Seek the Truth

by the Rev. Shelby Ochs Owen

This sermon is based on John 18:33-37. No audio version of this sermon is available. We apologize for the inconvenience.

“For this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.”

Today is Christ the King Sunday, a day when we celebrate the reign of God through Jesus Christ. In an American society where we do not have royalty – no queens or kings, no princesses or dukes – it may indeed be a foreign concept to consider.  What does it mean that Christ is our king?  Our readings for today can help us explore this reign of Christ.  Looking at the Gospel of John as Jesus heads toward his crucifixion, Pilate seems not to have a clue who he is dealing with when he starts talking to Jesus.  In the preceding verses Pilate attempts to talk the Jewish leaders into trying Jesus themselves, “take him yourselves and judge him according to your law.”  But they refuse so Pilate is left to deal with Jesus.

So Pilate asks Jesus, “Are you King of the Jews?”  In the Roman world, someone  who  claimed to be king other than Caesar would have been seen as a threat, as a political insurrectionist.   While it appears on the surface Jesus is being tried by Pilate, the local Roman governor, at a deeper level Pilate is being tried by Jesus.  Pilate is seeking the truth at an intellectual level, trying to get to the bottom of the Jewish leaders’ protest over Jesus, but Jesus points him to a deeper truth – the truth in the revelation of Jesus Christ himself.  “My kingdom is not from this world…my kingdom is not from here.”   Pilate asks, “So you are a king?” and Jesus responds, “You say I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world – to testify to the truth.  Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

What voices do we listen to? Many of us can hear our mother’s or father’s voice even when they are not with us, when we encounter a situation where we know how they would respond.  When we answer a telephone call (without caller ID) our brains quickly process the voice of someone we know; for those of us who have our hearing, we all probably all by now recognize the voices of Barack Obama or Mel Gibson or Katie Couric.  We listen to myriad voices in a day’s time.  What does it mean to listen to the voice of Jesus, to belong to the truth?

When Pilate asks Jesus if he is the King of the Jews, Pilate is referring to an earthly, temporal king, even of a religious or political ruler.  Jesus points him to a different realm, a kingdom beyond the earthly but still available in the earthly world.  For this gospel writer Jesus represents the deepest truth, the revealed truth of God in Jesus Christ.  Here Jesus intends that those who listen to his voice are also those who follow him. 

As followers of Christ, as Christians, are we listening to the voice of truth?  There is a quote engraved by the door of the Virginia Seminary library attributed to its former dean William Sparrow, “Seek the truth, come whence it may, cost what it will.”  When we got up this morning and decided to come to church, was it because we were seeking the truth – whatever the cost, whatever the truth ended up looking like?  And when we find the truth or some piece of it, are we willing to drop our plans, willing to rearrange our interior and exterior lives to live into the truth?   The other day I had a meal with a Christian.  She talked about a new family member who was disappointing her; she told me how she was planning to get back at that new in-law.  She said, “I’m sorry but this is just the way I am.”  What she was in essence saying is that she was not willing to be molded by Christ, not willing to be transformed, not willing to let God into the situation.  Perhaps this person found that the cost of seeking the truth, the cost of forgiving and loving was too much, the cost of following Jesus was just too much.  It takes courage to listen and then to do what Christ would have us do, and yet to listen to and to follow Jesus is the way of and to everlasting life.

Every one of our readings for today points to this amazing eternal nature of Christ:

From the book of Daniel: In the fantastical description of God as the “Ancient One”, “…his dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.”

From Ps. 93: “Ever since the world began your throne has been established; you are everlasting.”

From Revelation:”I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord, who was and is, and is to come, the Almighty.”

The kingdom of Christ is an eternal, life giving kingdom that was and is and is to come.  So much of our daily existence points to the temporal, the ever-changing world around us.  Politicians will come and go; stock markets will rise and fall; people will come into and leave our lives; our health will ebb and flow.  Times will change but the Kingdom of God is eternal and our greatest source of hope and truth.

To listen to the voice of truth requires discernment, a peeling back of layers of noise that crowds our minds and hearts.  The kingdom of God is at hand, is closer to us than our own breath if we can only allow ourselves to accept it.  Can we give ourselves over to being immersed in God’s love, immersed in the presence of Christ?  Are we ready to listen and willing to be God’s vessels of transformation in a world that so desperately needs Christ’s presence, so desperately needs God’s love? 

Seek the truth, come whence it may, cost what it will.  For when we encounter the eternal truth in Jesus, we find we are loved in unfathomable ways and eager to love the rest of God’s creation.

Amen.

Hear, Read, Mark, Learn, Inwardly Digest

by the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Mark 13:1-8 and the Collect for Proper 28. An audio version of this sermon is available here.

Our Gospel reading this morning is taken from the apocalyptic teaching of Jesus, Jesus’ “lifting the veil” on what will happen in the future. Apocalyptic teaching is notoriously difficult in the scriptures: it is dense, highly symbolic, given to hyperbole and dramatic overstatement, charged with ancient political significance, and full of images of suffering and destruction that we tend to find disturbingly out of place in Jesus’ usual teaching of love and compassion and the peace of God. Interpreting Jesus’ apocalyptic teaching is something preachers find distressingly difficult to do.

So I’m not going to preach on this Gospel today.

Instead, I’m going to preach on how we can approach this Gospel today. And to do that, I’m going to turn to the Collect, to our Prayer of the Day, and its reassuringly Episcopal way of connecting with scripture.

In today’s prayer, we give thanks to God for causing all Holy Scripture to be written for our learning. And then we ask God to help us appropriate that learning in a five-point plan: we ask God to empower us to hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the scriptures. And the reason we do this, the Collect says, is so that we can embrace and hold fast the hope of life. When we relate to scripture in this five-point way, the Collect says, then it becomes in us more than just a book, it becomes a living encounter with the living Word of God.

So how do we do that? Well, first, we have to hear scripture. That may come as something of a surprise, since we usually think of scripture as something written, and therefore something that must be read. But the Collect says that in the first place scripture must be heard. And that is because hearing is something you cannot do alone — it is always done in community, even when the community is only you and the person speaking to you. Saying we must hear scripture first is a way of saying we never encounter scripture all on our own, but we always come to it within a community of hearers, a community of interpreters, a community of responders. Hearing scripture is having a dynamic relationship with scripture that we always share with others.

But we must also read scripture. After we have heard it in community, we have to get closer to it, we have to dig deeper into it, we have to read it for ourselves. Reading is an amazing thing, because it doesn’t just dump information into our brains, but it engages our whole selves with what we read. Every time you read a word, any word, you bring with you all the memories and connections and meanings that word has just for you, in your experience. Every time you read a story, you don’t just watch the story outside yourself, but you re-enact the story in your own imagination, in your own act of reading. When we read scripture, we don’t just treat it as something external to ourselves, but we bring it to life in our own mind’s eye.

And then we have to mark what scripture says. The word “mark” here is an old-fashioned and poetic way of saying “pay attention.” When we pay attention to what scripture says, we let it touch us in a deep way; we let it bring up feelings and hopes and dreams and fears and promises; we let the scriptures make our train of thought jump its usual tracks and take us into new possibilities and unexpected places. Sometimes you can read something over and it doesn’t make any impression on you, you can barely remember afterwards what you’ve read. But when we pay attention, when we mark what scripture says, we let it make an impression on us, we let it leave its mark on us, and we begin to be changed by what the scripture tells us.

We begin to be changed — but then we have to make the change a part of who we are. And that’s what it means to learn scripture. I think “learning” here means more than just memorizing Bible verses — although memory exercises can be a great way to get scripture into your mind. But “learning” in this sense means also something deeper: it means incorporating the truths of scripture into the very way we think, it means becoming so familiar with scripture that we can spontaneously see connections between the stories of God’s faithful people and the way we are living here and now. When we learn scripture, we can see that we are not living our lives in a vacuum, but we are continuing the very same story we find in the pages of this book.

Finally, we must inwardly digest scripture, and that means really making the scripture our own. When our bodies digest food, we don’t just leave the food the way we find it, but our bodies incorporate it and assimilate it and transform the food into part of our own living tissues. When we inwardly digest scripture, we don’t just leave it the way we find it, but we interpret it and meditate on it and apply it, so that it is transformed into part of our own living spirits. I was in a guided meditation on a Gospel story once, where we were supposed to reenact the whole story in our imaginations — and then, at the climactic moment, just after Jesus heals the sick man in the story, the meditation leader told us to imagine Jesus turning to each of us, and asking us, “What do you want me to heal in you?” And the imagination was so vivid that each of us heard something different from Jesus, and each of us said something different to Jesus — and the story wasn’t just a story anymore, it was something we took into ourselves and made our own, it was a real, living, spiritual encounter with the Word of God, the same Word incarnate in Jesus, the same Word alive in the Trinity, the same Word addressing us and becoming in us our own. In prayer and meditation and application  we inwardly digest the scriptures and make them a part of the way we live.

And when we do all those things, when we hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest, then I think scripture becomes for us something more than just a book. It becomes something more than a set of moral rules and regulations for how to control lives. It becomes more than a historical fact-book that we must either criticize or defend for how historical or factual it really is. It becomes more than a collection of symbolic stories about some ancient peoples' encounters with God. When we hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest it, then the Bible isn’t just literal, and it isn’t just metaphorical, and it isn’t just a text — but it can be the living context where we can encounter the living Word.

When we connect with scripture in this way, we can look at something like our Gospel reading today, this difficult apocalyptic text, and see in it not just disturbing and distressing images of destruction, but see also the word of hope, the promise of the birth of something new, the good news that we do not need to be alarmed but can face the pains of this world with courage and trust in in God. When we connect with scripture in this way, we can hear something like our Hebrews reading today, where it urges us to “provoke one another to love and good deeds” and to “encourage one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching” — we can hear that and realize that is not just talking to some vague people long ago, but is all about how we live out our share of Christ’s mission in our world today, here and now, with love and good deeds and encouragement that are very particular and very personal to us. When we connect with scripture in this way, we can know that our ancient book is a gift we have to share with the world — a world that is increasingly biblically illiterate, by the way — and that we share it best not by hitting people over the head with it, but by inviting people in to hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest with us. We never know what new things we might learn from those who hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest differently from the way we do. And that too is part of our mission in Christ. 

Today we give thanks to God for causing all Holy Scripture to be written for our learning, and we pray that God will help us make the scriptures our own, so that we may embrace and hold fast the hope of life. May it be so for us. Amen.

It's who we are

by The Rev. Shelby Ochs Owen

This sermon is based on Mark 12:38-44. An audio version of this sermon is available here. 

“Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to have the best seats in the synagogues...”  Uh, Paul,  I think you and I are busted!  This is one of those Sundays, I might want to be wearing my street clothes sitting on the back pew!  I have to admit it is kind of nice to always know that, as your priest, I will always be guaranteed a seat, and a very good seat, in church.

In today’s reading from Mark we have Jesus teaching in the temple, denouncing the scribes.  Now before we think he is condemning all of the scribes we can see just in a few verses before this one that this isn’t the case.  In that exchange with a scribe, Jesus actually tells him “You are not far from the kingdom of God” when the scribe indicates his understanding the ultimate importance of the commandments of loving God and loving one’s neighbor.  Here, though, Jesus denounces the scribes whose priorities are out of whack, the ones who allow power and prestige to rule their actions, the ones whose religious pretensions direct the oppression of the less fortunate, particularly poor widows.  Throughout the Scriptures God’s people are exhorted to take care of widows and orphans, the alien and the poor; Jesus knows this and so do the scribes. So Jesus calls them out on their hypocrisy.   Those who oppress widows while striving to appear virtuous, pretending to be religious while being driven by greed and egotism will be condemned, Jesus says.  

And then, Jesus sits down opposite the treasury to watch the crowd. Many rich people put in large sums of money and then a poor widow places two small copper coins, worth a penny, essentially 1/64th of a laborer’s wages for a day.  Something almost too small to notice, something that was close to nothing and yet it was everything. It was all she had.  Jesus then says, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those contributing to the treasury.” “All she had to live on.”  But before we get overly sentimental and put her on the proverbial pedestal, let’s think about how we can walk along side the widow.  If we were to put her on a pedestal, we will find ourselves distancing ourselves from her as we realize we might not ever be able to give the way she gives or even to imagine ourselves doing so.  And then we find as we distinguish ourselves from her we are less able, less willing to change. 

Let’s look at the coins that the widow puts into the treasury as representing all that we are and all we can hope to become in God’s kingdom.  No doubt the widow knew of the oppression of the religious authorities and yet she gave all anyway.  In spite of an oppressive system she trusted in God, completely.  Might her actions be a foreshadowing of Jesus himself just a little later in the story giving himself completely for a world that had betrayed God’s trust?  For this widow, her act of giving was not simply about doing, it was about being-being one of faith, being one of trust.  Her giving was simply just who she was.

Early one morning this past week, I received an email from Patricia, a woman I know well, who lives in a European city.  She told me that she was shaken following an encounter right after work the night before.  Patricia and a colleague were walking down the street when they encountered a woman being mugged.  They helped stop the mugging.  The injured woman’s face had been badly beaten.   As I took in this shocking news, I remembered years ago another story of Patricia witnessing an attack in a subway station here in the States.  Crowds had gathered around the scene while a man attacked a woman.  No one was doing anything.  The crowd seemed paralyzed.  So Patricia jumped on the man’s back and starting hitting him so he would leave his victim alone and then she ran to find the police.  As I thought about the scene of this week’s recent mugging, I realized I wasn’t really surprised at Patricia’s actions.   Her coming to the aid of another in need or trouble was not a new thing at all.  It was just who she was, it was just who she was.

Who are we?  Who are we as people of God?  Who are we as members of the church, as members of the body of Christ?  For some of us, the church might at times feel like a club, where we connect and make friends with like-minded souls, not that there’s anything too wrong with that!; for some it might feel like a warm, welcoming home where we feel safe and cared for -not that there’s anything wrong with that either, and I certainly do hope church is warm and welcoming and a place to make great friends.  But church is more than a safe, warm place.  The church does not exist simply for its own well being; the church exists so that we can be instruments of God’s love and justice in the world, to relieve poverty, oppression and suffering, not to add to it the way the scribes were doing!

Just as Jesus was condemning the scribes who were part of an oppressive religious system that failed to care for the widows, God calls each of us to move out of our own areas of hypocrisy, areas of weakness where our profession of faith and our actions don’t quite jive; God calls us to integrate what we say we believe with how we treat others, particularly the poor.  You who have been baptized have made a promise to “persevere in resisting evil… to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself; to strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being.” With God’s help, of course.

So go into the world trusting God, go to your corporate board rooms, go into your classrooms, go into the court room, go into your governing bodies, go to your individual families, and look around you.  Where might you be supporting oppression of individuals or groups of people, knowingly or unknowingly?  How are you investing your money?  Your time?  Any of you who know your history know that the church has had its infamous moments where she has supported systems of violence and oppression – psychologically, spiritually, economically and even at times, physically, in the name of Jesus Christ.  How can we tear down oppressive systems?  How can we change as we carry the truth of the Gospel to our individual corners of the world, carrying peace and truth and justice for all?  We have more power than we realize – even if it looks like just two cents to us.  If we give our whole selves over to God, the seemingly nothing can turn into something, something big in God’s eyes.

We are called to move from where we are into the dream God has for us.  To be bearers of God’s truth, in every situation, morning, noon and night.  At home, at work and in church, in whatever situation life finds us.

To be bearers of truth and instruments of justice, all rooted in God’s love. It’s who we are, it’s who we are.

Making All Things New

by the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Revelation 21:1-6a, Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9, and John 11:32-44.  

“See, I am making all things new.”

These words, heard by John the Seer spoken from the throne of God at the very climax of the Book of Revelation — these words give us, I believe, a key to open the meaning of all our readings and all our celebration on this All Saints Sunday. "See, I am making all things new" is a promise of renewal, God's promise to take up all that has been worn down by time or disfigured by decay or broken by human sin, and to transform it, to re-create it, to bring it to the fulfillment of all God really wants it to be. "See, I am making all things new" is God's promise of the New Creation that will heal the hurts of this world and bring all things to their perfection in him through whom all things were made, our Lord Jesus Christ. 

We see that promise of renewal at work in all our scripture readings today. It's there in the Wisdom of Solomon, when we are assured that those who are gone from us, those whom we thought were destroyed by death, are in fact in the hand of God, with their hope full of immortality, their being ready to shine forth and run like sparks through the stubble. We see that promise of renewal in the Gospel of John, when Jesus calls Lazarus to come forth from the tomb, when Jesus tells the others to unbind Lazarus and let him go, when Jesus restores Lazarus's body and renews Lazarus's life. And of course we see that promise of renewal in the reading from Revelation, when it is not just a single human life that is restored, not just the souls of the righteous that are renewed, but the whole of Creation, the earth and the sky, the cities and the peoples that are made new, that are re-created, that are fulfilled to be the dwelling-place of God and the perfect manifestation of God's eternal goodness and God's unfailing love. The holy ones of God, the saints of God, the righteous and living and joyful people of God, are those who have received God's promise of renewal, and who are themselves made new in living godly lives. 

And today, on this All Saints' Sunday, it is our particular privilege and humility and joy to celebrate that we also are saints, that our lives too are caught up into the vast work of the New Creation, that we are called by Christ to be instruments and agents and participants in Christ's work of making all things new. That's what it means to be a saint; that's what it means to say we are all saints: that we are all active partners in God's great mission to make all things new. 

And here at Trinity we join in Christ's work of renewal in so many ways. 

Today, for All Saints Sunday, we are marking the end of our parish stewardship pledge drive. Cottage meetings have met; budget discussions have been discussed; pledge cards have been filled out -- at least many of them have -- and today we bring those pledge cards we have to the altar. We offer them up to God, along with our bread and our wine, as material symbols of our commitment. It may seem like a stretch to say it, but I really do believe that committing to the financial support of the church is part of the work of sainthood. Our financial support is what allows Trinity to be here, to offer this beautiful building as a spiritual oasis of refreshment and peace, to serve our neighbors' needs for food and medicine and counsel and education and prayer in places both near and far, to be a center of worship and action, prayer and service, for ourselves and for so many others. Making our pledges and paying them really is one of the ways we become partners with Christ in making all things new. 

Today on All Saints Sunday we are celebrating a baptism. In a few moments Megan Elizabeth Lively will stand here at the font and will make her Baptismal Covenant. And we will all join with her and renew our own Baptismal Covenants, affirming once more our fundamental promises to continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to persevere in resisting evil, to proclaim good news by word and example, to seek and serve Christ in all persons, and to strive for justice and peace among all people. We will recognize once again that we can only do these things "with God's help"; and we will pray for Megan, and for ourselves, that "all who are baptized into the death of Jesus Christ may live in the power of his resurrection." The sacrament of baptism is a gift of renewal of life, a movement of God's Spirit in us to re-create us to be more the blessed people God wants us to be. Baptism is what makes us all saints, members of the Body of Christ, partners with Christ in making all things new. 

Today on All Saints Sunday we are looking back over the path Superstorm Sandy carved in the Caribbean and up the East Coast, and we are mindful of how we can help in the rebuilding and restoration. Here in the Valley we didn't get hit anywhere near as badly as we had feared. My daughter texted me the other day to see if we were alright, and I texted back "Our mountains protected us." We've been lucky; but we've also seen the video of the damage on the Jersey shore, we've read about flooding in the subways of New York, we've received word from our partners in Haiti about the damage and death the hurricane left in its wake. With your bulletins today you received a flier from Episcopal Relief and Development about ways we can donate, and ways we can pray, for the aid of those affected by the storm. Even something so simple as donating to this cause is an act of renewal, a work of re-creation over against damage and loss. Reaching out to others in such a time of need is also a way to be partners with Christ in making all things new. 

Today on All Saints Sunday we commission ministers for Trinity Cares, a new program for connecting people in our parish one to another, so that those who are going through a hard time, or are ill, or are in some need can receive a card, or a phone call, or a meal, or a prayer, or a visit, not just from the clergy, but also from another sister or brother in Christ, someone who will help to show Christ's love in their need. Being a loving presence to help someone through a pastoral situation is another way we are partners with Christ in making all things new. 

And today on All Saints Sunday we share communion. We offer ourselves, our souls and bodies, to become living vessels for the Body and Blood of Jesus, the living presence of Jesus, to work in and with and through our daily works, to call us forth into the light of life, to unbind us and let us go out into the world and reveal Christ's gift of life in everything we do. Living for Christ in all the ordinary moments of all our ordinary days is precisely how we are saints, it is the main place we can be partners with Christ in making all things new. 

John the Seer heard the divine voice saying "See, I am making all things new." May we hear that voice speaking in our hearts -- and may we be saints, partners with Christ in the New Creation, this day and all our days. Amen.