Category: Lexington

What kind of heart is receptive and spacious enough for Emmanuel?

Childrens' Advocate Marian Wright Edelman passed along a story told to her by The Rev. William Sloan Coffin when he was Pastor of the Riverside Church in New York City.

It was Christmas Eve and the pews at New York City's Riverside Church were packed. The Christmas pageant was underway and had come to the point at which the innkeeper was to turn away Mary and Joseph with the resounding line, "There's no room at the inn!"

The innkeeper was played by Tim, an earnest youth of the congregation who had Down Syndrome. Only one line to remember: "There's no room at the inn!" He had practiced it again and again with his parents and the pageant director and seemed to have mastered it.

So Tim stood at the altar, bathrobe costume firmly belted over his broad stomach, as Mary and Joseph made their way down the center aisle. They approached him, said their lines as rehearsed, and waited for his reply. Tim's parents, the pageant director, and the whole congregation almost leaned forward as if willing him to remember his line.

"There's no room at the inn!" Tim boomed out, just as rehearsed. But then, as Mary and Joseph turned on cue to travel further, Tim suddenly yelled "Wait!" They turned back, startled, and looked at him in surprise.

"You can stay at my house!" he called.

Such childlike generosity and hospitality are qualities of the heart that is receptive enough and spacious enough for Emmanuel. The One whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain is graciously pleased to come under our roof and dwell with us. May our hearts prepare for him and may he dwell in us as we celebrate his Holy Incarnation.

O holy Child of Bethlehem,
Descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin and enter in,
Be born to us today.
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Emmanuel.

December 22, 2011
Here am I…Let it be

I'm listening to the Beatles' song "Let it be" as I read Luke's account of the Angel Gabriel's announcement to the Blessed Virgin (Luke 1:26-38). The song tells us Mary's words are "words of wisdom." Who would have expected wisdom from one so young?

Frederick Buechner, in his book Peculiar Treasures, has this to say about the Annunciation:

She struck the angel Gabriel as hardly old enough to have a child at all, let along this child, but he’d been entrusted with a message to give her and he gave it. He told her what the child was to be named, and who he was to be, and something about the mystery that was to come upon her. “You mustn’t be afraid, Mary,” he said. And has he said it, he only hoped she wouldn’t notice that beneath the great golden wings, he himself was trembling with fear to think that the whole future of creation hung now on the answer of a girl.”

The future of creation hung now on the answer of a girl. Imagine all the angels looking down and holding their breath, wondering what she would say. We know her answer: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.”

Mary wasn’t the first to say these words. She stands in a line of witnesses who said “Here am I” to God’s request. Noah said, “Here am I,” and God told him to build a floating zoo. Abram said, “Here am I,” and God told him to get his wife, pack his things, and go to a land God would show him. The boy Samuel said, “Here am I,” and began a career of speaking truth to the powers that be. Isaiah said, “Here am I,” and God sent him to deliver a prophetic message promising deliverance by a Messiah who is to come.

When we say the words, “Here am I,” and are open to hearing what it is God is asking of us, we take our places in that long line of faithful people. We are liberated and given the necessary strength to do what God is calling us to do.

Mary has already given birth to the Messiah, so God isn’t asking us to do that. Still, the angels in heaven are holding their breath to hear our answer when God draws near and calls us. We won’t need to find new words to say because the old ones still work just fine: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.”

Gay and I are blessed to spend another Christmas with the people of Good Shepherd. May your Christmas and the coming year be filled with joy, peace, and blessings in abundance.

December 15, 2011
Sermon at Church of the Good Shepherd ~ December 11, 2011

Third Sunday of Advent Year B

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December 12, 2011
Word Made Flesh – The Toughest and Tenderest Love

It is a happy coincidence that the commemoration of St. Ambrose, the fourth century Bishop of Milan, occurs during the Advent season on December 7. I say that because one of the chief contributions of Bishop Ambrose was his defense of Athanasian (orthodox) Christianity against Arianism. Athanasians affirm that the Logos or Word (John 1:1) is fully God in the same sense that the Father is, while Arians affirm that the Logos is a creature, the first being created by the Father. So it is appropriate that his feast day occurs during the season in which we are preparing for the coming of the Messiah because Bishop Ambrose helps us better understand what kind of Messiah we are talking about.

Ambrose may have written the Athanasian Creed (BCP p. 864), the first creed in which the equality of the three persons of the Trinity is explicitly stated. Whether he wrote it or not, it is consistent with his theology:

And the Catholic Faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one, the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal.

The Messiah who came as a little child and died on a cross as a man is not just a messenger. He is Emmanuel, God With Us in the flesh. That was as incomprehensible a Mystery in the first and fourth centuries as it is today – the Word that was in the beginning, the Word that was with God, the Word that was God, “became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son; full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). The proof of it is a matter of faith. This Word Made Flesh, Jesus, the Messiah, matters so much to us because he is the ultimate expression of God’s eternal love for us.

His entire life demonstrates to us that God’s love does not shrink in the face of tragedy, injustice, exploitation, and alienation. Love Divine embraces everything that happens to human beings from birth to death. God With Us heals brokenness, overcomes oppression, and reconciles estrangement. There is no love in the universe that is tougher or more tender!

A meditation attributed to Bishop Ambrose beautifully expresses what God’s love means to us in these words: “Lord Jesus Christ, you are for me medicine when I am sick; you are my strength when I need help; you are life itself when I fear death; you are the way when I long for heaven; you are light when all is dark; you are my food when I need nourishment.”

December 8, 2011
An Advent Story

Advent is a time of preparation. The messages of the Hebrew prophets and of John the Bapitzer tell us that repentance is a necessary element when we are preparing for God’s entrance into our lives. The call to repentance is a call to examine our lives and change directions in ways that open our lives for God to do something new.

At this time of year, many people turn again to the wonderful Victorian era classic A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. As I read it, A Christmas Carol is really an Advent story. The surly old curmudgeon, Ebenezer Scrooge, lives a miserly existence with his entire being. Then he is visited in a dream by three Christmas ghosts. He sees his past and then his present. But what is most frightening to him, what shakes him to the core, is the vision of his future. Scrooge awakens to find that nothing has changed. Dickens says, “The bedpost was his own. The bed was his own. The room was his own.” Then Dickens adds, in what might be an Advent text, “Best and happiest of all, the time before him was his own, to make amends in.”

Scrooge undergoes a radical transformation and becomes an entirely new person. He leaves behind the cold and indifferent miser and becomes generous and compassionate. He seizes the time and becomes what the Bible might call “a new creation.” The world has not changed, but he has!

It is a heart-warming story. But more than that, it is a hopeful story. It provides us with the hope that we too can have a change of heart and mind when we know we should. John the Baptizer tells us that someone is coming, someone so spectacular that it is not enough simply to hang around waiting for him to arrive. It is time to get ready, to prepare the way, so that when he comes he can walk a straight path right to us.

That’s what makes the news good! The call to wake up and change directions is filled with the promise that something new is about to happen right before our eyes and in our lives. The time before us is our own “to make amends in” as we prepare room for God to make us new creatures. May this Advent be such a time for you!

December 1, 2011
Sermon at Church of the Good Shepherd ~ November 27, 2011

First Sunday of Advent Year B
November 27, 2011

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November 27, 2011
Taking Time for Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving may be a teachable moment, when we can connect the dots that form a picture of family life and family identity.

Families seem busier now than when I was a child. It's easy to understand, particularly with more two-career households, more activities for children and youth, and significant shifts in cultural values. When something has to give, family meals may fall by the wayside. And yet, family meals are not only a time for strengthening family ties and keeping track of your children's lives, they can actually lead to better physical and mental health for your children and for the entire family.

Studies in recent years have concluded that family meals are a central feature in better nutrition, mental health, academic achievement, vocabulary, parenting, and family life in general. Many of us can recall how we learned the story of our family and came to an understanding of our place in that family while sitting at the table with our families.

Have you noticed that as the trend away from family dining has increased, worship patterns on Sundays have also changed? I suspect the same factors that make it more difficult to gather the family around the dinner table also make it more difficult for Christians to gather around the Lord's Table. I invite you to consider that the health and well-being of the Church is impacted by regular worship in ways that are similar to ways our families are impacted by regular family meals. When God calls us together to recall the family story and share in the family meal, we are nourished and formed as Christians. We remember who and whose we are.

Maybe the adage, "The Family That Prays Together Stays Together," is not so trite after all. I do understand that many people do not have good memories of family and home. Many have not found the church family all that wonderful either. However, there is universal hunger for a sense of belonging and identity that we might call "family feeling." Those who have found surrogate families will tell you how much it means. Those who have returned to their church families or found new ones will tell you how it has impacted their spiritual journey.

Now is a good time to pause and reflect on the busyness of our lives and consider what valuable times with our families and our church family have been crowded out. And, it is a good time to recall and give thanks for the good things that have not been crowded out. It is easy to focus on what we lack. Occasions of thanksgiving help us focus on the abundance of our lives.

If we are too busy to gather around the table – at home or at church – maybe we are just too busy for our own good and the good of those whose lives are closely linked with ours. At home and at church, we need that time together!

Here's a prayer and a selection of music to share with those whom you care about this Thanksgiving:

• The Collect for Thanksgiving Day from the Book of Common Prayer

Almighty and gracious Father, we give you thanks for the
fruits of the earth in their season and for the labors of those
who harvest them. Make us, we pray, faithful stewards of
your great bounty, for the provision of our necessities and
the relief of all who are in need, to the glory of your Name;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with
you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

• The hymn Now Thank We All Our God, performed by The Cambridge Singers and the City of London Sinfonia, conducted by John Rutter.

November 22, 2011
Sermon at Church of the Good Shepherd ~ November 20, 2011

Proper 29A ~ The Reign of Christ

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November 20, 2011
Christ’s Reign in Our Lives – Now and Then

We are coming to the Last Sunday After Pentecost. Many liturgical churches also celebrate this as The Feast of Christ the King. In our continuing efforts to make our language more gender inclusive, the term Reign of Christ is gaining acceptance as the designtion for this Sunday. I really prefer Reign of Christ because the emphasis is on what Christ is doing throughout the cosmos and throughout eternity – reigning!

Sunday’s Gospel, Matthew 25:31-46, is often referred to as The Parable of the Last Judgment. It speaks of the accountability of all people when the reigning Christ sits upon his throne.

I recall an encounter I had with a radically evangelical fundamentalist during my college years. He and I were about the same age. He was a member of Campus Crusade for Christ and had chosen me as the target of his mission. We talked about our differing theological views and never found much common ground. It turned out to be a debate, not a conversation. At the end of our debate, he referred to this passage of scripture and said as he parted, “I hope you’ll see the light and end up in heaven with me after the great judgment.”

He wanted the Reign of Christ to be all about the Last Judgment. Ever since then, I've been very curious about how and when we are accountable to Christ. So, naturally, when this text pops us, that's where my thoughts go.

If you’ll read the passage carefully, you’ll see that the basis of our accountability is not on having the right doctrine. When we stand before Christ it is always about how we express the faith we profess – how we are ministering to Christ through our service to the hungry, the thirsty, the strangers, the naked, the sick, the prisoners, the marginalized and vulnerable people we encounter in our journey of faith. Faith in Christ is a challenge to expand our comfort zones and reach out beyond them to such as these in ways that our faith and our good works are in alignment.

A hungry man was walking down the street in a village of medieval Turkey. He had only a piece of bread in his hand. He came to a restaurant where some meatballs were being grilled. The cooking meat was so near and the smell so delicious the man held his piece of bread over the meat to capture some of the smell. As he started to eat the bread, the angry restaurant owner seized him and took him away to see a judge.

The owner protested, “This man was stealing the smell of my meat without asking permission. I want you to make him pay me for it.” The judge thought for a moment, then held up his purse in front of the owner and shook it. “What are you doing that for?” asked the restaurant owner? The judge replied, “I am paying you. The sound of money is fair payment for the smell of food.”

The challenge when we dealing with the kind of people described by Jesus in this passage is to make sure that what we are sharing with them is real. We must make sure that our care is expressed in ways that are tangible and life changing.

Each Sunday, we say we believe “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.” One might say that Matthew 25:31-46 is a scriptural basis for that belief. It seems clear to me that the Judgment is not about arguing our case or preparing to be judged. Neither the sheep nor the goats had much of an argument or seemed prepared. It is about how we live day by day and it is about being accountable for our discipleship all along the way and not just at the end. The reigning Christ is already on the throne. We are judged not by the precision of our dogma or our membership in a particular church but by what we do for others. We are judged not by what we know but what we have shared.

What I wish I’d had the experience and presence of mind to say to my fundamentalist friend at the end of our conversation long ago is this: Both the sheep and goats will be judged not by their creeds but by their deeds.

November 17, 2011
Sermon at Church of the Good Shepherd ~ November 13, 2011

Proper 28A

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November 14, 2011