Seek God's Face: Do God's Work

By the Rev. Roger Bowen

In this sermon, the Rev. Roger Bowen reflects on verses from Psalm 27 -- "You speak in my heart and say, 'Seek my face.' Your face, LORD, will I seek" -- and Luke 13:31-35 -- "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings" -- and a group of Massachusetts students building a partnership with a school in Haiti. 

Click here to listen to this sermon.

Who We Are

by the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Luke 4:1-13. Click here to listen to an audio version of this sermon.

Who are you? And who, in God's love, are you willing to be?

That is the question set before us in our scripture readings today, and most especially in Luke's Gospel account of the temptation of Jesus by the Devil in the wilderness. In this story, temptation is all about asking the question whether we will be the people God wants us to be, or whether we will settle for something less: a lesser love, a littler life, a smaller self.

In the story, the Devil makes his opening move against Jesus by saying “If you are the Son of God…” Now remember: this all happens right after Jesus’ baptism. When Jesus was baptized he experienced the heavens opened up, and the Holy Spirit coming down like a dove, and the Voice of God saying, “You are my Son, my Beloved, and with you I am well pleased.” Jesus is filled with the Holy Spirit, filled with the awareness and the knowledge and the energy of being God’s beloved Son. And he goes into the wilderness to fast and to pray and to get focused on being ready to do the things he’s got to do in order to live out the mission of being the Christ, being the Holy One, being the Son of God. And that’s when the Devil comes to him and says, “If you are the Son of God… If. You might not be, you know. That whole Baptism thing might have been a hallucination. You might be deluded about yourself: maybe God isn’t calling you to be the Savior. You might be deluded about God: maybe God won’t be there for you when you need him. So, if you really are God’s Son, prove it. Show me. Demonstrate that God is with you, and then I and all the world will know.”

Each of the Devil’s temptations to Jesus is designed to get Jesus to doubt who he is, to lose sight of who God is calling him to be, and therefore to settle for something less than the fullness of life God wants to give to the Beloved Son.

“You’re hungry,” the Devil says. “Change these stones to bread for yourself.” The temptation for Jesus is to feed his stomach, but starve his spirit, to settle for something less than the full sustenance that comes from God.

“You’re destined to be King of kings and Lord of Lords,” the Devil says. “I can make that happen for you, quicker and easier than the way God has in mind.” The temptation for Jesus is to feed his ego, to grab for false glory in in a quick-fix, self-gratifying way; the temptation is to settle for something less that the true glory of Ascension that God wants to give him.

“Jump from the Temple,” the Devil says. “Surely God will protect you and hold you up — Scripture says so! You trust Scripture, don’t you?” The temptation for Jesus is to fear that his trust in God is misplaced, and so to settle for a cheap test of God’s love, rather than the deeper trust that Passion and Crucifixion and Resurrection will demand.

In each case, the Devil tempts Jesus to doubt who he is, to forget who God is calling him to be, to settle for a cheap substitute instead of the real love God wants to fulfill in the Beloved Son. And in each case Jesus refuses to take the bait. Jesus resists the temptation, not by exerting his will power, or gritting his teeth and bearing it — Jesus resists each temptation by remembering who he is, by remembering who God is calling him to be, by staying focused on living in God’s word, and worshiping God alone, and trusting that his relationship with God goes deeper than any cheap stunt could show. Jesus is God’s beloved Son, and nothing the Devil can do can make him forget that.

And that’s how temptation works for us, too. Temptation tries to make us doubt who we are, it tries to make us lose sight of who God is calling us to be, it tries to make us settle for something less than the fullness God wants to give to us: a lesser love, a littler life, a smaller self. And that doesn’t just happen out in the desert, out in the wilderness; it doesn’t just happen in the big, extreme moments of life. It’s happening all the time. It’s temptation when you want to settle for the momentary satisfaction of self-righteous anger against someone, rather than the harder, truer satisfaction of forgiveness and reconciliation. It’s temptation when you know you could speak out against injustice — when someone tells a racist joke, or makes a sexual slur, or uses language that’s hurtful and hateful — you know you could speak out, but you’re willing to settle for keeping silent and not making a scene. It’s temptation when you know you could use your unique gifts and skills and talents to do something beautiful and generous and Christlike — and yet you’re willing to settle for hiding your light under a basket and not showing forth the beauty that God has put in you. Day in and day out, in so many ways, we are tempted to settle for less, to go for the quick fix, the momentary gratification, the smaller self, and tempted to turn away from the real life God wants to give us.

And for us too, as for Jesus in the story, the way to resist temptation is not just to be strong and exert our will power. The way to resist temptation is to remember: to remember who we are, and to remember who God is calling us to be, and to remember the abundance of life that God has promised to us. Jesus defeats the Devil’s temptations by remembering that he really is the Son of God — and we defeat temptation by remembering that we are God’s children, too: remembering that we are sons and daughters of God, sisters and brothers of Jesus, and that God calls us and empowers us to be like Jesus, to share with Jesus in a life that is faithful, and truthful, and generous, and compassionate; a life that is nourished by God’s Word, and worships God alone, and trusts in God’s love that will never let us go — and doesn’t need any cheap stunts to prove it. We defeat temptation by letting God love us into being the people of love God wants us to be.

That’s what Jesus does in the wilderness. And that’s what we are invited to do in this Lenten season, as well. Lent can be for us a time to remember, a time to get focused, a time to know and to feel that we really are God’s beloved children, and a time to act like the children of God that we are: fervent in prayer and in works of mercy, using Lenten disciplines to clear the space in our hearts where God's love can come in, growing in God a greater love, a larger life, a truer self. That is what it means to keep a holy Lent; and that’s the kind of Lent that we can keep together. Amen.

Shining with Resplendent Light

by the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2, Exodus 34:29-35, and Luke 9:28-36, [37-43a]. Click here to listen to an audio version of this sermon.

Imagine coming to church some Sunday morning and finding everyone’s face shining. Imagine finding everyone’s eyes bright and alert, everyone’s expression open and engaging, everyone’s energy level way up here, everyone’s enthusiasm evident. Imagine walking into a church where you are greeted warmly and genuinely, not just by people you know but by people you don’t know. Imagine coming to a church where everyone participates in the service, where every reader and every choir member and every chalice bearer and every person sitting in the pew really believes that they have an important part to play in making the worship whole, and they play their parts with energy and liveliness. Imagine coming to a church which is so filled with enthusiasm that it lifts your spirits up and fills you with an energy you just didn’t have when you first walked in the door. Imagine coming to church and finding everyone’s face shining.

Can you picture that? Then listen to this: St Paul writes to the Christian congregation in Corinth in our epistle reading today: “All of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit. Therefore, since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart.”

Paul’s message here is couched in an extended metaphor which is a little complex, maybe even a bit arcane — but I think Paul is basically describing the same quality of church we’ve been imagining together. Paul’s imagery of “unveiled faces” in "glory" is a deliberate echo of two other stories in scripture — and fortunately for us we have those two stories as our First Testament and Gospel readings today. So we can unpack Paul’s symbolism, we can learn more about what he’s trying to say about the church, if we touch base with those other two readings.

The first reading, from Exodus, tells how Moses came down from the mountain after talking with God, and the skin of his face was shining. Moses had been in God’s presence, so he was radiant — literally radiating — with divine energy. Aaron and the other Israelites were a little freaked out by this, so they asked Moses to cover up his face, to wear a veil, so the divine energy in him would not overwhelm them. Being that close to God, they felt, was a little too much for ordinary humans to handle. But Moses would take the veil off every time he went to talk to God, every time he went up the mountain or every time he went in to the tent of meeting, Moses would take the veil off and be fully present to God, so that his face, his whole being, would be filled and radiant with divine energy. The light in Moses’ face was the sign of God with him.

Likewise, in the Gospel story, Jesus goes up on the mountain with Peter and James and John, and while Jesus is praying, while Jesus is talking with God, his appearance is changed, he is transfigured, his face, even his clothing, begin to shine with heavenly light, he reveals to his disciples the divine energy that is in and under and through all his human being. Peter and James and John are a little freaked out by this — but they don’t turn away. They witness Jesus’ manifestation of glory, and Peter says it is good for them to be there, even if he’s not entirely sure what’s going on. In his transfiguration Jesus reveals divine energy. The light in Jesus’ face is the sign of God with him.

Now Paul takes those stories about Moses and about Jesus, and Paul uses them to say something about the church. Paul says that when we Christians gather together, we can shine with the same divine energy that was reflected in Moses, we can shine with the same divine energy that was revealed in Jesus. And that energy is something we don’t have to be afraid of. Unlike Moses, who put a veil over his face, unlike Peter and James and John, who were terrified as they entered the brightness, we don’t have to cover up that light, we don’t have to try to restrain that energy. We, Paul says, can face each other with “unveiled faces,” we can let the light of Christ be reflected in us and shine forth for each other and all the world to see. We can let our energy level rise up to here, because we know that energy, that enthusiasm, is the sign of God with us.

That’s what Paul says about the church. But as moved as I am by what Paul says about the church, I have to pause here for a moment over what Paul says about the synagogue. Paul says that when the people of Israel, when Jews, read the Books of Moses today, a veil lies over their minds and their hearts are hardened. Paul implies that Jews don’t understand their own scriptures unless they see in them the promise of Christ. In Paul’s day and age, when there was a lot of tension between church and synagogue, when Christians had to work hard to explain why they were different from Jews, that may have made some sense. But we today recognize that Christians and Jews have much in common, and we want to work together for biblical ideals of justice and peace in the world. I, for one, would hardly want to go to our friends at Temple House of Israel and tell them they don’t understand their scriptures because they don’t read them the same way we do. If Paul’s words are taken out of context here, they could become an excuse for anti-Judaism, and I don’t think any of us want to interpret them that way. So we need to do our best to move that over to one side, and see what positive thing Paul is saying about Moses and the church.

And I think the positive thing is this: that the divine energy which was reflected in Moses is the same as the divine energy which shone forth from Jesus — and it is that same divine energy that can be revealed now in us. When we come together as church, we can be enthusiastic, because there is divine energy inspiring and encouraging and enthusing us. Paul’s imagery of us meeting with unveiled faces, and our imagination of a church were everyone’s face is shining, where everyone is filled with energy and joy — those images are one and the same, because it is the same light of Christ that radiates from us all.

So how do we catch that energy? How do we generate that enthusiasm? Our scripture readings this morning give us an answer: that energy comes from prayer. Prayer. You know, we usually think of prayer as something very quiet, very private, very inward — we often think of prayer as the opposite of energy. But the scriptures this morning make it very clear: Moses comes alight when he goes in to speak with God — that’s prayer. Jesus comes alight when he goes up on the mountain to pray. We come alight when the Lord, the Spirit, comes into us and transforms us from one degree of glory to the next — and that is what happens in deep and genuine prayer. It is prayer that releases divine energy into our lives, so that we can pour that energy into welcoming hospitality, into compassionate pastoral care, into social transformation of our community, into living joyful lives, into practicing the ways of faith that make us the people of God for the world, into gathering on Sunday morning for the kind of worship that can make everyone’s face shine. All of those things we do to be a vibrant, vital, welcoming, enthusiastic, growing church — all of those things begin with prayer, begin with opening up our spirits so that the Lord, the Spirit, can remove the veil from us and set us free.

So how do you pray? What do you do to open your spirit so the Holy Spirit can energize you? Some of us read the Bible daily, and ponder each day what that scripture passage says directly to us. Some of us use prayers from the Prayer Book, whose poetic language lifts us up out of ourselves and helps us feel the presence of God.  Some of us imagine having conversations with Jesus, just talking about whatever is in our hearts, opening up to Jesus so that Jesus can dwell in us. Some of us pray without words, feeling the Spirit move in our breath, seeing the light of Christ shining in each other and in ourselves. Some of us pray with all of the above. But no matter what style of prayer we use, the point of prayer is this: that in praying we come into the presence of God, so that God can transform our hearts, and God can empower our lives, and God can fill us with divine energy, so that we can radiate God’s love to the world.

Imagine coming to church some Sunday and seeing everyone’s face shining. We can be that church. We can shine with Christ’s light. We can pray. And we can live out our prayers together. Amen.

Prophet without Honor

by the Rev. Deacon James E. Gilman

The Gospel story in Luke 4:21-30 shows Jesus reminding the people of Nazareth of some dangerous stories from their tradition. In his sermon, the Rev. Jim Gilman reflects on how those stories might bring some eye-opening and risky remembrance to us, as well.

You may listen to the sermon by clicking here.

Introduction

What a provocative gospel story about Jesus. What happened? Was it something he said? How is it that at the beginning of this episode “[Everyone] spoke well of Jesus and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth,” as Luke puts it, and by the end of it, “The [same people] got up, drove Jesus out of town, and led him to the brow of the hill… so that they might hurl him off the cliff.? Wow!! What a sudden and unexpected reversal of fortune for Jesus. Why is it that his home town neighbors praise him for his gracious words, on the one hand, but a short time later threaten him with death. What happened? What caused this sudden reversal? What does Jesus do to incite his neighbors?

Remembrance

The answer, I think, can be summed up in a single word: REMEMBRANCE! Now, remembrance seems like an innocuous and harmless activity. It is something we do often and happily. We recall, for example, warm and cozy things—like family and friendships and goodwill and vacations and the like. And that’s all well and good. But truth be told remembrance can also be a provocative and dangerous activity. In Jesus’ time remembrance was a common Jewish activity—in the home and at synagogue. By telling and re-telling ancient stories, as Jesus does here, a community remembers who it is and what it is suppose to be doing. Remembering and telling stories should be today a common Christian activity. And indeed it is. Remembrance is central to the sacrament of Holy Communion, which in a few minutes we celebrate.           

So, what is it about remembering that caused such a ruckus in Jesus’ hometown? What is it about the ancient stories Jesus refers to that is so scandalous? Why do his neighbors want to put him to death? The stories Jesus refers to are ones they are already familiar with. Why are they provoked? Partly it is because Jesus interprets them in such a way that his Jewish friends suddenly recognize that they are part of the narrative, characters in the plot.

Both stories are classic; they are about two prophets—Elijah and Elisha. Listen to these stories; listen to what is provocative about these stories; listen for how you and I, how the church today, is part of their narratives

(1) The first story is about the prophet Elijah and the widow of Zarephath. There is a famine throughout the land, both in Israel and in Sidon. Elijah goes to the village of Zarephath, a foreign, Gentile region of Sidon (today Lebanon). Sidon was a longtime enemy of Israel. A woman comes out to gather sticks. Elijah says, “Give me something to eat.” She says, “I’m gathering sticks so I can make a fire and cook the last of the food that I have. My family and I will eat it and then die.” Elijah says, “I don’t care, get me something to eat.” Now, the woman easily could have been offended and said, “Get lost;” but she didn’t. With great faith and kindness, she brings him the last bit of what she has to eat. Elijah then tells her that her jar of meal and oil will feed them during the long famine, and incredibly it does. The kicker is what Jesus says next. He says that at the time of this miracle there were also many widows in Israel who were dying of starvation; but Elijah was sent by God to none of them. He was sent not to the Chosen people Israel, but to a foreign enemy. The implication is that the people of Israel were faithless; that they had forsaken their God. So, Elijah brings God’s love to a woman of a foreign religion who, unlike the starving women of Israel, has faith enough to receive the power of God’s mercy. How could that be? How provocative! How dare Jesus claim that the faith of a devotee of a foreign, pagan religion is greater than the faith of God’s Chosen people.

(2)  The second story Jesus tells is even more graphic, offensive, and scandalous. Naaman is a general in the Syrian army. He carried out many military campaigns in northern Israel; a region God had allowed the Assyrians to eventually conquer, again because Israel had forsaken their God.  So this is a story not just about an enemy; but about a conqueror and oppressor. On one raid, Naaman captures a young Israelite woman; he takes her home as a slave. When Naaman contracts leprosy, the slave girl, out of compassion, tells him about a prophet in Israel, named Elisha. Naaman seeks out Elisha. When the general arrives, Elisha doesn’t even go out to greet him; he sends a message telling Naaman to go and bathe in the Jordan River. At first, Naaman is offended, but his servant convinces him that he should give it a go; he does, and is made whole. The kicker is what Jesus says next. He says that “There were many lepers in Israel in the days of Elisha but none of them were cleansed.” Only Naaman, the Syrian general, the foreigner, the oppressor, has faith and is healed. What? The faith of a conquering, enemy general is greater than the faith of Elisha’s own Chosen people? Saying this to Jews then,is today like saying the faith of a Muslim Iranian general is greater than that of an American Christian. The hometown crowd immediately recognize themselves as characters in the story’s plot. They are not amused. How scandalous? What nerve? For Jesus to praise the faith of a conquering general and to chastise Israel for its lack of faith.

Implications

So, remembrance is sometimes provocative and dangerous, as the people of Nazareth found out. But where in these stories do you and I as Christians discover ourselves? Where in these narratives is the church today to be found?  

There are least two provocative points I think Jesus is making in referring to these stories. (1) First, that the power of God’s healing grace is not just for the Chosen, but for people of all nations and people of all religions, yes, even enemies. Israel had come to idolize its own Chosenness; it came to believe its own press; with great pride Israel deceives itself into thinking it is a nation and religion superior to all others. So it is today, I think, with so-called American exceptionalism; many Christians buy into this deception: that somehow America as a nation is called to be a beacon to the world, a city on a hill.  Like Israel we are often smug in our own sense of Chosenness. Last I looked it is the Kingdom of God and not earthly nations that is exceptional; that the gospel Jesus taught and lived is what is exceptional; so that the power of God’s grace belongs to the church, to peoples of all nations; that the power of God’s grace in the lives of all faithful people is  what is exceptional.

(2) Secondly, by referring to these stories Jesus is reminding Israel that people of other religions also have great faith, and that we should learn from their faith. The faith of the widow of Sidon and the faith of the general of Syria invites the power of God’s healing grace; in contrast, the faith of God’s own people sometimes is lacking. Can we Christians accept that the faith of some Muslims or Hindus may be greater than our own? Just as Israel could learn from the faith of the widow and general, Christians can learn from the faith of people of other religions. Just as in ancient Israel, we American Christians often place more trust and confidence in superior military power and in superior wealth than in the power of God’s grace to heal and redeem. Just as Jesus was asking his Jewish neighbors to learn from the faith of foreigners, like the widow and general, he is asking the church today to learn from the faith of others;  like the faith of Gandhi, for example, who believed that the power of God’s grace was greater than the military might of the British Empire; that the power of what he called “soul force” is greater than the power of what he called “body force;” that the spiritual weapons of non-violent, civil disobedience are more powerful than the physical weapons of violence and brutality.   

Jesus could have told his neighbors pastoral stories instead of prophetic stories. On some occasions he did; but not on this occasion. The stories he told were provocative and dangerous. The story we come now to celebrate is also a dangerous story. By participating in Holy Communion we enter with our lives a narrative of grace and mercy and peace that Jesus calls his church to practice.  It is a story that, like those of Elijah and Elisha, draws us well beyond nationalistic, racial, ethnic, and class divisions; a story that enables us as faithful Christians to see the grace and mercy and love of Jesus even in the faith and faces of foreigners and enemies. To do this is not easy, not something we can do under our own human power. Only by God’s power can we as Christians see with Elijah and Elisha the power of God’s healing grace in the faith of people of other religions. May Holy Communion draw us into the narrative of God’s redemption; may in faith we receive Christ’s healing power and pass it on to others, especially those different from ourselves.