The Food Here is Good

A Sermon for the 4^th Sunday of Pascha/Easter (RCL A) 5-15-2011

Offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

Texts:              Acts 2:42-47; Psalm 23; 1 Peter 2:19-25; John 10:1-10
Themes:         good shepherd Sunday, breaking bread, leading out into green pastures

Today, my friends, is Good Shepherd Sunday. The 4^th Sunday of the Paschal season every single year is known as Good Shepherd Sunday, and the lessons each year on this Sunday focus upon the description of our Lord Jesus Christ as the Good Shepherd who cares for his sheep.

Let us think for a moment about the role of a shepherd, and what makes a shepherd to be “good”.   

Jesus said that a shepherd goes ahead of his sheep and he leads them out to where they can find pasture.

A good shepherd, then, provides for the needs of the flock, by making sure that the flock has access to food and to water. But a shepherd also protects from the thief and the bandit who come only to steal and kill and destroy.  So a shepherd is good if he providing security from attacks.

Food, drink and safety – this is what a good shepherd provides.

These are the things necessary for sheep to have life. And these are the things that our Lord Jesus, Good Shepherd, provides for us so that we might have life and might have it abundantly.

From the very earliest days of the church’s existence, the followers of Christ have closely associated the care of the Good Shepherd with the sustenance that he provides for his people in the bread and wine of communion.

As we heard today from the Book of Acts, the first community of disciples who gathered after the day of Pentecost devoted themselves to the breaking of bread. These liturgies were certainly not nearly as elaborate as ours today, but they surely seem to have been understood as sacred events where Christ was present in a profound way and where he was nourishing and strengthening his sheep.

If we are to have abundant life as the Gospel says, then obviously we must have nourishment and sustenance for our souls, something that feeds us on the inside. Food, drink, safety – this is what a good shepherd provides, and this is what we need if we are truly to be the people of God.

Week by week you come to the Lord’s table to receive bread and wine which have been transformed by our prayers and by his promise into the body and blood of Christ. What do these things mean to you?

Let me invite you to consider for a moment what the body and blood of Christ have meant for all of the people of God throughout the ages, in all of the different places and situations and circumstances in which the church has existed. From hiding in catacombs and caves during the Roman persecutions, to the communion shared aboard the Apollo mission on the surface of the moon, from the grand cathedrals of Europe, to the communion liturgies in the bush among rural African tribes – everywhere humanity has been, in every circumstance that you can imagine, people have received and embraced the body and blood of Christ as true spiritual nourishment.

The Good Shepherd provides for his sheep. Even when they walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Christ is with them. Christ spreads a table for them even in the presence of their enemies.  

Consider this example, my friends. Dr. Vigen Guroian tells a remarkable true story about a very special Eucharist shared by refugees during the Armenian genocide.  Dr. Guroian is himself of Armenian descent, and he is now a professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia.

Around the time of the first World War, the Turkish army undertook extreme measures against the Armenian people, which resulted in the death of one-half of the 3 million Armenians.

In one instance during this genocide, the Armenian villagers from one small village escaped quickly into the countryside, fleeing from Turkish troops. The village priest had fled along with them. As they wandered, the people decided to stop and worship. I do not know whether it was the Lord’s Day, or whether they just felt that it was right to give thanks that they had escaped. But whatever the motivation, the people paused to celebrate the Holy Eucharist.

However there was a major problem: they had no bread and wine at all. They had fled the approaching army without very little time to gather many provisions. So, there in the countryside, they prayed and they celebrated and they gave thanks by blessing bowls of dirt and cups of water as the body and blood of Christ. It was all that they had.
Everyone took a bit of that blessed dirt and ate it, and washed it down with a bit of that blessed water. And God was present with them. "Restoring The Senses" interview from On Being

Even in their extreme suffering and hardship, wandering as refugees, fleeing from a genocidal army, even there the Good Shepherd provided spiritual nourishment for his people.

It may not always look like what we are used to. It may sometimes be rough, a bit sloppy or unpolished. But our Good Shepherd does provide us with food and drink and safety, the only kinds of food and drink and safety which truly matter!

Spiritual sustenance which brings joy and strength. Eternal security which brings peace that the world can never provide. These are the provisions for abundant life from our Lord.

Now, it is often surprising how the Good Shepherd might provide these things for us. Just consider the dirt and water communion of the Armenians. Consider also this personal story told by Julie Krause, a fellow Episcopalian. It is written in a brief poem, but with a bit of imagination, we can flush out the much larger story of her life which is told here.

Ms. Krause’s poem is titled “Homeless Angel” (from Women's Uncommon Prayers) and it speaks of a serendipitous meeting with a homeless man who points her toward the nourishment of the Lord’s Table in her time of need:

Returning from the nursing home, I feel empty.

She who nurtured me no longer knows me.

Suddenly, I need to be taken care of.

The unkempt homeless man on the steps of the church invites me in.

“The food here is good,” he says.

Trained early not to talk to strangers, I think only, “Do I look poor or hungry?

Why should he call me to me?” It’s his soup kitchen, and more his church than mine.

There is a noon Eucharist. How I’ve missed it. Communion,

And the taste of my mother’s kitchen. A meager celebration.

But the bread and wine feed my soul.

Outside, he calls to me again as I walk past.

“Did you get to eat? Did they feed you? Did you get what you needed?”

I glance back over my shoulder. He smiles.

“Yes,” my heart silently shouts.

He nods.

That’s right, my friends. The food here is good! Because it comes from the Good Shepherd who spreads out a table for us and who fills our cups to overflowing!

If we will but come to the feast; if we will join in the celebration, along with all of those around the world who know his voice and follow where he leads. Thanks be to God for the gift of abundant life which we receive through our Lord, the Good Shepherd. May each one of us always know and experience this sustaining and protecting grace which he so lavishly provides. Amen.

"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.

The Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Virtues

Thomas Merton once described a holy person as one who is "quiet, simple, humble, and direct." This summarizes for me a life that eschews the seven deadly sins and which cultivates the seven virtues. It is a beautiful life, one which is worthy of being pursued with vigor. This is a highly appropriate reflection for the period of mystagogical catechesis which is the Great Fifty Days.

Here is an outline of these traditional categories in Christian moral thought, with some of my own brief explanatory notes:

The Seven Deadly Sins

1. Pride - arrogance, boastfulness, expecting (closely linked with anger)
2. Covetousness - greed, taking (linked with envy)
3. Lust - obsession, demanding, grasping (linked with gluttony)
4. Envy - greed, discontent, craving
5. Gluttony - indulgence, immoderate, consuming, devouring
6. Anger - bitterness, resentment, fearing (fear gives birth to anger)
7. Sloth - laziness, unmotivated, disengaged, withdrawn, lack of vision

The Seven Virtues

1. Faith - confidence, trusting (closely linked with hope)
2. Hope - assurance, perspective, seeing (hope grows out of clear vision)
3. Love - commitment, focus, giving (closely linked with fortitude)
4. Justice - fairness, impartiality, compassion 
5. Prudence - discernment, wisdom (linked with temperance)
6. Temperance - calmness, self-control, moderation
7. Fortitude - perseverance, diligence, determination 

If you keep these characteristics in mind when you study the great teaching on the hillside by our Lord Jesus (The Gospel of Matthew 5-7), you can see how his teachings clearly connect here and how these categories help to dscribe the eternal kind of life into which he brings us when we trust in him.

The Stone is Rolled Away!

A Sermon for Resurrection Sunday (the Holy Pascha) 4-24-2011

Offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

Texts:              Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:1-2,14-42; Colossians 3:1-4; Matthew 28:1-10

Title:               The Stone is Rolled Away!

Welcome, my dear friends! Welcome, all of you, to this happy morning! Welcome to this season of rejoicing and feasting and splendor and happiness! For Christ has been raised from the dead, never to die again, and we too have been raised with him.

Now our Lenten fasting is over; now is the time only for joy and celebration. Let nothing and no one steal away or interrupt your joy now in the resurrection of our Lord!

They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the third day!  When Mary and the other Mary went to the tomb at the break of day, they met there the angel who had rolled the stone away from the entrance to the tomb. And they received the angel’s message with “fear and great joy”, as the gospel says.

But let’s back up just a moment and focus upon this rolling away of the stone by the angel. Why was the stone rolled away? What was the point of this?

If the risen Lord was able to walk through walls and by-pass the normal limitations of space and time, did he need this stone rolled away? Was it rolled away for Christ? This is what the great archbishop Peter Chrysologus preached about this many years ago back in the early 5^th century:

“[The angel] did not roll back the stone to provide a way of escape for the Lord but to show the world that the Lord has already risen. He rolled back the stone to help his fellow servants believe, not to help the Lord rise from the dead. He rolled back the stone for the sake of faith, because it had been rolled over the tomb for the sake of unbelief.”

“Pray, brothers [and sisters], that the angel would descend now and roll away all the hardness of our hearts and open up our closed senses and declare to our minds that Christ has risen, for just as the heart in which Christ lives and reigns is heaven, so also the heart in which Christ remains dead is a grave.”

There’s something very powerful for me in the imagery of this giant stone rolled in front of the Lord’s tomb in order to seal it closed, then rolled away by the angel at the break of dawn.

Rich Mullins was one of the great Christian musicians of recent decades. He sang these words about that stone and about the longing of our hearts (from his song named Jesus (Demo Version) ):

“Jesus,

They drove the cold nails through Your tired hands

And rolled a stone to seal Your grave

Feels like the Devil's rolled a stone onto my heart

Can You roll that stone away?”

Can you roll that stone away? That’s what I want to know! Can you do it, Jesus? Can you roll the stone away from my heart?

Now, let’s be honest, OK?  There are many days when I am not asking this kind of prayer. Those days, I am feeling confident and competent, like I can conquer the world and can tackle any challenge.

But there are other days when all of my bluster and bravado fade, and other days, when I feel tired and worn down, and days when I can’t seem to make any sense at all out of this life and it feels like things are spinning out of control, and days when I feel as cold as a block of ice, with no compassion, no love, no joy – at those times, I remember and I know that I need help!

And then I ask: Jesus, can You roll that stone away, off of my heart? Can you do it?

Well, today, on this glorious day, let there be no doubt at all that God can indeed roll it away; that God can set our hearts free and can fill them with joy! If we open ourselves to it!

Remember what Peter Chrysologus said: the heart in which Christ remains dead is a grave, but the heart in which Christ lives and reigns is heaven!

And in this matter, it is up to each one of us to make our choice. Will we choose to keep Christ sealed away in the grave, not interfering with the way we want to live our lives? Or will we allow Christ, the risen Lord, to take charge, to live and reign in our hearts, and so will we open ourselves to the joy of his resurrection? 

There have been many different charges made against Christians, and indeed most of us have heard of horrible things done by Christians over the centuries, often in the name of Christ.

Unfortunately, we continue to hear of detestable things done by some Christians today. All of these reports are indictments against the Church, but, to be honest, none of these things surprise me.

To be a Christian does not mean that we become automatically better than anyone else. To be baptized into Christ does not mean that we become automatically better than others. We continue to stumble and fail. We continue to sin. The fact that this happens is unfortunate, but it ought not to surprise anyone. After all , we are sinners saved by grace alone.

So perhaps the worst charge leveled against Christians is the one expressed by Friedrich Nietzsche, the great anti-Christian philosopher of the 19^th century. In Nietzsche’s experience, Christians were the people who were completely devoid of joy. He said that he saw more joy in the bars than in the churches of his hometown! Speaking to a group of Christians, Nietzsche once said: “if your belief makes you blessed then [at least] appear to be blessed! Your faces have always been more injurious to your belief than our [scientific] objections have!”   

Although Nietzsche was clearly an arrogant fool (IMHO), his critique still has merit!

That is, if Christ truly is raised from the dead as the scriptures proclaim and as the church has always confessed, then surely this fact ought to be reflected in the joy clearly evident on our faces for all to see!

Who are we if we are not people of incredible and indescribable joy? Our Lord Jesus, the one we love, the one who offered himself freely on our behalf, the innocent Lamb of God who would stop at nothing to set us free, the Son of God who has redeemed us from our own foolishness and sin and blindness – the Lord Jesus Christ is risen from the dead!

He is alive and well and active in the world. Alive and well and active in his church! Alive and well and active in our lives!

What can we do but rejoice?! Rejoice when we see him here in the gathered body of Christ! Rejoice when we see him in the faces of those in need out in the world! Rejoice when we see him in the beauty of God’s creation! (Rejoice when we see him in Matthew as he is baptized here today!)

For Christ is alive, and we are alive in him. Joy is the key to this life in Christ.

Let it show on our faces today. And by God’s grace may it abide in our hearts for ever. Amen.

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.