Father, Into Your Hands...

A Sermon for the Good Friday ecumenical liturgy (4-22-2011),

Offered by Nathan Ferrell at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church, Gloucester City, NJ

Texts:              Luke 23:35-49 (focus is Luke 23:46)

SCRIPTURE READING

“Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit.” So spoke our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ from his raised position on the cross, and then he breathed his last.

There is so much that can be said about the crucifixion of our Lord. Much has already been said; much more remains to be said. But at this moment, let us focus our thoughts upon these words of open trust and sure confidence which come from Christ at the very end of his earthly life. To give us a lens through which to better understand these words, let me bring before you the life of a saint, one who lived, and lives, in close relationship with Christ.

How many of you know the story of St. John of the Cross? The Vatican has declared this man to be a Doctor of the Church, one of the chosen few, primarily because of his incredible writings which describe the mystical life with remarkable insight. His most famous work is called The Dark Night of the Soul.

But do you know how he came to possess such insight into the life of intimate union with God? His story is a remarkable one, and it is worth of our attention on this day. St. John of the Cross was born at Hontoveros in Spain in 1542 into a life of poverty. When he was 21, he received the habit of the Carmelite order. It was not too long before St. John met St. Teresa of Avila. She inspired him to join in her vision of reforming the Carmelite Order back to its simple, original, life of prayer and discipline.

Soon, St. John of the Cross was one of the leaders of this growing reform movement. But this movement was seen as a threat by many of the existing monastic houses there in Spain, and so he was taken prisoner by a group of his brother monks. St. John was held in monastery prison in Toledo for nine months. He was locked in a solitary confinement cell that was 6 feet by 10 feet, with only one window high up in a wall near the ceiling. What is more, this saint was beaten three times a week, tortured even. All of this was in the hopes that he might renounce the reforms.

Now, can you imagine the pain that he must have felt? Not only the physical pain, though even that is impossible for me to fathom. I cannot imagine the pain of months of ongoing torture. But consider further the source of this pain! Imagine the deep psychological, mental and spiritual pains that he suffered. His own brothers – the Christian family to which he had devoted his entire life – these are the ones who betrayed him and tortured him, for their own goals motivated by greed and fear. Who could he trust? Who were his friends? Who was his family? Who would help him, defend him, liberate him from this pain?  And what is more, where was God in all this? Why did God abandon him to this fate?

St. John of the Cross is well-named, because in a very real way, he experienced the true pain of the cross, the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. I say the true pain, because we must be honest and realize that the physical pain of crucifixion was not the terror that caused the Lord such sorrow and pain.

I know that may sound quite presumptuous to say, but we know that there have been countless others – both before and after Christ – who bravely and courageously faced their death, their martyrdom for the sake of God, without crying with agony and pain. Do we truly think that our Lord Jesus was not able to bravely face the cross without first shedding tears in the garden in the dark of night? If any man, woman or child has ever been strong, then this Man was stronger still! No one has ever had more strength of soul than Jesus! No one has had more resources for facing suffering and death than Christ!

No, it was not the physical pain which caused our Lord such suffering in his soul. It was the betrayal by his friend, the abandonment by his students, the feeling of total alone-ness. Never had our Lord Jesus known such loneliness. Throughout eternity as the Son of God, the Lord had known intimacy with the Father. “I and the Father are one”, he had said, and in this he had opened to us an amazing relationship of love and intimacy. During his years on earth, it was commonly known that Jesus would often go off alone to spend time in intimate prayer with the One he called Abba. The one constant throughout his existence had been this intimate connection with Abba, the Father.

And yet, here, when his hour had come and he faced the greatest trial of his life, that intimate connection was gone. He reached out to Abba, and all was blank. All was dark. His friends left him; one betrayed him to his enemies; and his Father abandoned him.

And yet, even in that darkest hour of all, Jesus – the One we cling to as our Lord and Master – cried out with faith and trust to Abba: “Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit.”

For where else could he turn? From where else would he find strength and comfort? For ever, God alone had been his strength, his hope, his life. And when he needed help the most, all he could do is to cry out to the One who had always been there for him.

St. John of the Cross spent nine months in that hell of a prison.  Do you know why he is a Doctor of the Church? Abandoned and betrayed by his friends and his family, seemingly abandoned by God, John hit rock bottom, as we say. And in that darkness, that utter blackness, he realized that there was nothing and no one on earth upon whom he could truly depend. Sitting in that dark cell for nine months, John’s soul was set free from all the illusions of life on this earth, and he learned truly to trust in God alone. For where else could he turn? From where else would he find strength and comfort? His solitary confinement led him, not into a place of despair and anger and the desire for revenge, but to a place of solitary trust in God alone. His soul was set free and united with God in an intimate love which very few human beings have ever been privileged to experience.

Hope and love kept him alive, kept him moving. Finally this St. John of the Cross escaped by patiently unscrewing the lock on his door, sneaking past the guard, and then climbing out of a window by using a rope made of ripped strips of blankets. They only thing he brought with him when he escaped was the poems that he had written while in his cell – the most exquisite poetry of the love of God that the world has ever known, born in the pain and darkness of that prison. 

“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

Praise be to God that we do not all have to go through the pain of the cross, the suffering of betrayal and abandonment and martyrdom, in order to learn such truth about our lives. I can only hope that I am not so dull and stubborn and cold of heart that God might need to break me in this way.

Let us all heed the truth, and take it to heart. There is nothing on this earth upon which we can rely for our life, in this world and the next. In Christ alone can we find grace, hope, freedom, peace which this world cannot give.

In Christ alone can we find the strength of soul to cry out with trust and confidence, even in the midst of our own pain and suffering, and to say with the Lord: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Amen.

 SONG

 Psalm 31: Responsively

This word from the cross comes from the 31^st Psalm. Our Lord, our Teacher, our Master – he knew the psalms by heart. He prayed these psalms often, and even on the cross, the words of the psalms were on his lips. So let us practice our trust and confidence in God by saying together in unison, after each of these verses from Psalm 31, those same words spoken from the cross by our Teacher, our Master:

“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

Two great quotes from St. John of the Cross:

“Who has ever seen people persuaded to love God by harshness?”

 “Where there is no love, put love – and you will find love.”

The Cup of Salvation

A Sermon for Maundy Thursday (RCL A) 4-21-2011

Offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

Texts:         Exodus 12:1-14; Psalm 116:1,10-17; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17,31b-35

Themes:     the Passover lamb, the last supper, the washing of feet, servant leadership, love
Title:           The cup of salvation

My dear friends in the Lord: It is a joy and privilege to be here once again on this Maundy Thursday as we re-member together the last evening that our Lord Jesus spent with his friends, his students, his disciples as we know them, just before his passion was to begin.

In just a few days, on Sunday morning, we will celebrate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We still have a ways to go before we get to that time of celebration. But Sunday is coming, and when it comes, we will all celebrate and remember our baptism into the death and resurrection of Christ.

One of the promises of the baptismal covenant that we will make and re-make throughout the Great Fifty Days is this: “Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?” And we will all answer together: “I will, with God’s help.” Matthew will be making this promise for the first time on Sunday as part of the body of Christ.

With God’s help, we will seek after Christ and serve Christ in all persons. With God’s help, we will love our neighbors as ourselves. Why will we do this? Not because we earn anything by doing this. In fact, we may lose much by serving people in this way. Folks like Donald Trump (for instance!) only become that rich because they stomp on many people along the way. “It’s the way business works”, so they will say in order to justify their brutality and thievery.

No, to serve Christ in others in this way means that we may lose much, because we make the choice never to take advantage of others at any time for the sake of our own selfish gain.

So why do we promise to serve in this way? We could love much in the way of earthly treasures, and we also know that there is no brownie point system in the kingdom of God. You gain no special bonus points with God by loving others, or by serving on the Vestry or the altar guild, by helping and serving the poor.

So, why do it? Why bother with loving others, with serving others?

We do this only because of what Christ has already done for us. When we truly grasp the greatness of the grace and mercy of God poured out upon us through Christ, what else can we do but to show our gratitude in this way? We love because Christ first loved us.

What did the Gospel say? “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”  

For we are what Christ has made us: a community, a fellowship, a nation of servants who act on the basis of love alone. On Sunday morning, at Church of the Ascension, after Matthew is baptized, we will welcome him into the body of Christ by saying:

“We receive you into the household of God. Confess the faith of Christ crucified, proclaim his resurrection, and share with us in his eternal priesthood.”

Tonight, Matthew serves with me in the washing of feet in order to introduce him to this priesthood-life of servant leadership to which we have all been called.

For each and every one of us, our baptism is our ordination – our first and primary ordination into the royal priesthood of the body of Christ. Do you see our bulletin covers? On this cover and on all the bulletins that we use, it says on the front: “Ministers, All Baptized Members.” That is the truth. By our baptism, we are all ordained to be ministers of Christ. What we do and experience tonight is meant to be a call back to the servanthood basis of our ordination, our baptism into life in Christ.

 May God grant us all the grace to grow in our understanding of this life of service and love into which Christ has so graciously brought us. Amen.

Two Different Processions

A Palm Sunday meditation (RCL A) 4-17-2011, offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

Texts: Matthew 21:1-11; Isaiah 50:4-9a; Ps. 31:9-16; Phil. 2:5-11; Matthew 26:14-27:66

And so we hear once more the entire sweep of this compelling, and amazing, and holy week. Beginning just outside the holy city of Jerusalem, on the Mount of Olives, then entering into the city for a time of conflict and struggle, a time of judgment and pain, and ending once more outside of the city, at Golgotha, ending with a sealed stone across the entrance of a tomb.

But there is even more to this story than what we have heard here today. Every year in the springtime, just before the Passover festival was to begin, Pontius Pilate rode from his primary seaside residence in Caesarea up into Jerusalem. He entered the west side of the city sitting on his imperial steed, flanked by rows of Roman soldiers, in a clear show of force, intending to display to all the citizens of the city that Rome was in charge, and who it was they would have to deal with if they caused any trouble for the empire.

But this particular spring, there was another procession entering the city at the same time. This other procession entered into the east side of Jerusalem, coming up from the Kidron Valley, with Jesus of Nazareth sitting upon his royal mount – the humble donkey, flanked by rows of cheering, peasant disciples, in a clear show of spiritual force, intending to display to everyone that Rome was not in charge after all, and who it was that this empire would have to deal with from this time forward.

Do we wonder then why the whole city was in turmoil? Do we wonder then why, since those fateful days, every nation on earth, every human community has been challenged and changed by the message about what this Jesus has done, the truth told about who he is?

Are we ready for how this one – this one killed by the imperial forces and their allies – how he might continue to challenge us and to change our lives, our families, our communities?

This is Holy Week. Walk into it, enter fully into it, with an attentive mind, and an open heart, ready for surprise and wonder, and for powerful, transforming grace. Amen.

Mt. Washington trip

Here are a few pictures from a PERFECT weekend up in snowy New Hampshire! There was still 1 to 2 feet of snow at our cabin, which made for fantastic nordic skiing through the woods. And in the mountains there are still 4 to 8 feet on the ground. With warm temperatures (40-50's) and full spring sun, it was amazing. Praise God who is the giver of all good gifts!

quite a snow pile at the cabin!

climbing the mt washington summit cone

view from Tuckerman Ravine top

view from the summit cone itself

Angus and Se' snowboarding with me at Waterville Valley - $1 lift ticket day!!

Perfect day at Tuckerman's and Mt Washington (Agiocochook). Praise be to God.

Is the Lord Among Us or Not?

A Sermon for the 3rd Sunday in Lent (RCL A) 3-27-2011, offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

Texts: Exodus 17:1-7; Psalm 95; Romans 5:1-11; John 4:5-42

Is the Lord among us or not?

What a question for the people of Israel to ask! What a question for us to ask!

Is the Lord among us or not?

When we meet the people of Israel here in this story from the Book of Exodus, they are traveling in the wilderness toward Sinai. Just a few weeks earlier, God had delivered them in an amazing way from the hands of the Egyptians. They had seen the dead bodies of the Egyptian army floating in the waters of the sea. And they had rejoiced and celebrated that deliverance from their oppressors. Now, we find them journeying on by stages toward the appointed meeting place with God at Sinai, where they will receive the great gift of the law, the guidance they need to live as God’s free people in the world.

And so what do they do? In our story here, we hear them complaining against God and against Moses, and at the end of this episode, we find them asking this question, which surely seems to be the product of remarkable ingratitude and arrogance and presumption.

Is the Lord among us or not? Come on, God. Are you going to take care of us or not? Are you even here with us, or what? Do you actually have any power after all?

Let’s be honest for a minute: how many of you have ever posed a similar question to God? How many of you have ever complained to God about how life has worked out for you? Even if you have seen God do amazing things in your past, how many of you have complained about God’s apparent lack of involvement at other times? I know I have.

So what are we to think? Do we doubt God’s presence and power? Is this a clear sign of our lack of faith? Does this mean that Christ is not alive in us after all?

I want to suggest to you that it is not. Let me show you this morning how God in fact wanted the Israelites to make these complaints in the wilderness; and that God even now expects and welcomes our questions and our complaints.

When the Israelites left the land of Egypt, they were freed from their physical slavery, but they were not yet free from the bonds of slavery in their minds and in their souls. Hundreds of years of slavery meant that they were not yet ready to live as the free and faithful people of God. They were not yet ready to receive the Torah, the law, not yet ready to receive the gift of the law, and so God puts the people through a series of tests in the wilderness to prepare them for what is to come.

Similar to Jesus in the wilderness during his forty day fast, these tests for the Israelites follow a clearly devised pattern: attack by the Egyptians, a desperate lack of water, the lack of food, the lack of water once again, ending with an attack by the Amelikites. All these things took place in the span of their wandering seven-week journey from the shores of the sea to the mountain of Sinai.

The structure is clear and intentional: it is clear that God wants the people to complain. Of course the people need food to eat. Of course they need water to drink. They are in the desert, after all! God knows that they need water, and so God leads them to a place where they will most certainly be thirsty. Why? So that they can learn that God is the place of the nourishment, not Egypt nor any of the powers of this world! So that they can learn that God is the only one upon whom they must rely for their life and health and salvation.

In this wilderness wandering, heaven replaces earth as the source of their food (remember the manna that fell from the sky), Sinai replaces the Nile as the source of their water, the power of God replaces Egypt as the source of their security!

Remember: Horeb is known as the mountain of God. Horeb is another name for Sinai. And Horeb is precisely the place where God revealed the divine name and plan to Moses in the burning bush! And here, God sends Moses back to this same place for the gift of water straight from the hand of God! Moses is commanded now to take his staff and, not to strike the Nile any longer, but strike the rock at Horeb, so that the needs of the people may be met by the gracious providence of God.

So what did God think of the people’s complaining? The Psalmist certainly understood the people’s actions in a negative light. Serving as the mouthpiece of God, the psalmist said: “Harden not your hearts, as your forebears did in the wilderness, at Meribah, and on that day at Massah, when they tempted me. They put me to the test, though they had seen my works” (Psalm 95:8-9).

But there is another way to look at this episode, as I have already suggested. I believe that God intended to put the people into these difficult situations, as a means toward a greater end. This was a necessary hardship, one which God alone could see and understand from the point of view of eternity. To support this, please consider another example of hardship and suffering, one which we will be remembering soon during Holy Week.

On the night before he suffered, our Lord Jesus Christ, after that final meal with his friends on Maundy Thursday, goes out alone into the garden of Gethsemane in order to spend time with the One he called Abba, to find strength to face the ordeal to come, to get prepared for what is coming. Remember please: Abba, God, is the one with whom Jesus, in his earthly ministry, has spent numerous hours alone in prayer and meditation. Many times in the gospel narratives, we find Jesus going out alone to pray, to spend time alone with his Father, seeking direction and guidance and strength.

Remember too that this Abba is also the one with whom Jesus, as the eternal Son of God, has shared an eternity of intimacy and love. Nothing, ever, in all eternity has ever come between Jesus and the Father.

And so, facing the greatest challenge and difficulty of his life, Jesus goes out alone into the garden to spend time with Abba, to find strength for the day to come. He goes out there to find heaven – the intimate presence of God, with which he was so familiar. And what he finds there instead is hell – the actual absence of God.

This is why he sorrowed with such pain in the garden! Do you think he did not have the strength and the courage to face his death bravely just as countless other martyrs have done? Were his tears a sign of weakness? Of course not. What struck our Lord Jesus so deeply there was the loss of the one upon whom he had always relied, the absence of that relationship which had been the backbone of his entire existence!

Do you understand what that must have felt like?

How many times have you cried out to God for help, when you were facing something very difficult or painful right in front of you, and you were given nothing?! How many times have your prayers been left hanging, like they never went any further than your own breath? How many times have you struggled with the same kind of question as the Israelites: Is God among us or not?

But let me ask you this: were the struggles and hardships of the Israelites in the desert without purpose, or did they work as part of God’s plan to fulfill God’s desires and dreams for the people? Were the struggles and hardship of Jesus in Gethsemane without purpose, or did they work as part of God’s plan to fulfill God’s desires and dreams for all people?

Are our own struggles and hardships without purpose, or do they work as part of God’s plan to fulfill God’s desires and dreams for us?

How quick we are to assume that, because we cannot see the bigger picture, then of course there must not be any greater purpose behind our struggles and pain! As if our own perspective was the sole measure of reality!

My friends: let the examples of our ancestors in the wilderness, and of our Lord in the garden, serve to calm our minds and remind us to put our whole trust in the good purposes of God, even when we cannot see them. As St. Paul has written, God has proven his love for us. Therefore, we have no right to allow anything into our hearts but joyful confidence and hope. Thanks be to God. Amen.


BTW:
Doubt is not the opposite of faith. The opposite of faith is fear.

Hate is not the opposite of love. The opposite of love is apathy.

The 5 Stages of Transformation

A Sermon for the 2nd Sunday in Lent (RCL A) 3-20-2011, offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

Texts: Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121; Romans 4:1-5,13-17; John 3:1-17

“How can anyone be born after having grown old?” How can anyone be born from above?

Our youngest child, Fiona, is now 8 years old. She is what we call a “cuddle bug.” She is her mama’s girl. Ever since she has had the ability to speak, Fiona has asked if she can crawl back into her mama’s belly. Even at age 8, she still tries. She’ll pull up Erin’s shirt and try to squeeze in as close to that belly as she can get. I think Fiona likes Nicodemus’ idea of “entering a second time into the mother’s womb”.

Unfortunately, it is likely that she is just as confused about our Lord’s words in this story as Nicodemus was. These words of Jesus when he responded to Nicodemus have puzzled more people than just that learned Israelite! In addition to Nicodemus, Christians throughout the centuries have wondered over the meaning of this text.

The truth is that it seems clear that the one who wrote this text in John’s Gospel intended for it to be puzzling. In our text today, Jesus said, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” But in most people’s Bibles, Jesus says “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born again.” Why the difference? Which one is it? Born from above or born again?

The word used in the original Greek manuscripts in anothen, and this is a word that has a double meaning. Anothen means either “from above” or “again”. Both are consistent with the original text, and both offer directions for faithful interpretations of the text.

To be born again has meant, to many Christians, the need for each believer to have a dramatic, one-time conversion experience that changes the direction of life from then onwards.

How many of you have “born-again” Christians in your family? In your circle of friends?

It’s not quite so common here, but if you travel down in the Bible belt region, you’re almost certain to be asked the question: “Have you been born again?” Christians who emphasize the need for this kind of conversion are mostly the ones who practice believers baptism. Their teaching is that those who are born again in this way, those whose hearts are suddenly touched and changed by the grace of God, are then baptized as a sign of their new faith and their new identity as a member of the body of Christ.

On the other hand, to be born from above has meant to many Christians the steady, on-going progress of spiritual transformation that occurs throughout the life of a believer. This of course is the primary meaning that we use in the catholic tradition, and this is one of the reasons why we baptize children.

Let’s be clear: baptizing babies has nothing at all to do with protecting them from an uncertain fate in the tragic event that they die as infants. Rather, it has everything to do with immersing them in a community where they are given the tools for this kind of life-long spiritual rejuvenation.

The name for this entire topic within Christian theology is regeneration: the process by which someone is re-generated, re-created, made young in heart and soul once again after becoming physically mature.

And the question before us today is this: is regeneration a sudden conversion experience, a born-again experience; or else is it a life-long process of conversion and transformation?

The answer, of course, isYES! Both are true. Both are legitimate, faithful ways of interpreting this text and of understanding how God works in our lives.

The truth is that many people experience sudden touches of grace that change them radically, but many others do not. And, in fact, many others who were baptized as infants most likely need to be born again – they often need to experience a profound fresh start in their lives.

Both of these emphases are true and faithful. God has as many unique ways of dealing with human beings as there are people. This is because the process of growth and change in life is so very difficult.

A story is told of a homeless man who was standing on a street corner just off of Wall Street up in Manhattan. He stood there holding out hands, begging for money, pleading with all the corporate people passing by, saying, “Change? Change?”

One corporate executive who passed right in front of the homeless man responded frankly by saying, “I’m trying! I’m trying!”

Isn’t that right? Aren’t we all trying? All of us who are in Christ are trying to be faithful, but many of us simply do not know how, and we do not have a plan for how to embrace fully this eternal life that Jesus brings.

So how do we do it? How can we be born after having grown old?

In his masterpiece book called The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard lays out a way of understanding the progressive growth of the Christian life. Willard describes five developing dimensions of the eternal life that we share with Christ. Each dimension builds upon the previous ones, like the building of a house in stages.

The first dimension, the foundation of this eternal life, is “confidence in and reliance upon Jesus”. To begin this journey into an eternal kind of life, we need to come to a point where we recognize our need for Jesus to guide us into this new realm. This confidence often comes suddenly; many people describe it like falling in love.

Once we have become enraptured by Christ’s vision of this new life, once our hearts have been taken hostage by his grace and love, next comes the “desire to be his apprentice in living in and from the kingdom of God.” Whenever we come to respect someone as an important person, we naturally want to learn from them, to listen to their stories and to pay attention to their habits and behaviors. This is true even more so of Jesus, who offers us access into a new kind of life. This listening and paying attention is what an apprentice does, along with putting these things into practice for personal experience.

Next, after serving as apprentices for some time, we begin to learn a life of obedience. Just as Jesus was obedient to the One he called Abba, we begin to lead a life where we regularly practice the kind of life that we have seen in Christ and in those who are close to him, not out of fear, but out of love and desire. The obedience that counts is the obedience of love.

This on-going practice of obedience leads to a “pervasive inner transformation of the heart and soul.” Old habits are broken; new habits are created. The new practices become a complete way of life that is characterized by the same spirit that was seen in Jesus.

And finally, once this transformation has taken place, we are endowed with “power to work the works of the kingdom.” The friends of God are those who are close to God, those who have proven themselves trustworthy of the power of the Spirit, which blows where it will. These are the ones entrusted with more and more of God’s grace and power as life progresses, because they share more and more of their lives with God.

(The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard, p. 367-369).

Confidence, apprenticeship, obedience, transformation, power: these are the typical stages of regeneration in a human soul.

My friends: you and I are somewhere along this journey of regeneration. Perhaps we need a fresh start, a new birth. Perhaps we need strength to carry on with our learning and practice. Wherever we may find ourselves, let us not be content to stay where we are. There is more life available. With God’s help, may we have the strength and courage to persevere on this path of eternal life which we share with our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.