Sermon delivered on Trinity 9B, Sunday, August 1, 2021 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: 2 Samuel 11.26-12.13a; Psalm 51.1-13; Ephesians 4.1-16; St. John 6.24-35.

May the words of my mouth and meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you o Lord our Rock and our Redeemer, In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen

A deep spiritual hunger is implanted in every human heart. Different people will seek to fill this need in different ways, but the hunger is not unique. People yearn for a deeper connection, an eternal spiritual connection, and when that is lacking will seek any means to be fulfilled. Jesus said he came that we might have life and have it abundantly. Yet, he who offered fullness of joy was often met by people with simpler, lesser needs. In the fifth chapter of John’s gospel, Jesus met a Samaritan woman who longed for living water so she wouldn’t have to keep returning to the well each day. Jesus started with that basic need and used it to forge a relationship with her that ended with the woman reconnected to God and to others in her community.

In our gospel reading for today, Jesus has met the immediate needs of a host of people. Those remaining after he fed 5,000 with a little fish and bread seek out Jesus. Jesus tells them, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”

The previous day, Jesus fed their physical hunger with bread and fish, and the crowd sought him out once more. Jesus points them to their spiritual hunger, which is what he really wanted to fill. After all, the people were created to love God and love others as they loved themselves, and in chasing after other needs, they risked getting further from the real nourishment they needed. Jesus compares this to the original bread from heaven, manna, with which God miraculously fed the children of Israel for 40 years in an uninhabitable wasteland. This was the daily bread that would come anew each morning, with enough to last the day and a double portion for the Sabbath. Now Jesus compares the daily bread of manna, which God gave in the desert, to the Bread of Life, which God offers in Jesus Christ. Jesus says, “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Jesus offers nourishment, which goes to the heart of our most basic human need to fill a spiritual hunger. Having been created to be in relationship with God, without that connection, we can feel empty.

It is an easy move to connect Jesus referring to himself as the Bread of Life to the Eucharist. For in the mystery of the Eucharistic feast we eat the bread and drink the wine, and in so doing we partake of the body and blood of Jesus. But we don’t want to jump to that correct response so quickly that we miss the bigger picture.

This discourse comes when Jesus has two more years of ministry ahead of him. There is much more time left in Jesus’ ministry before he gets to that last meal with his disciples. John’s gospel makes clear what the other three gospels only hint at: the Eucharist is not about Jesus’ death alone. Jesus’ self-giving act in communion is not only concerned with the Last Supper, the cross and the empty tomb alone. Jesus’ whole life, rather than just one or two events, will institute the sacrament of communion. Put differently, faith is not in Jesus’ death and resurrection alone, but in Jesus’ whole life – from Bethlehem to Golgotha, and beyond to an empty tomb in a garden, Jesus’ appearances to his disciples, and his ascension to heaven. Everything Jesus did – who Jesus was and how he acted – are part of God’s revelation to us. We cannot separate one part of his life from the rest. Nor should we have a Christian part of our lives separate from the rest of our lives. We are to take Jesus’ whole story and make it part of our whole story. This is much more than hearing the word, it is word and deed. In baptism, we do not simply hear of Jesus’ baptism, but water is poured over us as a sign that we are united with Christ through baptism. We don’t just hear the story, we are actually baptised. In the Eucharist, we don’t merely listen to the words, “Take eat,” but we actually get up, come forward to take and eat. It’s not just the bread that we take, bless, break and give. God took Jesus’ whole life, blessed, broke it and gave it to us. We are to let that story of God’s love for us take us, bless us, break us and give us back to the world. Jesus wanted those who followed him after having their fill of fish and bread to discover real spiritual nourishment so that they would never hunger again. And yes, one is fed through the Eucharist, but this too is only part of the picture. Our Sunday worship is to be just a part of how we are fed spiritually. Compare spiritual nourishment to food. Eating out once a week in a restaurant is not unusual. In fact, it is rare to find someone who eats out only once a week. But what if that was the only meal the person ate.

Someone who goes back to their familiar seat in a restaurant week after week to enjoy their one meal of the week could never be nourished enough to make it through the remaining six days. In the same way, common worship in church on Sunday is meant to be an important part of one’s spiritual food and drink, but it will never satisfy your hunger if this is your whole plan for feeding your spirit.

Fortunately, the Anglican Church has a centuries-old norm of daily prayer that is well suited to filling this void. The Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer as found in the Book of Common Prayer are a wonderfully enriching daily devotion. When praying in this way, together with the daily scripture readings, one is better prepared to meet whatever comes. It is not that troubles never occur to people who pray and read their Bible; it’s just that those who dwell daily in prayer and scripture are more connected to God as revealed in Jesus Christ. Then whatever comes, they can call on that connection.

So much of our lives is spent working for the food that perishes. We must work to earn food, water and shelter and all the extras that make life enjoyable. But we know there is more to life than the daily grind. For a fulfilled life, one should commit a portion of each day to prayer and reading the Bible, for that is the food that endures for eternal life and the gift of Jesus who came so that you might have an abundant life.

Paul in today’s epistle lesson reminds us that God has chosen us to be Christ’s representatives on earth, in light of this truth, Paul challenges us to live lives worthy of the calling we have received -the awesome privilege of being called Christ’s very own. This life includes being humble, gentle, patient, understanding, and peaceful. People are watching your life. Can they see Christ in you? How well are you doing as his representative?

It is my prayer that as we seek the food that endures that each of us will live a life worthy of the calling we have received.

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

Sermon delivered on Trinity 8B, Sunday, July 25, 2021 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: 2 Samuel 11.1-25; Psalm 14; Ephesians 3.14-21; St. John 6.1-21.

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

In our epistle lesson, St. Paul prays for the power of God in the lives of his people, of you and me. He ends by making the bold declaration that God’s power working in us is “abundantly more than we can ask or imagine.” What does the apostle have in mind when he tells us this? How are we to read this in light of David’s folly in our OT lesson? This is what I want us to look at.

If you have been a Christian for any length of time you will certainly know it is not an easy thing to be a Christ follower and lover. As the psalmist reminds us starkly in our lesson, there is no one who does good, not a single person. It seems that we all have inherited Adam’s sin-sickness, a sickness that distorts and corrupts God’s image in us and makes us think, say, and do all kinds of things that dehumanize us. This, of course, is not God’s original intention for us as his image-bearers and our sin-sickness disqualifies us to rule God’s world on God’s behalf. Yet hard as we try—and try we do being the proud rebellious creatures we are—none of us have the ability to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps so that we can be the humans God created us to be. What to do?

Enter the power of God. When St. Paul prays for God’s power to be with us, he has in mind first and and foremost God’s ability to overcome our sin-sickness on our behalf. And even a superficial reading/knowledge of Scripture reminds us that God does indeed have the power to deliver us from our incurable sin-sickness. He is the God who created this vast universe by speaking it into existence out of nothing. He is the God who has the power to raise the dead as he did with Jesus that first Easter morning. He has the power the free his people from their bondage to slavery as he demonstrated when he brought his people Israel out of Egypt at Passover. And as our gospel lesson testifies, God become human has the power to feed the masses and rule over the storms of creation and life. Many of us have not experienced God’s power in such a spectacular manner, but some of us have, experiencing mighty acts of healing and other acts of God’s transformative power. 

And this power is surely behind St. Paul’s prayer for Christ’s body, the Church, in our epistle lesson. Earlier he made the astonishing claim that God’s purpose for his Church, for you and me, is to demonstrate God’s wisdom and purposes for healing and redemption to the dark powers and their human agents. Imagine that! We as Christ’s people are called to show the world and the powers who have usurped God’s rightful rule—an enigmatic mystery in its own right; why did God allow that?—how to be human and live according to God’s good will and created order! Clearly we cannot do that on our own because we are hopelessly sin-sick. Most of us can’t even manage to follow through on our new year’s resolutions for more than a month let alone live faithfully and obediently as God’s image-bearers! So how do we become God’s healed and redeemed people? Answer: by the grace and power of God. But how does that work? It works to the extent that we can bind ourselves to Christ so that we understand the nature of God’s power in us. When God empowers us to be his people, he does not empower us to lord it over others or to be mighty conquerors. Doing so would only help us impose our selfish desires on others—we do that quite nicely on our own, thank you very much—and satisfy our fallen human nature. No, the kind of power about which St. Paul speaks is the power to forgive, the power to be patient, the power to love, the power to be compassionate, the power to be humble, and the power to do good, to name just a few. It is the power to take up our cross and follow Christ, especially in the face of the world’s scorn and hatred of Christ and us, to suffer for his name’s sake so that he can use us to help bring in his kingdom on earth as in heaven. It is the type of power that doesn’t always bring immediate results; in fact, it is power that often looks like failure in the eyes of the world. And because it does not often meet our expectations of what real power looks like—the ability to impose our will and views on others, to stop at nothing in an effort to obtain security and wealth and status—we often mistake God’s power for weakness and timidity, and we treat it scornfully.

This is nothing new. Ask the surviving disciples on that Good Friday night if Christ was truly God’s Messiah and/or if they had seen God’s mighty power at work, and they would have looked at us like we had three heads. It took the power of the Resurrection for them to see that in the cross—a worldly sign of humanity’s ability to degrade, to torture, to humiliate—God’s power to forgive all our sins was at work and accomplishing God’s purposes. Nobody in Christ’s day expected a crucified God and many in our own day join with them despite the fact that we have 20-20 hindsight now. 

Yet it is only in Christ’s death and resurrection that we find forgiveness of our sins and the table set to have real reconciliation with God our Father, something the world has not seen since before the Fall and until God arrived on the scene in the person of Jesus to deal with our sins and hostility toward him. At just the right time, St. Paul tells us in Romans, Christ died for us, even though we were still God’s enemies. Before Christ and bereft of his Holy Spirit, none of us would even consider dying for our mortal enemies, and even with the Holy Spirit living in us and making Christ known and available to us, many of us still struggle with the notion of loving our enemies, let alone dying to save them because we are so profoundly broken. But this is exactly what we are called to do, and as St. Paul promises in our epistle lesson we do indeed have Christ’s power and presence in us in and through the presence of the Holy Spirit to transform us into the people God created us to be so that we will one day be fit to rule God’s new world, the new heavens and earth. 

So if this is true, why do we have stories like David and Bathsheba in our OT lesson? After all, here we have King David, the man after God’s own heart, who was clearly endowed with God’s Holy Spirit even before the Spirit was made available to all God’s people at and after Pentecost, involved in one of the most sordid stories in all the Bible. In this story, we see God’s man commit adultery and then murder to cover it up to save his own skin (adultery was a capital offense in Israel, even for a king). And it was a murder committed with great cynicism and malice aforethought to boot. Not only did David violate the commandments to not commit murder, he also violated three others: he coveted his neighbor’s wife, stole her from her husband, and lied about it. Five out of ten is an impressive batting average, even for the worst sinners among us, let alone God’s anointed king. How could this have happened? In David’s case, there were some unfortunate circumstances involved, but we all have endured those before, often without sin. No, the bottom line is that David let his sin-sickness control him and the results were catastrophic, just as all sin is. In great understatement the writer ends this sordid story by observing succinctly that the thing David did displeased God. You don’t need reality TV. Just pick up your Bible and read it if you want to see humans at their worst. But unlike reality TV, you will actually profit from reading and pondering these stories.

All this can be terribly unnerving. Are God’s promises false? Was St. Paul delusional in praying his prayer found in our epistle lesson? Some would say yes. After all, we all know stories of religious leaders missing the mark and falling into catastrophic and grievous sin. You all have to put up with me on a regular basis, surely proof positive that God’s promises have failed! But for those of us who pay attention to these things, for every failure we can count many more successes in our lives and the lives of those we love. Think of serious illnesses that were healed. Think of hopelessly damaged relationships restored. Think on the fact that all of us here are reconciled to God while none of us deserve a lick of it! No, the power of God is real, even if at times it can certainly be unpredictable and enigmatic. But we must keep our eyes focused on Christ our prize, for only in and through his power do we have any hope of overcoming our sin-sickness and enjoying eternal life with him now and forever. In this world there will always be heartache and failure; after all, we live in a cursed world ravaged by human sin that naturally separates us and keeps us alienated to God our Father, the Source and Author of all life and health. Thus we suffer and fail. But there is also victory and healing and redemption in this world and I would boldly suggest that our little parish is a microcosm of God’s victory on our behalf in and through Christ, warts and all. Despite the fact that we are losers and ragamuffins, we are a family who love each other and support each other, despite the times when we irritate each other. We are usually patient and kind and (hopefully) forgiving of each other. We care for each other and enjoy sweet fellowship despite our differences. These are all signs of God’s power at work in us because none of this is possible without Christ in our midst and as our Center. And if you think otherwise, you are the one who is delusional, not St. Paul.

I close with a story from The Way of a Pilgrim that illustrates how Christ typically works in his people. 

We sat down to table and the officer began his story: “I have served in the army ever since I was quite young. I knew my duties and was a favorite of my superiors as a conscientious officer. But I was young, as were also my friends, and unhappily I started drinking. It went from bad to worse until drinking became an illness. When I did not drink, I was a good officer, but when I would start drinking, then I would have to go to bed for six weeks. My superiors were patient with me for a long time, but finally, for rudeness to the commanding officer while I was drunk, they reduced my rank to private and transferred me to a garrison for three years. They threatened me with more severe punishment if I would not improve and give up drinking. In this unfortunate condition all my efforts at self-control were of no avail and I could not stay sober for any length of time. Then I heard that I was to be sent to the guardhouse and I was beside myself with anguish.

“One day I was sitting in the barracks deep in thought. A monk came in to beg alms for the church. Those who had money gave what they could. When he approached me he asked, ‘Why are you so downcast?’ We started talking and I told him the cause of my grief. The monk sympathized with my situation and said, ‘My brother was once in a similar position, and I will tell you how he was cured. His spiritual father gave him a copy of the Gospels and strongly urged him to read a chapter whenever he wanted to take a drink. If the desire for a drink did not leave him after he read one chapter he was encouraged to read another and if necessary still another. My brother followed this advice, and after some time he lost all desire for alcoholic beverages. It is now fifteen years since he has touched a drop of alcohol. Why don’t you do the same, and you will discover how beneficial the reading of the Gospels can be. I have a copy at home and will gladly bring it to you.’

“I wasn’t very open to this idea so I objected, ‘How can your Gospels help when neither my efforts at self-control nor medical aid could keep me sober?’ I spoke in this way because I never read the Gospels.

“‘Give it a chance,’ continued the monk reassuringly, ‘and you will find it very helpful.’

“The next day he brought me this copy of the Gospels. I opened it, browsed through it, and said, ‘I will not take it, for I cannot understand it.’

“The monk did not give up but continued to encourage me and explained that God’s special power is present in the Gospel through his words. He went on, ‘At the beginning be concerned only with reading it diligently; understanding will come later. One holy man says that “even when you don’t understand the word of God, the demons do, and they tremble”; and the passion for drink is without a doubt their work. And St. John Chrysostom in speaking about the power of the word of God says that the very room where the Gospel is kept has the power to ward off the spirits of darkness and thwart their intrigues.’

“I do not recall what I gave the monk when I took the copy of the Gospels from him, but I placed the book in my trunk with my other belongings and forgot about it. Some time later a strong desire to have a drink took hold of me and I opened the trunk to get some money and run to the tavern. But I saw the copy of the Gospels before I got to the money and I remembered clearly what the monk had told me. I opened the book and read the first chapter of Matthew without understanding anything. Again I remembered the monk’s words, ‘At the beginning be concerned only with reading it diligently; understanding will come later.’ So I read another chapter and found it a bit more comprehensible. Shortly after I began reading the third chapter, the curfew bell rang and it was no longer possible for me to leave the barracks.

“In the morning my first thought was to get a drink, but then I decided to read another chapter to see what would happen. I read it and did not go. Again I wanted a drink, but I started reading and I felt better. This gave me courage, and with every temptation for a drink I began reading a chapter from the Gospels. The more I read, the easier it became, and when I finally finished reading all four Gospels the compulsion for drink had disappeared completely; I was repelled by the very thought of it. It is now twenty years since I stopped drinking alcoholic beverages.

“Everyone was surprised at the change that took place in me, and after three years I was reinstated as an officer and then climbed up the ranks until I was made a commanding officer. Later I married a fine woman; we have saved some money, which we now share with the poor. Now I have a grown son who is a fine lad and he also is an officer in the army.”

Notice first how Christ used human agency (the monk) to introduce the young soldier to his Gospel. Notice how the monk abandoned his agenda (begging alms for the church), at least temporarily, to address a person’s needs that he perceived. We have to be ready to see others in pain if we ever hope to help them address it. Notice too the monk’s gentle persistence and the faith he had in the transformative power of the Gospel in people’s lives, a faith based, in part, on past experience.

Next, pay attention to how Christ used circumstance instead of understanding to stay the young soldier’s hand from drinking. He read the Gospel without understanding it, but was prevented from going on a drinking binge because he had lingered too long in his quarters to read it. Was it really coincidence that the soldier found the gospels before he got to his drinking money? This is how God typically works to control the circumstances of our lives in a wise and loving way, but we have to pay attention to realize it!

Finally, mark how understanding occurs—through persistent reading. Ask anyone who reads the Bible regularly and systematically and you will hear this same answer. God grants understanding to humble minds willing to submit to his word (as opposed to trying to make his word submit to their agendas, which sadly many try to do, especially today) through our persistent reading of his word. God doesn’t beat us over the head to make us learn (usually). Instead he uses ordinary people and circumstances along with our own efforts to speak to and transform us. God can use even less than ideal circumstances to break through to us, as the young solder discovered. That may not be sexy enough for some of us but it is much more effective over the long haul because God respects us and our relational integrity. So if you are struggling with your faith, do the things that will cultivate Christ’s power. I beseech you, my beloved. Give yourself completely to Christ if you have not done so already. Please. Don’t hold back. Don’t be afraid. He loves you and he will not ultimately fail you because he is the only one who remains faithful to the Father! Cultivate his presence and power. He is our only hope to rescue and heal us from our sin-sickness! Read Scripture regularly. Partake in the Holy Eucharist as St. John exhorts us to do in our gospel lesson (listen if you have ears). Enjoy sweet fellowship with God’s faithful people, remembering our Lord’s promise to his fearful disciples in the midst of a life-threatening storm. Don’t be afraid, it is me, and only I have the power to save you. I know your lives are no less stormy. Trust in my power, and if you begin to doubt that power, meditate on my death and resurrection because in these events are your only hope and future. Doing so will remind you of the surprising and sometimes unpredictable power of God. Now to him 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 Trinity 7B, Sunday, July 18, 2021 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH.

Like Father Wylie, Father Sang gets all whiny when we ask for a written manuscript. Nobody’s got time for yet another whiny priest so click here to listen to the audio podcast of his sermon.

Lectionary texts: 2 Samuel 7.1-14a; Psalm 89.20-37; Ephesians 2.11-22; St. Mark 6.30-34, 53-56.

Sermon delivered on Trinity 6B, Sunday, July 11, 2021 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH.

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

Lectionary texts: 2 Samuel 6.1-5, 12b-19; Psalm 24; Ephesians 1.3-14; St. Mark 6.14-29.

Sermon delivered on Trinity 4B, Sunday, June 27, 2021 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: 2 Samuel 1.1, 17-27; Psalm 130; 2 Corinthians 8.7-15; St. Mark 5.21-43.

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

We hold our quarterly healing service today. Most of you will come forward for us to anoint you with healing oil, lay our hands on you, and pray for you according to your needs/requests. Some of you will find immediate healing and relief. Others of you will not. What are we to make of that? Are the ones who have prayers answered like the woman of great faith in our gospel story today? Do those whose prayers remain ostensibly unanswered lack sufficient faith? These are vexing questions and deserve our attention. This is what I want us to look at this morning.

Out of the depths, O Lord, I cry to you! If you have lived long enough you can relate to the opening line of the psalmist from our psalm lesson this morning. Life can weigh us down to the point where we feel like we are drowning. Some of our parish family are struggling with chronic illness and devastating loss, this despite their fervent prayers for healing/recovery. It’s heartbreaking to watch. We all know others who cry out for God’s healing power or relief from a host of evil maladies that weigh them down terribly and yet apparently find no relief. On the other hand, the Lord recently granted what was effectively a healing miracle to a woman for whom our intercessors have been praying. Her doctors were convinced she had pancreatic cancer, a death sentence as we all know. But there were fervent prayers asking for healing and when the tests came back, it was discovered she had lymphoma, which while still cancer is highly treatable with a fairly good prognosis. The doctors were stunned. Welcome to the challenge of living in a good world cursed by God over human sin and rebellion. We experience incredible beauty of all kinds living alongside incredible ugliness of all kinds, and it can make us crazy. Out of the depths, O Lord, I cry to you! Indeed.

And this dynamic, along with the questions it raises, is not new or unique to our day. We see it in our gospel lesson this morning. St. Mark sandwiches two stories of healing, faith, and fear together for our edification. What is he trying to tell us? Surely the woman with the chronic bleeding problem had prayed to God for healing and help. She had suffered under many doctors and found no relief or healing. We all know or have heard of folks who struggle likewise today despite our spectacular medical advancements and knowledge that often produce phenomenal results. It is not a stretch of the imagination to think this poor woman had prayed Psalm 130 regularly as part of her entreaties to the Lord. Not only was her bleeding a medical problem, it was also a social problem because it rendered her unclean and she was not supposed to even be there in the crowd with the others. Yet there she was, trembling in fear over the possibility that Jesus and/or the crowds would turn on her because of her unclean condition. 

Then there was the leader of a local synagogue whose daughter was desperately ill to the point of death. Jairus risked scorn and humiliation reaching out to this itinerant teacher who had on more than one occasion come into conflict with Jairus’ counterparts over matters of faith and practice. Yet here he was, desperate for our Lord to come and save his daughter. He too had likely prayed Psalm 130 in desperation before reaching out to Christ for help. 

So what is St. Mark trying to tell us in these gripping stories of faith, fear, and healing? We start with the woman. Here we see a person of great faith. She was convinced that if she could just touch Jesus’ clothing, she would be healed. Indeed, our Lord confirmed that her great faith had healed her once she did touch his clothes. So is St. Mark telling us that healing depends on faith? After all, we’ve all heard a version of this claim before. Doesn’t this scene prove that it’s true? Not so fast my jumping-to-wrong-conclusions friends! While Christ did tell the woman that her faith had healed her, it was clearly his power that had caused the healing. Notice the remarkable statement Jesus made before he told her that her faith had made her well. As soon as she touched him, Christ felt power go out from him and he said so. It was his healing power, aided but not dependent on the woman’s great faith, that had caused her to be healed. Furthermore, the woman’s faith wasn’t perfect. After all she approached Jesus from behind because she was afraid. But she was also desperate and her faith overcame her fear. Sound familiar? So let none of us hold the mistaken idea that we are healed (or not healed) based on the amount of faith we have. That’s bad theology, my beloved, because it puts the focus on us and our powerlessness, instead of the Lord and his power. Also in this poignant scene of healing, faith, and fear, St. Mark surely wants us to see that even with all of life’s pressures, even when it feels like we are about to drown in the sea of life with all of its brokenness, sickness, suffering, and sorrow, we can approach Jesus and he will make room for us because of his great love for us. Christ reflects his Father’s huge heart for his wayward children.

But what if healing doesn’t come, at least in the manner we ask or according to our timetable and expectations? Does that mean Christ rejects us? Hardly, as the story of Jairus’ daughter attests. As with the bleeding woman, St. Mark paints a picture of fear and faith. As we have seen, Jairus was desperate in approaching Jesus. And then the awful news came: your 12 year old daughter is dead. Don’t trouble the teacher anymore. But Jesus isn’t just any teacher. He is the Son of God, God become human, who entered our world to heal it and us from the ravages of our sin and rebellion and the Evil unleashed by it. And so our Lord told Jairus not to be afraid, just as he had told the woman. Then with intimate details that surely indicate an eye-witness recounting, our Lord raised the dead girl back to life, pointing us to Christ’s resurrection and our own one day. As St. Paul reminds us in his letter to the Romans, those who are baptized into Christ share in his death and resurrection (Rom 6.3-5). In this story, we see a foretaste of that reality. 

So what are we to take from all this? How do these stories help us grapple with the reality that sometimes God does not answer our prayers for healing in the manner we ask or expect? Let us start by acknowledging that more often than not, God does answer our prayers for healing. Think about the times in your life God has healed you from illnesses of all kinds. If you are hard pressed to come up with personal examples, ask any of our intercessors—Jeanne, Julie, Lisa, Tucker, myself—and we will give you lots of examples of God’s healing in answer to fervent prayers. Or ask Archbishop Ben Kwashi of Nigeria, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer and now is free of it as a result of many fervent prayers. We dare not deny this reality and focus on what God apparently doesn’t  do for us. 

But let us also acknowledge there is a mystery and an enigma to healing (or lack thereof) because we all know of instances where our heartfelt prayers have apparently gone unanswered. Because we are not God with God’s eternal perspective and omniscient knowledge, we must be very reticent about offering “answers” to our “why” questions. Let us have the humility to acknowledge that we will never know all the reasons this side of the grave, if ever. We live in a fallen world ravaged by human sin and the evil it unleashes. As the psalmist acknowledges in today’s lesson, there is a relationship between illness and sin. If God held us accountable for all our sins, who could survive? The answer, of course, is no one! Part of what we therefore must understand is that God shows his great love and mercy in healing any of us to begin with because none of us deserve that.

We know this is true because we have seen the cross of Jesus Christ and we believe that Christ died for our sins so that we could finally be healed or saved, i.e., we know the Father’s great love for us. Did you know that the Greek NT word for healing and salvation, soz?, is the same word? There’s a reason for that because unless Christ saves us by his precious blood, we have no hope of ever being ultimately healed. So let us acknowledge as God’s beloved children that there is a mystery to unanswered prayer. When we are confronted with that, let us turn in faith and remember God’s mighty acts of power in our lives and the lives of his people. For Christians, the first thing we should always ponder is Christ’s death and resurrection because they testify about God’s great love, mercy, and grace toward us. They literally witness to our future. As St. Mark has shown us, faith is an important conduit through which God’s power works for our benefit. Remembering God’s mighty acts of healing and rescue remind us that God has the power to heal us and loves us enough to have acted decisively on our behalf when he became human to die and be raised again. When the floodwaters of life and/or illness surround us we must be intentional in our remembering and turn to each other to be reminded of this truth. God will surely use our efforts to sustain us. 

And let’s also be clear about the nature of healing so that we can keep things in their proper perspective. What happened to the bleeding woman and Jairus’ daughter after Christ healed them? What happened to Lazarus after Christ raised him from the dead? What will happen to us if Christ chooses to answer our prayers and heal us completely? They died and so will we barring Christ’s return before our mortal death. My point is that all physical healing this side of the grave is temporary at best. As the story of Jairus’ daughter reminds us, our full and complete healing will not occur until Christ returns to raise us from the dead and bring in God’s new creation in full. Until then, all healing is only temporary. This is not to suggest that we shouldn’t desire to be healed or mourn when our prayers for healing apparently go unanswered. What I am suggesting is that we need to keep healing in its eternal perspective and remember that we will not be healed in full until we have our new resurrection bodies. In the meantime, we must be strong in our faith and learn to trust Christ in any and every circumstance because only Christ has the power of life and true healing. 

So how do we keep our faith strong? As we’ve seen, we need to remember God’s love and mighty works on behalf of his people, on your behalf and mine. We do this best when we learn the story of God’s rescue plan for us and God’s creation. That means we read our Bible regularly and we talk about those stories regularly. Second, we worship together regularly and come to the Lord’s table each week to feed on his precious body and blood. When we do so, we unite ourselves with the risen Christ in a most powerful way and he can more effectively minister to us. Ideally we should feed on our Lord everyday. When that isn’t possible, we feed on him through reading and study of the Scriptures and through prayer, and we do this individually and together because we are the family of God and families take care of each other. Doing these things also remind us of the nature of God’s character. Many of us have a faulty notion that God hates us and is out to get us. Refusing to answer our prayers for healing is one way for God to punish us. But there is no way we can read today’s gospel lesson and hold that mistaken notion. God loves us so much that he became human to die for us to deal with our sin that separates us from him. In other words, God became human to heal us. An abusive Father would not do that, my beloved, and any such thinking frankly comes from our darkened minds and/or the Evil One himself. So let us praise God when our prayers for healing are answered, always having a grateful and humble heart. And let us join together to mourn for and support each other as David did for Saul and Jonathon in our OT lesson when our prayers apparently go unanswered. God will honor our efforts to persevere in faith together because our faith opens us up to his healing and saving Presence. This in turn helps us trust in God, even in the face of unanswered prayer. We worship and love a God who has rescued us from the ultimate illness of Death. Let us learn to trust his love, goodness, and power completely, even when we don’t understand it or observe it in action in ways we can comprehend. He will never let us down or abandon us. How do I know this? How can you know this? Because Jesus Christ is raised from the dead. To him 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 Trinity 3B, Sunday, June 20, 2021 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: 1 Samuel 17.1a, 4-11, 19-49; Psalm 9.9-20; 2 Corinthians 6.1-13; St. Mark 4.35-41.

A story is told of a young lady who was driving along with her father one day. They came upon a storm, and the young lady asked her father, “What should I do?”

He said “keep driving”. Cars began to pull over to the side, the storm was Getting worse.

“What should I do?” The young lady asked?

“Keep driving,” her father replied.

On up a few feet, she noticed that eighteen wheelers were also pulling over. She told her dad, “I must pull over, I can barely see ahead. It is Terrible, and everyone is pulling over!”

Her father told her, “Don’t give up, just keep driving!”

Now the storm was terrible, but she never stopped driving, and soon she could see a little more clearly. After a couple of miles she was again on dry land, and the sun came out.

Her father said, “Now you can pull over and get out.”

She said “But why now?”

He said “When you get out, look back at all the people that gave up and are still in the storm, because you never gave up, your storm is now over.”

Moral Lesson: While there are sometimes legitimate reasons for stopping, oftentimes dry land is right in front of us — we just can’t see it while sitting in the storm. This is a lesson that we can apply to all facets of life.

So when we hear in our Gospel ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’ well in my own way, I have a sense of what they were feeling.

They were stuck on a boat in the middle of the lake, and taking on water, and in danger of sinking, some of them were seasoned fishermen, and so we know that this is no ordinary storm, because if it was, then they would have dealt with it themselves, there was only one thing they could do, and that was to wake up Jesus.

Immediately he rebuked the wind and the raging sea, and all was well once again.

But as I thought about this reading the question which pre-occupied me was why did Jesus say ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’

This story deals with the principle question of our faith, where do we place our hope, who do we trust above all others, and how do we demonstrate that trust within our lives.

We all know that when life is easy and everything is fine, then it doesn’t take much effort to have faith in God, we can almost take it for granted. But when trouble strikes our lives, how far do we go to try and resolve our problems ourselves before turning to God to help us?

We all experience storms in our lives, where there is a real and present danger, but there are those storms which we encounter in our personal lives, be it a tragedy, bad news or a situation which is just too big for us to cope with on our own.

Is our first reaction to panic and to try and resolve the problem for ourselves, or do we turn to God and ask him to help us, to give us the strength and the courage that we need to face the situation?

In our Old Testament lesson we heard of the story of David and Goliath. In the midst of this storm that faced the children of Israel David felt that something had to be done even when the great army of Israel was at the verge of giving up. Faith in the midst of storm

We all need to remember that it’s never the trial that makes us stronger; it’s what we choose to do with that trial.

If we choose to lay it at the foot of the cross, and say we give this trial to you. Then in faith and trust that he will help us, we can remember what it says in the book of James.
‘whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete and lack nothing.

We have a God who walks with us, not only in the easy times, but also in the storms and the trials that we face in our lives. God is the one who can calm the storms for us, the one who can bring us the hope and the knowledge that we need to face any situation, however dire we may feel that the situation is.

As Christians we don’t walk the journey of life on our own, we walk with a God who wants to know us, to be there for us in everything that we have to face, and when we call upon him we can have the confidence, the faith, to know that he will be there to guide and strengthen us in any situation.

As I was preparing I came across this prayer by Lisa Engelhardt that I would like to share with you. It says,

If you have a secret sorrow,
a burden or a loss,
an aching need for healing,
Hang it on the cross.
If worry steals your sleep,
and makes you turn and toss,
if your heart is feeling heavy,
hang it on the cross.
Every obstacle to faith,
or doubt you come across,
every prayer unanswered,
Hang it on the cross.
For Christ has borne our brokenness,
and dearly paid the cost,
to turn our trials to triumph.
Hang it on the cross.
Lisa O. Engelhardt

Every Sunday before we dismiss at the end of our service we remind ourselves what we need to do as we face the week ahead: to send all our problems, all our difficulties, and all the devil’s work to the cross of Christ and to set all our hopes on the risen Christ

Sadly, far too often, we act like the disciples who were afraid on the boat, we try to face the problems that we encounter on our own, we look to the world, and its solutions, and often find that the solutions it offers don’t bring us the peace that we long for, our faith doesn’t enter into the equation.

Today Our Gospel reminds us that Christ stilled the waters for the disciples, let us remember this morning that whenever we turn to Christ, He will be an ever-present help to us and be there as our guide in all the storms that we encounter in our lives. Faith in the midst of a storm.

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

Sermon delivered on the Feast of Corpus Christi (transferred), Sunday, June 6, 2021 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH.

Father Jorden celebrates his 50th ordination anniversary with us today but gets all whiny when we ask for a written manuscript. Nobody’s got time for that so click here to listen to the audio podcast of his sermon.

Lectionary texts: Genesis 14.18-20; Psalm 116.10-17; 1 Corinthians 11.23-26; John 6.51-58.

Sermon delivered on Trinity Sunday B, May 30, 2021 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 6.1-8; Psalm 29; Romans 8.12-17; St. John 3.1-17.

Grace and peace to you all, in the name of the Holy Blessed Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, Amen.

A friend of mine decided to adopt a baby from Africa, it took years for the adoption to go through. Painstaking planning, paperwork, interviews. And every time when it seemed they were nearing completion, something would come up and the process would be delayed. When my friend finally did bring the adopted child home, to say they were happy was the understatement.

“For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.” In the ancient world, for one who once was a slave to be adopted into a household was a profound entry into a family it meant having a name, a place, and a future. It is with this reality as backdrop that Paul says WE are adopted into the family of God, becoming now and forever children of God. And not just children, he continues, but heirs of God, heirs with Christ, this means we have a name, a place, and a future in this family. 

As I watch children I know who have become part of a family through adoption grow, I marvel at the giftedness of such choosing, adoption is a deliberate and intentional act of love and welcome.

When I look at families through adoption, I am overwhelmed by the idea that God has welcomed me into God’s family in the same way. I am struck by Paul’s words: “We have not received a spirit of slavery to fall back in fear, but a spirit of adoption.” In Christ, we have a name, a place, a future. 

We’ve been brought into this identity, not accidentally, but by a deliberate act of inclusion and welcome. God our Father is always concerned for our wellbeing and good purpose in our lives, God is always seeking to bless us, and as His children we have identity in Him, we have a new name we identify with,  a place we belong to, and a future. 

On Memorial Day we remember those fallen Heroes who sacrificed and put their lives in the liveline for the love of this country they belong to, defending the name they bear, American, and securing a future for us and them.

It is to brothers and sisters that Paul writes his letter to the Romans. These brothers and sisters are a mix of Jewish and Gentile Christians, most of whom he had never met. Brothers and sisters? That is no small statement, In Christ, with all the things in the world that might divide us, such divisions are insignificant next to that which connects us. Brothers and sisters, brought together by a promise, and now we share one name, belong to the same kingdom, and a new future together. 

No less profound is what John writes in our gospel reading today, where we overhear Jesus teaching Nicodemus, a Pharisee, about being “born from above”; born of the spirit. Nicodemus had come to Jesus by night, secretly, in darkness. Nicodemus was one who knew the law well. He practiced his faith and observed all the religious requirements of his day. But he was baffled by Jesus when he said, “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”

This was radical talk, birth status in the ancient world was very important. Who you were was all about who you were born to. “Birth status” was the single most important factor in determining a person’s place in society; one’s “class”; one’s honor rating; one’s level of respect; one’s perceived value. 

Of course, this is often true in our world too. 

Growing up, I remember I benefited from the respect my parents had earned in our community. I was the son of Samuel and Rebecca, and that carried a certain idea of who I was, and expectation of how I would behave.

I am grateful for my family, my Sang name, my place in the family, and the future they’ve helped pave for me.

Every baptism we witness and celebrate reminds us of our spiritual rebirth into the kingdom of God and into this family.

We baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. When Jesus commissions us to do so at the end of Matthew’s gospel, in Greek he says we baptize INTO the name of the father, INTO the Son, INTO Holy Spirit. INTO this relationship, INTO this story of faith that gives meaning and purpose to our living. To simplify even better the word INTO is also translated to belong to.

Father, Son, Holy Spirit…yes, it is Trinity Sunday today. It is the only Sunday of the church year named not for a teaching of Jesus, or historic event in his life or the life of the early church…but for a church doctrine.

The word “TRINITY” doesn’t even appear in the Bible. This doctrine of the trinity didn’t really take shape until the 4th century, when arguments arose surrounding the identity of Jesus. Who is God? And who is Jesus in relationship to God? Was he divine? Was he only human? And what about the spirit that Jesus promises? 

Questions like these have led to the development of Creeds and doctrines alike. These are big questions that really we cannot answer with full certainty. 

As your servants, your priests, Father Kevin, Father Wylie, Father Santosh and I, we want you to ask us questions in regard to faith that are hard to answer, because faith is about seeking, and wondering, and asking hard questions of ourselves, and of God. Where is God, in suffering? Where is God beyond Christian faith? What does heaven really mean?

These are questions of faith, and the more we ask hard questions like these, the more we discover that a simple answer just doesn’t suffice. A “right” answer doesn’t really exist…because FAITH is not just about the right doctrine, or a set of rules. Faith is a relationship. 

In conclusion on this Trinity Sunday, as we celebrate the love of God we are invited into and the experience of God we are invited to share with others. 

As we go home today one way we can celebrate our faith and our Christian family is for all of us to spend time this week to pray for our new building as a reminder of our shared faith and prayers, our shared mission and ministry, shared name, shared place, and shared future in Christ, for we have been adopted INTO or rather to belong to Blessed Trinity.

In the name of the Blessed Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit Amen

Sermon delivered on the Feast of the Ascension (transferred), Sunday, May 16, 2021 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH.

Father Wylie, like Father Sang, gets all whiny when we ask for a written manuscript. Nobody’s got time for whiny priests so click here to listen to the audio podcast of his sermon.

Sermon delivered on Easter 5B, Sunday, May 2, 2021 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 text: Acts 8.26-40; Psalm 118.19-24; Romans 6.3-11; St. Matthew 28.16-20.

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

Today is a huge day in the life of our parish family. Not only do we celebrate the 10^th anniversary of the founding of St. Augustine’s and receive and confirm several new family members, we will baptize our newest baby terrorist and beloved in Christ, Maggie May, into his family, (sorry Sweet Baby James, there’s a new kid in town) and I want to direct my sermon primarily to her. Yes, yes, I know she is only almost three and I regularly confuse you adults when I preach. But any child who tells her parents at that age that she needs to be baptized knows the Lord, and probably better than most of us. So I will trust the Lord, along with her parents, godparents, and the rest of you, to compensate for my, um, awesomeness to bring about needed understanding in the years to come. I’ll try to make it so easy to understand that even a bishop will get it! Of course the rest of you ragamuffins are welcome to soak up the great wisdom I impart along the way. Now that I have insulted everyone here, I can proceed with the sermon forthwith.

Maggie May, your parents have made the wisest and best decision of your young life. Ever. On your behalf, they have declared that you will reject what St. Paul called the first Adam—the old person living in you despite your young age—and like new clothes, put on the second Adam, Jesus Christ himself. But what does that mean? It means that the power of Sin will not control you, that you will choose life over death and will not want to live your life in ways that demonstrate you don’t like God by acting in ways that are contrary to his will for you as his image-bearing creature. Instead, your parents are declaring for you that you will choose to follow Christ and be where he is because you believe him to be God become human, the only true reality and Source of life, and that you want to live with God forever, starting right now. In biblical terms we call this repentance: where you will choose to turn from a life lived for yourself to a life lived for God. You will choose to kill off in you all that makes you God’s enemy, or as St. Paul puts it, you will crucify your sinful nature (a lifelong practice), but you will realize you cannot do this in your own power or strength. When you are baptized your parents are declaring for you that you will realize you must rely on the power of God working in your life in and through the Holy Spirit to help you do all this so that you can live as a fully human being and that your life orientation will point to something (or more precisely Someone) greater than yourself. They are also declaring for you that you will realize this is a free gift from God despite your unworthiness to receive it, but receive it you will because it pleases God the Father to give it to you out of his great love for you. That’s what dying and rising with Christ means. It means you know Jesus and are reconnected to your Source of life. It means you understand that only in Christ’s power can you overcome Death. I am fully confident that all this will happen as you come of age because you know Jesus.

But here’s the thing. If you are like me, you will also at times find what St. Paul says to be a real head scratcher. Perhaps you will want to say to him with me, “St. Paul, are you crazy? I still do things that don’t please God. I’m not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. How can you say I’ve died to sin?” To which St. Paul would reply, “It’s not about you Maggie May, it’s about the power of God at work in you.” That’s the key. The power of God working in you, invisible to our senses but there nonetheless. And I know you understand this at some level already, even at your tender age.

St. Paul knew very well that being united with Christ does not make one a perfect person. But that is not what St. Paul is talking about. He is echoing what he wrote to the Colossians when he said that “[The Father] has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness [where we are separated from God and without real life] and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, who purchased our freedom [from the power of Sin] and forgave our sins” (Col 1.13-14). This is the power of God at work in us to rescue us from sin and death and bring us into the kingdom of his promised new creation that one day will come in full at Christ’s return. God did this for us out of his great love for us. We did nothing to deserve this gift nor can we earn it. In our own right we are hopelessly broken, unworthy and incapable of living as God’s true image-bearers. This is what the power of Sin has done to us and unfortunately you will understand this all too well one day. But God loves us too much to let us go the way of death that never ends and so God has acted decisively in Christ to break Sin’s power over us on the cross and transfer us into his new world via Christ’s resurrection. This is what God’s grace and power look like; and your baptism signals, in part, your acceptance of that grace and power, even you don’t fully understand it. We can’t earn God’s grace but it is ours for the taking because of the power and love of God. And what God wants, God gets; and nothing, not even the power of Sin or the dark powers, can overcome God’s power made known and available to us through Jesus Christ our Lord. It’s a done deal, even if it may not always feel like that to us. 

But Christ’s death and resurrection were not feelings. They were and are the real events that made known supremely the power of God to intervene in our lives on our behalf to rescue us from ourselves, our foolishness, our folly, and our slavery to the power of Sin and Death. We don’t create a new reality; rather we believe the reality exists. Christ has died for us and been raised from the dead to proclaim God’s victory over Sin and Death, and when we are united with Christ in a living relationship with him at our baptism, St. Paul promises in our epistle lesson that we too share in Christ’s reality, whether it feels like we do or not. Again, notice nothing is required of us except an informed faith. In other words, we look at the reality of Christ’s death and resurrection and know it to be true so that we learn to trust the promise that has not yet been fulfilled in us to also be true. 

How does this all happen? St. Paul doesn’t tell us how, only that it does happen beginning with our baptism. When we are baptized we share in Christ’s death and are buried with him so that Sin’s power over us is broken (not to be confused with living a sin-free life, something that is not mortally possible because as St. Paul reminds us in verses 6-7, we are not totally free from sin until death). We reject sin and can no longer live like we hate God because we have been transferred into a new reality, God’s new world that started when God raised Christ from the dead. So in our baptism we begin our new life with Christ (cf. 2 Cor 5.17), flawed as that will look at times. You have been given a great gift in the death and resurrection of Christ and will be joined together with him in a new and different way at your baptism. And where Christ is, there you will be with him. If this isn’t Good News, I don’t know what is. And how do I know all that I have told you is true? Because Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, Maggie May, and I know you know his risen Presence! Alleluia!

So you have died with Christ and are raised with him, even at your ripe young age! You have been delivered from the dark empire of slavery to the empire of freedom and life and light, the Father’s kingdom. Now what? Well, for starters it means you no longer need to be afraid as you grow older. You have peace with God, real peace, a peace that was terribly costly to God, and you also have life that cannot be taken from you. Sure your mortal body will die, and you’ll understand what that means when you grow older, but that’s nothing more than a transition until the Lord returns and raises you from the dead and gives you a new body to live in his new world. As a baptized Christian you have no reason to fear death because you know Christ is the Resurrection and the Life (John 11.25) and you know that where he is, there you will be with him by virtue of your baptism that signals his great love for you and his power to rescue you from Sin and Death! It means you will reject living your life in ways that tell God you don’t want anything to do with him. It means you will reject false realities and will be willing to speak out boldly against them. It means you will be willing to love even the most unloveable people (and unfortunately you will come to know your fair share of them), starting with yourself. It means you will be willing to speak out against injustices of all kinds. It means you will have compassion for people, realizing they are without a Good Shepherd who will love and heal them just like he is loving and healing you, and so you will be willing to share your baptismal faith with them. There’s more to this reality, but certainly not less. 

Your baptism also means you are welcomed into and will agree to become part of the family of God in Christ (the Church), hopefully here at St. Augustine’s, because you understand God created you for relationships and that you cannot live out your Christian faith by yourself because that is how the world, the flesh, and the devil get together to pick Christians off and get them to reject God’s free gift of life won through Christ. The power of God living in you right now is often made known in and through other people, and just as we rely on family to help us when things go bad in our life, so too must you rely on your parish family to help you stay the course. That means you will agree to worship with us, study Scripture with us, feed on our Lord’s body and blood each week to have Christ himself nourish you, weep with us, rejoice with us, and everything in between. I think you already understand this at some level and You’ll grow in your understanding of what this means as you grow older. Your baptism is a tangible reminder that God the Father has claimed you in and through God the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit to make you Christ’s own forever. Like any healthy relationship, Maggie May, God will never force you to love him and gives you the freedom to choose whom you will serve. Today your parents declare for you that you are choosing to serve Life and not Death and all that that entails, even if you don’t fully understand right now. Who among us does? Congratulations, my dear one. I couldn’t be happier for you. Glory to him whose power working in you is infinitely more than you can ask or imagine. Glory to him from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus forever and ever. Alleluia!

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

Sermon delivered on Easter 4B, Good Shepherd Sunday, April 25, 2021 at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH.

Lectionary texts: Acts 4.1-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3.16-24; St. John 10.11-18.

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

Today is the fourth Sunday of Eastertide and we are at day 22, almost midway through the 50 days of Easter (how are your new creation celebrations going, BTW? Are you causing anyone to wonder why you are partying so much?). In the Anglican Tradition, we celebrate the fourth Sunday of Easter as Good Shepherd Sunday, where our readings point to Christ as our Good Shepherd. But what does that mean for us as Christians living in an increasingly chaotic 21^st century world? This is what I want us to look at this morning. 

So who needs Christ as their Good Shepherd? Well, all of us, frankly, because we live in a world of instant communication that allows us to see with increasing intensity the dark and chaotic world in which we live. Toots and I can barely watch the news anymore and we increasingly stay away from social media because of the ever-growing toxic strand of stories that stream from these various sources. In short, we avoid the news for the sake of our mental and spiritual health, and we’re not alone. As the Christian faith and those who profess and live it come under increasing attack, not to mention the very foundations and traditions of our nation, if we are not careful we can quickly and easily fall into despair. Then of course there are the personal failures, setbacks, losses, anxieties, and other difficulties we all face. Many of us who try to live up to the high calling of the Christian life are all too painfully aware that we miss the mark, sometimes as much as we hit it. Like David in Psalm 51, we know our transgressions and our sin is ever before us. Perhaps a better question might be, where is our Good Shepherd, rather than do we need one! Then there’s the quaint and seemingly outdated term, shepherd, itself. Most of us don’t come from a rural background and even if we do, shepherding seems to be a thing of the past. Why would we need a good shepherd when we live in the 21^st century?

But we mustn’t let the historical context of Scripture lull us into false and misleading conclusions. We must remember that it is to the glory of God that he indeed works and is active in the context of human history, meaning that Jesus lived at a particular time and in a particular culture where his listeners would have quickly related to his use of the term shepherd. No, as Scripture consistently proclaims, our God is not some absentee god who is disinterested in this world and our lives. Nor is he a god who focuses exclusively on things “spiritual” as any self-respecting gnostic, past and present, would have us believe. Instead, Scripture proclaims consistently that God our Father is the God of history and our Creator. And as the resurrection of Christ proclaims boldly to us and to the world, creation matters to God and God intends to make all things right again. The risen Christ is our living preview of coming attractions so to speak, testifying to this truth, thanks be to God!

If we keep all this in mind, we are ready to answer the question as to why we need Christ the Good Shepherd. A shepherd is one who looks after those who follow him, in this case human image-bearers, not mindless sheep. This image therefore reminds us that the notion of shepherding by definition applies not to individuals, but to groups (think Christ’s body, the Church). Of course, Jesus leads us and is available to us as individuals. Anybody who knows the risen Lord knows that. But Christ does not call us to live our lives in isolation. He calls us to live together as a family of believers. We are all in this together because we are all subject to the same dark powers and forces of chaos, which at its root is the very nature of sin. Show me sin of any kind and I will show you chaos. Given that we are subject to powers and forces far stronger than we are, forces that have enslaved us and stripped and robbed us of our original human dignity as God’s image-bearing creatures whom God created to rule his good creation on his behalf, we are in constant danger of being undone. Simply put, we are not able on our own to free ourselves from our slavery to that alien and hostile power we call Sin, and if we are unable to free ourselves from its slavery, we all face Death, not only our mortal death, but also the Death that results from being disconnected from God, our very Source of life. This means that we are already dead people walking without God’s help. Take the patient off his life-support systems without a cure and the patient dies. Try to live life in the face of the dark powers and the chaos they impose on our lives and world without the help of someone or something stronger, and we become people who live without hope. And without hope, we all die.

But thanks be to God that we do have someone who is stronger than the forces who hate us and want to destroy us. We have Jesus Christ, crucified, died, and raised from the dead, available to us. Christ is our Beautiful Shepherd (a more accurate description for the Greek word, kalos, than the term “good”), who loves us enough to give up his equality with God to become human and to die for us to break Sin’s power over us, and to bear God’s righteous and just punishment for our sins. This self-giving love for us reflects the heart and glory of God the Father who does not give up on us, irrespective of how badly we manage to screw things up. None of us know all that transpired on Calvary that Good Friday because none of us has the mind of God. Yet we believe that our sins are forgiven and that we have new life starting right now because Christ’s death reconnected us to God our lifeline and promises one day to raise our mortal bodies from the dead to live with him forever. How do I know this? How can I be sure, especially with so many unanswered questions and in the face of so much dysfunction and suffering and alienation and chaos (sin)? Because Jesus Christ is raised from the dead as he tells us he would be in our gospel lesson today. As St. Paul proclaimed in his letter to the Romans, at just the right time, Christ died for us, even while we were still God’s enemies (Romans 5.6-20) so that we could have life once again and be the image-bearing creatures God created us to be as human beings. This is what real shepherding looks like, the only kind that matters, and this is why we have only one real Shepherd because only in Christ do we find forgiveness of sins and salvation. And here we need to spend some time unpacking this extraordinary statement found in our NT lesson. Isn’t it incredibly exclusionary? Well, no it isn’t. 

Why? Because what Saints Peter and John were proclaiming, along with the early Church, is that only Jesus is God-become-human and only his saving death can break our slavery to Sin and restore us to our rightful place as God’s image-bearers. In other words, Christianity has a truth that other religions simply do not because only Jesus Christ is raised from the dead. Neither is God’s love closed to anyone. All are invited to put their faith in Jesus Christ and no one is shut out expect through their own stubborn refusal to see and believe the truth that is in Christ. Now of course the history of Christianity is littered with all kinds of folly that has accompanied our proclaimed faith in Christ and all kinds of wickedness that has sadly accompanied real Christian wisdom. But human wickedness and folly do not negate the truth of the claim itself! Jesus Christ is raised from the dead, proving he is who he claimed to be, not to mention the testimony of hundreds of millions of people over time and culture, our little parish being a blessed microcosm of that collective witness! Christ himself tells us this today in rather stark terms: You’ll never know me or that my claims are true if you don’t know the One who sent me, i.e., God. Why? Because the Father and I are one and that kind of deep intimate relationship characterizes the relationship my followers have with me. Confess me as your Lord and live like you believe it, and you will know that my claim to be the only way to the Father is true (John 14.6). As both the psalmist and St. John in his epistle remind us, Christ our Beautiful Shepherd is the basis for our reconciliation with God and our confident trust that he is with us, even at the moment of our mortal death. What more protection and promise do we need, my beloved? That is why only Christ can be our Good Shepherd, because only in Christ do we find forgiveness of sins and the promise of resurrection. No other shepherds will do because no one but Christ can give us life. Pinheads like me who claim the title of pastor (shepherd) by virtue of our office cannot give you life; we can only point you to the One who can and does, and encourage and exhort you to believe the power and the promise, especially in today’s world where it is increasingly viewed with disdain and hostility. Even so, we do not fear nor will we let ourselves be kowtowed into silence if we really do believe that there is no other Name than Christ’s by which we are saved! That is why Christians, and by that I mean those who have a real and lively faith in Christ, have never feared persecution and have actually rejoiced when suffering for Christ’s sake. As Jesus himself reminded us, we shouldn’t fear those who can kill our body but are then powerless to do anything else to us. We should instead fear God who has the power to end our life forever (Matthew 10.28).

I can hear some of you grumbling right now. You have questions. Why does he sweat so much when he preaches and leads worship? (A: I am a born sweat hog.) If Christ really is the Good Shepherd, why is my life so blown up right now? C’mon dude. Get real. Well, my skeptical interlocutory friend, here’s the deal. I don’t know why God allows what God allows to go on in his world. Nobody does and if you hear someone claim otherwise, run like crazy from that person! What I can tell you is this. Life is not a grand experimental design. It does not consist of experimental and control groups where we can manipulate variables to determine causation and/or correlation. It just doesn’t work that way. We aren’t God and we aren’t omniscient. We aren’t privy to all to which God is privy. That’s why, for example, I can’t prove in any kind of strict empirical sense that God answers prayer or that God is moving mightily within our parish family by bringing new families in and opening up your generous hearts to enable us to occupy our new premises. I can’t “prove” any of this, but I know it’s true because I know the power of God in Jesus Christ raised from the dead, in my life, in the lives of many of you, and in the life of the one holy, catholic, and apostolic church, broken and dysfunctional as she is. It’s called FAITH. And because I know the power of the risen Lord and his presence in and among his people, I don’t feel the need to try to “prove” anything to skeptics with their sneering questions. I’m not copping an attitude here. I simply don’t feel compelled to play by the enemy’s rules or by the rules of scoffers. I know the reality and so, I pray, do you. 

None of this means that we are immune to hurts, heartaches, failures, and brokenness as a parish. We know this all too well. Wendy just lost her dad to congestive heart failure. Chris recently lost his brother to the wicked disease of cancer. Doug is still not fully healed, to name just three examples. You all can add your own heartbreaking stories. But mysterious as this all is, it does not negate the reality of Christ’s promise to be our Beautiful Shepherd in life and in death because he is risen from the dead and because we don’t live a life that is built like a cosmic experimental design. There’s much more than meets our senses and Scripture affirms that there is an unseen reality out there of which we are unaware. Think, for example, of Elisha and his young assistant who found themselves seemingly trapped by the Aramean army. The young man fell into despair as a result, thinking that they were about to be utterly undone. But then Elisha prayed for God to open the young man’s eyes and he beheld the unseen forces of God ready to intervene on their behalf to rescue them (2 Ki 6.8-23)! St. John essentially tells us the same thing in our epistle lesson when he reminds us that when we are Christ’s we have the invisible Presence of the Holy Spirit working in us to remind us of God’s great love for us despite the fact that we were at one time God’s enemies. God’s love reminds us that we no longer need to languish over a guilty conscience. Rather we are to repent of that which caused that guilty conscience and ask God’s forgiveness. And because we know the crucified and risen Lord, we know that God gladly answers our prayers. Do you believe this? If you do, let Christ’s shepherding strengthen and encourage you in the dark valleys of your life. And by all means, let us encourage and strengthen each other with this reality when we become aware of of those dark valleys.

All this reminds us why we need Christ our Beautiful Shepherd and what it leads to: changed lives and the power to be a living embodiment of Christ’s love for us and for his world. If we really believe that there is no salvation other than in the Name of Christ, and if we really believe God does truly love us despite our warts, sometimes quite sizable, then we must live and proclaim our faith to others because having Christ as our Good Shepherd really is a matter of life and death. It means, in other words, we put our faith into action, starting with our families and our extended parish family. When we see others in need we act on their behalf, having generous hearts that imitate our Savior. It means we give our time, talents, and money to help our families and those around us who desperately need to both survive and to hear and see the gospel of Jesus Christ proclaimed and lived out faithfully. It means we are to embody the self-giving love Christ has for us to others in the context of our daily lives and communities. And here I want to offer counsel to you because many, if not most, Christians misunderstand what self-giving love looks like. To embody the self-giving love of Christ doesn’t mean we become punching bags of all sorts to others. Jesus Christ did not love us and die for us to enable us to continue in our (self-)destructive behavior. He died for us so that we might learn to live and love like he loves us and the Father loves him. He died for us so that we might be truly healed and find wholeness and peace. Remember this as you attempt to love others. Becoming their verbal, emotional, or physical punching bag or enabling their destructive behaviors is not loving them. It is actually participating in their sin and this is never the loving thing to do. We sometimes are confronted with difficult choices when dealing with others. That is when we go to Scripture and pray to the Lord for guidance and wisdom. And we learn to trust each other enough to seek and receive their godly guidance. We can do so with confidence, a confidence not rooted in ourselves or others, but because we know the One who is our Beautiful Shepherd and who promises to be with us, individually and together, in any and every circumstance because of his great love for us. This is Jesus Christ, crucified, raised from the dead, and ascended into heaven to rule until he returns again to finish his saving work on our behalf. This is the Shepherd we desperately need and the One on whom we can count and to whom we can give our wholehearted love, loyalty, trust, and obedience because only in him is forgiveness and life. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever. Alleluia! Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

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