For My Sake

A Sermon for the 11^th Sunday after Pentecost (RCL A) 8-28-2011

Offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

Texts:              Exodus 3:1-15; Psalm 105:1-6,23-26,45c; Matthew 16:21-28

Themes:         Moses and the burning bush, God’s deliverance, self-denial
Title:               For My Sake

My dear sisters and brothers in the Lord: What does it mean to set the mind on divine things rather than on human things?

It’s been rather difficult this past week to set the mind on anything but Hurricane Irene!

The way the news media played this thing up, you might think it was Armageddon and the end of the world!

But the Lord rebuked Peter for setting his mind on human things rather than on divine things, as we just heard, and that is a powerful message which all human beings need to ponder carefully. 

Once Peter made his great confession of faith in Jesus as the Messiah who has come to set the people free, he seemed overtaken by the sudden realization of the immense value of their leader.

And so Peter, quite naturally, wished to protect Jesus and to keep him from harm. This is what we do with all of the things that are valuable to us – we protect them and keep them from harm.

But Jesus responded with one of his “hard sayings”, as they are called. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

Do you notice how Jesus begins this saying, what he identifies as the motivating factor for this path of self-denial?

“If any want to become my followers…”

There can never be any denial of the voluntary principle if we are to be a spiritually healthy community. Human beings have to choose. Our dignity demands that we make the choices that affect our lives and our futures.

Look at the example of Moses. Even in the midst of this amazing, life-changing encounter where God reveals God’s own name personality, the voluntary principle is respected. Moses has the right to argue over this task with the Lord. Moses even has the right to say no to this task, if he so wished. He could have said, “No thanks, I’ve got a good and stress-free life right now here in Midian and I think I’ll just keep it like that.” In a sense, God presents the sight of the burning bush in order to persuade Moses to agree to this task. When dealing with human beings, even God – our Creator – works by persuasion and not by compulsion. 

Consider the so-called “Mandatory Evacuations” that have been in place over the last few days along the east coast. They are called “mandatory” but I’ll bet that you’ve seen folks interviewed who have decided to stay put in some coastal town. Thankfully, it seems that our government authorities are not able to force people to live. And that is as it should be.

St. Clement of Alexandria is reputed to have written this axiom of deep truth: “Compulsion is repugnant to God.” It is repugnant to God and it is also repugnant to human beings!

We must be able to choose. We instinctively recoil against anyone who attempts to force us. The basic tool of those governments and groups who torture their prisoners is to take away their dignity, to take away their ability to choose, to control everything so that the prisoners feel that they no longer have any control themselves at all.

What God seeks is people who will serve and love God and the world simply because they choose to do so! I have heard a modern parable about Jesus and his disciples during their days together in Galilee. This is not in the Gospels, but I think that it does communicate truth to us.

Jesus and his disciples are together walking along the road one morning when Jesus turns and tells the disciples, “I would like you to carry a stone for me. Now, come and follow me.” Then he turned and began to walk on. Simon Peter, being a very simple and practical man, picked up a small stone in his hand and began to follow along. After all, the Lord said nothing about the size or mass of the stone to be carried.

Around mid-day, Jesus asked the disciples to stop and be seated. He gave thanks to Abba for all of the gifts of the day, and when he had finished, all of the stones being carried by the disciples had turned into bread. And so they ate lunch together. But Simon Peter’s lunch was over with just one mouthful!

Once they finished, Jesus stood up and once again said, “I would like you to carry a stone for me. Now, come and follow me.” And he turned and began to walk on. Peter said to himself, “OK, now I get it. This stone will be for supper!” So he found a small boulder and, though it was difficult, he brought it up onto his shoulder and began to walk on. And as he did, he thought to himself, “Man, I can’t wait for supper!”

But in just a few hours, the Lord stopped as they crossed a small stream and he asked his disciples to throw their stones into the stream. Then he turned and began to walk on.

But now the disciples were grumbling and confused, and Peter especially began to complain and grumble. And the Lord turned and said to him, “Peter, what is the matter? Have you forgotten? For whom were you carrying that stone?”

You see, Jesus had asked them to carry a stone for him! But quickly they began to think only in terms of what they themselves were going to get out of this labor, rather than offering their service simply because their beloved Teacher and Master had asked for it.

But that is not love, my friends. God cannot force it, but what God longs to find in us is the desire, the longing, simply to serve without any regard of what we might get out it.

As soon as begin to bargain, we know that we’ve lost sight of the path. As soon as we say, “Well, Lord, I’ve been a faithful church-goer all my life. Surely then I deserve some protection or special blessing…”

But as soon as we go down that path of trying to negotiate something special for ourselves, then we’ve lost sight of love and service.

For whom are we carrying our stones? For whom do we gather for worship? For whose sake do we serve in the church, or take care of our loved ones, or work so hard to put food on the table?

If all of this is not done for the sake of Jesus Christ alone, then we’ve missed the path to true joy and peace and life. “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

May we always be among those who are willing to serve simply because God asks us to do so, and without any desire or motivation to secure any benefit by so doing for ourselves. Amen.

A Royal Priesthood

A Sermon for the 5^th Sunday of Pascha (RCL A) 5-22-2011

Offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

Texts:              Acts 7:55-60; Psalm 31:1-5,15-16; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14

Themes:         Stephen’s martyrdom, living stones, a holy nation, the greater works
Title:               A Holy Priesthood

My dear brothers and sisters, I have a question for you:
Do you know who you are? I mean, do you really know who you are? 

It seems to me that many of the problems of our lives come about because we forget who we truly are.

Martin Luther made it a practice every morning, as soon as he stood up out of bed, to make the sign of the cross and to declare his identity out loud: “I am a baptized Christian!”

It was a way to remember, a discipline of remembrance, so that every one of his days would begin and would be shaped by this remembrance of who he was at the core of his being.

And it was a practice which he encouraged all Christians to adopt.

For this is the truth of the matter, the truth of our lives: God has chosen you to carry on the works of Jesus in this world.

It doesn’t matter how you feel about your relationship with God; how you feel about your faith or about the church. It really doesn’t even matter what you’ve done or what you haven’t done. It doesn’t matter whether you feel ready or adequate for this calling.

None of that matters, because it’s not about you or me after all!

This is God’s choice. God has chosen us to be God’s own special and peculiar group in this world.

But why does God do this? What is the purpose? The apostle tells us clearly: 

 
"In order that we might proclaim the mighty acts of the one who called us out of darkness and into God’s marvelous light!"

Do you see? We have the incredible privilege of participating in what God is doing in the world. The works of Jesus continue, and even greater things are being done today in his name. And we have been drafted to be those through whom God is redeeming the world.

So I invite you right now to listen, my friends, once more to what was written in the name of great apostle Peter.

Listen, and remember!

4 Assistants come forward to a front table now. Each takes a candle in her/his hands.

Reader:          Now we are newborn infants, Reborn in God’s grace.

                        Let us thirst for the pure, spiritual milk

                        So that, by drinking it, we may grow into our salvation.

                        Remember what the scripture says:

                        “You have tasted that the Lord is good.”

Reader:           Come then to the Lord, the living stone,

                        Rejected by men and women as worthless,

                        But chosen by God as precious.

                        Come and let yourselves be used

                        In the building of God’s spiritual temple.

                        Remember what the scripture says:

                        “I am laying in Zion a chief cornerstone.

                        Whoever trusts in him will never be put to shame.”

Reader:           This is what God says about us:  “You are a chosen race.”

Assistants:     Move out to 4 random individuals and give them candles. While handing over the candles, say You are a chosen race. Then they return to the table and take another candle.

Reader:           Listen, my friends, and remember. For this is what God says about us: 

“You are a royal priesthood.”

Assistants:     Move out to 4 other random individuals and give them candles. While handing over the candles, say You are a royal priesthood.

Reader:          Listen, my friends, and remember. For this is what God says:  “You are a holy nation.”

Assistants:     Move out to 4 other random individuals and give them candles. While handing over the candles, say  You are a holy nation.

Reader:           Listen, my friends, and remember. For this is what God says:  “You are God’s own people.”

Assistants:     Move out to 4 other random individuals and give them candles. While handing over the candles, say You are God’s own people.  After giving out this last candle, the Assistants return to their seats.

Reader:           You … and you… and you

are chosen by God,

chosen to proclaim the mighty acts, the wonderful works of Christ

who has called you out of darkness

and into God’s marvelous light! 

Once you were not a people; now you are God’s people! 

Once you had not received mercy; now you have received God’s mercy!

Called out of darkness and into God’s marvelous light! That is who you are! Beacons of light and truth and goodness in this world.

My friends, let us never forget who we are; let us never forget who God has made us to be. Amen.

This symbolic action is adapted from a resource from the Iona Community in Scotland, He Was In The World: Meditations for Public Worship by John L. Bell (1995: GIA Publications), p.97.  He Was in the World : Meditations for Public Worship

 

"We See a Gardener"

"We See a Gardener":
 a prayer-poem for the Paschal Season by Jennifer Heckart
found in Women's Uncommon Prayers (p. 29).

Risen Lord,
so often encountered,
so seldom recognized,
you meet us in the gardens of our hearts,
on the lonely roads of our lives,
on empty beaches, and greet us.
But in our blindness,
we mistake you for someone else.
Through our tears, we see a gardener;
in our weariness and wariness, a stranger.
But you call us back to ourselves.
Forgive us our hard-heartedness,
our lack of understanding.
Open our eyes and our ears to you,
wherever you are found,
and give us grace to love you with abandon,
to throw ourselves into your service,
as Mary threw herself at your feet,
as Peter threw himself into the sea.
Amen.

God was with him

A sermon for 1 Epiphany A RCL (1-9-2011), offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

Texts: Isaiah 42:1-9; Psalm 29; Acts 10:34-43; Matthew 3:13-17

How do we change ourselves? How are we able to effectively change our lives and also to change our communities?

This is a big challenge, and it seems to be on many people’s minds at this time of the year. What about you? How many of you made New Year’s resolutions 9 days ago?

Go on – raise your hands. Good. Can you tell us what they were about? Not the specifics, just the topic. Like health, or money, or work, or family. Go on and call it out.

How effective do you think you might be? Do you know that only 12% of Americans are typically able to achieve their New Year’s resolutions? This means that 88% of us fail to accomplish our New Year’s goals! Accomplishing change in ourselves in not easy, and yet we all recognize the need to do it.

So how can we make this happen? Perhaps some of you remember the old story of the fat Irish priest who was visited by a poor distraught widow in need of guidance.

“I am in despair,” the woman said to her priest. “My son spends all our money on honey, which he eats straight from the pot. We are penniless. Please come and tell him to stop!”

You have to understand that this was before the days of sugar and chocolate. Honey in the jar then was like the best candy and sweets that we have today. Well, weeks passed and the priest did not come. The old widow thought that he must have forgotten her request. So she went to see him again. And as soon as she came into the room, she was amazed at the sight of him.

“You are so thin!” she exclaimed. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Well, I have given up buying honey and eating it straight from the pot,” the priest replied. “Now that I know that I can stop, I will come and tell your son to stop as well!” (see Celtic Parables.)


Here is an old story which points to the importance of community and personal example in effecting change. Someone in his community needed this priest to change, and his example has benefit for others.

Ever since it first took place, people have wondered about why Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan. Even John was confused! After all, this was a baptism of repentance, which means the forsaking of sins and the commitment to change one’s life. But Jesus had no need of that. He had no sin. He did not need to change his life.

We will never know why for certain, but perhaps the Lord understood the power of his personal example and what this might mean for the rest of us who would come to follow in his footsteps. And perhaps it was this humility, this willingness to do whatever was necessary in order to accomplish the goal of God that elicited this voice of affirmation from the heavens: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

And so we today follow his example. We come to blessed waters to be baptized, to be anointed, to receive the Holy Spirit, to be named as a child of God.

Today, as we gather to baptize two beautiful young children, God speaks these words of grace and joy in our very midst: “This is my daughter, Olivia and Amelia, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

But it’s not quite the same for us as it was for Jesus. He did not need to change his life, but we do! Not the anything is wrong with Olivia and Amelia yet, but we all know it’s coming. And by the time they are forced to make difficult choices, and when on occasion they make the wrong choice, they too will understand about the challenges of this human life and the difficulty of changing ourselves.

After all, that is why we are here! Change is exactly what the church is all about. If you wish to change yourself, if you can see the potential for so much more within yourself and you long to see it come to fruition…if you wish to see this world change, if you can see the potential for so much good within our communities and are frustrated by the violence and needless suffering and heartache that so many experience…if you see and feel these things, then you are in the right place. Change is what this community gathered around Jesus, called the church, is all about.

Listen again to what Peter preached when he spoke to Cornelius and his household: “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power;… he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.”

Can you see here in these words the prescription for our malady as well as the description of our goal?

God anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit and with power. We are given the same, and what is more – we are given a community of fellow pilgrims on a journey together to become more tomorrow than what we are today.

Spirit, power, community – these are fantastic tools that God gives to us. But to what end? To do what he did. To go about doing good, to bring healing to those who are oppressed by the forces of evil in this world.

That is what this baptism is all about: being brought into a living community where we are equipped with the tools and the energy and the motivation to change ourselves and to change the world, so that all together we might become what God intended for us.

Remember this, as we stand in just a few minutes to declare once more our trust in God, and to promise faithfully to walk in the path of Christ, to become agents of change along with him in his work of redeeming the world.

Amen.

Where God's Mouth Is

Sermon for Proper 20 C RCL 9/19/2010


Offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry


Texts: Jeremiah 8:18-9:1; Psalm 79:1-9; 1 Timothy 2:1-7; Luke 16:1-13



We began with a fun dramatic script from the Iona Community in Scotland called, “Of mouths and money.” It imagined an "off the record" (meaning, not recorded in Scripture!) dialogue between Jesus and Peter about which subject the Lord spoke about the most. Peter wonders if Jesus is obsessed with money, since he speaks about it so often. Jesus contends that many people have "a money problem" that keeps them separated from God and from one another. You can find this dialogue (and many others directrly related to the Gospels) in this book here on Amazon.com:
Jesus and Peter: Off-the-record Conversations




Yes, my sisters and brothers: Jesus talks a lot about money! He talks more about wealth and money than perhaps any other single subject matter.


Now, this can be difficult for us to hear. Very often, I hear people complain that all they ever hear the church talk about is money. But I don’t think this is the same as the way Jesus talked about money. Jesus wasn’t concerned with fundraising or with budgets or pledges or anything like that.


Always, Jesus is focused laser-like on the disposition of the human heart and how this guides all of our actions.


All of his teachings on money reach their climax in the final saying from our reading today:


“You cannot serve God and wealth” (Luke 16:13). His point is this: here are two different paths that we can follow. The path of pursuing money or the path of pursuing God. It is a matter of eagerness and energy, of devotion and commitment.


This teaching is so crucially important for us, because we here in our nation are so easily distracted and blinded by the plethora of goods around us. This past week, our high school son, Angus, and I got into a little argument about the relative importance of technology. He reported to me that our upper elementary school just received a gift of 25 new I-Pads so that students can learn to use this new technology. I replied and said, “Angus, that’s stupid! How are I-Pads going to help 5th graders with their math and creative writing?” Of course, he responded that he felt it is important for kids to learn about new technology.


But is that really important? Is this the technology that matters, I told him? When thousands of children die every day because they do not have clean water to drink, is it really important for us here to learn how to use the newest touch screen computers? Is that what our children need to learn? For that matter, do we really need have to have the best flat screen TVs and the newest and fanciest gadgets when there are 1 billion people in the world today who suffer from chronic hunger?


I know that many of these folks are hungry because of their own dysfunctional governments. I know that. But still, we have to be careful not to excuse ourselves too easily. You and I have an extra responsibility to turn away from the sea of advertisements in which we swim every day, to not be fooled by these siren voices calling us to buy more and more.


What did we hear today from our Epistle reading? That God “desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). Last week, we talked about what it means to be saved. That to be saved is to be released from the baggage of our past, the bonds of ignorance and foolishness and selfishness and greed which we have picked up over the years, in order that we might be healed and recover our true, natural selves.


This process of healing includes coming to the knowledge of the truth, and surely this knowledge includes an awareness that God calls us to lives of deep generosity and compassion. That kind of life is impossible as long as we continue to listen to the voices of greed and possession rather than the voice of God.


So may the Holy Spirit grant us grace to be among those who put our money where God’s mouth is as we live with the compassion of Jesus Christ. Amen.