August 31, 2008 at Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Jeremiah 20: 7-9 + Psalm 63 + Romans 12: 1-2 + Matthew 16: 21-27

In the film “As good as it gets” Jack Nicholson had a memorable line that compliments Paul’s council today. A bitter cynic, Nicholson’s character is mellowed by Helen Hunt’s character whose kindness and caring finally made him declare: “You make me want to be a better man.”

This is the response Paul proposes to those who have a sense of the goodness and mercy of God. This becomes the heart Pauline morality. The law is no longer the standard of perfection or the way to holiness. We all know how it is possible to be rule keepers and yet be cruel and selfish, self-justified sorry representatives of God’s mercy and love. Failure comes from what is not done while keeping the law. This is the risk of becoming nothing more than law-keepers. Paul suggests that there is in those who follow Christ something more than the law motivating a moral life. It is an awareness of the goodness and mercy of God and desire to live in worthy humble response to that God. “You make me want to be a better man.”

Life in Christ which Paul has spent 11 chapters describing brings about a change that transforms one’s life into a living liturgy – into a continual day in and day out sacrifice that gives praise to God by everything that is said and everything that is done. Paul’s suggestion for offering one’s body is fulfilled by living in the presence of God all day long so that whatever one is doing becomes an act of worship, an act of praise, an act of thanksgiving to God. This what he means by “offering one’s body.” It is the essence of “liturgy” which literally means “work done for pay.” It describes a worker who gives service in exchange for pay. In this case, the “pay” is the glory of God. Eventually the word came to mean that to which a person gives their lives: in other words someone who is dedicated.

Paul’s plea is that we who know what God has done for us would respond with dedication – would give our lives, what we do as an offering of thanks and praise. “You make me want to be a better man.”

This is the heart of morality in Paul’s teaching: a truly moral person is not someone who keeps the law, but someone who seeks to discover the will of God. They no longer turn to the rules to determine what is right and what is good, what is just or what is best. They discern what it is that God wills and wishes for creation and for those who live in God’s presence. We can go wrong by following the rules, but we can’t go wrong be discerning the will of God. The law is not enough in Paul’s teaching. It is not that the law is wrong, it is simply not enough and without a Spirit filled life that seeks to live in God’s presence and seeks to fulfill God’s will by the decisions of one’s life one cannot be good and pleasing and perfect to quote the last verse of today’s readings.

This is what today’s Gospel calls for – making one’s life an offering to God, doing what is asked of us in this life for the sake of God’s glory. This is the conduct of service that the returning Son of Man will recognize and repay. It is the kind of life lived by the Son of Man himself and by all who would belong to the Son of Man. This what an unenlightened Peter could not figure out. This is what Peter before Pentecost did not understand: that in obedience to the Father’s Will Jesus reached perfection – the Will of the Father was the embracing of the cross. To not take it up and seek the Father’s will in doing so would have meant being conformed to this age: an age that does not care about what God wills, an age that is concerned with career and power, possessions and prestige rather than service, love, and sacrifice for the glory of God,

This is the transformation Paul calls for: a transformation, not a conformation. Being conformed to this age leads one to avoid what is difficult and troublesome, service and sacrifice. But being transformed leads one into Christ, into Christ’s way, Christ’s obedience and desire to know and follow the will of the Father. It is the only way to holiness: asking what God desires. It is the only norm for morality: doing what is the Father’s will. It is the only way to distinguish those who belong to this age, and those who belong to the age to come.

Wanting to become a better person, like Jack Nicholson’s character leads one to desire and seek first with Will of God. Doing so is what it means to gain one’s life.

August 24, 2008 at Saint Mark Church Norman, OK

Isaiah 22: 19-23 + Psalm 138 + Romans 11: 33-36 + Matthew 16: 13-20

Through the verses of Romans chapter 9 to 11, Paul has conducted himself like an attorney. He set forth his position clearly and convincingly. Then he gives a powerful closing argument. We just heard it in these three verses that conclude chapter 11.

He did everything he could to convince his fellow Jews to accept Jesus as the Savior they had long waited for. He argued that God’s plan had started with them, and that through them salvation was extended to all the peoples of the earth. No results. So what does Paul do? He sits back to wait for God to do what Paul cannot do. He surrenders his will and his desire for his fellow Jews to God’s wisdom.

Hidden in this wonderful poetic acclamation is a truth we often fail to grasp; the truth that sometimes God uses negatives to accomplish the divine purpose – “inscrutable ways” Paul calls it. What Paul as awakened to in his struggle is that God can take bad things and use them for good, and that realization moves him to the poetic acclamation we had just heard. Paul has reasoned that Israel rejected Christ because of grace. What kind of thinking is this we might wonder. In having Israel refuse Christ ( a negative ), God opens salvation to others ( a positive )so that they might lead Israel to salvation. What Paul suggests is that only God could pull that off. Only God could think of such a plan.

This is the mystery Paul acknowledges: that God can draw good from evil; that God can take what seems to be bad and turn it into grace. This is inscrutable wisdom. This is deep knowledge. This is unsearchable. God can bring good from anything. The best example of this is the sacrifice of God’s own Son on a cross. The ultimate wrong becomes the ultimate good. The rebellious human heart hardened to the point of murdering an innocent and good man brings goodness and kindness by the depths of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God.

Rather than argue any further, Paul is content to celebrate what is incomprehensible. God is so unlike humans in every way that we are able to count on God being constant as we are inconstant and as faithful as we are unfaithful. At this point for Paul, theology turns to poetry. The seeking mind gives way to the adoring heart. Every one of us faces more often than we care to count situations and events that we cannot understand and cannot control: people we cannot sway with kindness or clarity; tragedies we cannot understand, avoid, nor change. What Paul teaches us today is that there are times when the human mind can only go so far, and when that limit is reached, there is nothing left but to accept and to adore.

Paul had battled with what for him was a heart-breaking problem with every resource he had. He never thinks he solved the problem, he simply knows that he did his best and is content to leave the problem unsolved to the love and power of God. It seems like a good lesson for us all. There is a time when only silence, praise, adoration, and faith will suffice. When believers learn this, they will attain great wisdom.

August 17, 2008 at Saint Mark Norman, OK

Isaiah 56: 1, 6-7 + Psalm 67 + Romans 11:13-15, 29-32 + Matthew 15: 21-28

For three more weeks, until September 14 when will assemble here to celebrate the Feast of the Holy Cross we shall listen to Paul as he writes to the faithful in Rome. For some time, the Jewish Christians were the sole presence of the Gospel in Rome, and they had paid for it dearly by their expulsion from synagogue and alienation from other Jews who would have nothing to do with the Gospel and its Christian traditions. They certainly must have taken great comfort then from each other. We could suspect that they were very close, and their identity came from what they suffered and what they believed to be true. Then in no time at all Gentile convert/believers are all around them, and then before they knew what was happening, the Gentile Christians outnumbered the Jewish Christians which gave rise to questions and conflicts that Paul addresses with pastoral passion and a spirit filled wisdom. Who was more Christian? Who was more faithful? Who is more worthy: the faithful Jewish Christians, the Gentile outsiders? What about the other Jews long thought to be God’s Chosen? How could these foreigners fit in? They were not chosen by God. How are they going to pray: in Hebrew, in Latin, in Greek, Aramaic? What about the customs that for all the groups had for so long been the source of their pride, their reason for celebration, their identity?

It all sounds like our church still troubled with the same experiences in this country, and the wisdom and counsel of Paul is as true today as it was while he was writing. We are very much like those Jewish Christians suddenly surrounded by others. We are used to doing things our way, and some have no doubt considered themselves “chosen people.” Some among us have paid a big price for their faith, and all of us have customs and little things that express our identity. We like to pray in our language even though some imagine that it was better in Latin. Instead of Gentile Christians, now it’s Hispanic Christians who by some counting will soon outnumber us; and things will be different. We will be different and they will be different. To this experience Paul speaks in a powerful way, and so does the Jesus of today’s Gospel.

Racism, anti-Semitism, any kind of phobia about others as well is what Paul challenges in this chapter of his letter. We cannot allow these things to spoil our lives together before our God. All kinds of stuff goes on in Christian communities. The fact of the matter is, we don’t always like each other, we hold grudges and sometimes think of getting even. Add to this the fact that this is an “eye for an eye” culture, and the mission of our church and the work of our faith is serious and difficult. We are called to build relationships as a church in which we confess that there is something more important than me. We are called to remember and to witness to the world that our Lord is present; and has an agenda beyond our differences that can build a context big enough for our differences even when they are ongoing and unresolved.

What Paul explains to the Romans and to us, is that God has chosen us all. In the context of Paul’s Rome, that included unfaithful Jews, and un chosen Gentiles. Everyone was in need of salvation, the Gentiles who did not know election, and the Jews who even though they were chosen were not examples of faithfulness. It’s the same for us. The only people in need of salvation are those who have been unfaithful or “disobedient” as Paul calls it. “Let anyone without sin cast the first stone.” is how John put it.

The discussion here is not about whether Christians have to be Jews or Jews are to become Christians. It is about how God saves and calls a commonly disobedient humanity that exists in a broken relationship with God.

To get the point even more clearly, enter a Canaanite woman in Matthew’s Gospel.

The Canaanite’s were famous for their idolatry and human sacrifices, and Israel wanted nothing to do with them. To make matters worse, this is a woman, a Canaanite woman! Jesus is embarrassed and you can almost feel it in the text. He is even silent in the face of this mess. But, see what happens. Disciples push for her exclusion, but her faith gains her a place of honor regardless of anything else. Her faith triumphs over national boundaries. Pay attention to what the Prophet said in Isaiah about how foreigners are joined to the Lord and come his holy mountain.

What we see and what we learn is that the mission of Christ is for all people and even all creatures — all creation. Everything is made new in Christ. The theologians have a term: apokatastasis it means making things new, a transformation of all beings, the reordering of fallen creation in Christ. In an age that has seen gas chambers, firing squads, anonymous mass graves, ethnic cleansing exploitation of poor countries by wealthy, industrialized nations the work of Christ will take divine presence, and we have it in the church, in you and me. Jesus came to make possible what seems impossible. In a way, the Canaanite woman is a guide here, and an unlikely one at that. Yet, herein lies the truth: those whom we target as outsiders are often the ones who lead us to the doors of the kingdom of God.

Now the Eucharist is before us. Here at this table, we become one here on this holy mountain. We must stop looking at how different we are and discover how much our faith and our hope for the Kingdom has made us one.

August 15, 2008 at Saint Mark in Norman, OK

Revelation 11: 19, 12: 6-10 +1 Corinthians 15: 20-27 + Luke 1: 39-56

The messenger says that she is favored by God. Yet anyone who would examine her life might at first wonder what being favored by God means.

There is certainly no reason to think that it brings the promise of an easy life. This woman so highly favored by God watched her Son be misunderstood by the crowds, denied and betrayed by his friends, and killed by the powerful political and religious authorities of her time. She might have thought God’s favor would spare her but instead it made her more vulnerable to a broken heart and brought immense responsibility. She stood at the foot of the cross, and she watched her Son breathe his last, accepting his painful death. She held his dead body in her arms and let go of the one she loved most.

But this Feast of Hope reminds us that this is not the end of her story. Easter came and Pentecost. Jesus, who had promised that he was the resurrection and the life, fulfilled that promise before her very eyes. His promise to send the Spirit was fulfilled, and she was in that room says the one who records the event. In this truth lies the meaning of God’s “favor”. Being favored by God and faithful to God never means being free of trouble and pain. It means something more important and more wonderful. It means that when that favor is returned, promises are fulfilled and hope if sustained through the darkest of times.

That Pentecost was not the first time the Spirit had come upon Mary. The first time in Nazareth she became the mother of Christ. The second time in Jerusalem she became the mother of us all, Mother of the Church. She continues to proclaim the greatness of God and lift up the lowly, the hungry, and those overlooked in every age. In so far as we her children learn from our mother and make her cry of victory our own, we too shall know the favor of God.

Anyone of us who has stood at the side of a loved one dying or in death has every reason to cling to the hope this Feast proclaims. It is the hope that there is life after death for both those who continue on this earth and for those who pass into God’s embrace. It is the hope that every trial and every suffering opens us ever more widely to the possibility and the promise that all will be well in God’s time, and that those ponder these things in their heart meaning seek God’s plan and God’s will shall experience the gratitude of the Father and the embrace of His Only Son when finally coming home.

August 3, 2008 at Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Isaiah 55: 1-3 + Psalm 145 + Romans 8: 28-39 + Matthew 14: 13-21

If God is for us who can be against us?

If God is for us…… who can be against us?

If God is for us…….who can be against us?

In an anxious age and to an anxious people, the message of Paul is welcome, but before its comfort can settle in, its challenge must be accepted.

We are an anxious people living in an anxious age. The politics fear used so skillfully on us these days to tamper with precious human rights and mock our age old respect for refugees and immigrants are only two obvious signs. A drug culture that lies at the root of immense human suffering is yet another sign of human anguish and anxiety dulled by alcohol abuse and every other chemical combination imaginable. This is an anxious age. Homes which ought to be sanctuaries where God dwells and lives in peace with people bound in love hold secrets of abuse and violence. Alarms and security systems are big business not just to protect human life, but to protect our stuff because we most often set them when we are gone, not when we’re home. We spent precious dollars protecting our children and examining the background of everyone who comes near them, and well we should, says recent history. Because? This is an anxious age. Recorded airport announcements warn us to be on the outlook for people who are different from us or “act suspicious.  What does that mean? It means, we’re anxious and afraid. It means that we live in an anxious age, and Paul addresses that in these verses from Romans 8.

First he invites us to look back and remember. He reminds us of the gift of Christ – the gift that God has given us. What God did NOT require of Abraham in the sacrifice of his own son, God DID offer his own for us. Nowhere else in all his writings does Paul expose the vulnerability of God so tenderly. Paul constantly and consistently sees the complete interaction of humans in the divine plan and God’s involvement in our lives. God’s plan cannot be fulfilled without our cooperation, and we can never be fully human without God’s incarnation into human life.

The secret to survival in the midst of anxiety, the source of courage in times of fear, and the reason for hope in times of tragedy and disappointment is to REMEMBER what God has done for us.

Those who falter, those who give up, those who are overwhelmed in the face of tragedy and trial have lost their memory, have forgotten all that has been revealed while those who bear all things in faith do so because “they know that God makes all things work together for the good of those who love Him.”

All of this is revealed to us in Christ Jesus. The story of Jesus is our story. The victory of Jesus is our victory. The power of Jesus is our power. There is no evidence that Jesus lived his faithful life without anxiety, worry, fear, or sadness. In fact if you listen to the Gospel story you can hear it. He wept at the grave of Lazarus. He experienced temptation. He knew betrayal by his dearest most trusted friend. He was misunderstood by his family. He was hated, distrusted, used, and not even thanked by some he cured. At the end, he knew a loneliness none of us should ever experience. But the story does not end there does it, because God was for him.

We are a people that Paul describes as “In” Christ. We are not about Christ or for Christ. We are in Christ. To be in Christ puts us within the sphere of divine love. The result is that nothing can cut us off from the love of Christ. There is no denying that there is evil, that there is sin, that there is sadness and tragedy everywhere, but there is also no denying that these things are not catastrophic. In this there is always then reason for hope, reason to rejoice, reason to be grateful and for that we are here in this holy place to sustain that hope, to remind ourselves of what God has done for us, and to place ourselves again in this Holy Communion of a Church deeply and finally and forever in Christ Jesus.

If God is for us……..who can be against us?