Lent II/Orange Sunday
Sean C. Kim
St. Mary’s Episcopal Church
25 February 2024
 
 
Today’s Orange Sunday Mass is part of our continuous prayers for peace and healing in the aftermath of the deadly shooting at the Chiefs Super Bowl rally on February 14. This past Wednesday evening, we held a Prayer Vigil. It was beautiful and moving. Each of us lighted candles in memory of those who have suffered from gun violence and in hopes that this scourge on our society will end soon. Lenette Johnson, who is a parishioner and chorister here at St. Mary’s, offered a powerful and eloquent witness during the service. I would like to share some of her mesage with you this morning.
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Lenette is a retired music teacher from the North Kansas City and Kansas City, Missouri, public school districts. She recalled how life changed for her and her students at school after Sandy Hook in December 2012, when twenty children and adults were killed in the shooting.

After Sandy Hook, the active shooter drills began. 1) The first drills, teachers and students were to hide from the shooter. 2) Then a few years later, teachers were told to hide and then flee from the shooter.  3) A few years later, teachers were asked to hide, flee, and then fight the shooter. Throw whatever was in your classroom at the shooter. In my classroom, it was keyboard instruments!! I was emotionally affected by these experiences, and I could only imagine the trauma that the children were feeling. My daughter went through her entire school life with active shooter drills. And yet the white elephant in the situation, the guns, was never addressed.
 
As I listened to Lenette, I thought about how in the 1950s, schools did so-called duck-and-cover drills in the event of a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. Remember those? I was too young, but I’ve seen photos and videos of the drills. Now, in our nation, we are doing drills not to prepare for a foreign attack with atom bombs but to protect ourselves from individuals within our own communities who wish to do us harm. What kind of society have we become?

As you know, in the recent Chiefs rally shooting, eight children were among the twenty-two people hit by the gunfire. And I just heard on the news yesterday that there was a sixteen-year-old student at Olathe Northwest High School who brought a loaded gun to school just this past Friday. There have been many other similar cases throughout the metro area in recent years. And need I list the examples of school shootings across the country, such as Columbine in 1999 and Uvalde, just a couple of years ago, in 2022, in which so many innocent children have died or been injured and traumatized for life? The active shooter drills are by no means the result of paranoia. Sadly, they are necessary precautions against a very real daily threat.

In the Gospel of Matthew, we read about the Massacre of Innocents. King Herod, threatened by the news of the birth of a king, slaughtered all the children under two years of age in and around Bethlehem (Matthew 2:16-18). Today, in our society, we have our own Massacre of Innocents, as the senseless gun violence claims the lives of innocent children.

So, what should be our Christian response to the gun violence? As with other major social and political issues in our society, Christians are divided. Some call for strict controls; others claim the right to bear arms. Gun violence is a complicated and contentious issue both in analyzing the problem and in providing solutions. I know that here at St. Mary’s, we have a broad spectrum of views and opinions on the matter.

But on one point, we, as Christians, cannot be divided – our commitment to peace, a society free of gun violence. Whatever may be our analysis of the problem, whatever may be our solutions, we have to come together in working to end the gun violence and creating a peaceful and safe society. After all, we follow a Lord who is the “Prince of Peace.” At his birth, the angels in the heavens sang, “Peace on earth.”

Moreover, during Jesus’ life and ministry, children held a special place. In the Gospels, we read of how much Jesus loved and cared for the children. Parents brought their children to Jesus so that he would lay his hands on them and pray. When the disciples tried to chase them away, Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs” (Matthew 19:13-15; Luke 18:15-17).

Some of you know that I attended a Community of Christ Church for a brief period. When I was a kid growing up in Independence, Missouri, my siblings and I attended Sunday School at Second Church. Back then, it was called the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints or RLDS; the name change to Community of Christ came later. The reason why we went there was my parents were good friends with the organist, and the church had a great Sunday School program.

At one time, I was deeply immersed in the beliefs and practices of the RLDS Church, but since then, my faith journey has taken me in very different directions. I no longer subscribe to most of what I was taught at Second Church, but one part of the RLDS legacy in my personal life that I will always cherish is their emblem, which can been seen on their buildings and church publications. Picture a small child standing in the middle with a lion lying next to him on his right and a lamb standing to his left.  A child, a lion, and a lamb – it is a beautiful and powerful image of the hope for peace.
The emblem is based on a passage from the Book of Isaiah:

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child will lead them…They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:6-9).
 
For me, this vision from Isaiah is the goal to which we strive, a world in which former enemies do not hurt or destroy but live in harmony side by side and the little child has nothing to fear. As followers of Christ, we are called to build this world of peace, a world with no active gun drills in our schools.

In closing, I would like to share with you the prayer that Lenette offered at the Prayer

Vigil:
Dear Lord, we whisper NO MORE in our prayers at night as we remember gun violence victims. We say NO MORE as we go through our day as we remember students and staff of gun violence. We shout NO MORE when we are at rallies and remember all those affected by gun violence. Help us to have the strength and courage to do those things that will lessen gun violence in our city and nation. Amen.

Dr. Richard Liantonio
February 18, 2024
Year B, First Sunday in Lent
 
Today is the first Sunday in Lent, a time to recognize, confess, and repent for one’s sins. But if we’re honest, increasingly in our culture, the language of sin and repentance is losing meaning. Someone can stand on a street corner with a “repent or perish” sign, and tell people that they’ve gotta “turn or burn” but what does that even mean? What significance does that communicate to anyone who isn’t an insider?
 
When words lose their cultural resonance, our task is not simply to double down on the use of traditional terminology. Instead, we can take the opportunity to reflect afresh on what these words mean, what concepts these words point to in the Scriptures, and how we, with our many repetitions of these words, may have drifted from our Scriptural anchoring. We may find our concepts are indeed too small, an impoverished shadow of that to which the Scriptures point. We may discover that though we repeat these words believing them to be important, they have lost meaning to us as well.
 
Language of sin in American culture often centers around certain hot-button issues. In a 2015 Pew Research survey, up to 4-5 times as many Americans believed terminating a pregnancy or engaging in homosexual behavior was a sin, than people who believed acquiring many more possessions than you need or living without regard for environmental destruction was a sin. But what would make any of these behaviors a “sin?” Is “sin” simply a list of things god doesn’t like? Is repentance simply stopping the activities on god’s “bad list” and doing the items on the “good list?” The central message of the gospel reading from Ash Wednesday is that activities which are top candidates for gods “good list,” prayer, fasting, and charitable giving can be done in a way that misses the central good for which these practices aim. Jesus’s point is not that we should do prayer, fasting, and giving, but that they can be done wrongly. So there is a deeper logic to Jesus’s ethic.
 
To understand Jesus's logic of sin and repentance, we turn to today's Gospel and will attempt to tease out four enigmatic phrases. Take out your service leaflet so you can see the words with your eyes. We will focus on the final sentence of our Gospel reading. Mark recounts Jesus’s ministry of preaching as him saying only one sentence:  “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Obviously when Jesus preached, he said more than one sentence. Maybe some of you wished my sermon was only one sentence. But this one sentence appears to encapsulate the core of Jesus’s message. As we look at these phrases we should reflect on whether these are at the core of our message, whether they are at the core of our understanding and articulation of the gospel.
 
First Jesus says, “the time is fulfilled.” The time is fulfilled, or perhaps better translated “the period of time has been fulfilled,” or completed. The phrase is so short, it’s easy to move on to the next one. Jesus seems to assume his audience knows to what he is referring. In some of Israel’s prophets, there is a concept of dividing time into two eras. The present age, is one in which evil prevails. This is the age when injustice is rampant, when war and violence destroy human and animal life, when hatred assaults human dignity, and poverty undermines human well-being.
 
The prophets however spoke of a time when humans would practice war no more. They would beat their swords into plow-shears and their spears into pruning hooks. They would take their weapons and melt them down into instruments of agriculture. That which riddles the world with death and destruction would give way to that which cultivates life and fosters flourishing. People would decisively and definitively turn from their drive to destroy life and their indifference to suffering. The injustice, hatred, division, poverty, and despair that characterizes the world would experience God’s redemption and be transfigured. A new age would emerge, characterized by justice, wholeness, dignity, equality, and joy.
 
When Jesus says “the time is fulfilled,” he is saying something very, very radical: The old age has ended. What the prophets have spoken of is now here. The time of hatred, violence, war, injustice, poverty, and despair has come to an end.
 
The next phrase is “The Kingdom of God has come near.” The Kingdom of God has come near. This phrase is often misunderstood. The Kingdom of God is not up in heaven and neither is it the church. Also contrary to a popular misunderstanding, the “Kingdom of God” is not “within you,” or within  any other individual. It may be better to translate the term “Reign” instead of “Kingdom,” as it does not refer to a place, but rather to a time period in which God reigns. By analogy, I could say “the reign of Elizabeth is completed. The Reign of Charles has come near.” The reign of Charles is the period of time when Charles is the ruler of the British Commonwealth. Likewise the “kingdom or reign of god” is the period of time when God is the ruler.
 
As Christians we may be accustomed to jargon like “god is in control” or “God’s will always happens,” but these ideas would be very strange and very foreign to many of the bibles characters and authors. God’s will is for all living creatures, including humans, to flourish. God’s will is for the experience of peace, wholeness, happiness, and security to fill planet earth. When this occurs, we say that God’s will has happened. This contrasts with struggling to find some mysterious divine will when all sorts of terrible events happen.
 
God’s will is that wars, violence, hatred, enmities, divisions, and injustices cease and are replaced by peace, love, wholeness, justice, and joy in every area of society. When biblical authors speak of “God’s kingdom” or “God’s reign,” they mean the period of time in which this happens. And when Jesus says the reign of God is at hand, he means this era of peace, love, wholeness, justice, and joy is beginning even now in his life and ministry, and eventually through his death and resurrection.
 
Next Jesus says “repent.” This is a key word for the Lenten season. What is critical is that Jesus’ message of repentance is not set within a framework of so-called “morality.” Repentance for Jesus is not simply about “stopping being bad and starting being good.” Jesus’ message of repentance centers on the reign of God – the period of time when the rule of evil, violence, war, injustice, and poverty is overturned, and peace, love, wholeness, justice, and joy prevails. Repentance is a total reorientation of convictions, values, practices, and social affiliations that reflect this coming Kingdom.
 
Jesus’s message was not “repent so you can get to heaven,” “repent so you can be in relationship with god,” “repent so you can be a good person.” It was “repent because god is renewing and restoring the world.” Are you going to clamp down and preserve the old world or are you going to be part of bringing about the new world? Are we struggling to maintain the old world of death and destruction, of violence, hatred, and self-preservation, the old world where fantasies of ethnic superiority turn neighbor into enemy, where indifference to human and creaturely suffering perpetuates the endless string of misery? Are your convictions, values, practices, and social affiliations oriented toward and shaped by the new world which has no place for hatred, war, violence, injustice, and poverty? This is the repentance to which Jesus calls us. Not get better so you can go to heaven. Rather, join me in creating heaven on earth. We then can understand sin, not simply as the items on God’s bad list, but rather, those convictions, values, practices, and social affiliations that remain indifferent to the suffering, violence, and injustice of the old order, or worse, actively work to ensure their dominion.
 
Finally, we return to when Jesus says to “believe the good news.” Believe the good news that God is reshaping earthly existence, bringing earth’s history into an era of transformation and change, where the old order of things passes away and God makes all things new. But if we’re honest, believing this can be very, very hard. Perhaps this is more pointedly so in the days following a mass shooting in our very own city, just blocks from this building. 22 people were injured, more than half of them children. Two people remain in critical condition. One person, who by all accounts was a beautiful soul, had their life cut short in their prime. We pray for the repose of the soul of Lisa Lopez-Galvan and for the recovery of all those suffering injuries, trauma, and loss. How can we believe God is renewing and restoring the world when the reign of violence and death seems alive and well—when indifference to human suffering is palpably present?
 
In the Eucharist we encounter the body of Christ who has experienced the fullness of the world’s evil, hatred, violence, and death itself. Yet this same body rose from the dead. Jesus Christ passed over from death to life and in himself began the Exodus from the reign of evil, hatred, and death to the reign of justice, love, and life. The risen body of Christ we receive in the Eucharist is a token, a real true piece of the new world God is creating. This token of the new world we receive in the Holy Eucharist cries out for more. It cries out for us to become a constant disturbance, a constant annoyance to those who refuse to repent of their allegiance to the status quo. It creates a resolute insistence that sets us against the grain of this world. We refuse to accept circumstances as they are. We refuse to accept the permanence of gun violence. We refuse to afford senseless terror and violence a position of normality. We set the vision of a renewed and restored world before our eyes and refuse anything to the contrary.
 
“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
 
The reign of death, violence, and hatred is coming to an end. God’s reign of life, justice, and love is beginning. Forsake your allegiance to the old world, believe this new world is beginning, and follow Christ in making it happen.

Ash Wednesday Year B
Isaiah 58:1-12
2 Corinthians 5:20 b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6,16-21
Psalm 103 
St. Mary’s Episcopal Church
Justin E. Smith
14 February 2024

Create, in us new and contrite hearts, that we may obtain of you, all mercy, perfect remission, and forgiveness.
(In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.)

Today, the Church celebrates Ash Wednesday. Why is this day is so popular? What is it about our practices that attract so many people, who otherwise may not come to church on a regular basis; yet, they appear at our doors on this occasion? Is it the token of ashes smudged on our foreheads, the mysterious and striking rituals that speak to our guilty human consciences, or is it something more?

 Christians have been mindful of their mortality and their need for repentance since the earliest of times. Ashes were used in ancient times to express grief. The gesture of sprinkling ashes was commonly used to express sorrow for sins and faults. Ashes are symbolic of our sinful selves, dying and returning to the dust. In Job, he repents by saying "I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." The prophet Daniel pled to God saying: "I turned to the Lord God, pleading in earnest prayer, with fasting, sackcloth and ashes". Prior to the New Testament, the Maccabees prepared for their battle using ashes: "they fasted and wore sackcloth; they sprinkled ashes on their heads and tore their clothes". Christians have continued the practice of using ashes as an external sign of repentance for generations.

Tertullian, said that the confession of sin should be accompanied by lying in sackcloth and ashes. The historian Eusebius recounts how a repentant apostate covered himself with ashes when begging Pope Zephyrinus to be readmitted to Holy communion. In the 19th century, The Episcopal Church observed Ash Wednesday in the Book of Common Prayer: "as a day of fasting and humiliation, wherein they publicly confessed sins, meekly to implore God's mercy and forgiveness, and humbly to intercede for the continuance of his favor". In the 20th century, the revised Book of Common Prayer provides prayers for the imposition of ashes.

In the apocalyptic poetry of Joel, which was the alternate old testament reading for today, the Lord says “...return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. As human beings we are on a never-ending quest for answers about our purpose in life and what it means to exist. We ponder our mortality and what happens in the afterlife. Furthermore, Christians are on a quest to understand what it means to be in relationship with God and those around them. For many, Ash Wednesday is steeped in powerful traditions, that move their hearts to action. On this day we feel compelled to contemplate the mysteries of God, our human nature and tendency to sin. This day in particular, people make sacrifices and solemn vows to return to the Lord in ways they may not have on other days of the year. It is assumed then that the practice of imposing ashes still has something to offer the church and her people in this age.

Today, we have heard in the readings a call to return to the Lord and repent of our sins, while being mindful of our fleeting mortality and the need for spiritual preparation.

In the book of the prophet Isaiah, we hear him speaking to the Israelite’s by saying, “you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers..., you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.”

Zechariah indicates that Israel fasted on the fifth and seventh months for seventy years, following the destruction of Jerusalem. (Perhaps coincidentally, this is where we get the pre-Lenten season of Gesima-tide which marks the countdown of 70 days of preparation before Easter.)

In this context, Israel complains that God has deprived them of justice. God responds to this by demanding Israel to stop depriving those around them of justice and righteousness. Even though Israel has been attentive to the ritual ordinances of the Law, they have completely neglected the ethical demands of it. The people believe they are the victims, when in fact they are the victimizers.

Isaiah goes on to say, “If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.”

God in this moment, is chastising them for their sins of selfishness and judgment of others. Their arrogance and haughtiness have consumed them and they have made idols out of their superficial spiritual acts, through heartless prayer and a lack of love for those people around them.

Similarly, in the narrative of Matthew we encounter the sin of prideful vanity. The people are warned of practicing their piety before others in order to be seen by them. The people of this time were overly concerned with their outward piety and how seemingly righteous they were before the Lord in visual ways. They practiced grand gestures, (we certainly don’t do that here at St. Mary’s, right?) but instead had very little internal reverence towards Gods covenant. Their hearts were puffed up with appearance seeking, attention and arrogance, so much so that their pious acts became empty and meaningless to God.

The problem with pride or vanity, is that one sees them self as higher and more important than others.

Vanity or vainglory in many religions, is considered a pernicious form of self-idolatry, in which one rejects God for the sake of one's own image, and thereby becomes divorced from the graces of God through their own accord.

Pride, not to be confused with the sense of self- worth, is the sin of haughtiness and arrogance, which St. Augustine defines as "the love of one's own excellence". The negative connotation of pride here, refers to a foolishly and irrationally corrupt sense of one's personal value, status or accomplishments. Pride is called the root of all evil because it is known to be sadistic and contemptuous.

When one is filled with thoughts of them self in a disproportionate way, they place an obstacle between them and God. He tells us that we are all the same in His creation. When we fall into sin, we are worshiping idols, something other than God and His will, and we damage our relationships. We turn away from God, His divine nature and towards those things that prevent us from perfectly loving Him and our neighbors.

Pride, like all sin, is considered deadly. The word sin comes from the Greek word “Amarita” which means to “miss the mark”. As Christians, the mark for which we aim is a Christ-like life. One that is lived to the best of our ability in line with the teachings, precepts and commandments of God. When we fail to hit this mark, we sin.

While taking into account addictions and other disorders that prevent a person from making right decisions, let’s take an example into consideration to help us better understand what this means. One would not consider listening to pop music on the radio as something deadly, right? However, a person who spends all of their time listening to this music, to a point of ignoring others, isolating themselves from people and other activities, and subsequently becomes controlled by their desire to listen to this music; to the exclusion of important aspects of life, can find themselves in a deadly, sinful condition. Music in and of itself is not a sin; becoming obsessed with it, and ignoring aspects of their life, and loving relationships with others, on the other hand, is what is sinful.

When we look at our consciences and sin, we should be evaluating the questions. Are my actions, thoughts, attitudes, and material goods controlling me, or am I in control of them? These things cannot control us, unless of course we allow them to. The television does not turn itself on and hold us captive for hours, while ignoring the needs of our family, friends and neighbors, all on its own. We make a choice to sin.

Sin is destructive and holds us in slavery and bondage, it imprisons us to the point of anger and bitterness. These internal dispositions can be detrimental to our spiritual, mental and physical health, effecting our relationship with others, quenching the spirit from within us, and we end up listening to the wrong voices. Sin prevents us from effectively witnessing to others, blocks our spiritual growth, and the blessings God tries to bestow upon us.

It is for this reason that the Lord says whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, whenever you pray, go into your room, and shut the door to pray in secret, whenever you fast, do not look dismal. Even our well-seeming acts of piety can be done in a sinful manner.

In the Gospel of Matthew, the Lord is not necessarily speaking about our external gestures, but rather to the disposition of our hearts and intents behind our acts of piety and the sacrifices we make. To say it more plainly, He is telling us that with our external spiritual practices, we should find our hearts, our souls and our being as well.
Additionally, the Lord tells us not to store up for ourselves treasures here on earth, where moth and rust consume, but instead store up for ourselves treasures in heaven, where nothing dies. He says, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."  In this passage, when the Lord speaks of storing up our treasures in heaven, He is speaking about our mortality and preparing us for a fate we all must face one day.

He is calling us to live a life that reflects our eternal home in the next, by preparing our hearts to enter into a place of all-encompassing love. When the Lord asks us to do things like fast, it is for self-denial, when we are asked to give alms, we are offering a sacrifice of our earthly treasure back to Him. Along with prayer and repentance, the Lord is moving us outside of ourselves, using our sacrifices and preparing us in a way to receive the heavenly graces restored to us by Christs own sacrifice on the Cross.

It might surprise many of you that smudging crosses on our heads on Ash Wednesday hasn’t always been practiced, yet, using the cross says something powerful to the world. The cross we use today is not imposed in a vainglorious or prideful way, but instead is symbolically marked upon us as an image of Christs sacrificial love for all of us. These crosses are visible to others, as an acknowledgment of compassion and mercy to those whom we encounter in our day. In the psalm today, we hear that “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our sins from us. As a Father cares for his children, so does the Lord care for those who fear him.”

 Continuing on it also says that “For he himself knows whereof we are made; he remembers that we are but dust.” The crosses on our heads are comprised of ashes. These serve as a sobering reminder that we were not created for this world, but rather, for something greater. Our mortal bodies will one day return to the earth, but our souls, having been properly prepared, will live on in the next. The symbol of the cross is the powerful visual, that the lord has won salvation for us and lives victoriously over sin and the grave. St. Paul tells us that, we are dying, yet are alive; punished, and not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet rich. While ultimately having nothing, yet possessing everything. Paul is saying that we possess something far greater than this earthly life. We are marked as Christ’s own forever.

When we sin, we lose the consciousness of the forgiveness we’ve been given through the cross, as well as our peace with God. While we are always complete in Christ’s redemption, we are also in a real relationship with Him. By analogy, this can be seen in our human relationships.

The relationships we have with family are permanent, yet if one of my family members sin against me or I against them, our relationship becomes strained and needs to be restored. Our covenant with the triune God works in the same way. When we seek repentance, we come to the father, admitting that we have failed through our behavior that is not in line with God’s will, assuming the responsibility for our actions, with true contrition. When we turn to God for healing we are reapplying what Christ has already done for us, reviving our security in him and the confident assurance of our salvation.

            So, on the contrary, perhaps Ash Wednesday is not popular because of our external rituals and tokens of ashes, or even the mindful, fear-inducing renderings about sin, death, and punishment from God, but rather, because in returning to the Lord, we are reminded that he is gracious and merciful and full of compassion to all whom he loves. God is here to help us in our lives when we fail to live up to our potential. He wants nothing more than to be in relationship with us. He wants to be in relationship with you.

Over the years there has been one consistent prayer that I say to myself almost on a daily basis, and multiple times a day. That prayer is short but significant. It is ‘Lord have mercy on me a sinner.” As much of a sinner as I am, and believe me I sin a lot, I am extremely grateful that we have a God of Love and Mercy. There is nothing that myself, you, or anyone can do, that will prevent God from loving us. I am always reminded that I need a savior by my own wretchedness and failure to hit the mark I’m called to. In our readings today, against the juxtaposition of the warnings of sin, we are also reminded of the compassion of God. That His merciful goodness endures forever on those who show reverence towards him. He is slow to anger, and his righteousness is on the generations before us and the ones to come.

The truth is that we all must face mortality. Statisticians have crunched the numbers and the results are indeed clear, there is 100% chance you and I will die. This transition is not something to fear, but because of the reality of it, we should be in mindful preparation. We know, as Christians, that our supernatural lives do not end with our last breath. Christ is both the Alpha and the Omega, the source of all light and eternal life. By fostering our relationship with God through word, prayer and sacrament; partaking of His body and blood, confessing our sins, fasting and praying, we are healed of our human imperfections, strengthened in our bonds, made new, made whole, and are assured in joyful hope of the resurrection. We stand here awaiting the day of His coming, in a continued, revelatory journey of spiritual growth, with our everlasting creator.

So, as we enter Lent dear friends, let us fast and pray alongside Jesus, over these next 40 days, as He did in the desert, resisting the temptation to sin, loving God and our neighbors as ourselves, and striving to live a life in accordance with His will.  Amen
 

Last Sunday of Epiphany, Year B
“The Transfiguration”
February 11, 2024
2 Kings 2:1-12   Ps. 50:1-6   2 Corinthians 4:3-6   Mark 9:2-9
 
This is the last Sunday after Epiphany. We have left behind the light of the Christmas Star. The Wise Men have returned to their home country.  Mary and Joseph have long ago rescued the Christ child by fleeing to Egypt, and during the past few Sundays we have experienced the grown-up Jesus, calling His disciples and teaching.

We are on the verge of Lent, a darker time in our church calendar, and the lights are already being dimmed.  In our worship space the Christmas trees have been packed away and the Alleluias have been buried.   But as we balance on this particular precipice of the church year and descend into the shadowlands of Lent, there is a burst of blinding light,.

In our texts today, the office of prophetic power from a legendary prophet of Israel, to another no less legendary—Elijah to Elisha—is accompanied by the parting of the River Jordan, a chariot of fire with horses of fire, and a “whirlwind into heaven.”

   Then a Psalm about God who reveals his glory accompanied by consuming flame and a raging storm, and a letter from St. Paul telling us of “the light of the Gospel” “shining out of the darkness.”

Finally, the Gospel tells the dramatic story of Jesus’ “transfiguration”, in which His whole being becomes blinding white light as Elijah and Moses walk about.

In my observation of clergy I have known over the years, it seems that two Sundays that the sermon was often consigned to an assistant, a student/postulant, or a guest preacher, were the Sundays featuring the Trinity or the Transfiguration.   Preachers of mainline denominations don’t like texts they can’t explain or make a metaphor out of. 

I think that applies to most people.  We are, after all, even those who immersed in the Christian faith, modern people.  We don’t have much truck with the supernatural. We seek meaning in the experiences of our lives, but the experiences need to be located in logic, i.e. framed by the natural or the explainable:  something which passes muster as scientific method. 

In that, we who are “believers,” share the same suppositions of the large majority of others in our 21st century world—at least in the Western World—when it comes to the Bible.   If we can’t “make sense” of a story or event in the stories and teachings of our faith, by “common sense”, then that story or event isn’t true and we dismiss it as having any relevance for our daily lives.

On the other side of the same coin, the fundamentalists, who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible, believe that every story is historically and scientifically “true” because they have declared it so. “The Bible says it.  I believe it.  That settles it.”  The Bible becomes “like a textbook or the instruction book that comes with a cordless drill.” (Mike Cosper 15) 

There is no room for interpretation or imagination.  The “mighty works of God” are limited to what they look like on their surface, and their interpretation is limited to the bias and limited knowledge of the interpreter. (And NOBODY has unlimited knowledge!)

 Mystery is shut out.  Intuition and experience are nullified.  Christian philosopher James K.A. Smith has said, “No one is more modern than a fundamentalist.” (Cosper, p. 15)

Now there are some of us who like to think that we are more “enlightened” than the fundamentalists, or the “Biblical technicians” among our liberal brothers and sisters, who use the tools of ancient language and historical, including archeological,  research to identify the roots and cultural backgrounds of Biblical stories, to ferret out how much of a story is verifiably true by today’s definitions, while dismissing the “accretion” of interpretation of centuries of people who have found  the courage to live, and even to die, in the reading of the stories and reinterpreting them into the events of their lives.

This kind of research is valuable to us as we attempt to draw parallels between say, politics in ancient Israel, or daily life in first century Corinth, to the issues of our lives today.  However, Scripture often gets taken apart, like a clockmaker disassembling a clock, and once it gets disassembled doesn’t tell time anymore! 

So we(“enlightened” ones) take a literary approach:  What does the story mean?  How does it unfold?  How is an individual story part of the whole story the Bible tries to tell? 

We use our imaginations and retell stories in modern narrative, or make metaphors, so that the stormy sea that Peter walked on is a story about our chaotic lives, and Peter’s walk is our trust in God in the midst of our storm (i.e. life!). 
This is certainly where l have come to in trying to grapple, both intellectually and prayerfully, as a person, pastor, and preacher, with the Bible.  It avoids seeing the Bible as a rigid book of instruction, or as a clock to be parted out or a corpse to be dissected.  This approach honors the Bible as a living, breathing entity, that I can see replicated in my life and in the lives of others.

It keeps the Biblical stories on a level with something I can understand and talk about with some degree of logic, albeit logic infused with imagination!    If you don’t use this methodology on reading and understanding Scripture already, I highly recommend it.  As bit of wisdom from the community of black preachers says, “The Bible is like condensed milk.  You just need to add the water of imagination and humor!”

However, what this approach lacks is the embrace of mystery.  There are some stories that resist such playful or creative interpretation.  Stories like our Old Testament reading today, about a  prophet handing off a “double share” of his God-given power to another prophet and coming to the end of his service, and his life, not by dying, but by being taken up in a whirlwind, escorted by a chariot of fire, and horses of fire.
 
 Or the Transfiguration story, in which Jesus takes aside three of his disciples out of the daily grind of teaching and is shot through with light, a blinding light, that turn Jesus’ clothing pure bright white, while God speaks—audibly and unmistakably.

Then there is the Psalm that calls people to worship a God of “consuming flame” and “a raging storm.”  There are no scientific or sensible explanations here.  They are out of the realm of everyday life and experience. You can’t make them into metaphors.

Nor should we even try.  For centuries, millennia, even, “people lived in a Cosmos that was full of mystery, a place where human knowledge had its limits and an unseen spiritual realm was constantly at work, shaping their everyday lives.” (Cosper p. 11) They lived in an “enchanted” world.   “In our modern world we have tried to trade mystery for certainty, a certainty born of the delusion that we can gain understanding of things we don’t understand through methods we can control.” 

 Because of the world we are immersed in, we unconsciously “buy” the myth that we have to prove what we believe.   It becomes a world in which cynicism and pragmatism rule, and wonder and awe are for children.

 The world has become disenchanted, and in their disenchantment, people believe that they are alone, that it is just them against the universe, and the universe is not their friend.

  People long to be enchanted, to know that there is more to a life of meaning than that which can be proved or which makes sense.   That there is “truth” that cannot be proved by scientific analysis or logic.  That the Good will ultimately prevail.

Bishop Skelton, the bishop that gave the keynote address to the convocation of the Society of Catholic Priests held here at St. Mary’s last year, said that, as Christians, “our faith is an enchanted faith.”   It is.   Every worship service we have here, especially the High Masses, gives thanks to, and invokes, a God that encompasses the cosmos, and yet is as close to us as our breathing:

 A wild God of fire and whirlwind and blinding, uncreated light; a God of consuming flame and raging storm, represented by incense, song, and organ.

 A God celebrated in word and sacrament as the God of steadfast and abundant love that will not let us go.   A God whose glory is testified by “the heavens and the earth” in their very existence, and yet who became as one of us in Jesus, whose glory shone in the self-sacrificial love of a terrible crucifixion; that enchanted all pain and suffering and unjust power, putting an end to their triumph over us in the glory of the Resurrection.  This makes no sense to a cynical world, but it is

TRUE!

We have been having conversations lately about how we bring more people to join us in this experience of enchanted worship.  As I proffered a few weeks ago, the question is not so much how, but why?. 

 St. Paul pointed a way forward in the letter addressed to the Church at Corinth in the First Century and read to us at 13th and Holmes in the 21st Century.  “The god of this world (i.e. the glorification of cynicism and the need to provide a logical explanation for everything?) “has blinded the minds” of people “to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of God, who is the image of God.  For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake.”  (The same God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness”) “has shone in our hearts to give the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Cor. 4:3-6)

God of fire and light, enchant us with your love and glory and through us enchant those who long for enchantment.
 
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen
+++

Much of my thinking on the subject of this sermon has been clarified by a book I have recently read:
Recapturing the Wonder, Transcendent Faith in a Disenchanted World,  by Mike Cosper.  IVP Books, Intervarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, 2017.   Statements in quotes are statements, or paraphrases, from this book.  The conclusions I have drawn are mine alone.

    --The Rev. Larry A. Parrish    February 11, 2024
 
 

Septuagesima
Sean C. Kim
St. Mary’s Episcopal Church
28 January 2024


In the history of Christianity, the early church is the golden age. Beginning with the apostles and spanning the first four centuries of the faith, it is the age that produced the New Testament and the Creeds. It is the age that established the Sacraments and the Orders of Ministry. It is the age of saints and martyrs. In short, the early church laid down the foundations of the Christian faith. So, it is no surprise that we idealize the early church. During the Protestant Reformation, the early church was the model on which the various reforms were carried out. The reformers were trying to restore the beliefs and practices of the early church, purging what they believed to be the accretions and errors that had crept into the medieval church.

But when we look closely at the early church, it was far from perfect. In today’s Epistle, we learn about a major source of division in the church at Corinth, meat sacrificed to idols. For the people of Corinth, meat was a luxury, expensive and hard to get.[1] One way to obtain it was to buy the meat sold in the markets after animals had been sacrificed in pagan rituals.[2] Or sometimes they could eat the meat in the dining area of the temple in which the sacrifices had been performed. Some Christians in Corinth had no qualms about acquiring meat this way, since they knew that the gods to which the sacrifices were made didn’t really exist and thus the rituals had no meaning. But other Christians, newer to the faith and steeped in the old pagan culture, refused to buy or consume it because of the association with the idols. The Corinthians could not resolve this disagreement on their own, so they appealed to the Apostle Paul.

And what does Paul say? On the one hand, he agrees with those who believe there is nothing wrong with eating the meat, explaining that “we know that ‘no idol in the world really exists,’ and that ‘there is no God but one,’” (I Corinthians 8:4). But he doesn’t go on from there to force the other group into eating the meat. In fact, he doesn’t provide a simple answer. He offers a solution but with a condition. For those of you who believe that there is nothing wrong with the meat offered to idols, you can eat the meat but only if it doesn’t cause offense to a fellow believer. In other words, go right ahead and eat the meat in the privacy of your home, but if you risk being seen in a temple dining area, then don’t. Be sensitive to the conscience of those who disagree with you.

Paul’s advice is not just a matter of being polite and considerate. It has profound theological meaning. If eating the meat causes another member of the community to stumble or fall, then it is nothing less than sin. It is a sin against that person whom you hurt. Moreover, it is a sin against Christ himself. For that person is just as much a member of the community of believers as you are, the believers for whom Christ died. Paul states, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” (I Corinthians 8:1). The interpersonal relationship – love – is more important than correct knowledge or belief.

The problem of meat offered to idols was one of many sources of division in the Corinthian church. They were also divided over issues of ethnicity – Jews versus Greeks, socioeconomic status – rich versus poor, and personal loyalties – Paul’s faction versus Apollos’s faction. We often bemoan how sadly divided Christians are today, but the early church was no model of peace and unity.

Division in the church is nothing new. But, of course, the causes of our division today are different from those of the early church. Christians now have a whole host of new issues that have caused disagreements and conflicts, ranging from abortion to the blessing of same sex unions.

And we also confront the bitter theological divide between conservative and liberal churches. I’ve heard horror stories of the trauma experienced by LGBTQ+ persons in conservative churches that have condemned and even expelled them. And, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant, many conservatives believe that the liberal churches, with their progressive theological and social views, as having abandoned traditional Christianity.

At the other end of the theological spectrum, in liberal denominations, such as the Episcopal Church, we haven’t done such a good job either of showing love and respect to those who don’t agree with us. It is not uncommon these days to encounter the dismissal and even mockery of cherished beliefs and doctrines on social media and even from the pulpit. Several years ago, I heard the dean of a major Methodist seminary give a sermon at commencement in which he remarked, “Of course, none of us believe in the Trinity these days.” And a clergy friend shared with me the story of an Episcopal priest who at a diocesan gathering for Easter blurted out to her clergy colleagues, “None of you believe in this Easter stuff, do you? But it’s pretty ritual.” We wonder why so many people have left our denomination.

My own personal background is mainline Protestantism, and my theological training has been at a liberal seminary. So, it is my own tradition that I am addressing. I value and celebrate the freedom of belief and practice in our mainline churches, but what I have found disturbing is the absence of sensitivity to those who do not share our views. We do not have to change our minds or compromise our beliefs, but at the same time, we should not be assuming a superior or condescending position to those who don’t agree with us. To borrow the Apostle Paul’s language, we should not be puffed up in knowledge.

When I began serving at St. Mary’s five years ago, among the many things that I learned from Fr. Charles was a new term, “inclusive orthodoxy.” It refers to holding traditional Christian beliefs while having open and progressive views on social issues. Many of the younger Episcopal clergy have embraced this term, in part as a reaction against the extremes of the previous generation’s liberal theology. At St. Mary’s, we have many parishioners who would identify with inclusive orthodoxy. And we have others who would identify as liberal or conservative. This is the beauty of our Anglican tradition. We can hold a variety of theological and social views, but what is important is that we come to pray and worship together as one body.

Soon, we will approach the altar and receive the Body and Blood of Christ. And in these Holy Mysteries, Christ comes to dwell in us – all of us, whether we are liberal, conservative, or inclusive orthodox; male, female, or transgender; white, black, or Asian. Knowing that Christ dwells in us, including the brother or sister with whom we disagree, how can we interact in any way other than love?

[1] Jeehei Park, “Commentary on 1 Corinthians 8:1-13,” Working Preacher. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-after-epiphany-2/commentary-on-1-corinthians-81-13-6
[2] Valéry Nicolet, “Commentary on 1 Corinthians 8:1-13,” Working Preacher. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-after-epiphany-2/commentary-on-1-corinthians-81-13-3