What you do matters: Sermon for February 1st, 2015

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Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

February 1st, 2015

Given before the Annual Meeting of The Church of The Ascension

Readings:

Deuteronomy 18:15-20
Psalm 111
1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Mark 1:21-28

 

“…for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. It is not everyone, however, who has this knowledge.”

 

So says Saint Paul in his epistle to the church in Corinth, which we heard this morning. We know, he says, that there is really only one God; one God that created everything, and for whom we live. And we know that there is really only one lord, Jesus Christ, through whom we are given a new life, but he goes on to warn them, not everyone knows this. Not everyone has the knowledge of God as the creator of the universe; not everyone has the sense of a divine being that is active in their lives; not everyone has a knowledge of Jesus Christ and what he actually taught and did; even fewer know about his Resurrection and the promise of forgiveness and new life that that gives us.

 

So because not everyone has this knowledge, and because you do, what you do matters. What you do matters, because the people who know less or are perhaps weaker in the faith are watching you. They are watching you to see if this so called knowledge that you possess actually makes a difference in your lives. Does this faith which you profess have any power to it? Can it change you? Can it change others? Are you more generous? Are you more caring? Do you live your life as if you actually had a real hope for the future? Do you have a joy in your life that others can see and feel? Does this Christ exert some power over your life or are you just like everyone else?

 

Now the issue that Paul is talking about in his letter this morning, that of eating food sacrificed before idols, that specific issue I won’t go into detail on this morning. It is a better discussion for a bible study than it is for a Sunday Sermon and at the end of the day the issue being discussed really has more to do with the Christians living in Corinth at that time than it does for us. But the principle that Paul upholds here IS a very important one for us. And that principle is this: that we Christians have the obligation to live out our faith in such a way that builds the members of Christ’s body up and not that pushes them down. We who claim to know something about God should be ruled first and foremost by our knowledge of his love for his people and not by our own inflated conceit. We should be always mindful of those who are weak in the faith or who may have no faith at all, and we should make sure that those people can see in us living examples of the power of Christ.

 

We are called here in this little outpost of God’s kingdom to be a place where God’s transformative power is on full display. We are called to be a place where people who are weaker in the faith are strengthened by the witness they see in the lives of those who are stronger. We are called to be a community that doesn’t just know things about God, but who uses what they know to transform their own lives and the lives of others around them. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up, and as important as knowledge is, it is love that actually builds the church.

 

There are plenty of people who supposedly know things about God and you wonder what difference it makes. There are plenty of people who profess Christianity and exhibit none of its virtues. There are plenty of people who are comfortable knowing Christ, but don’t actually want to be changed by him.

 

When Jesus entered the synagogue in Capernaeum, people were amazed at how he taught and at how he seemed to understand the mind of God. It wasn’t just correct knowledge, but it was the power and the authority that he had that astounded them. And still, one person from the congregation called out to him and said: “What do you want with us Jesus of Nazareth? I know what you want, you want to change us. You have come here to change us, to destroy us. I know who you are. You are the Holy One of God.” The man wasn’t wrong. He knew who Jesus was. He had the correct knowledge, but he didn’t want to be changed by him. Not everyone who professes Christ actually wants to be changed by him. There is an old saying that some people may be singing “standing on the promises” while they are really only sitting on the premises. This man was one of those. And what does Jesus do? Does he kick the man out? Does he expel him from the community? No. Jesus casts out the demon and not the man. Jesus shows that he has the power to change someone who doesn’t even want to be changed and the people are amazed.

 

There are always gonna be people among us who may profess to know who Christ is, but don’t really want to be changed by him. Its ok. Christ has love for them to, and he has proven that he can be a powerful influence in their lives, even when they are resistant to it. But for the rest of us, for those of us who know Christ and who want to be changed by him, we are called to show the world just how powerful he truly is. We are called to display the wonderful knowledge we have of God through the love that is in our hearts and the grace that is in our lives. We are called to use that love to build up the people of Christ wherever they are, and at whatever stage they are at.

 

This little corner here at the intersection of North Village Avenue and Quealy place, this is a corner of God’s kingdom. It is an outpost that belongs to him, and not to us. We are merely the caretakers for a time. Hopefully what we do while we are here, the actions we take, how we live and what others see in us will all be things that build up the church of God, that will cause people to be stronger in the faith, and help people not only to know who Christ is, but encourage them to let his power truly work in their lives.

Sacrifice is an act of love

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People make sacrifices every day. Sometimes the sacrifices are minor: a momentary suppression of desire. Sometimes the sacrifices take everything we have, even our own lives. We are born with wants and needs that sometimes exert a powerful control over our actions, and yet, we also exhibit this powerful capacity to ignore those wants and needs if we perceive a greater need or a greater good. Parents do this all the time. Parents go without sleep, without food and without many of the opportunities that they might otherwise have had, because they find in their children a love and a joy greater than their own desires. For the average parent, the desire to see your children safe and happy far outweighs your own individual needs. You have found something more precious than your own sleep or hunger.

 

Sacrifice isn’t just about losing something, it is about finding something. It is about finding something more precious to you than your own wants and needs. It is about finding something that you love so much, that you are willing to let go of everything else just to hold onto it. Sacrifice is a natural byproduct of loving deeply.

 

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls, who when he discovers the finest pearl in all the world, sells everything that he has in order to obtain it. In his letter to the Philippians, the Apostle Paul stated that he regarded everything else as loss in comparison with the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus. Both the merchant in Jesus’s parable and the Apostle Paul had to sacrifice much, but those sacrifices were nothing compared to what was found by each of them. It is much easier to let go of the things you like once you have found something that you truly love.

 

For us as Christians, the Kingdom of Heaven, living in relationship with our creator and our redeemer, is the finest pearl. It is the thing in our lives which should bring us such unrestrained joy, that we gladly sacrifice our lesser wants and needs just to possess it. The story of Christ is, in part, a story about how much God is willing to sacrifice in order to hold on to us. The story of Christians, on the other hand, is often about how much we are willing to sacrifice in order to hold onto him.

 

As we enter the holy season of Lent and as we contemplate making small sacrifices in our daily lives to draw us nearer to Christ, and a deeper understanding of his supreme sacrifice, let us bear in mind that at its root, sacrifice is an act of love. Sacrifice is not about punishment or penance; it is not about creating needless pain or suffering. Sacrifice is simply about finding one thing of supreme value and letting everything else go.

 

The Sacrifices of Lent

 

Lent is a time for growing deeper in our faith and in our relationship with Christ. It is a time for making intentional sacrifices: letting go of things that harm us, distract us, or on some level draw us further away from communion with God. Some of these sacrifices are very traditional: abstaining from flesh-meat on Fridays is an ancient Christian practice. While some people may try abstaining from things that would have been completely unknown to our ancestors (e.g., Television or Facebook). Either way, the point is that we do something to set this time apart to serve as a reminder to us that we should be focusing our thoughts and energies on our relationship with God and not allow ourselves to be distracted by all the busyness of everyday life. Take some time before Ash Wednesday and consider the ways in which you might observe Lent this year.

 

Here are some suggestions:

 

Prayer: Consider saying Morning or Evening Prayer as a regular part of your Lenten discipline. Join the Society of Mary on the 3rd Sunday of the month to recite the rosary, or perhaps say the rosary at home on your own.

 

Fasting: Abstain from meat on Fridays. Consider skipping one or two meals a week and using the money for buying food for those in need or some other good purpose. Try abstaining from a particular food which you may indulge in too often.

 

Almsgiving: Make regular donations to our food pantry collection. Consider cutting some of your expenses during Lent and giving the money to charity or directly to an individual in need.

 

Study: Try joining either our Sunday morning book discussion group or our Tuesday morning or Wednesday evening bible study groups. Considering reading the Bible at home, or try some other spiritually edifying book.

 

The sacrifices that we make during Lent are things that we do willingly as a sign of our love and devotion, not because we are told that we have to; therefore, the preceding list should be seen as recommendations for ways to begin a Holy Lent. Many will doubtless find ways to observe this holy season that are more reflective of their personal faith journey. May it be a blessed time to all, however it is observed.

We are not here to celebrate Christmas. We are here to celebrate Christ.

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Altar-at-Christmas---2012Sermon for Christmas Eve 2014

In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, amen.

If you ever happen to be passing through Queen’s college at Oxford University at Christmas time, you may encounter a very strange custom. In that college there is a tradition of having a very special feast at Christmas. The feast begins with torchbearers entering the dining hall, accompanied by a herald who sings a once famous Christmas Carol, and the chef who bears in his hands the evening’s piece-de-resistance: a boar’s head.

The carol that the herald sings, and in which the guests join in singing, is known as the boar’s head carol. It is quite old, and was once quite popular, just as the boar’s head feast was quite popular and held in many places throughout England. But I am willing to guess, that unless you are someone who studies obscure traditions, or unless you are from one of the few places where this tradition is maintained, you have probably never heard of this carol.

You aren’t going to hear it on the radio, or in the stores, and it isn’t likely to be found on any new recordings of Christmas music. If you manage to look it up, or if you actually find an old recording of it these are the lyrics you will find:

The Boar’s head in hand bear I,

Bedecked with bays and rosemary;

And I pray you, my masters, be merry,
         

Quot estis in convivio.

 

Caput apri defero.

Reddens laudes Domino.

 

The boar’s head, as I understand,

Is the bravest dish in all the land;

When thus bedecked with a gay garland,

Let us servire cantico.

Our steward hath provided this,

In honour of the King of Bliss;

Which on this day to be served is 
        

  In Reginensi Atrio.

 

You may be wondering to yourself: what on earth does that carol have to do with Christmas? and you should be. The tradition that it describes and celebrates is something very foreign to most of us: unless you go to a luau in Hawaii, or a pig-picking down South, you probably are not accustomed to eating an animals head, much less of associating that with Christmas, and yet, for Christians centuries ago, this type of feast was as much a part of their idea of Christmas, as shopping for presents is for us today. They would have recognized this song as a Christmas Carol, because its lyrics celebrated part of their Christmas celebration.

For most of us now this song is merely a curiosity. It has died as a popular carol, and the reason it has died is not because it is old. There are plenty of even older carols that are still sung today: No, the reason it has died is because it no longer has any meaning to us. The song celebrates a tradition: it celebrates the Christmas Feast and the food and the decorations; it celebrates the customs of Christmas, but what barely gets mentioned, in one momentary allusion at the end of the song, is the reason why the feast is being celebrated: in honor of the King of Bliss. The song’s primary purpose is to praise the celebration of Christmas, not the birth of Christ, but because our manner of celebrating has changed so much, it is hard for us to connect with, or to get much meaning from.

I began reflecting on this carol this year as I was doing my Christmas shopping, and like many of you was inundated by the constant blaring of holiday music in the stores and on the radio. As I was listening these songs, it occurred to me that our holiday music has become more and more about celebrating Christmas the season or Christmas the holiday, and less and less about celebrating Christ the man. Like the Boar’s head carol, so many of these songs celebrate customs or traditions that are meaningful to us in our own age, but I wonder how many of them will be meaningful 100 or 200 years from now. Will future generations, generations whose customs may be far different from our own, will they look back on our holiday music and wonder: “What on earth were they singing about?”

Customs and traditions come and go. The world we all live in changes everyday. The way we celebrate Christmas changes too, and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Personally I would love to go to a boar’s head feast, but I am willing to guess that many of you would be less enthusiastic. Many of the traditions that are dear to us as a part of Christmas now, were really only begun within the last 150 years or so, and we can only imagine what Christmas may be like for our grandchildren, or their grandchildren. In every age, the way we celebrate Christmas changes, but the story of Christ does not. We think of secular Christmas music as being a modern phenomenon, it is not. The word secular just means “of the age,” it doesn’t mean the music is bad, it can be quite fun, what it means is that the music belongs to a certain place and time, and when the age has passed, much of the music does too. The Boars head carol and the boars head feast belong to a certain place and time, and now that that time has passed, those traditions have little relevance to our lives.

There is an expression that is used over and over again in the latin mass: in saecula saeculorum. It comes from the same root word that our word secular (or age) comes from and it means “in the age of all ages”. The phrase is used over and over again as the ending to our important prayers: we usually translate it as “forever and ever” or “throughout all ages.” It is a reminder to us that the story we are telling here, not just tonight but at every mass, it is a reminder that this story is not just about our own age, or about something that happened long long ago: It is a story that is about and concerns all ages. There is a reason why songs like the Boar’s Head carol have mostly passed away, and other songs like Adeste Fideles or Of the Father’s love begotten have remained popular. One song celebrates Christmas, the other songs celebrate Christ. One type of song has meaning in one age or era, the other type has meaning throughout all ages.

Tonight we are not here to celebrate Christmas, we are here to celebrate Christ. It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t participate in the holiday celebrations that are secular or “of the age,” what it does mean is that we should never lose sight of exactly what it is that we are celebrating. In the prayer book we pray that we “may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal.” After the food has gone cold, the company has outworn their welcome, the gifts have been opened and the garland has dried and wilted, what will we have left of Christmas? We will have the one thing that doesn’t just belong to this age, but belongs to all ages. We will still have Christ, and he is after all, the only part of Christmas that we ever needed in the first place.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.

There is Only One War: Sermon for Remembrance Day November 9th, 2014

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remembrance sunday

Sermon for Remembrance Day, November 9th, 2014

Click link below to see the editorial cartoon referenced in this sermon

Bruce MacKinnon Editorial Cartoon

A couple weeks ago a Canadian newspaper, the Chronicle Herald, published an editorial cartoon that many have described as one of the most powerful and moving cartoons ever published. The drawing, by an artist named Bruce Mackinnon, depicts bronze soldiers stepping down from their stone war memorial platform to hold up a fallen comrade. The cartoon was published as a tribute to Corporal Nathan Cirillo, a Canadian soldier who was killed during the terrorist attack on the Canadian parliament.

While on the surface this drawing is a heartbreaking depiction of the camaraderie that exists between members of the armed services, a bond that transcends death, there is in this depiction of that terrible tragedy on October 22nd, a deeper lesson for all of us. Today is Remembrance Sunday, and as 2014 is the 100th anniversary of the beginning of hostilities of the First World War, there will be services and commemorations happening at war memorials throughout the world, memorials just like the one Corporal Cirillo was standing beside.

We will remember today the 5-6 million allied soldiers killed in the First World War, the more than a million allied soldiers killed in the Second World War, as well the many soldiers killed in conflicts since then: Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. We name conflicts after the country they happen in now and I think in our minds we think of war as something that happens between countries. It is us and them: Allied powers verses Central powers, Allied powers verses Axis powers, the United States verses Japan or Great Britain verses Argentina. The truth is, as what happened last month in Canada was a painful reminder, war isn’t so simple anymore. Perhaps it never really was.

The young corporal who was killed while on duty at that war memorial was not killed by an enemy combatant; he wasn’t killed by a foreign government or even a foreign person. He wasn’t at war with the man who killed him…not in any traditional sense. It was someone from his own country. It was someone that he had been willing to defend. This isn’t war as we like to think of it. There weren’t any negotiations or declarations and (although he was given a very dignified funeral) Corporal Cirillo’s name probably won’t wind up listed as a casualty of any specific conflict, and yet part of what makes that picture so moving is that we all know deep down that he deserves to be there on that monument just as much as those bronze soldiers do; his sacrifice is worthy to be remembered just as theirs is.

I think it is important to remember on days like today when we commemorate the many heroes of major world conflicts and on days like last October 22nd when we witness the senseless death of a lone soldier just doing his duty, it is important to remember on those days that there is really only one war.

There is only one war and we all have a roll to play in it. It is not the war against terror, or the world war, or the cold war. It is much older than all of those. It is a war that we have all been fighting since the dawn of humanity. It is, quite simply, the war between good and evil. The brave men and women who we honor today weren’t just soldiers in her majesty’s army, of the United States of America, or the Allied Expeditionary Force: they were soldiers in the one great battle and the one great war.

The war between good and evil isn’t a war between nations as we are sometimes painfully reminded. It is a war between wills. It is a war between the graces given to us by God: mercy, courage, compassion and our own sinful desires to be covetous, fearful and hurtful. It is a war between our noble desires to defend, protect and respect and our evil lusts to steal, kill and dominate. God has given us the freedom to choose which path we will follow: we can choose to follow the path of mercy, justice and compassion, showing respect to all and defending the weakest among us, or we can choose to follow the path of fear, hatred and intolerance. Either way, ground zero in the war between good and evil is right here. Right inside our own hearts.

We honor our veterans today and I think that perhaps one of the best ways that we can honor them is by looking at the choices that they had to make. When danger and evil threatened they could have succumbed to it, but instead they chose to stand up to it. On that terrible day last month, one Canadian chose to show honor and respect by defending the lives of his fellow men, another Canadian chose to show fear and hatred by taken the lives of his fellow men. We have those same choices to make every day of our lives. Do we stand up to evil, not just in the world but in ourselves, or do we allow ourselves to become the very thing we have been fighting?

This morning the choir is singing two of my favorite anthems: Jerusalem and I Vow to thee My Country. These songs have been criticized when used in church settings because of their nationalistic overtones. I would say to those critics listen to the words of these songs again. Pay attention to what they are actually saying: I will not cease from mental fight, nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, till we have built Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land. The fight is my fight and it starts as a mental one. It starts as a mental fight between good and evil that then calls me to go out into my own country and build God’s kingdom there. This is not blind worship of a country for what it is, it recognizes that within the country itself is a struggle between the countenance of God and those dark Satanic mills; it is instead a call to action to do the work of transforming the country into what God is calling it to be.

I vow to thee my country begins by declaring the love that we have for country and the duty that we have to sacrifice and protect it, but it goes on to talk of another country: God’s kingdom, and it is to that kingdom that we owe our greatest allegiance. We cannot count her armies, we cannot see her king, but her fortress is right here…a faithful heart. And soul by soul that kingdom silently increases. The ways of that kingdom are gentleness, the ways of that kingdom are peace.

When lieutenant colonel John McCrae wrote his famous poem “In Flanders Fields” he ended it with this stanza: “Take up our quarrel with the foe: to you from falling hands we throw the torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die we shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flanders’ fields.” Who is the foe? It isn’t Germany, or Russia, or Japan or Iraq. The foe is much closer to each of us than any of those places. It is the same foe we have always been fighting: we may call him Satan or the Devil or the evil forces of this world, but it is the same enemy and the battleground is taking place right in each of our hearts. We may know in faith that the war is won and that the victory is ours through our Lord Jesus Christ, but we still have battles to fight each and every day, and we still have sacrifices to make. Let us catch the torch and hold it high, let us keep faith with those who’ve died.