Sermon delivered on the Feast of Candlemas (transferred), Sunday, January 30, 2022 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH.

Father Wylie gets all whiny in a PhD kinda way when we ask for a written manuscript. Nobody’s got time for a whiny priest with a PhD so click here to listen to the audio podcast of his sermon.

Lectionary texts: Malachi 3.1-5; Psalm 24; Hebrews 2.14-18; St. Luke 2.22-40.

Sermon delivered on Epiphany 3C, Sunday, January 23, 2022 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH.

Father Sang gets all whiny when we ask for a written manuscript. Nobody’s got time for a whiny priest, especially in the new year, so click here to listen to the audio podcast of his sermon.

Lectionary texts: Nehemiah 8.1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 12.12-31a; St. Luke 4.14-21.

Sermon delivered on Epiphany 2C, Sunday, January 16, 2022 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 62.1-5; Psalm 36.5-10; 1 Corinthians 12.1-11; St. John 2.1-11.

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

What are we to make of that strange but compelling story about Christ changing water into wine at a wedding in Cana? What might we learn from it as Christians who seek to be faithful disciples of our Lord in a world going increasingly mad? This is what I want us to look at this morning.

We come to our gospel lesson by way of our OT lesson. In it we note the desperation in the prophet’s voice as he resolves to give God no rest until God makes good on his promise to restore his people. In last week’s OT lesson—which Tucker ignored because he’s a Loser and likes to make my preaching job more difficult, but I digress—God himself had promised to end his people’s exile in Babylon and restore them to the promised land (Is 43.1-7). Now here we are, several chapters later in Isaiah, and God had apparently not fulfilled his promise to Israel to end their exile. And we all get what this is about because we too are waiting for God to consummate his promises to us in Jesus Christ. Simply put, between the pandemic, the strident language coming from our leaders, and the ever-increasing division, rancor, and lawlessness in this nation, we are flat worn out. Now depending on how we view God—whether we think God is fundamentally for or against us—this waiting can cause us to lose hope and/or stop believing that the promises of God to liberate us and his good creation from the powers of Evil, Sin, and Death are true. Neither is a good choice for us as Christians because then we are effectively calling God a liar. Others of us want to roll up our sleeves and work harder to bring in the Kingdom on earth as in heaven to get things moving in the right direction. Notice carefully that Isaiah did none of these things. Instead, he resolved to persevere in prayer like the persistent widow in Jesus’ parable (Lk 18.1-8).

Why am I spending time with this? Because if we lose hope or stop believing the promises of God or attempt to take matters into our own hands, we will eventually be defeated by the dark powers and/or our own fallen nature. If in the end we do not have a vision of God’s new heavens and earth that is robust enough and extravagant enough to help motivate us to keep our eyes on the prize, our faith will always be in danger of being broken by the next setback or catastrophe that strikes us or the world in which we live. And we all get why this is a problem. Think about that prize in your life on which you set your sights, be it work or school or athletics or love or fame or whatever. It was/is big enough and compelling enough for you to do whatever you had/have to do to achieve it. You probably were/are wiling to endure any setback, persevere against all odds, and sacrifice mightily to achieve your prized goal. We need to strive likewise in our faith journey to help keep it strong and vibrant. As our Lord Jesus was fond of reminding us in many of his parables, if we are content to pursue the lesser things of life, how much more should we pursue the greater things of life, like eternal life in God’s new creation? 

And now we are ready to turn to our gospel lesson today because it is the prize on which every Christian should set his/her sights, a foretaste of what is in store for us as God’s beloved and redeemed children in Christ. Before we begin, I want to clarify that when I just talked about pursuing a prized goal, I was certainly not suggesting that we are responsible for our salvation. Nothing could be further from the truth as we saw last week when we looked at the grace of baptism. Salvation comes solely from the Lord, but it does require a response—after all, faith is more than a set of convictions, it demands a response—and if we stop believing the promises of salvation in Jesus Christ, we no longer have the ultimate prize to look forward to because without Christ we are no longer God’s redeemed children. 

In our gospel lesson, then, we see the first of seven “signs” in St. John’s gospel, seven being the biblical number for completeness. Signs in St. John’s gospel refer to Jesus’ miracles, but they are not just supernatural acts. They are significant acts that point us to something greater. Here we see the astonishing extravagance of God manifested in Christ at this wedding in Cana. The wine has run out, a social catastrophe that could have serious legal consequences for the host, and the mother of our Lord asks him to rectify the situation. Please observe carefully that nothing happened until the servants obeyed Mary’s command to, “Do whatever he tells you” (John 2.5). Remember that. At first our Lord apparently rebuffs his mother’s request (more about that later), but ultimately he delivers a whopper, producing the equivalent of 600-900 bottles of the finest wine! 

So what is St. John trying to tell us? Among the many things we could talk about, first we note the theme of the wedding/marriage covenant, a biblical theme that denotes the gracious call of God to his people Israel in the OT and ultimately to all people in and through Jesus Christ. Of course this covenant also describes the intimate relationship between God and his people, a relationship broken by Israel’s sins and ours. No relationship in all creation is more intimate than the relationship between a husband and wife at its best. It is the restoration of this relationship that the prophet sees as the fulfillment of God’s promises for his people in our OT lesson (Isaiah 62.4-5). What could be better news for hurting and broken people who are alienated from God and each other, then and now, than to hear that God loves us as his spouse despite our infidelity? In this wedding/marriage theme we find security, belonging, protection, forgiveness, and healing, among others. And we are encouraged to embrace the love of God for us made manifest in his Son Jesus Christ and to be made new again in our relationship with Christ in and through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Of course, the wedding feast is an integral part of a wedding where we celebrate the newly-formed union of husband and wife because weddings are meant to be public affairs. Scripture celebrates likewise with its various images of the wedding feast or Messianic banquet where God’s people will celebrate their union with their rescuer and savior, the Messiah, whom Christians know to be Jesus of Nazareth. This theme is by no means an exclusive NT theme. Listen to this description of God’s great future banquet from an earlier chapter of Isaiah, a passage that is frequently read at funerals:

In Jerusalem, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies will spread a wonderful feast for all the people of the world. It will be a delicious banquet with clear, well-aged wine and choice meat. There he will remove the cloud of gloom, the shadow of death that hangs over the earth. He will swallow up death forever! The Sovereign Lord will wipe away all tears. He will remove forever all insults and mockery against his land and people. The Lord has spoken! In that day the people will proclaim, “This is our God! We trusted in him, and he saved us! This is the Lord, in whom we trusted. Let us rejoice in the salvation he brings!” (Isaiah 25.6-9, NLT)

We note here the extravagance of God’s grace and generous heart on display like it was when Jesus turned the water into wine. People of the world will gather at God’s banquet to celebrate their liberation from all the darkness of this world and to feast on the finest, well-aged wine and choicest meat, symbols of God’s good creation. None of us deserve an invitation but God invites us anyway. And those who have the good sense to accept the invitation will celebrate the end of their exile and enjoy no second-rate food and drink—we are not talking metaphor here—but the finest food and drink from God’s storehouse of grace. St. John is pointing us to the same promise in our gospel lesson this morning, thus he calls Jesus’ action a “sign.” As the psalmist proclaimed in our lesson, God gives us drink from the river of his delights (Ps 36.8)!

Second, we note that in providing this finest wine Jesus tacitly approves things that make life meaningful and pleasant: relationships, sexual fidelity in the context of marriage, community, hospitality, meals, family, and celebration, to name a few. Contra to those who look for every reason to make our relationship with Christ a lifeless, dour, and grim experience, our Lord will have none of that nonsense in this story. When we are redeemed and healed by Christ, we have no reason to be dour and stingy. Christ gives our mortal life meaning and purpose, even as we live in the darkness of a fallen world and our sinful desires. When we love each other and work at developing healthy and wholesome relationships with all kinds of people, especially the people of God, the promise of this story is that we will find abundance and delight in doing so because we obey Christ. Engaging in the above activities is part of living the abundant life our Lord told us he came to bring (Jn 10.10). Nothing else will do it for us. No one other than Christ can give us the joy of love and the delight found in giving generously of our time, talents, and resources for the sake of others. To be sure, there is plenty in this world to make us sad and beat us down. But the hope and promise of having a real and lively relationship with our risen Lord can overcome the darkest darkness because it reminds us that life, wholeness, health, goodness, and abundance are the reality, not scarcity, sickness, alienation, hurt, or death, thanks be to God! Can I hear an Amen??

Last, the foretaste of the Messianic banquet that will be ongoing in God’s new creation reminds us to keep our eyes on Jesus the prize because the ordinary things of this life will be transformed when he returns and made more beautiful and abundant than we can ever imagine, just like the new wine Jesus made. Think about the most beautiful things you’ve ever seen—husbands, this is a good time to turn to your wife and tell her she is that most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, it’s a good old-creation, anti-doghouse practice—and then try to imagine things more beautiful and abundant than that, i.e., try to imagine the unimaginable. This will give you a clue as to what awaits us in God’s new heavens and earth. I don’t know all that that entails, but I do know that our resurrected bodies will be inexpressively beautiful and without defect or sickness or any kind of malady. We will drink the finest wines without becoming intoxicated and we won’t desire to become intoxicated because we will be enjoying unbroken communion and fellowship with God the Father and the Lamb. There won’t be an addictive or lonely bone in our new body. The intimacy we enjoy only partly now, we will enjoy in full then. We won’t worry about being unloved or abandoned by God or others because we will be living in the light of God’s presence and the Lamb’s forever! I’m sure my puny imagination does not do justice to God’s new heavens and earth in trying to describe our future life. But one thing is certain, we get a glimpse and foretaste of the extravagant love and generosity of God in this first sign at Cana. 

Our future, of course, is made possible by the final sign in St. John’s gospel. Spectacular as this first sign is, the most powerful sign of Jesus is his death and resurrection, where the dark powers are broken and our slavery to Sin with its attendant sickness and alienation are forever destroyed. When Jesus told his mother that his hour had not yet come, he wasn’t pointing to his death, but later in the gospel this was the hour about which he consistently spoke, the hour that couldn’t happen before its time. Without Christ and his sacrificial death and resurrection, we have no future on which to keep our eyes focused because we would still be living in our sin and death would therefore remain unconquered (it’s no coincidence that St. John tells us this creation of new wine happened on the third day). Without Christ’s death and resurrection we would have no motivation to live in the manner he calls us to live. Thankfully, because of God’s extravagant love for us, we do have a real future and hope to sustain us in the midst of our darkness and sorrow (cf. Jeremiah 29.11). When we obey Christ, we allow ourselves to live life and live it in the abundance of God’s extravagant love and grace first revealed by our Lord at Cana. 

So what’s this all mean for us at St. Auggie’s? First, as St. Paul reminds us in our epistle lesson, we are to celebrate in ongoing and diverse ways the gifts of healing, wholeness, and life given us by God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There is no reason for any Christian to live a joyless life, even in the midst of sorrow. Having a joy that is not contingent on the circumstances of life will go a long way in helping us deal with our sorrows when they come. 

Second, we get a taste of the future real deal (new creation) each week when we come to the Table and feast on our Lord. That’s why we serve you fine port wine and bread. It mirrors imperfectly Christ’s banquet in the new creation where bitterness is no more. When you take in Jesus at the eucharist, he should be sweet to your palate and leave you wanting more because of Who he is and what he has done for you. And here’s a little self-check to help you assess your hope in Christ: As you return from the Lord’s Table and/or when you leave worship, would people mistake you for wedding guests or party goers? If not, I challenge you to examine your new creation theology because chances are it is lacking in significant ways. 

Last, it means we are to take our relationship with each other seriously and celebrate those relationships, along with our relationship with God, whenever we can. How we treat each other as family members matters to our Lord and it should matter to us. Next Sunday we take partial possession of our new parish home and we need to make it a sign and foretaste of the extravagant abundance of God’s promised new world. There is no better way to do this than by using our new home as a base of operation for us as God’s people in Christ to shine the light of his abundant love and goodness on the community around us by living and proclaiming our new creation promise in our worship, our fellowship, and our service to Christ and his world. 

Let us therefore continue to pray for God’s kingdom to come in full on earth as it is in heaven and for Christ to give us the grace to be obedient to him so that we will never turn his extravagant wine into water on our watch. After all, the only reason we have to celebrate is God’s extravagant and gracious love for us made known supremely in Christ and him crucified. And that, my beloved, is Good News, extravagantly so, now and for all eternity. So go celebrate and make others wonder what is your secret so you can explain it to them. Maybe even invite them to have a glass of the finest wine with you at the wedding feast of which you are a part so that they too can experience the new eschatological joy you do. In doing so you will also find it to be the needed balm for your soul to help you transcend the death-dealing and soul-destroying business as usual of this world as well as this wicked pandemic that wears us all out. Keep your eyes on the prize who is Jesus and dare to imagine the unimaginable world he promises to usher in, God’s new world that defies and transcends our deepest longings. To Christ be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever.

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

Sermon delivered on Epiphany 1C, the Baptism of Christ, Sunday, January 9, 2022 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH.

If you prefer to listen to the audio podcast of today’s sermon, click here.

Lectionary texts: Isaiah 43.1-7; Psalm 29; Acts 8.14-17; St. Luke 3.15-17, 21-22.

Let the words of my mouth & the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock our redeemer. In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

I have to begin this morning with a confession: I have always found the baptism of Jesus to be a bit perplexing. This is probably not something I should admit as I’m opening up a sermon about Christ’s baptism, but it’s the truth. It’s always been puzzling to me. I am sure you can all see the look of panic in Fr. Kevin’s eyes as he’s perhaps beginning to regret giving me the task of preaching on this text.

In my defense, Father, I think I am in good company. I’m not the only one who has struggled to understand why Jesus would be baptized. Even John the Baptist, the very man who presided over Jesus’ baptism, could not make sense of it. In St. Matthew’s account of this event, we’re told that when “Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him, John would have prevented him” (Matthew 3:14). John made his objection known: He said to Jesus, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” (Matthew 3:14b).

It’s understandable that John would be confused. After all, John’s baptism was a symbol of repentance, a call for people to turn from their sinful ways. At the beginning of Luke 3, we’re told that John “went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Luke 3:3). People from all over Judea came to be baptized by John, and he exhorted them, “Bear fruits in keeping with repentance” (Luke 3:8). In Matthew 3:2, John’s message is summarized like this: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

This presents a problem: if Jesus is who the Church confesses Him to be—the sinless Son of God—why would He need to participate in a baptism of repentance? He did nothing of which he should repent. He had no sins to confess. And yet, Jesus insisted that John must baptize Him, saying, “It is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15). Somehow, in some way, baptism was an integral part of Jesus’ mission.

So what do we make of Jesus’ baptism? How are we to understand it, and what does it mean for us as believers today? This morning, as we examine St. Luke’s account of Jesus’ baptism, I hope that we will see two related truths: First, that in His baptism, Jesus identifies with us. And second, that in baptism, we are identified with Jesus.

Let’s start with the first of those statements: in His baptism, Jesus identifies with us. More specifically, we could say Jesus identifies with sinful humanity.

To begin to unravel the mystery of Jesus’ baptism, we should take note of a detail that is easy to overlook: the location of His baptism. Luke 3:3 tells us that John “went into tall the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance of forgiveness of sins.” For John, the Jordan River was more than just a water source. Pools for used for ritual cleansing were readily available in the city of Jerusalem, but John chose to operate in a remote place. It would seem that John was intentional in choosing this location for his ministry. The Jordan River was the boundary that God’s people had crossed to enter the land of Canaan, the land that He had promised to give to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

It’s near the banks of the Jordan that an important event takes place, an event that is recorded in the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy. God’s people were encamped on the Eastern side of the Jordan River, and at long last, after many years of wandering in the wilderness, they were about to cross over into the Promised Land. But before they did, Moses reminded Israel of the Law God had given them after He delivered them from their bondage in Egypt. Moses urges them to obey God’s commands once they enter the Promised Land. “When you cross the Jordan to go in to occupy the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and when you occupy it and live in it, you must diligently observe all the statutes and ordinances that I am setting before you today” (Deut. 11:31-32).

Moses repeatedly warns the people that he is setting before them a blessing and a curse, good and evil, life and death. If they lived according to God’s Law, they would experience God’s blessings, but if they chose disobedience, they would reap disastrous consequences. Unfortunately, despite these warnings, soon after they take possession of Canaan, God’s people defy Him. They worship false gods and adopt the pagan practices of their neighbors. 

In a heartbreaking passage from Hosea 11, God recounts the tragic choices of His beloved people: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son” (Hosea 11:1). God had graciously freed His people from slavery in Egypt. He had lovingly guided them through the wilderness. He provided them with everything they needed and instructed them about how life works best. Yet sadly, like a rebellious child, the people of Israel spurned the loving guidance of their Father and chose to go their own way: “The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals and offering incense to idols” (Hosea 11:2). 

As a result of their unfaithfulness, the people of Israel experienced all of the curses that Moses predicted: famines, plagues, attacks from their enemies, and ultimately, exile from the land. These consequences reverberated into the time of Jesus and John the Baptist. Even though some of God’s people had been able to return to Judea, they were still under the rule of a foreign power.

With all this in mind, it is no accident that John calls people to a baptism of repentance on the Eastern shore of the Jordan River, the very place where Moses had called Israel to keep God’s Law in the land. Theologian Scott McKnight explains this well: “John is saying that if Israel wants to enjoy the blessings of God, they need to go back to the Jordan and begin again . . . John’s prophetic drama is a reenactment of the entry into the Land.” (Scott McKnight, The Jesus Creed, 67).

But John’s ministry was ultimately about more than just pointing people to repentance. It was about pointing them to a Rescuer. It would not be enough for God’s people to resolve themselves to live according to God’s ways. They had made this commitment many times before and failed to live up to it. And this is where Jesus shows up, the one that John said would come after him would be greater than him (v. 16).

It’s here that we should pay attention to another detail from Luke’s account: the words God the Father speaks to Jesus after His baptism: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (v. 22). We just saw that God referred to Israel in the same way—as His son—in Hosea 11:1. Interestingly, St. Matthew quotes this same verse in His gospel and tells us it applies to Jesus. After the visit from the wise men, Jesus and His family flee to Egypt to escape Herod’s schemes, and St. Matthew tells us that these things took place “to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I have called my son.’” (Matthew 2:15).

The writers of the New Testament are endeavoring to show us that Jesus is the True Israel, that is, that Jesus came to what the people of Israel could not do themselves. We see Jesus as the New Israel right after His baptism when he is led into the wilderness by the Spirit. While the people of Israel grumbled and rebelled against God during their wilderness wonderings, when Jesus is tempted by Satan in the wilderness, He resists the devil and remains perfectly obedient to the will of His Father.

If we put all these pieces together, we get an idea of what was happening at Jesus’ baptism. Why would Jesus participate in a baptism of repentance if he has no sin of His own? Jesus is standing in for His people Israel—and not just for ethnic Israel, but for all sinners, ourselves included. In His baptism, Jesus is acting as our representative, our substitute, by doing what Israel did not do and what we can’t do: perfectly repenting—not of His own sins, but of ours—and completely submitting to God’s will. N.T. Wright explains that this is how Jesus ushers in God’s kingdom on earth: “By humbly identifying Himself with God’s people, by taking their place, sharing their penitence, living their life, and ultimately dying their death” (Wright, Advent for Everyone: Matthew, 38). Jesus lived perfectly, died, and rose again so that anyone who is united with Him can experience all the benefits of His perfect obedience and His saving work.

This brings us to our second truth: in baptism, we are identified with Christ. It’s only those who are united to Christ who can experience the blessings He has secured through His life, death, and resurrection. In Romans 6:3, St. Paul teaches that baptism is the means by which, through faith, we are united with Christ. He says that those who are baptized “have been baptized into Christ Jesus.” He goes on to say, “Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). 

In baptism, as Scott McKnight explains, “the grace of God [is] set loose in the life of the baptized” (McKnight, It Takes a Church to Baptize, 51). Christ’s saving work is personally applied to us. In baptism, both a drowning and a cleansing take place. We die to our sinful nature, which is buried with Christ, and we are also washed clean of our guilt and sin and are raised to walk in new life in Christ.

These are not the only blessings God offers us through baptism. In our gospel reading, John teaches that Jesus, the one who would come after him, would “baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (v. 16). Just as the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus at His baptism, so Scripture connects our baptism with the indwelling of the God’s Spirit. In Acts 2:38, St. Peter says, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit enables us to do what we cannot do on our own: to say no to sin and to walk according to God’s ways (Phil 2;13, Ez. 36:27).

Finally, remember how God the Father says after Jesus is baptized? “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” (v. 22). Scripture tells us that this blessing is ours as well. Romans 8:14 says, “All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.” In baptism, God claims us as His own. We are adopted into His family, and we have a glorious inheritance awaiting us—not the Promised Land, but the new heavens and a new earth, a place where we’ll be free from sin, death, evil, pain, and suffering once and for all (c.f. Rev. 21:4). These are the blessings that are ours in Christ, blessings that God extends to us in baptism.

This morning, as I close, I want to leave us with an often repeated but ever important admonition: remember your baptism.

If you had given this advice as a young Christian growing up in Baptist church, it would have been just as perplexing to me as Jesus’ baptism was. But this is exactly the advice I needed in moments when I questioned, “Did I really understand what I was doing when I prayed for Jesus to save me? Was I sincere in my commitment to Christ?”

Remembering your baptism points you away from yourself and what you have done and points you to Jesus, and what He has done for you. As one theologian explains, “In times of doubt, fear, and even despair, those who worry about God’s love for them, and those who question their salvation or their participation in Christ, should not look inward where they will probably find even more reasons to doubt their salvation. Rather, they must look outside themselves . . . Christians in need of assurance should understand that their salvation is an objective fact, sealed in an event in space and time, as tangible as water . . . Instead of building our hope on the shifting sands of our own works or inner lives, we can have confidence that what Christ did for us is a fact” (Gene Veith, Jr., The Spirituality of the Cross, 59, 43-44).

So, if you begin to doubt God’s love for you, remember your baptism. Remember that God has claimed you as His own. When Satan tempts you to despair over your sin, remember your baptism. Remember that your sin has been nailed to the cross and that you have been washed clean by the blood of Christ. When your body is plagued by sickness and disease, when you grow weary amidst the pain and suffering of this world, remember your baptism. Remember that God has given you His Spirit to guide you, and look with hope to the glorious inheritance that awaits you.

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

Sermon delivered on the Feast of the Epiphany (transferred), Sunday, January 2, 2022 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH.

Father Sang gets all whiny when we ask for a written manuscript. Nobody’s got time for a whiny priest, especially to start the new year, so click here to listen to the audio podcast of his sermon.

Lectionary texts: Isaiah 60.1-6; Psalm 72.1-15; Ephesians 3.1-12; St. Matthew 2.1-12.