O Lord, we pray, speak in this place, in the calming of our minds and in the longing of our hearts, by the words of my lips and in the thoughts that we form. Speak, O Lord, for your servants listen. Amen.
Today - this last Sunday of the Church Year - is the Sunday that is called "Christ the King Sunday".
For most of us the image of Christ as King is perhaps troublesome. We live in a place call HongKong after all - our minds can't quite wrap themselves around the whole concept of kingship, even when it is applied to Christ Jesus.
It may help us to appreciate what Christ the King Sunday is all about if we know a bit about how it came to be.
The title for this Sunday was created fairly recently - in 1925 in fact - by Pope Pius XI, and it entered into the Protestant Church during the nineteen-sixties as more and more Protestant churches began to use the Lectionary (or fixed schedule of readings) as a basis for proclaiming the Word of God each Sunday.
Why did Pope Pius XI create this Sunday and suggest the readings that we have just heard?
Quite simply because the church needed the image of Christ the King at that moment in time.
On its first celebration, Mussolini had been the leader of Italy for three years; and a rabble-rouser named Hitler had been out of prison for a year. Hitler's Nazi party was growing in popularity, and the world lay in a great Depression: a depression that would become far worse over the next fifteen years.
In such a time, Pius XI asserted that, nevertheless, with all of those new dictators and false values in the world, Christ is King of the universe.
The feast of Christ the King, then, was - and is - basically a language thing, a symbol, a metaphor, designed to be a statement of life's fundamental question for broken times such as ours.
The question - who exercises dominion over whom? And the question - Who or what rules our lives and how?
If we pick up on that theme, then the feast of Christ the King can makes sense for us today.
Who rules our lives? Who dominates culture?
The answer to the last question - who or what dominates our culture is - I think - fairly obvious. The forces of evil hold great sway both here in Hong Kong and around the world.
Greed, pride, selfishness, and fear motivates much of the world:
- in our corporate systems;
- in our media - and especially our advertising media;
- in our economic and governmental systems, where what matters most is not whether you are right - but whose side you are on - or who you work for;
- and in the hearts of many individuals - of those who think only of what is in it for them and for those they love, and rarely, if ever, about what is in it for those they don't know - or those they don't like.
The fruit of those forces that rule in our culture - and in every nation of this world - are as obvious as the huge pile of rubble and debris that sits in the heart of Central District here in Hong Kong today - as clear as the pictures of starving children in Africa and Asia and that come to us on Television so very often - and as manifest as the number of homeless - beaten - battered - abused - drug dependant - persons that live on our streets or are hidden away in our middle class homes.
The pursuit of happiness - the pursuit of success - and the exaltation of our families and our region or our country or our religious and political thinking as the most important things in life - is fraught with danger.
These are, in part, the things that led to Mussolini and to Hitler in the 20's and 30's -and they are in part the things that feed the Bin Ladens and the Arafats of our world today - the things that allowed countries to spend so much money on weapons and very little to help the people of their own country who need help. Are warplanes and warships more important than people's lives? Who and what rules our culture?
The answer is depressingly obvious.
And it feels even more obvious - and even more depressing the more we focus on all that trouble out there, the more we look at all the negative stuff, the more we experience the body blows of troubles within our own families and the more we are slapped silly by the series of illnesses and deaths within our very own community.
Think of them all.
In the last few months many people have been taken from us - one after the other - both young and old - people like Maggie, Michael, Jean, Ah Sze, Lok Man, Vincent, and now Carol.
You just get up off the floor from having been hit by one death or illness or tragedy and another comes and knocks you down.
It makes you wonder who or what is in charge doesn't it?
It makes you wonder if it will ever end.
If things will ever get better.
Hence this day - today - Christ the King Sunday.
Today we assert the Gospel message - the message that Christ is in charge.
And we assert the Gospel message that not only is Christ in charge - but the peace that we need, the hope we need, can be found in him, now, today. And more - that the peace our world needs - the peace our culture needs - is coming through him, on the day that God has chosen.
But - as Jesus himself said to the disciples on the night of his betrayal, the peace he gives - he gives not as the world gives.
And that is important - very important - as we, with Paul, name Christ not only as the King of the Universe, but as King of our lives - of our hearts.
In the first reading today we heard that:
"The days are coming," declares the LORD, "when I will raise up to David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which he will be called: The Lord Our Righteousness"
The word Righteousness conjures up for most of us an image of someone who is holy and good, of someone who is following the laws of God - the laws of moral correctness. And that is indeed part of the meaning of the word Righteous.
But when the word Righteous is applied to God in the Bible it is almost always used in reference to the saving and healing activity of God.
God shows us that he is righteous by delivering us from our enemies and by making us whole. God is righteous when God forgives us. God is righteous when he keeps his promise to be our God and to watch over us and protect us.
The righteous branch of David, the one who will be called "the Lord Our Righteousness", is, of course, Christ Jesus: the one that Paul describes in our reading from the letter to the Colossians as the image of the invisible God; the one who through whom and by whom all things were created; the one who is the head of the church, and the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead.
Let me illustrate the nature of Christ's Kingship, this Lord of Righteousness with a story.
It is the story of a little boy who wanted to do something good. A fellow like most of us.
Six-year old John decided one Saturday morning to fix his parents pancakes. He found a big bowl and spoon, pulled a chair to the counter, opened the cupboard and pulled out the heavy flour canister, spilling it on the floor. He scooped some of the flour into the bowl with his hands, mixed in most of a cup of milk and added some sugar and an egg, leaving a floury trail on the floor, which by now had a few tracks left by his kitten.
John was covered with flour and getting frustrated. He wanted this to be something very good for Mom and Dad, but it was getting very bad. He didn't know what to do next, whether to put it all into the oven or on the stove, (and he didn't know how the stove worked!). Suddenly he saw his kitten licking the bowl of mix and reached to push her away, knocking the egg carton to the floor. Frantically he tried to clean up this monumental mess but slipped on the eggs and landed on the floor - getting his pajamas white and sticky. Just then he saw Dad standing at the door. Big tears welled up in John's eyes. All he wanted to do was something good, but he'd made a terrible mess. He was sure a scolding was coming, maybe even a spanking.
But his father just watched him. Walking through the mess, he picked up his crying son, and hugged him - getting his own pajamas white and sticky in the process of loving him.
That's how God - our Lord and King - deals with us and the mess we have created. That's how Jesus - our Lord and King - deals with us and the mess we have created.
He enters into our reality and takes our mess onto himself. He loves us and forgives us
- and shows us the way of true love;
- the way that gives life - and that abundantly;
- the way of the kingdom over which he rules;
- the way of the kingdom in which he serves.
Jesus provides us with an image of royalty totally different from the world's image of royalty.
His is a total reversal of roles usually assigned to royalty and servitude. He refuses to be master of the world, the mighty monarch, the spiller of blood.
Rather he is a king who serves others. He is the king who dies for others. He is the king who is ridiculed, scorned and mocked. He is the king who is described in the Book of Revelation - not as a lion - the usual image for a king, but as a lamb - a crucified lamb upon a throne, with sword coming from his mouth by which he smites his enemies.
I don't know about you - but in all the years I have watched nature shows I have never yet seen a killer lamb... how about you? I have seen lions take down prey - but a lamb?
Jesus our Lord, our Righteousness, is one who heals, who forgives, who restores: one who refuses to take up the sword to protect himself, or call ten thousand angels to keep him from the cross, one who even as he dies promises us, as he promised the repentant thief on the cross beside him, to remember us when he comes into his kingdom, one whose word is his sword - rather than steel and space age alloys, one who conquers - not by killing others - but by allowing himself to be put to death.
I will tell you this - although Jesus as a King is a lamb rather than a lion, he is a king I want to obey - a king I want to rule over my heart and my life, a king - whose ways - whose kingdom - I want to have rule over my world and my culture.
Jesus is Lord - Jesus is King - precisely because he is not like the kings of this world.
And it is his faithfulness and his obedience and his love which has conquered death and opened the way to eternal life to all who call upon his name - for all - not just for those who are good enough, or strong enough, or smart enough.
Who and what rules our culture? I think we know who rules right now.
But it will not always be so - because I know in here - and from the words of Scripture that the one who rules our hearts and our lives is stronger than the one that rules this world.
Jesus told his disciples - and he told Pilate - "My kingdom is not of this world". And that is true. But this world will be of his Kingdom one day.
For now - let each of us hasten that day by becoming citizens of that kingdom by focussing on its Lord - and living by his direction - his values - his wisdom - here and now.
If you must look into the darkness - and occasionally we must if we are to do the work of God, then look at it with the light of Christ behind you and within you.
When the world strikes you - and then strikes you again, remember whose you are - trust in him - pick yourself up - turn the other cheek - forgive those who need forgiving - and proclaim once again that Jesus is Lord and King and that his way is the way of life.
As you do you will find within you the peace that he has promised to give to all who follow him.
Praise be to God, and Praise be to Christ Jesus our Lord: our King - our brother - and our friend. Amen
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Sunday, November 17, 2013
Malachi 3:13-4:6; Isaiah 12; Luke 21:5-19
Bless thou, the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts that they be of profit to us and acceptable to thee, oh our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
There is a story told about the monk who once approached Buddha and asked:
Do the souls of the righteous survive death?
Characteristically the Buddha gave him no reply. But the monk persisted. Each day he would repeat the question and each day he would get silence for an answer, till he could take it no longer. He threatened to abandon the path to enlightenment unless this crucial question was answered, for to what purpose, he wanted to know, was he sacrificing everything to live in the monastery if the souls of the righteous perished with their bodies? Then Buddha, in his compassion, spoke.
You are like a man, he said, who was dying from a poisoned arrow. His relatives rushed a doctor to his side, but the man refused to have the arrow pulled out unless three vital questions were first answered.
First, the man who shot him - was he a white man or a black? Second, was he a tall man or a short man? And third, was he a fat or thin?
How many of us are in the same position as that monk? How many of us question God and refuse to go on in our faith walk until those questions are answered to our satisfaction? How many of us have had friends and family leave the church - leave the faith - leave God - because they have not received the answers they wanted to hear when they wanted to hear them?
Many people refuse to belief in God, they refuse to act as God wants them to act, until their questions are answered.
Lest we become too judgmental about these people, I want you to know that many of those who ask these questions are very sincere people. For them it is not so much a matter of avoiding God, or of refusing to consider the path of faith, as it is a matter of being convinced that they will not be wasting their time.
For many the questions that they have revolve around one simple matter, it revolves around the apparent success that evil people have in this world.
The sincere amongst the questioners are very concerned - they are concerned by the fact that while God is supposed to be a God of justice, the wicked do not seem to be hindered in their evil ways at all.
This was certainly the situation for some of the people of Israel during the time of the prophet Malachi, and it continues to be the situation for so many believers and, of course, for so many sceptics , in our land today.
They cry out - or they just plain assert:
It is vain to serve the Lord. What do we profit by keeping his command? Or by going about as mourners before Him? What does it avail us? The arrogant are happy and evildoers not only prosper, but when they put God to the test, they escape.
I admit that these are tough questions and statements. I can't count all the times I have heard them from both those who openly disbelieve, and from those who claim the name of God as their own.
What is in it for us? How do we profit if we do all that God says we should do? Why should we follow the Lord since we see that wicked people do very well, and that evil people all too often do not suffer?
These are tough questions - yes they are - yet I can't stop thinking that these statements and questions miss the mark - that when they are asked amongst believers these questions reveal a lack of understanding concerning God's ways, and that when they are asked by unbelievers, they reveal an unfortunate willingness to snuff out the light of hope in this world and have everyone dwell in darkness.
In the old testament reading of today, we have featured a group of people complaining to God and saying "what is the point of serving God - the wicked prosper, and the evil ones do not get punished."
There is a point to all this my friends - A point to our worship of God. A point to our serving Him and obeying his laws, even when all around us evil seems to prosper and wicked people seem to go off scott free.
Actually there are several points - but the one I want to high light today is one of the most fundamental ones - the one that we so often forget when we look out on the world and complain about how things are going and question what profit there is in following God.
That point is the one made by God through the prophet Malachi after he listened to the questions and doubts of his people:
There is a day coming sayeth the Lord, a day coming "when all the arrogant and all evil doers will be stubble. The day that comes will burn them up, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch - but for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in his wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act."
That is the image that is provided to us in the very last chapter of the last book of the Old Testament - and it is an image that is repeated over and over again in the New Testament - there is a day coming when:
the wicked will perish, they will be ground underfoot, they will be burned up like so much straw and stubble, while the righteous, those who keep faith with God, those who attempt to follow in the path of Christ, will be spared as parents spare their children who serve them. They will be more than conquerors through him who loves them they will be richly blessed and live eternally.
There is a point to all this. A point to faith, a point to keeping the law of God, a point to believing. Even when the wicked seem to prosper, and the good seem to suffer and died without any kind of relief.
Those who righteous live by faith. Those who are evil - perish - at the last day. That is the long and the short of the point to all this.
I would be the last person to say to anyone, believers and sceptics alike - do not ask questions about evil, do not ask questions about the fate of the righteous.
Indeed I am convinced that between now and the time of Christ's return that there is a place for the questions we have for God, and that God has provided an answer for almost all of those questions within his holy word - and within the faith we have inside ourselves.
But that really is the secret of it all - and one must be willing to act in faith and live in faith before the answers to the questions of faith are revealed to us.
We must be willing to allow God to pluck out the arrows that poisons our lives, before we have all the answers as to who shot us, and why poison arrows are allowed in the first place.
Hearing about the judgement to come will avail us nothing as an answer to our questions unless we are willing to allow Christ to enter our hearts, and minister to us his life giving word, and share with us his life-restoring powers.
We all my friends end up this life the same way, we all die - whether young or old, good or bad.
The question we need to ask is not - why do the wicked seem to prosper? but rather - with whom do we want to be numbered?
The story is told of a village preacher who was visiting one day at the home of an elderly parishioner.
Over a cup of coffee, he ended up answering questions that were being put to him by the kindly old grandmother.
"Why does the Lord send us epidemics every so often?", asked the old woman.
"Well", said the preacher, "sometimes people become so wicked that they have to be removed and so the good Lord allows the coming of epidemics."
'But", objected Grandma, "then why do so many good people get removed with the bad?"
"The good ones are summoned for witnesses", explained the preacher, "the Lord wants to give every soul a fair trial."
God gives to all a fair trial, but even more - he gives to all a fair chance before the time of judgement: a fair chance to observe his life-giving laws, and to follow his Christ - the one who was willing to die so that we might live, willing to suffer so that we might not perish.
There is a point to all this - and there is an end.
Those who endure in faith will win their souls. Jesus came to tell us this and to ensure it.
Praise be to his life giving name. Amen
There is a story told about the monk who once approached Buddha and asked:
Do the souls of the righteous survive death?
Characteristically the Buddha gave him no reply. But the monk persisted. Each day he would repeat the question and each day he would get silence for an answer, till he could take it no longer. He threatened to abandon the path to enlightenment unless this crucial question was answered, for to what purpose, he wanted to know, was he sacrificing everything to live in the monastery if the souls of the righteous perished with their bodies? Then Buddha, in his compassion, spoke.
You are like a man, he said, who was dying from a poisoned arrow. His relatives rushed a doctor to his side, but the man refused to have the arrow pulled out unless three vital questions were first answered.
First, the man who shot him - was he a white man or a black? Second, was he a tall man or a short man? And third, was he a fat or thin?
How many of us are in the same position as that monk? How many of us question God and refuse to go on in our faith walk until those questions are answered to our satisfaction? How many of us have had friends and family leave the church - leave the faith - leave God - because they have not received the answers they wanted to hear when they wanted to hear them?
Many people refuse to belief in God, they refuse to act as God wants them to act, until their questions are answered.
Lest we become too judgmental about these people, I want you to know that many of those who ask these questions are very sincere people. For them it is not so much a matter of avoiding God, or of refusing to consider the path of faith, as it is a matter of being convinced that they will not be wasting their time.
For many the questions that they have revolve around one simple matter, it revolves around the apparent success that evil people have in this world.
The sincere amongst the questioners are very concerned - they are concerned by the fact that while God is supposed to be a God of justice, the wicked do not seem to be hindered in their evil ways at all.
This was certainly the situation for some of the people of Israel during the time of the prophet Malachi, and it continues to be the situation for so many believers and, of course, for so many sceptics , in our land today.
They cry out - or they just plain assert:
It is vain to serve the Lord. What do we profit by keeping his command? Or by going about as mourners before Him? What does it avail us? The arrogant are happy and evildoers not only prosper, but when they put God to the test, they escape.
I admit that these are tough questions and statements. I can't count all the times I have heard them from both those who openly disbelieve, and from those who claim the name of God as their own.
What is in it for us? How do we profit if we do all that God says we should do? Why should we follow the Lord since we see that wicked people do very well, and that evil people all too often do not suffer?
These are tough questions - yes they are - yet I can't stop thinking that these statements and questions miss the mark - that when they are asked amongst believers these questions reveal a lack of understanding concerning God's ways, and that when they are asked by unbelievers, they reveal an unfortunate willingness to snuff out the light of hope in this world and have everyone dwell in darkness.
In the old testament reading of today, we have featured a group of people complaining to God and saying "what is the point of serving God - the wicked prosper, and the evil ones do not get punished."
There is a point to all this my friends - A point to our worship of God. A point to our serving Him and obeying his laws, even when all around us evil seems to prosper and wicked people seem to go off scott free.
Actually there are several points - but the one I want to high light today is one of the most fundamental ones - the one that we so often forget when we look out on the world and complain about how things are going and question what profit there is in following God.
That point is the one made by God through the prophet Malachi after he listened to the questions and doubts of his people:
There is a day coming sayeth the Lord, a day coming "when all the arrogant and all evil doers will be stubble. The day that comes will burn them up, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch - but for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in his wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act."
That is the image that is provided to us in the very last chapter of the last book of the Old Testament - and it is an image that is repeated over and over again in the New Testament - there is a day coming when:
the wicked will perish, they will be ground underfoot, they will be burned up like so much straw and stubble, while the righteous, those who keep faith with God, those who attempt to follow in the path of Christ, will be spared as parents spare their children who serve them. They will be more than conquerors through him who loves them they will be richly blessed and live eternally.
There is a point to all this. A point to faith, a point to keeping the law of God, a point to believing. Even when the wicked seem to prosper, and the good seem to suffer and died without any kind of relief.
Those who righteous live by faith. Those who are evil - perish - at the last day. That is the long and the short of the point to all this.
I would be the last person to say to anyone, believers and sceptics alike - do not ask questions about evil, do not ask questions about the fate of the righteous.
Indeed I am convinced that between now and the time of Christ's return that there is a place for the questions we have for God, and that God has provided an answer for almost all of those questions within his holy word - and within the faith we have inside ourselves.
But that really is the secret of it all - and one must be willing to act in faith and live in faith before the answers to the questions of faith are revealed to us.
We must be willing to allow God to pluck out the arrows that poisons our lives, before we have all the answers as to who shot us, and why poison arrows are allowed in the first place.
Hearing about the judgement to come will avail us nothing as an answer to our questions unless we are willing to allow Christ to enter our hearts, and minister to us his life giving word, and share with us his life-restoring powers.
We all my friends end up this life the same way, we all die - whether young or old, good or bad.
The question we need to ask is not - why do the wicked seem to prosper? but rather - with whom do we want to be numbered?
The story is told of a village preacher who was visiting one day at the home of an elderly parishioner.
Over a cup of coffee, he ended up answering questions that were being put to him by the kindly old grandmother.
"Why does the Lord send us epidemics every so often?", asked the old woman.
"Well", said the preacher, "sometimes people become so wicked that they have to be removed and so the good Lord allows the coming of epidemics."
'But", objected Grandma, "then why do so many good people get removed with the bad?"
"The good ones are summoned for witnesses", explained the preacher, "the Lord wants to give every soul a fair trial."
God gives to all a fair trial, but even more - he gives to all a fair chance before the time of judgement: a fair chance to observe his life-giving laws, and to follow his Christ - the one who was willing to die so that we might live, willing to suffer so that we might not perish.
There is a point to all this - and there is an end.
Those who endure in faith will win their souls. Jesus came to tell us this and to ensure it.
Praise be to his life giving name. Amen
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Haggai 2:1-9; Psalm 145; Luke 20:27-38
God of our days and our nights, of our coming and our going, bless we pray thee, the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts and by them and the power of your Holy Spirit, make us more fitting servants of your most Holy Will. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.
There is An Italian legend about a master and servant.
It seems the servant was not very smart and the master used to get very exasperated with him. Finally, one day, in a fit of temper, the master said: "You really are the stupidest man I know. Here, I want you to carry this staff wherever you go. And if you ever meet a person stupider than yourself, give them this staff."
So time went by, and often in the marketplace the servant would encounter some pretty stupid people, but he never found someone appropriate for the staff. Years later, he returned to his master's home. He was shown into his master's bedroom, for the man was quite sick and in bed. In the course of their conversation the master said: "I'm going on a journey soon."
"When will you return?", asked the servant.
"This is a journey from which I will not return." the master replied.
The servant asked: "Have you made all the necessary arrangements?"
"No, I guess I have not."
"Well, could you have made all the arrangements?"
"Oh yes, I guess I've had time. I've had all my life. But I have been busy with other things."
The servant said: "Let me be sure about this. You're going on a journey, from which you will never return, and you've had all your life to make the arrangements, but you haven't."
The master said: "Yes, I guess that's right."
The servant replied: "Master, take this staff. For at last I have truly found a man stupider than myself."
Just a story - perhaps. Or perhaps it is more. Perhaps it describes the way in which we live, many of us, refusing to look on the one journey that faces us all. There may be good reason for that.
A famous theologian, confronted by an eager young seminary student to say a few words about the resurrection of the dead, refused.
"I can't talk about the resurrection with anyone under the age of 30. Before 30 what do you know of honest-to-God failure, real heartbreak, mortality, solid defeat? So what can you know of a dark world which only makes sense if Jesus Christ is raised?"
Sure, we could argue about the accuracy of choosing age 30, but the larger point remains. Unless we have experienced something of the world's darkness, then the light which shines in the darkness is never going to make any sense.
As a friend of mine said recently: "It was not until I had been a patient in a hospital for a month while the best of medical science played Sherlock Holmes over my body that I understood - down here where life gets real - what that fear and uncertainty and awful waiting is all about."
Maybe some questions shouldn't be asked unless we're starving for an answer.
The Sadducees who approach Jesus don't want an answer - they want to play theological tennis with the question, to throw a question up and bat it around a bit.
I love academic debate. But it's not the route of people starving for an answer. This is not a text about marriage; it's a question about the resurrection and Jesus' answer seems particularly flat. Like he's having an off day.
Other people got better answers to this resurrection question - but then they were asking from a very different place in life.
To Martha, weeping for her brother, Jesus said "I am the resurrection and the life".
To Mary, weeping outside the tomb on Easter Sunday, the answer came in the form of her name spoken from the other side of death.
Ask the question with tears in our eyes, ask it in a hospital room or a nursing home, ask it in those long hours of the night after a difficult verdict has been given and we may hear our own name in answer as well.
But if we ask it, as the Sadducees do, in a comfortable, secure, brightly lit religious building where we imagine everything is under control, we get something that sends us away scratching our heads.
The Sadducees come to Jesus with their convictions. There's nothing wrong with convictions. But they can cause blindness - they can prevent us from seeing what others see.
The Sadducees were very conservative theologically. They only accepted the first five books of the Bible - the ones everyone thought Moses wrote. For the Sadducees that was the extent of the Bible. And since nowhere in those five books is resurrection mentioned - they believed that the resurrection couldn't be real. That's conviction number one.
Conviction number two that they came to Jesus with was that, if there is a heaven, an eternity, a resurrection, then it has to be just like this life. What you see is what we get - for eternity.
So they put together this peculiar, but marginally plausible, story about a woman and seven brothers. For you see, tucked away in the corner of Moses' law, in Deuteronomy 25:5-6, is the idea that if a man died childless it was up to his brothers to create children with his widow.
All the evidence suggests that this law, which is known as the law of levirate marriage, wasn't even practised in Jesus' day. But here's a nice little theological conundrum the Sadducees can pose. Maybe they even think it's funny. It's a ludicrous situation - designed to show everyone who was listening to them question that a halfways intelligent God couldn't dream up something like eternal life if it could result in a mess like this.
It didn't strike Jesus as funny. Maybe it leaves a sour taste in your mouth too.
Jesus' response is to turn the issue around. The Sadducees have been evaluating eternal life on the basis of earthly life. He tells them that all those social and legal and relational arrangements which can be so good and necessary and wonderful here, remain here. The structures of "this age" will be superfluous in "that age - in the resurrection of the dead".
So is eternal life so absolutely different that we can't do anything to get ready?
Not quite. Remember the servant and the master. It is a journey which we will all face. It is a journey for which we can prepare - although we are often reluctant to do so.
In preparing for this sermon I thought about all the funerals I attended or even conducted. The subjects of the those funerals ranged from barely one year old to 96 years old. There have been men, women and children. Most died from so-called "natural causes" but I have had my share of accidents, murders, suicides and so on. Some funerals were attended by the tens, some by only four or five.
The point, of course, is that death is no respecter of age or status. You know that and I know that but we often live as if we were blissfully ignorant of it. What can we do?
Here are some really practical suggestions.
Have you got a driver's license? Sign the donor card. You won't need any part of your body where you're going but someone here might. It is the last desperate act of human selfishness not to give that gift.
Have you talked to your doctor and your loved ones about what heroic measures if any, are to be taken in event of serious illness? This is a deeply personal decision, to be made individually, but don't leave it to your wife, your children or your doctor outside the Intensive Care Unit to decide. Think about it. Talk about it.
Pre-arrange your funeral. Too many times I have heard the plaintive "we don't know what so-and-so would have wanted".
Have you a will and is it up to date? Or is your family going to get into a real mess because you haven't wanted to think about things ahead of time?
Several things you can do. Simple things - some of them. Things I'd be willing to help anyone through. Please, for the sake of those you love, don't leave the preparations for others to make.
But that's only one aspect of the preparations we can make - having to do with those thing we leave behind. What about being prepared for that which is to come?
I'm sure that the Sadducees were convinced that they had hard-headed common-sense on their side when they rejected the pie in the sky when we die by and by notion of eternal life. Better to stand tough and face the harsh truth that this is all there is.
But that is a position of faith just as surely as the one Jesus advances.
Opposite to the view that this is all there is - that history is nothing but a row of tombstones - Jesus places another vision. He says we'll be transfigured. That everything - our life, our relationships, even the very world itself - will be changed - as Paul puts it - in a twinkling of an eye.
How will all things be changed? And Into what? Neither Jesus, nor Paul, says.
Jesus does says that the transfigured life will be like that of angels - but to say it is like something implies it is also unlike.
In the end Jesus settles for saying that we will be the children of God. That's based on a few clear ideas.
First, history is going some place. Not just round and round. There is a beginning and an ending.
The words of the Bible are theological and religious, not historical and scientific, but the message is plain: there is a beginning, a present, and a consummation.
And God is more than just a great engineer who set it all going and then walked away.
The clear reason that we were made - was to be friends with God.
There's lots that gets in the way of that but that's our purpose, to be God's friends - now in this world - and forever in the world of the resurrection, in a world,a state, a condition, which includes those most have viewed as long dead - Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Sarah, Leah, Rachael, Rebecca, my friend Robert - our sister-in-Christ - Grace - our brother-in-Christ - Sammy.
As Jesus said - God is not God of the dead, but of the living - to him all of them are alive.
Are you willing to the friend of God - to go where God wants you to go? Are you willing to begin the process of being changed - of being transfigured - here and now? Are you willing to let go of the brief and transitory things of this world for the sake of drawing closer to God?
The Sadducees showed in their question to Jesus that they wanted an eternity as close to earthly life as possible - and of course it is ridiculous. As ridiculous and unappealing as sitting around on a cloud strumming a harp for all eternity. Jesus tries to blow the doors off that.
Whatever the resurrection is, it is utterly other than anything we have known. But, at its centre is the One we have always known, however dimly.
When John Owen, the great Puritan pastor and teacher lay dying, he was dictating some last letters to friends. He said to his secretary:
"Write, I am still in the land of the living." Then he stopped and said: "No, change that to read - I am still in the land of those who die, but I hope soon to be in the land of the living."
That is where what is real, what is love, will be lifted into the light and all relationships and all faces will be transfigured for the children of God.
In that transfigurement we will at last become the living.
To be ready for the journey, for that reality - that life - Jesus tells us that all we need to have is faith, and that all we need to do is to try to live by faith.
May the God of the living - the God of Christ Jesus - be praised now and evermore. Amen.
Blessed be God, day by day, Amen.
There is An Italian legend about a master and servant.
It seems the servant was not very smart and the master used to get very exasperated with him. Finally, one day, in a fit of temper, the master said: "You really are the stupidest man I know. Here, I want you to carry this staff wherever you go. And if you ever meet a person stupider than yourself, give them this staff."
So time went by, and often in the marketplace the servant would encounter some pretty stupid people, but he never found someone appropriate for the staff. Years later, he returned to his master's home. He was shown into his master's bedroom, for the man was quite sick and in bed. In the course of their conversation the master said: "I'm going on a journey soon."
"When will you return?", asked the servant.
"This is a journey from which I will not return." the master replied.
The servant asked: "Have you made all the necessary arrangements?"
"No, I guess I have not."
"Well, could you have made all the arrangements?"
"Oh yes, I guess I've had time. I've had all my life. But I have been busy with other things."
The servant said: "Let me be sure about this. You're going on a journey, from which you will never return, and you've had all your life to make the arrangements, but you haven't."
The master said: "Yes, I guess that's right."
The servant replied: "Master, take this staff. For at last I have truly found a man stupider than myself."
Just a story - perhaps. Or perhaps it is more. Perhaps it describes the way in which we live, many of us, refusing to look on the one journey that faces us all. There may be good reason for that.
A famous theologian, confronted by an eager young seminary student to say a few words about the resurrection of the dead, refused.
"I can't talk about the resurrection with anyone under the age of 30. Before 30 what do you know of honest-to-God failure, real heartbreak, mortality, solid defeat? So what can you know of a dark world which only makes sense if Jesus Christ is raised?"
Sure, we could argue about the accuracy of choosing age 30, but the larger point remains. Unless we have experienced something of the world's darkness, then the light which shines in the darkness is never going to make any sense.
As a friend of mine said recently: "It was not until I had been a patient in a hospital for a month while the best of medical science played Sherlock Holmes over my body that I understood - down here where life gets real - what that fear and uncertainty and awful waiting is all about."
Maybe some questions shouldn't be asked unless we're starving for an answer.
The Sadducees who approach Jesus don't want an answer - they want to play theological tennis with the question, to throw a question up and bat it around a bit.
I love academic debate. But it's not the route of people starving for an answer. This is not a text about marriage; it's a question about the resurrection and Jesus' answer seems particularly flat. Like he's having an off day.
Other people got better answers to this resurrection question - but then they were asking from a very different place in life.
To Martha, weeping for her brother, Jesus said "I am the resurrection and the life".
To Mary, weeping outside the tomb on Easter Sunday, the answer came in the form of her name spoken from the other side of death.
Ask the question with tears in our eyes, ask it in a hospital room or a nursing home, ask it in those long hours of the night after a difficult verdict has been given and we may hear our own name in answer as well.
But if we ask it, as the Sadducees do, in a comfortable, secure, brightly lit religious building where we imagine everything is under control, we get something that sends us away scratching our heads.
The Sadducees come to Jesus with their convictions. There's nothing wrong with convictions. But they can cause blindness - they can prevent us from seeing what others see.
The Sadducees were very conservative theologically. They only accepted the first five books of the Bible - the ones everyone thought Moses wrote. For the Sadducees that was the extent of the Bible. And since nowhere in those five books is resurrection mentioned - they believed that the resurrection couldn't be real. That's conviction number one.
Conviction number two that they came to Jesus with was that, if there is a heaven, an eternity, a resurrection, then it has to be just like this life. What you see is what we get - for eternity.
So they put together this peculiar, but marginally plausible, story about a woman and seven brothers. For you see, tucked away in the corner of Moses' law, in Deuteronomy 25:5-6, is the idea that if a man died childless it was up to his brothers to create children with his widow.
All the evidence suggests that this law, which is known as the law of levirate marriage, wasn't even practised in Jesus' day. But here's a nice little theological conundrum the Sadducees can pose. Maybe they even think it's funny. It's a ludicrous situation - designed to show everyone who was listening to them question that a halfways intelligent God couldn't dream up something like eternal life if it could result in a mess like this.
It didn't strike Jesus as funny. Maybe it leaves a sour taste in your mouth too.
Jesus' response is to turn the issue around. The Sadducees have been evaluating eternal life on the basis of earthly life. He tells them that all those social and legal and relational arrangements which can be so good and necessary and wonderful here, remain here. The structures of "this age" will be superfluous in "that age - in the resurrection of the dead".
So is eternal life so absolutely different that we can't do anything to get ready?
Not quite. Remember the servant and the master. It is a journey which we will all face. It is a journey for which we can prepare - although we are often reluctant to do so.
In preparing for this sermon I thought about all the funerals I attended or even conducted. The subjects of the those funerals ranged from barely one year old to 96 years old. There have been men, women and children. Most died from so-called "natural causes" but I have had my share of accidents, murders, suicides and so on. Some funerals were attended by the tens, some by only four or five.
The point, of course, is that death is no respecter of age or status. You know that and I know that but we often live as if we were blissfully ignorant of it. What can we do?
Here are some really practical suggestions.
Have you got a driver's license? Sign the donor card. You won't need any part of your body where you're going but someone here might. It is the last desperate act of human selfishness not to give that gift.
Have you talked to your doctor and your loved ones about what heroic measures if any, are to be taken in event of serious illness? This is a deeply personal decision, to be made individually, but don't leave it to your wife, your children or your doctor outside the Intensive Care Unit to decide. Think about it. Talk about it.
Pre-arrange your funeral. Too many times I have heard the plaintive "we don't know what so-and-so would have wanted".
Have you a will and is it up to date? Or is your family going to get into a real mess because you haven't wanted to think about things ahead of time?
Several things you can do. Simple things - some of them. Things I'd be willing to help anyone through. Please, for the sake of those you love, don't leave the preparations for others to make.
But that's only one aspect of the preparations we can make - having to do with those thing we leave behind. What about being prepared for that which is to come?
I'm sure that the Sadducees were convinced that they had hard-headed common-sense on their side when they rejected the pie in the sky when we die by and by notion of eternal life. Better to stand tough and face the harsh truth that this is all there is.
But that is a position of faith just as surely as the one Jesus advances.
Opposite to the view that this is all there is - that history is nothing but a row of tombstones - Jesus places another vision. He says we'll be transfigured. That everything - our life, our relationships, even the very world itself - will be changed - as Paul puts it - in a twinkling of an eye.
How will all things be changed? And Into what? Neither Jesus, nor Paul, says.
Jesus does says that the transfigured life will be like that of angels - but to say it is like something implies it is also unlike.
In the end Jesus settles for saying that we will be the children of God. That's based on a few clear ideas.
First, history is going some place. Not just round and round. There is a beginning and an ending.
The words of the Bible are theological and religious, not historical and scientific, but the message is plain: there is a beginning, a present, and a consummation.
And God is more than just a great engineer who set it all going and then walked away.
The clear reason that we were made - was to be friends with God.
There's lots that gets in the way of that but that's our purpose, to be God's friends - now in this world - and forever in the world of the resurrection, in a world,a state, a condition, which includes those most have viewed as long dead - Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Sarah, Leah, Rachael, Rebecca, my friend Robert - our sister-in-Christ - Grace - our brother-in-Christ - Sammy.
As Jesus said - God is not God of the dead, but of the living - to him all of them are alive.
Are you willing to the friend of God - to go where God wants you to go? Are you willing to begin the process of being changed - of being transfigured - here and now? Are you willing to let go of the brief and transitory things of this world for the sake of drawing closer to God?
The Sadducees showed in their question to Jesus that they wanted an eternity as close to earthly life as possible - and of course it is ridiculous. As ridiculous and unappealing as sitting around on a cloud strumming a harp for all eternity. Jesus tries to blow the doors off that.
Whatever the resurrection is, it is utterly other than anything we have known. But, at its centre is the One we have always known, however dimly.
When John Owen, the great Puritan pastor and teacher lay dying, he was dictating some last letters to friends. He said to his secretary:
"Write, I am still in the land of the living." Then he stopped and said: "No, change that to read - I am still in the land of those who die, but I hope soon to be in the land of the living."
That is where what is real, what is love, will be lifted into the light and all relationships and all faces will be transfigured for the children of God.
In that transfigurement we will at last become the living.
To be ready for the journey, for that reality - that life - Jesus tells us that all we need to have is faith, and that all we need to do is to try to live by faith.
May the God of the living - the God of Christ Jesus - be praised now and evermore. Amen.
Blessed be God, day by day, Amen.
Sunday, November 3, 2013
Ephesians 1:11-23; Psalm 149; Luke 6:20-36
Lord of light - shine upon us. God of love fill our hearts with your wisdom. Holy Spirit, bring yourself closer to us in my words and how we hear them, in our thoughts and how we think them. Use this time - and use us - to accomplish your good and gracious will. Amen
There is an old story - perhaps it is a joke - perhaps something like this really happened at one time, we don't really know - an old story about two brothers who lived in a particular town where they were involved in corruption, deceit and every manner of vice. It was rumoured that they were affiliated with some very famous organized crime families as well. Whatever the case, both brothers had accumulated much wealth through their dishonest means.
There was little grief in the town when the older brother died. But his younger brother, wanting to honour his elder sibling, went all out in planning the funeral. The problem was finding a minister willing to do the service, given that neither of them had ever graced the steps of a church. Knowing that the one of the local churches was in the midst of a capital campaign for some much needed repairs, the younger brother called upon the minister.
"Reverend," he said, "I know my brother and I never attended your church, as a matter of fact we never attended any church. I also know that you've probably heard a lot of things about my brother and I, this being a small town and all, but I'd like you to do my brother's funeral. And if you'll say he was a saint, I'll write you a check for 50,000 dollars. That'll go along way to fixing up the church."
After some thought, the pastor agreed to have the service. The pastor, however, also had a condition. The $50,000 had to be paid in advance. And so it was.
On the day of the funeral, the church was crowded. Curiosity brought dozens of people in, who were certainly not there to honour the rich man, but to see what the minister would actually say. The remainder of the crowd was made up of mobsters and women the brothers associated with.
The service began with the usual scriptures, hymns and prayers - and then the homily began. The minister began slowly, but then step by step launched into a litany of the horrible things the rich man had done, how he had been selfish, greedy, corrupt, caring about no one but himself, carousing with women, drinking excessively, and on and on.
The younger brother, sitting up in the front pew, was getting hot under the collar about how the minister was not fulfilling his promise, but during the service there was not much he could do about it. He could only wait and hope that the minister would keep his end of the bargain. Finally, after about ten minutes of outlining the rich man's flaws, the minister concluded his sermon in a booming crescendo proclaiming:
"Yes my friends, this man was a no-good, dirty, rotten scoundrel! But, compared to his brother, he was a saint!"
When people think of the saints, they most often think of people like Paul, or John or James, and the other Apostles; or they think of people like St. Francis, St. Teresa, St. Catherine, St. Bernadette, or St. Ignatius of Loyala.
In short they think of those people that the church has long declared to be saints - those people whose faith and vision and moral integrity has been thoroughly examined and widely known; those normally long dead people who have been judged to have advanced the cause of Jesus Christ notably in this world; those people who have been deemed to be worthy of imitation and of praise by both church bureaucrats and popular opinion.
Today is All Saint's Day - a feast day that has been celebrated for hundreds of years within the church, particularly within the Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican churches, but in many others as well. But in many of the traditions arising out of the Protestant Reformation - often not much is said about the Saints and All Saints Day: except to explain that the night before, the night of witches and devils and other things that we should not pay attention to, received it's name because it is on the Eve of All Hallows Day, of All Saints Day.
That neglect of the Saints in many traditions is a pity in a way because it can make the whole idea of sainthood and of the communion of the saints, inaccessible to us - especially when you couple that neglect with the popular idea of what a saint is - namely someone who is only a little less than perfect, someone who has been a spiritual overachiever as it were.
It is true that those that the universal church has declared - after much examination and debate, to be saints are saints. But - when we get down to it - these wonderful poeple are only bright examples of something that is very common - namely bright examples of a deep and abiding faith in Christ Jesus, a faith that has issued forth in action.
They are people upon whom the fickle finger of public attention has descended, and while normally deserving of the attention they have and are receiving, so are many, many, more people, people both dead - and people who are still alive.
The word Saint derives from the word Sanctus - which we translate as the word "holy".
And in the bible - in this morning's reading from the Letter to the Ephesians, and in all of Paul's letters, the word - sanctus - the word saint - is applied without further distinction to the company of those who believe in Christ Jesus and who strive to live faithfully according to his teachings and his example.
Listen to verse one and two of the Letter to the Ephesians - where Paul tells them who is writing and to whom it is that he is writing.
"Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus - grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."
Listen as well to how Paul addresses the church in Rome.
Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle... to all God's beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints. Grace to you and peace...."
And to the church in Corinth:
Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes, to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ...
Saints are all around us - people who are holy - people who are set apart from the rest of the world who are different because they believe in Christ Jesus and seek to live faithfully as he has shown them.
In the bible, in our faith, saints are normal people, normal people who differ from most others in this world, not because of the degree of their moral perfection, but because of the degree of their faith and how, because of their faith and how they live it, draw others to give praise to God and inspire them to want to believe in and follow the Christ whom they believe in all follow.
We are saints....We are called to be saints...
A saint is someone who is set apart because of their faith. A saint is someone whose life is dedicated to the worship of God and the doing of God's will. A saint is someone who inspires in us the desire to know and follow Christ Jesus..
Think about it for a minute: does it not make sense that we - who are called to be saints - should pause once a year in our public worship to think about who the saints of God are and to thank God for them?
Does it not even make sense to perhaps pause once a month - or even once a day - in our private worship, and give thanks to God for all the saints and especially for those saints who have touched our lives and showed to us something of Christ's love, something of God's glory.
What we admire in them after all is part of what we are called to imitate part of what we hope God will work through us, part of what God calls us to be and to embody and to live out.
A saint is a person who is an example of faithfulness; a person who because of their faith in Christ, shows forth something of his light in their lives.
Think about it for a minute or two more, think of the saints - think not of the famous saints - like Saint Paul or Saint John or Saint Theresa, or Saint Catherine, or Saint Francis, but think of the saints who have touched your lives, of those who have inspired in you a deeper faith in God, of those who have made you want to bless the God they believe in...of those whose love and whose testimony have awakened something in your soul.
Who are you thinking of?
Take the paper angel you have been given and pen or pencil and close your eyes and think about saints who have touched your life.
Think about whose names you would like to write upon the angel as thank offering to God, an offering to be received during the hymn that is coming very soon.
I think of a woman who lived in a little ramshackle house. I think of her humility - such that she did not easily pray for her own needs - and her care that led her to pray for others. I remember how when trials and tribulations came upon her - problems of health, problems of money, problems of family, she plunged more deeply into the heart of God - saying that her Lord had brought her thus far and that she believed that he would see her through. Her name was Mei Sin - and she died of cancer several years ago and is now with the Lord above.
I think of Mother Teresa, whose example from afar, has touched me even here. One who may well end up being named the kind of saint that we normally think of when we hear that word.
I think of some of you. Fellow saints in the body of Christ.
Who do you think of? Open your eyes and write down the name or names, the name or names of those whom you want to thank God for, of those who faith has inspired you to faith, of those who dedication to God and to showing God's love has warmed your hearts.
Bless God for those who seem to you to be blessed - those like the ones to that Jesus calls blessed in the beatitudes we heard today - those whom you believe are indeed set apart by God and made holy because they have encouraged you to live towards your high calling as the children of God........
Blessed be God day by day. Amen.
There is an old story - perhaps it is a joke - perhaps something like this really happened at one time, we don't really know - an old story about two brothers who lived in a particular town where they were involved in corruption, deceit and every manner of vice. It was rumoured that they were affiliated with some very famous organized crime families as well. Whatever the case, both brothers had accumulated much wealth through their dishonest means.
There was little grief in the town when the older brother died. But his younger brother, wanting to honour his elder sibling, went all out in planning the funeral. The problem was finding a minister willing to do the service, given that neither of them had ever graced the steps of a church. Knowing that the one of the local churches was in the midst of a capital campaign for some much needed repairs, the younger brother called upon the minister.
"Reverend," he said, "I know my brother and I never attended your church, as a matter of fact we never attended any church. I also know that you've probably heard a lot of things about my brother and I, this being a small town and all, but I'd like you to do my brother's funeral. And if you'll say he was a saint, I'll write you a check for 50,000 dollars. That'll go along way to fixing up the church."
After some thought, the pastor agreed to have the service. The pastor, however, also had a condition. The $50,000 had to be paid in advance. And so it was.
On the day of the funeral, the church was crowded. Curiosity brought dozens of people in, who were certainly not there to honour the rich man, but to see what the minister would actually say. The remainder of the crowd was made up of mobsters and women the brothers associated with.
The service began with the usual scriptures, hymns and prayers - and then the homily began. The minister began slowly, but then step by step launched into a litany of the horrible things the rich man had done, how he had been selfish, greedy, corrupt, caring about no one but himself, carousing with women, drinking excessively, and on and on.
The younger brother, sitting up in the front pew, was getting hot under the collar about how the minister was not fulfilling his promise, but during the service there was not much he could do about it. He could only wait and hope that the minister would keep his end of the bargain. Finally, after about ten minutes of outlining the rich man's flaws, the minister concluded his sermon in a booming crescendo proclaiming:
"Yes my friends, this man was a no-good, dirty, rotten scoundrel! But, compared to his brother, he was a saint!"
When people think of the saints, they most often think of people like Paul, or John or James, and the other Apostles; or they think of people like St. Francis, St. Teresa, St. Catherine, St. Bernadette, or St. Ignatius of Loyala.
In short they think of those people that the church has long declared to be saints - those people whose faith and vision and moral integrity has been thoroughly examined and widely known; those normally long dead people who have been judged to have advanced the cause of Jesus Christ notably in this world; those people who have been deemed to be worthy of imitation and of praise by both church bureaucrats and popular opinion.
Today is All Saint's Day - a feast day that has been celebrated for hundreds of years within the church, particularly within the Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican churches, but in many others as well. But in many of the traditions arising out of the Protestant Reformation - often not much is said about the Saints and All Saints Day: except to explain that the night before, the night of witches and devils and other things that we should not pay attention to, received it's name because it is on the Eve of All Hallows Day, of All Saints Day.
That neglect of the Saints in many traditions is a pity in a way because it can make the whole idea of sainthood and of the communion of the saints, inaccessible to us - especially when you couple that neglect with the popular idea of what a saint is - namely someone who is only a little less than perfect, someone who has been a spiritual overachiever as it were.
It is true that those that the universal church has declared - after much examination and debate, to be saints are saints. But - when we get down to it - these wonderful poeple are only bright examples of something that is very common - namely bright examples of a deep and abiding faith in Christ Jesus, a faith that has issued forth in action.
They are people upon whom the fickle finger of public attention has descended, and while normally deserving of the attention they have and are receiving, so are many, many, more people, people both dead - and people who are still alive.
The word Saint derives from the word Sanctus - which we translate as the word "holy".
And in the bible - in this morning's reading from the Letter to the Ephesians, and in all of Paul's letters, the word - sanctus - the word saint - is applied without further distinction to the company of those who believe in Christ Jesus and who strive to live faithfully according to his teachings and his example.
Listen to verse one and two of the Letter to the Ephesians - where Paul tells them who is writing and to whom it is that he is writing.
"Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus - grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."
Listen as well to how Paul addresses the church in Rome.
Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle... to all God's beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints. Grace to you and peace...."
And to the church in Corinth:
Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes, to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ...
Saints are all around us - people who are holy - people who are set apart from the rest of the world who are different because they believe in Christ Jesus and seek to live faithfully as he has shown them.
In the bible, in our faith, saints are normal people, normal people who differ from most others in this world, not because of the degree of their moral perfection, but because of the degree of their faith and how, because of their faith and how they live it, draw others to give praise to God and inspire them to want to believe in and follow the Christ whom they believe in all follow.
We are saints....We are called to be saints...
A saint is someone who is set apart because of their faith. A saint is someone whose life is dedicated to the worship of God and the doing of God's will. A saint is someone who inspires in us the desire to know and follow Christ Jesus..
Think about it for a minute: does it not make sense that we - who are called to be saints - should pause once a year in our public worship to think about who the saints of God are and to thank God for them?
Does it not even make sense to perhaps pause once a month - or even once a day - in our private worship, and give thanks to God for all the saints and especially for those saints who have touched our lives and showed to us something of Christ's love, something of God's glory.
What we admire in them after all is part of what we are called to imitate part of what we hope God will work through us, part of what God calls us to be and to embody and to live out.
A saint is a person who is an example of faithfulness; a person who because of their faith in Christ, shows forth something of his light in their lives.
Think about it for a minute or two more, think of the saints - think not of the famous saints - like Saint Paul or Saint John or Saint Theresa, or Saint Catherine, or Saint Francis, but think of the saints who have touched your lives, of those who have inspired in you a deeper faith in God, of those who have made you want to bless the God they believe in...of those whose love and whose testimony have awakened something in your soul.
Who are you thinking of?
Take the paper angel you have been given and pen or pencil and close your eyes and think about saints who have touched your life.
Think about whose names you would like to write upon the angel as thank offering to God, an offering to be received during the hymn that is coming very soon.
I think of a woman who lived in a little ramshackle house. I think of her humility - such that she did not easily pray for her own needs - and her care that led her to pray for others. I remember how when trials and tribulations came upon her - problems of health, problems of money, problems of family, she plunged more deeply into the heart of God - saying that her Lord had brought her thus far and that she believed that he would see her through. Her name was Mei Sin - and she died of cancer several years ago and is now with the Lord above.
I think of Mother Teresa, whose example from afar, has touched me even here. One who may well end up being named the kind of saint that we normally think of when we hear that word.
I think of some of you. Fellow saints in the body of Christ.
Who do you think of? Open your eyes and write down the name or names, the name or names of those whom you want to thank God for, of those who faith has inspired you to faith, of those who dedication to God and to showing God's love has warmed your hearts.
Bless God for those who seem to you to be blessed - those like the ones to that Jesus calls blessed in the beatitudes we heard today - those whom you believe are indeed set apart by God and made holy because they have encouraged you to live towards your high calling as the children of God........
Blessed be God day by day. Amen.
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