Advent III, 2020
The Rev’d Isaac Petty
St Mary’s Episcopal Church, Kansas City
 
I’ve seen a lot more death in recent weeks than I had anticipated seeing at this point in my life. I suppose it’s odd, being the son of a funeral home owner, that I have not been confronted with so much death before. However, I now find myself in patient rooms as they take their final breath, a holy moment that is accompanied by many emotions and family concerns.
 
Saint Luke’s Hospital began, to overly simplify the history, out of the ministry of this parish nearly 140 years ago. I now serve there as a chaplain intern, and one of the kinds of visits I have all-too-frequently is pastoral care at the time of death or when care is withdrawn. Because of the pandemic, Covid-related deaths only add to the number of calls we receive and, being where we are culturally, a question both dying patients and their family members ask is to inquire about the nature of Heaven or to assure them of their heavenly destination.
 
Fr. Charles spoke two weeks ago about death among the four Last Things in this Advent sermon series (with Judgment last week, Heaven today, and Hell next week). The recording of Fr. Charles’ sermon on death is out online, so I won’t rehearse what he said here, except to remind us that Christians have already died with Christ in baptism. Fr. Charles also referenced one of the prayers in our prayer book for use at the Commemoration of the Dead, which reads “life is changed, not ended;” and it continues, “when our mortal body doth lie in death, there is prepared for us a dwelling place eternal in the heavens” (BCP 349).
 
Discussions of Heaven aren’t reserved for the time of death. In fact, heaven isn’t about us and our destinies so much as it’s about the will of the Maker of heaven and earth. Now, I do not claim to understand the architectural details of Heaven, and I truly don’t intend to turn this nave into a lecture hall, but I do intend to share what I think is compelling reason for us to start talking about heaven in our everyday life. Heaven is not about death, but it truly is about life.
 
Scripture offers many different images for describing heaven and many books on many bookshelves are filled with speculations and interpretations. Put most simply, a common theme in the Bible is that heaven is God’s space, where everything is ordered according to God’s will. Heaven is filled with God’s holiness, which leads to several images, such as heaven being filled with light, the shining glory of God; and picturesque streets of gold, to show the richness of God’s royal kingdom; and depictions that it is filled with angels, whose job is eternally praising God. All of these depictions give us some idea of the kind of space God inhabits – one where everything is glorifying God and enjoying God forever, to paraphrase the Westminster Shorter Catechism.
 
Our own Catechism teaches us that heaven is eternal life, and specifically the eternal life in which we enjoy God (BCP 862). You know, Jesus talked about eternal life. In one of the most commonly known verses of Scripture, Jesus tells Nicodemus that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3.16 NRSV). Jesus immediately follows this line with a discussion of light entering the world but humanity choosing darkness. The conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus concludes with Jesus saying “But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God” (John 3.21 NRSV). Deacon Isaac, what does all of this have to do with heaven? Good question! You see God is light, in whom there is no darkness at all (1 John 1.5), and we understand heaven to be filled with God’s light. But, thankfully, that light does not just stay in heaven.
 
Appropriate for Advent, we are concluding the daily, Low Masses here at St. Mary’s by reading the beginning of John’s Gospel, including some of the verses in the Gospel I just proclaimed. This section of Scripture tells of the true light, coming into the world, to enlighten others. Likewise, the Creed we will say in a moment reminds us that Christ “came down from heaven.” Christ brought that heavenly light into the world and, as St Matthew tells us, he proclaimed that the Kingdom of Heaven had come near.
 
Heaven and Earth are as different as night and day, quite literally, and yet heaven comes to earth. God’s light shines when heaven and earth overlap. Heaven may be a separate dimension that breaks into earth, our space. Heaven’s light, with its clean, pure, and loving reality becomes visible, even in our dark and sin-filled world, because of Christ’s presence. The work of Christ that began at his incarnation continues by the Spirit in the work of the Church as we await his coming again. At Christ’s impending return from Heaven, which we are especially mindful of during Advent, heaven and earth will be made anew, into one space, where nothing and no one is outside of the will of God, in which God is all-in-all, and all of creation is filled with God’s light. Heaven-on-earth is eternally filled with life and the glory of God.
 
When someone on their deathbed asks me about going to heaven, I don’t often have the time to talk through four hours through a theology of the afterlife, but I feel comfortable talking about the joys of heaven that await them, because heaven comes to earth, and at the resurrection of the dead, heaven and earth will be one and all made anew. The Kingdom of Heaven will be the dominion into which the dead in Christ shall rise. As the Creed reminds us, not only did Christ ascend in heaven after his resurrection, but “he shall come again, with glory, to judge both the quick and the dead; [his] kingdom shall have no end.”
 
The Good News for today is that we don’t have to wait for the day of the resurrection of the dead to experience heaven on earth. When the will of God is done, through glorifying God in the Church or by proclaiming the justice of God’s reign in the middle of an unjust society, we are catching glimpses of heaven coming to earth.
 
In a few moments, after the bread and wine have been consecrated, we will join our voices in praying the prayer Our Lord taught us, asking for Our Father’s will to be done “on earth as it is in heaven.” Those gathered here will then commune with one another and the faithful from every age as we feast on Christ, who comes from Heaven and gives us that “grace and heavenly benediction” for which we pray. Those joining online will pray, too, for that spiritual communion, wherein God’s heavenly grace may be apparent as you prayerfully join in God’s ever-present embrace and see the glimpses of heaven made available to you where you are.  May we all continue to grow in God’s “love and service” as we become “partakers in [that] heavenly kingdom.” Amen. 

First Things First: Inclusive Prayers for God’s Mission
1 Timothy 2.1-7
 
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
 
Let’s get first things first. That’s the introduction to the letter-full of instructions coming to Timothy, as we heard in today’s Epistle reading. Because we’ve since heard a Gospel passage that confuses the snot of out me and the Epistle lection was only a few verses, I think it’s worth re-reading at this point.
 
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For
    there is one God;
    there is also one mediator between God and humankind,
    Christ Jesus, himself human,
    who gave himself a ransom for all
—this was attested at the right time. For this I was appointed a herald and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.
 
What we didn’t hear in today’s lesson was the preface that told Timothy the following instructions would help get his church in order so it can be about God’s mission in the world. As such, it starts by reminding Timothy of putting first things first.
 
To get the church in order and start with the matter of utmost importance, which is prayer. Paul[1] gets directly to the point: the Christian life together has to be grounded in prayer. Because this letter cuts to the chase, so will I: in order for the church to live out its vocation in the world – its calling to proclaim God’s salvation to all peoples – the church must pray for everyone, as Jesus mediates salvation to all of humanity.
 
Perhaps you’re all more sanctified than I am, or maybe you’ve never had this experience, but imagine with me, if you will, that reaction some of us who drive have when we’re in traffic. You know the one – when you just want to honk your horn with the rudest honk imaginable or maybe wave a particularly angry hand gesture in another driver’s general direction. Maybe it’s 5:47pm on a Thursday, you’re rushing home, and someone is holding up traffic on 31st trying to turn left onto Broadway and you see, as clearly as they surely do, the long sign that says no left turn from 7am-9am and from 4pm-6pm Monday to Friday except holidays, though busses are exempt – yet it’s 5:47pm, it’s not a holiday, and their Prius in no way could be mistaken for a bus, but nevertheless they’re holding you up and trying to turn left anyway. At least twice this week I just had to say out loud “that beloved child of God has probably had a hard day” in order to keep my threads of sanctification held together.
 
Oh, if it were only that simple to live a life of Christian holiness. If all we had to do would be to recognize a common humanity – the leveling of the playing field. While that’s not all the Christian life encompasses, it’s certainly a necessary first step. We, every human to ever exist, are all in need of God’s salvation. We are all recipients of the grace Christ mediates to us.
 
In Timothy’s day and place, Christians were persecuted. They didn’t fit into the Gentile society of the day because they had a different Lord than the Emperor. They didn’t fit in with the tolerated Jews because they claimed that Messiah had already come. They were a minority voice, and they were killed for it. They couldn’t live out their Christian life because they would be plowed down by the ruling powers. With Timothy’s church needing a firmer structure to withstand these physical attacks over spiritual matters, he’s instructed in this letter that the first step to ordering a church is to pray, and to pray for everyone, even the ones who are attacking – even the governing officials who are literally ordering for them to be killed.
 
While I don’t know of contemporary American governmental leaders explicitly ordering the killing of any class or group of people, I think it’s possible to read current events and find that politicians of every rank are continuing to enact injustices in society that keep the playing field out of balance, in favor for some groups over others. I’m not talking about an attack on Christians here, but on a number of the races and classes and groups of persons who are not part of the powerful majority yet are just as much children of God as the rest. Each and every week – as we will in just a few moments – when we pray for some leaders by name and then generally for all who are in places of authority, I have to intentionally remind myself that these fellow humans are just as needy for God’s grace as I am myself. Thankfully, now that I’ve been named a Postulant, I’m listed in the prayers by name for our community to pray for my continual growth in both knowledge and holiness of life.
 
As this letter to Timothy attests, God “desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (v4 NRSV). And there, in putting his thumb on the very heartbeat of God, Paul shows the foundation of the Church as being a place that offers every person ample opportunity to have their life transformed in the knowledge and love of God. That, my friends, is the mission of the church. As Christ “gave himself [as] a ransom for all” (v6 NRSV) and therefore mediates grace between the fullness of God and all of humanity, so should the Church, the Body of Christ, be the people who embrace all of humanity as an offering back to God. In doing so, the Church mirrors back God’s desire for all to know salvation.
 
What happens when we recognize the common need for salvation for each person? What would the church look like every week we sat down the aisle from the person who ticks us off in traffic or who votes to enact an unfair law? What if, when we prayed for everyone, we truly meant every single person? Our narrow-mindedness in such a polarized society might, just maybe, be broadened if we prayed every single day for that person that we just can’t stand. Think about it: what if we looked at someone who we thought was the vilest human being and remembered that Christ the mediator is offering them the same grace he is offering to each of us? It’s hard to wish damnation on someone who is seen as a fellow child of God. Put in a much better way, Saint John Chrysostom wrote this: “No one can feel hatred towards those for whom they pray.”
 
Have you ever met an angry nun? From time to time, I go visit the Benedictine Sisters up in Atchison, Kansas. These holy ladies, like most monastic communities, are always praying. They intentionally start each day by recognizing the presence of Christ in each other and in visitors who come to them. They are also some of the most peaceful bunch, even as a group who speaks truth to power in matters of societal injustice. Yet, if any group lives “a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity,” it’s them. Does that mean they don’t have disagreements? Not at all! But they ways in which they handle their problems starts with the recognition that each person in the dispute has the light of Christ in her. From that grounding, built on their shared prayer life, they can find charitable ways of moving forward.
 
While God’s salvation is offered to every person, and the church is called to pray for and with everyone, the grace Christ mediates does not force uniformity; rather, it calls for unity. Unity assumes that persons with vastly different perspectives can each have space to respond to the unique ways in which Christ’s grace is poured upon them. While God’s grace is universal, we each come to know it in particular ways. 
 
In bringing many voices together of every perspective in prayer for each and every person, the church is transformed. We are bonded together in the unity for which Christ prayed. In our mutual humility under the grace-dealing work of Christ, we grow in holiness of life and, from that holy habitation, can structure our church and respond to the injustices of the world in well-rounded, wholistic, prayer-borne ways.
 
First things first: prayer unites us. We in The Episcopal Church pray from a prayerbook that is common to all and yet uniquely understood by each one. We pray for justice and inclusion, salvation and sanctification, redemption and restoration. Together, in our shared life, may we continue to recognize that our prayers together for the sake of the whole world not only change us as individuals, but they lay the foundation for our life together to enact the very will of God in our own day. By praying for everyone, we are starting our work of participating in God’s mission of salvation. Our prayers unite us in God’s universal mission for “everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For ‘there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all.’” May we continue to pray for all people, all of humanity, who benefits from Christ’s work of salvation; and may we do so recognizing that God equally wants each person to know and accept the grace that is being offered. May our church, in so doing, be found in the middle of the will of God. Amen.


[1] Probably a pseudepigraphal character claiming to be Paul.

Mary as Model: Simple Adoration as Lenten Devotion (John 12.1-8)
Fourth Sunday in Lent at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, Kansas City
Isaac Petty

The audio recording of this sermon can be found here.
 
There are several Marys in the Bible who can serve as models for us. We have the Blessed Virgin, for whom this parish is named [and sidebar: I probably don’t have to say much about what she did … (or what she didn’t do) … but if you want to know more, see Fr. Charles after the Mass]; Okay, where were we? Oh yes – Marys. There’s also Mary Magdalene, one of the first evangelists of the Resurrection; and there are others, including Mary of Bethany, whom we encounter in today’s Gospel passage. We know very little about Mary of Bethany, but we know that she and Martha were sisters of Lazarus, the one who died and was brought back to life by Jesus. Actually, that story of the raising of Lazarus is the only place in Scripture where we get to hear this Mary’s words. In John 11, the chapter preceding today’s reading, we get this verse: “When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died’” (Jn 11.32 NRSV).

Probably the most notable time we encounter this Mary in the Gospel accounts is when Jesus visits Mary and her sister Martha. There, too, Mary is at Jesus’s feet, although this time she is simply listening to Jesus’s teaching while her sister Martha is busy being the **hostess with the mostest.** Jesus even says “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10.41b-42 NRSV).

In today’s lesson, Mary is at Jesus’s feet yet again, but this time she is anointing those feet with expensive perfume and wiping them with her hair. This time, instead of Martha being mad at Mary for not helping her serve Jesus, we have a recognized disciple being so taken with greed that he misses her devotion. To read from the lesson at verse four: “Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray [Jesus]) {John always layers on the details for us}, [Judas] said, ‘Why was this perfume not sold for [a year’s wages] and the money given to the poor?’” (Jn 12.4-5 NRSV, edited). I love that John also gives us a note of explanation next. Verse six: “[Judas] said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it” (Jn 12.6 NRSV).

The tie of Judas’ greed probably brings up the story of Jesus’s crucifixion for many of us – and if not, then I hope my comment helps bring Christ’s Passion into view here. In this Lenten journey, the lectionary passages remind us that we are journeying with Jesus to Jerusalem. A few verses before today’s reading, we hear “Now the Passover of the Jews was near, and many went up from the country to Jerusalem before the Passover to purify themselves” (Jn 11.55 NRSV) and today’s passage begins “Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany…” (Jn 12.1 NRSV). Christ’s Passion and Resurrection should be heard in terms of the Jewish Passover, where Jesus celebrated with his disciples and instituted a different way of gathering for the religious feast – developing into the Eucharist we know today. The journey to the feast – for Jesus, to the feast of Passover, and to us, to the greatest feast of Easter – is a journey of preparation; of self-denial; of purification; of devotion.

Our trek with Jesus to the Cross, even as people with Resurrection hope, is a calling to greater devotion to Jesus – to move away from self-centered desires and to practice the simplicity of sitting at Jesus’s feet. Like Martha, we may get so busy in doing work for Jesus that we forget to simply adore of Him. Instead, even the seemingly most religious among us, devout disciples of Jesus, can begin to miss the devotion of other people – of disciples who aren’t recognized as such. Judas was filled with vile contempt and didn’t see the point of Mary’s devotion. So, reading from the lesson: “Jesus said ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me’” (Jn 12.7-8 NRSV).

While giving of what we have to the poor and picking up pious slack is meet and right so to do in the Lenten season (as well as year-round, I might add), we must also recognize the importance of simply sitting at Jesus’s feet and being transformed by his teaching. In the growth toward simplicity and adoration, we have an exemplary model in Mary of Bethany. Here, we are called by one with no words to devotion – a short sermon where Mary is recognized as less of a disciple and isn’t even recorded speaking, yet her simple devotion speaks to us in a voiceless sermon all these centuries later. When Matthew and Mark tell of this event in their Gospel accounts, they close with one more line from Jesus: “Truly I tell you, wherever this [gospel] is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her” (Mt 26.13 & Mk 14.9 NRSV, edited).
Sermons may be short, such as this one on a busy Sunday, but no sermon of any length compares to the message of Mary’s simple devotion to Jesus. As we continue in this Lenten journey to shape the whole of our Christian lives, may we remember the call to simple devotion at the feet of Christ, ignoring distractions, staying strong against our self-seeking habits, and allowing ourselves to be discipled in such a way as to preach a voiceless sermon through our simple devotion. Amen.