed our ship or in the oil-slick waters that surrounded it.

Sometimes they come to us in the night, a haunt of images that troubles our sleep. Or perhaps the phone rings, and we flinch. Or a car backfires, and instinctively we duck.

These memories lie within me, forever still and silent, like the men entombed in the Arizona. Others, like the oil that seeps from its wreckage, slip around inside me until they find a way out and make their way to the surface, where they pool and sometimes catch fire.

Over the years, many of us made the pilgrimage back to that harbor, where we have experienced both the soothing of those wounds, and, at the same time, a reopening of them.

Have some been healed? Yes. Year by merciful year. But all? No. And that is true for so many who have survived trauma, not just those who have survived the horror of war.

Read it all and buy the book.

2019: Remember, Remember the 7th of December

Today is the 78th anniversary of the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor (is that possible???) that drew the United States into the great conflagration known as World War II. Ask anyone who was living that day and they can tell you exactly where they were. It was an act of treachery and it proved to be foolishly short-sighted and ultimately fatal for the Japanese militarists. It was that generation’s 9/11.

Sadly the generation of Pearl Harbor is rapidly fading away. But its lessons remain and remind us that we must constantly be on guard as a nation because there are those out there who hate us and want to destroy us and end our way of life.

From the History Channel:

At 7:55 a.m. Hawaii time, a Japanese dive bomber bearing the red symbol of the Rising Sun of Japan on its wings appears out of the clouds above the island of Oahu. A swarm of 360 Japanese warplanes followed, descending on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in a ferocious assault. The surprise attack struck a critical blow against the U.S. Pacific fleet and drew the United States irrevocably into World War II.

Read it all.

Father Philip Sang: Living in Light and Hope of the Kingdom of Heaven

Sermon delivered on Advent Sunday A, December 1, 2019 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH.

It’s Advent. Father Sang hates wearing purple and gets really cranky about it, Even so, he surprisingly offers up the written text of today’s sermon. Click here to listen to the audio podcast.

Lectionary texts: Isaiah 2.1-5; Psalm 122; Romans 13.11-14; Matthew 24.36-44.

Advent is a season of expectation and preparation, as the church prepares to celebrate the coming (adventus) of christ in his incarnation, and also looks ahead to his final advent as judge at the end of time. The readings and liturgies not only direct us towards Christ’s birth, they also challenge the modern reluctance to confront the theme of divine judgement.

The four last things – Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell – have been traditional themes for advent meditation. The characteristic note of advent is therefore expectation rather than penitence, although the character of the season is easily colored by an analogy with Lent. the anticipation of Christmas under commercial pressure has also made it harder to sustain the appropriate sense of alert watchfulness.

Many people have spent some time in the past few days decorating for the holidays, for me, one of the best things about the holiday season is enjoying decorations. I am excited to enjoy them. Specifically, I love Christmas lights. Whether on a tree, candles in a window, or in the lawn, it is beautiful to see those twinkling lights. When I was in Johnson City, TN, I was close to Bristol Motor speedway and they use to have it covered in different Christmas light scenes during this season and I use to drive there just to enjoy the lights and Christmas music playing. There’s something magical about lights. There is something quite peaceful and reassuring about those little lights nestled among the branches that brings a sense of calm to the hustle and bustle of the holiday season.

The preparations remind us that the season of Advent has begun, the start of a new church year, and help draw us in to the awe and wonder of preparing for Christmas. During the next four weeks, we’ll hear a lot about light. Our worship will begin with the lighting of candles, a reminder of the light of the world that is to come. They help us build our anticipation, adding one flickering flame each week, as we eagerly wait to celebrate the birth of our Savior, lighting the way to the manger and leading us to Christmas Eve when we will sing Silent Night with our own candles flickering. But we aren’t there just yet. In fact, we have a ways to go first. Advent, is our journey to get there.

We begin Advent with the words of the prophet Isaiah, who invites us on the journey saying “come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!”

The writings in Isaiah are among the most dazzling and complex in all of our Scriptures, speaking to a complicated community. In the opening chapters, the people are on the brink of the Syro-Ephraimitic war, as the northern kingdom of Israel and the Aramaean kingdom of Damascus tried to force Judah into an unwise alliance in opposition to the Assyrian Empire. When these foes finally laid siege to Jerusalem, King Ahaz turned to the prophet Isaiah for advice and assurance.

Isaiah is known as the “poet of light,” offering powerful imagery of light and life even as he condemns the current priorities of God’s people. In these and other images, the prophet offers a vision of a new heaven and a new earth, prompting the people of God to look ahead to the future and imagine a world in which God, not them, is center-stage. The people in Jerusalem will experience one challenge after another, often brought upon themselves because of pride and arrogance that puts distance between them and God. And yet, this vexing city is an integral part of God’s plan and purpose for the world, so the prophet speaks repeated words of hope and promise in the midst of struggle.

In our reading today, one of his first images features people of all nations coming to the mountain of God and joining together. This means the people of Israel and others – a radically inclusive group that would have been virtually impossible to imagine. A critical part of this interaction is that they come as students, sitting together to learn from the Almighty and seeking wisdom and council for where to go next. The prophet’s vision is not accidental – he wants to remind the people of Israel that their help and guide comes not from their own devices, but from God, and more specifically, from the Torah. All the students, it seems, are on a level playing field and have something to learn. It is the Word of God which will be their guide and open them to new possibilities. Isaiah’s vision is of a community that comes together to discover that path.

This, I think, is a vision many of us can get behind. Like the people of Isaiah’s day, we too are people of God who long for such an image of peace and harmony. We read this text on the first Sunday of Advent as a reminder of hope and aching expectation for the world. Advent is a chance to imagine the world not as it is, but as it should be, and Isaiah paints a beautiful picture for us. The second image gets even better. The very things that separate and divide – weapons- are no more. This is significant. They are not just laid aside. They are transformed into useful tools for growth in a way that only God can do. One commentary notes:

It is not enough to end spears and swords as an act of romance or of goodwill. There must at the same time be production of instruments of life, such as plowshares and pruning hooks. Thus human energies and public resources are reassigned to vine dressing and agriculture. The economy is transformed; the earth is also transformed, from battleground to fertile garden.

Advent doesn’t just hope for an end to the challenges in the world. It proclaims a hope that God will bring about new life; the kind of life that comes in a newborn baby in a manger, and leads to all of creation being restored to right relationship with God. The birth of a Savior.

But Advent isn’t just about that sweet little baby in the manger who was promised long ago. There is another arrival at play for us as Christians – the second coming of Christ. In Advent, we recognize that we are living between Advents, or comings, and are called to embrace the expectation for the time when Christ will indeed return to earth and fulfill in their entirety those promises proclaimed by Isaiah. One of them being the kingdom of Heaven. Our Epistle reading from Romans highlights the hope of the promise of this second Advent.

Paul calls the early church to look to that day with the same kind of eagerness that the people of Israel had for the hope of a promised Messiah. There is an urgency born of this hope that reminds us Advent is more than just a simple time of waiting to open presents under the tree and sing; Advent is a time of action. Paul puts it in the imagery of waking up to the dawning of a new day. Perhaps it is that mysterious moment when the darkness of night begins to give way to shadows, and there is just enough light to know that morning is just around the corner. This is a time of anticipation, and Paul urges his audience to action. It is time to get up and get dressed!”

It is an urge to be ready, as if Christ is coming at any moment. The clothing we put on, according to Romans, is Christ, the light of the world. Bathed in this light, we will be ready to face the new day, even if it seems that darkness has not quite departed.

Isaiah calls us out of the darkness, “Rise and shine! Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!” The words of the prophet are meant to fill us with hope – a hope that God’s word will be enacted. That what has been promised will indeed come true.

Advent declares that God’s light is coming into the world, just as it did so long ago in Bethlehem. Our job is to be awake, ready, looking and listening for it to be revealed to us.

In the end, what Isaiah offers is not only a vision of global transformation, but an invitation to live toward that day. . . The future belongs to God, but the first step toward that future belongs to those who have glimpsed God’s light and are willing to trust that enough light lies ahead.

Theologian Henri Nouwen writes that it can be quite a challenge to live in this way:

Often we want to be able to see into the future. We say, “How will next year be for me? Where will I be five or ten years from now?” There are no answers to these questions. Mostly we have just enough light to see the next step: what we have to do in the coming hour or the following day. The art of living is to enjoy what we can see and not complain about what remains in the dark. When we are able to take the next step with the trust that we will have enough light for the step that follows, we can walk through life with joy and be surprised at how far we go.

May the hope of the prophets light our way as we go up to the mountain of the Lord together. May we learn God’s ways, and may we walk in his paths. Let us walk in the light of the Lord as we anticipate the kingdom of Heaven that has been prepared for us.

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