Who are we, where have we been, and where are we going?

 To say that the last several months have been like none other in our  lifetime would be an extreme understatement.   We’ve watched a virus bring the world to a screeching halt, an economic shutdown rivaling the Great Depression, and now civil unrest reaching a fever pitch.  I keep coming back to the questions that serve as the title of this essay - who are we, where have we been, and where are we going?  I think that those are appropriate questions when addressing  a situation such as this.

We seem to be adapting to the first two issues.  The COVID-19 coronavirus has really been something like none other.  In some ways it’s similar to worldwide epidemics that we’ve previously experienced, but in other ways it truly is unique.  In analyzing the data, the number of deaths (probably not the best way to “rank” pandemics), COVID-19 isn’t as bad as other worldwide health crises - recognizing that it’s still an awful situation.  We’ve been through far worse from a shear statistical perspective.  However, the rapid spread and indiscriminate infection parameters seem to be unique.  We would expect the immunocompromised to suffer at a significantly higher rate.  Yet, even the somewhat “healthy” have been affected in high numbers, and with serious symptoms.  The number of people subjected to long-term hospital stays with significant life-saving measures has been astounding.  To diminish the impact would be foolish.

The immediate response to this epidemic has been the near complete shutdown of world economies that have surpassed our wildest dreams.  We began ranking businesses as essential vs. non-essential.  For the purpose of this discussion we won’t address which ones fell into which category.  Nonetheless, except for essential human needs (Maslow), non-essential businesses were shuttered for at least two months.  The economic impact of these shutdowns will take years, if not decades, to determine the true impact.  The unemployment rates skyrocketed to almost 20% of the workforce.  In a two-month span we went from near full-employment to Great Depression-like numbers in 6-8 weeks.  Unreal doesn’t even begin to express the sentiment.  Yet, the American people remained resilient that we would emerge from this crises, and build back from these loses.  

Then, in the midst of all of this, enter Derek Chauvin and George Floyd.  With the exception of their families, friends, and co-workers, these were simply two names in the great fabric of Americana.  Yet, on May 25, 2020, everyone knew who these two men were.   One a Minneapolis Police Officer, the other a victim of police apprehension gone horribly wrong.  Mr. Floyd apparently committed some crime that led to his arrest, and then his horrific death.  While in police custody, Officer Chauvin knelt on the neck of Mr. Floyd for almost nine minutes, ultimately leading to his death by asphyxiation - a death that never should have happened.  Yet, here we are.  Who are we, where have we been, where are we going?

Who are we?/Where have we been?

It’s almost inconceivable that we as a developed society are in this situation once again.  Over the past decade or so, in the realm of law enforcement, we’ve watched a life end at the hands of a man or woman entrusted with public safety.  In some instances the use of force was completely legitimate.  In some instances it was not.  Yet, in the court of public opinion, the “mob” jumps to a conclusion before the facts of the case come to light.  In some instances the blood hasn’t even dried before the American people have acted as both judge and jury and rendered judgement.  Recently that judgement has taken the form of violent riots and egregious destruction of private property.  There must be a better way.

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson penned these words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  Since those words were written some 244 years ago, we haven’t done the best of jobs of living into the reality that all men are created equal.   There were hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children, brought here on slave ships, who were not viewed as men created equal.  They were different, and we somehow excused that away.  It was wrong, it was sinful, and no one that I know would doubt that for one second.  Until the Emancipation Proclamation and then the end of the Civil War, slaves were seen as “less than”.   Nonetheless, we still had work to do.

Even though we would have declared ourselves to be a Nation built upon Judeo-Christian principals, we could not with integrity maintain that claim, while at the same time view African slaves as inferior, less-than, sub-human.  It’s one of those unfortunate realities of our history.  Who we were in actuality didn’t match who we said we were.  We were not truly faithful to our guiding principals.   It sure would be nice to pretend that this didn’t happen or that we could excuse it all away, but we are not given that option.  We must acknowledge with all its subsequent faults and shortcomings, who we are and where we’ve come from.  A truly virtuous people will admit those issues, learn from them, and strive to be a better people as a result.  I’m afraid that on both sides of the issue we continue to fail miserably.

Where are we going?

This really is the ultimate question.  Based upon who we are & where we’ve come from, where do we go from here?  I’m afraid that we have two factions that have two totally different destinations, and at the end of the day, are totally incompatible with one another.

On the left or more progressive side of the situation we find those who seem to desire anarchy, total decentralization of control, and a complete restructuring of American society.  We’re watching this play itself out in the Seattle, WA, situation regarding the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ).  A somewhat loosely organized group has now seized control of a 6 square block section of Seattle.  The demands and expectations of this group continues to change depending upon the circumstances.  This level of chaos is ultimately unsustainable.  Organization based upon shifting aims is untenable.  Yet, there are still those who adhere to these beliefs, and think that this is a workable solution.

On the right or more conservative side, we have those who desire the status quo.  Those who desire the preservation of law and order.  Those who see what’s happening in cities around the nation as shear lawlessness.  Most would like for the government to come sweeping in, squash this insurgence, and establish proper governance.  In other words, hurry up and get things back to how they’re supposed to be.

There really is a sizable third group that takes a portion from both groups.  If I would offer some conjecture, I’d guess that most in this group take more from the second group than the first, but that’s just a guess.  Most of these folks want to take a little bit of a nuanced stance and at least listen to both groups.  After all, the first group didn’t reach their positions in a vacuum, and neither did the second.  The beliefs of both groups requires at least an open ear.  As Christians we owe both sides at least that common courtesy.  

The Impasse

Unfortunately, We seem to be at a point where everyone is talking past one another.  After the death of Mr. Brooks in Minneapolis, both sides appeared to be equally appalled by what happened.  A person who had committed a crime didn’t need to die at the hands of Law Enforcement.   All rational people were of one mind.  However, that wasn’t good enough.  All of the stars were perfectly aligned for another race battle.  Were there racist motivations behind what happened between Mr. Floyd and Officer Chauvin - we may never know?   The pressing question still remains, where do we go from here?

One place we cannot go is into the exchange of one form of racist actions for another.  What do I mean?  First and foremost, we cannot perpetuate the fiction that the “system” is rigged, slanted, or tilted, so that one race or demographic group cannot rise to their fullest potential.  That is categorically a false assumption and must be dismissed whenever it rears its ugly head.  Economic and political systems such as Socialism and Communism are geared in that direction.  Anyone who has ever escaped the grips of those regimes will completely verify that assertion, not what we have in this country.  Yet, at every turn that’s all that we seem to hear - systemic racism, white privilege, white fragility.  For those who have ears to hear, that type of language seeks only to exchange one form of racism for another.  Where are echoes of Dr. King’s words to search for the content of one’s character and not the color of their skin?  Why are white members of society not given the benefit of the doubt, instead of being labeled as racist for the shear fact that they are white?  Can we not see the hypocrisy of such allegations?

Do I think that we have solved the racial problems of our times - absolutely not?  Do I think that there are continued reforms and improvements to our society to make it more just and equitable for all - without a doubt?  Do I think that exchanging one form of racism for another is going to solve the matter - by all means NO! 

How does the Christian respond?  In the same manner we’ve always been called to respond - to love the Lord our God with all our heart, and all our soul, and all our mind; and our neighbor as ourselves.  That’s the place where we have failed, and unfortunately, continue to fail.  Too many cannot or will not  see the handiwork of God  in their neighbor.  C. S. Lewis said, “next to the Blessed Sacrament, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.”  How many of us have taken the time to meditate upon those words, and see our neighbor in that manner?  More than likely too few people and far too infrequently.  Yet, that is how the Christian is to see the world.  That is the way that we can begin to understand the phrase, “behold, the Kingdom of God has come upon you.”  

We recognize that there is much left to be done and more work to be accomplished.  May God grant us the courage to meet these challenges, the grace to perform them in a Christlike manner, and the humility to share in that endeavor.  If we make that a daily petition, our Lord will grant what we ask, and we will begin to look like the people He has called us to be. 

Sermon for the Eleventh Sunday after Trinity
St. John’s Church – Moultrie, GA
September 4, 2011


I mentioned last Sunday that this morning's Epistle was again going to come from St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians and the topic at hand begins to speak of the Christian notion of death and dying. Well, this morning's section from I Cor. 15 doesn't actually go to the full depth that the rest of this chapter does in dealing with this life and the life to come but is the platform from which Paul is going to begin to speak about that most important and relevant topic.

A number of you mentioned on several occasions that you so much prefer the Anglican Burial Office to any of the other funerals that you've attended in your lives. Certainly the reverence and solemnity of the rite itself is beautiful and comforting in its language and does indeed set the stage for a service that is hopefully done decently and in order. Another reason that I believe that these services are so beautiful is the fact that we lean so heavily on Holy Scripture in the service and depend on the language of the great hymns of the church to express in words far better than we can say at that particular time. However, I think that the true reason behind those statements is the fact that more times than not the funeral has felt more like a roast of someone's life rather than in the worship of Almighty God and the final rite of the church for the deceased. It's more about the life of the deceased than about the life of the Saviour of the world into whose loving arms we are committing the soul of someone we loved in this life, with the blessed hope of everlasting life resounding in our ears that we will see that person again.

If we look at both of our lessons appointed for today, we see two prime examples of what displaced trust does in our lives. I am only going to touch on the Epistle, but I hope you will also see that same theme shine through in our Gospel lesson of the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican.

Paul begins this 15th chapter of I Cor. by making four declaratory statements about the Gospel. First, it is the Gospel which Paul preached to them. There is a great deal of trust being exhibited that he is asking them to extend, which he is going to clarify at the end of this passage. Second, it is the Gospel that they received. It is not something that they came up with on their own, it was not something that came from the "devices and desires of their own hearts." No, it is something that they received, and it is the same faith that we receive as well. Third, the Gospel is the means whereby they are now able to stand, and is the strong rock upon which they receive sure footing. The Gospel that they've heard proclaimed and that they now believe is their very foundation. Finally, and most importantly, it is the only place where they may receive salvation and whereby they are saved.

Paul then brings these four statements back to their starting point by adding a caveat that they must continue to return to his faithful preaching and teaching for instruction, correction, and growth in the faith. He is calling upon them to remember that the only source of strength for their life in this world is a faith in the One that will bring them into the perfect joy and fellowship with Him in this life and in the life to come. They cannot depend upon themselves for this but submit their lives wholly into the care, mercy, protection, and pity of Almighty God.

That's an awfully strange way to say that, to place ourselves in a position where we might receive pity. However, remember what we prayed in our collect this morning. God's most glorious example of his unfailing power is in His showing to us his mercy and his pity. It's not in His handiwork and in the things that He created, however marvelous those things are. It's not in the outpouring of gifts from the Holy Spirit, as necessary and important as they are. No, God's most remarkable example of his power is through showing mercy and pity.

The reason this is so is because it points most directly to the cross and what God's Son did upon the cross for us.

Paul offers a reason whereby he can exert his authority to the Corinthian church, and it speaks most clearly as to why his trust is not a disordered one. He tells his hearers that he's not preaching to them his own gospel but the one that he has first received. He's not placing his authority in something that is perishable, but in something that fadeth not away. He says to the Church that first and foremost he's sharing with them the Good News that was given to him-that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again according to the scriptures. Twice he mentions the scriptures, and then he goes on to bear witness to those who share in that same revelation, those who believe that Jesus died for their sins, was buried, and rose from the dead. We make that same declaration ever time we celebrate the Eucharist, and we do so twice in the liturgy-once in the Creed and once in the Eucharistic prayer.

Finally, Paul acknowledges his shear folly in exulting in himself and says that he is of course the least of all of the Apostles, born out of due time. He was a persecutor of the Church. He sat there and held the cloaks of those who stoned Stephen to death. He did everything in his power to stamp out this rebel movement that he saw as a threat to everything that the Jewish faith stood for, and the promises of a Messiah to which they all were looking. He realized that asserting anything else other than the message of Gospel as the source of his authority to preach as a minister of Jesus Christ was shear foolishness. Paul believed that he was unworthy to even bear the title of Apostle, and yet, through God's grace, mercy, and pity, he is able to do just that because by God's grace only he is who he is. It is only through Christ and him crucified can he boast. Anything else is of no worth. But by the grace of God, we are who we are.

Are we not the same? If we are truly honest with ourselves do we not make the same claims that we are not worthy to be the vehicles through which God's work is accomplished? No, we probably don't offer the same excuse as Paul in persecuting the Church, but we offer our shortcomings as excuses nonetheless. We say that we don't know our Bible well enough to lead a Bible study, or talk to that skeptic who has questions about the Christian faith. We often call to mind those times where we've sinned against God and neighbour and shrink back in fear. We lament our state and say that we can't possibly be the one God has called to bring His kingdom into this broken and hurting world.

Yet, we prayed at the beginning of this service that the supreme vehicle through which God's power is exalted is through showing mercy and pity. I need that assurance. Wretch that I am in light of God's law and commandments, I need someone to show me mercy and pity.

For all of those people who make the claim that Jesus was just like all of the other moral teachers who have come and gone, this doesn't hold water. Jesus was not simply bringing some new morality or new way of showing how to be good as opposed to being bad. No, Jesus came to show us that we are dead, but that through Him and through Him alone we might have new life. That new life is not just reserved for the life to come, but in this life as well. If that were not the case then there would have been no reason for Jesus to have taught us to pray that God's will be done on earth as it was in heaven.

Where do we place our trust? How could we possibly have the audacity to think that we could ever trust in our own righteousness? We can't. Why on earth would even bother to pray the Prayer of Humble Access if that were so? After all, when we pray that prayer in just a few minutes, take note of the fact that the word mercy appears 3 times in those 3 sentences.

The great Apostle St. Paul knew that there was only one place in which he could glory and that was in the cross of Jesus Christ. That's why our Anglican Burial Office speaks with such power and conviction is because it attempts to direct our attention away from the casket and onto the cross. The cross is the only way that one lying in that coffin, which we will all one day do as well, can ever have hope in this life, can ever have true faith, and can ever have life everlasting. To the same Lord who gives us that assurance, and whose power is exalted most in His ability to show mercy and pity, be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and praise both now and evermore.

Sermon for the Tenth Sunday after Trinity
St. John’s Church – Moultrie, GA
August 28, 2011


Last Sunday, today, and next Sunday we will hear Epistle lessons from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. Last week we heard from the tenth chapter and Paul’s words to the church to pay attention to two temptations that befall Christian disciples – laxity toward the law on the one hand, and on the other, a religious moralism that distorts our need for Christ in our lives and the necessity of grace to help us along our path toward sanctification. Next Sunday morning we will hear the beginning of the long fifteenth chapter which deals with the theme of death and resurrection and the latter portion of that lesson is one that I always select at the Burial of the Dead because of the manner in which we should properly orient ourselves and our thoughts regarding the Christian perspective on death and dying.

This morning’s Epistle from the twelfth chapter is a continuation of a theme of Christian stewardship that permeates our lessons, and looks at stewardship not from the perspective of our treasure, but more so from the perspective of our talents.

Paul begins this portion of his letter with a sharp transition, and he begins a new line of thought in his teaching about spiritual gifts. I must say that we don’t talk allot about spiritual gifts or the gifts and manifestations of the Holy Spirit. We don’t delve too deeply into the realm of theology known as pneumatology, which is the study of the Holy Spirit and his works. Why not? Why are we so shy about this most important branch of theology? Should we be weary of studying about it, talking about it, and somehow avoid praying more fervently regarding the things of the Spirit of God?

The answer to the final question must be a resounding NO. We should not be weary of studying about and talking about the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in our lives. After all, everyone here who has been confirmed had a bishop lay hands upon your head and ask for that very thing to happen – to pray for the Spirit to come and be among us, and permeate our total existence. The bishop prays, “Defend, O Lord, this thy Child with thy heavenly grace; that he may continue thine for ever; and daily increase in thy Holy Spirit more and more, until he come unto thy everlasting kingdom.” The bishop, through the power of his apostolic office, invoked the Holy Spirit of God upon each of us, and asked that we might increase in that Spirit each and every day of our lives.

I think that one of the main reasons that speaking of things in these terms is so frightening is that it is ultimately an acknowledgement that we are giving ourselves over to something that is mysterious, awesome, frightening in many ways, and last but probably most important, out of our control.

We want to be in control. We want to have a handle on things. As Burger King advertisements say, “We want it our way.” Unfortunately, with the things of God, we don’t get to have it our way. When our way does not accord with God’s way, we will never get it. Well, in actuality if we are so obstinate that we insist on doing it our way, God will allow us to have it our own way, but unfortunately, the consequences are met usually to our own peril. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve heard it said that the song that will be forever sung in Hell will be, “I did it my way.” C. S. Lewis of course wrote that at the end of time there will be two types of people left, those who have said to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God will say, “Thy will be done.”

Not only is Paul telling the Corinthian church that they should pray for the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, but that they should carefully regard the stewardship of those gifts for one reason alone – the glory of Almighty God.

There is a good reason that this lesson follows directly after the one that we heard last Sunday. If it was equally destructive to deviate in one way or another regarding the law, so too should we not deviate too far regarding spiritual gifts.

Our text says that the Spirit divides to every may severally as he will. What that means is that some will be given the gift of wisdom, some knowledge, some faith, some healing, some prophecy, some tongues, some the interpretation of tongues. The key words here are some and same.

Paul does not say that all will be given all of these gifts. I frankly don’t think that anyone could handle the responsibility of the stewardship of that many items. It’s hard enough simply to manage what we have.

It’s also critical to focus on the word same as well as some. All of these gifts come from the same Spirit. Just because someone has the charisma for a certain spiritual gift does not mean that he has reached some new plateau from which he can look down at others who do not possess that same gift.

There are some churches who state that if you have not been given the gift of speaking in tongues you have not been completely baptized by the Holy Spirit. Somehow your Christianity is deficient, and that you need to pray harder and seek more faith so that you might receive that gift.

To those folks I say, I’m sorry, you are doing the exact same thing the Judaizers did in saying that the only way you could be a proper Christian was to be circumcised and be a good Jew first.

This is why the entire heading of this passage falls under the broad category of stewardship. Our Lord has entrusted us to be the good stewards of the gift or gifts He has given. We are to cultivate them, pray that they might be strengthened, use them, and share them with others. We are not called to lord them over other people.

We are also called not to bemoan the fact that we don’t possess a gift that someone else does.

There are some in this parish who have the gift to offer their service to God in the preparation of the altar, others have the gift to offer their voice in the choir, others serve as a greeter or usher, others in their gift being with the children.

Our lesson stops early in the twelfth chapter of I Corinthians, but if you were to read further Paul goes on to talk about the interworking of the various gifts. What if all wanted to sing in the choir, but none wanted to serve on the altar guild? Brandt, don’t answer that question! What everyone felt called to teach Sunday School and no one wanted to attend. Actually, I don’t know what I would do if that happened!

I think you see what I mean. We cannot wish away the gifts that God has given us because they are not the same gift as others have. We can’t look down on others because we have been blessed in one area that is not visible in others.

Rather, we are called to use our gifts for the glory of God, for the building up of the Body, for the edification of the faithful, and for the growth of God’s kingdom. We must pray that God might enlarge and multiply the several gifts we have been entrusted to be the stewards of.

Yes, this is somewhat scary stuff because it requires us to be accountable for what we have been given, and use those wonderful manifestations of the Holy Spirit faithfully and wisely. Being agents of the Holy Spirit commands us to go forth in faith, allowing the Spirit to do His work, working in us that which is well pleasing in His sight. For it is the same Spirit, same Lord, same God which worketh all in all. To Him be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and praise both now and evermore.

Sermon for the Ninth Sunday After Trinity
St. John's Church - Moultrie, GA
August 21, 2011


There is a term that has been used to speak of Anglicanism for years that has in some way become corrupted, but has a use for us this morning in hearing the words from St. Paul to the church in Corinth. I believe I've mentioned this before, but it certainly helps ground our lesson if we know a little something about the church to whom Paul is addressing his concerns. If you really wanted to insult someone, and basically say that they were a sorry lot, un-redeemable, hedonistic, and in general residents of the the pleasure capitol of the world, you called them a Corinthian. Certainly there were plenty of other places in the Ancient Near East with their own vices, but the Corinthian community had a reputation for rampant paganism, debauchery, and sexual immorality surrounding the pagan cult practices of the area. It was a rough place to live a morally upright life because the pervading culture around you was such a hotbed of its antithesis. Unfortunately, we appear to be moving the compass in that direction ourselves as a society.

Going back to my original comment as I opened this sermon, the term I wish to speak on is the phrase via media. What was originally used to describe Anglicanism as somewhat of a middle way between the gross abuses of Roman Catholicism from the Middle Ages and a rejection of the overtly Protestant rejections of everything Catholic, the Church of England sought to find a middle way which was a reformed Catholic form of the Christian faith that was not a wholesale housecleaning that the Protestant and Puritan reformers were advocating. Today, the term has somewhat come to mean that under the umbrella of Anglicanism you will find high church Anglo-Catholics, broad churchmen, low church Evangelicals, including influences of the charismatic movements. Even though we have differing views regarding churchmanship and style of worship, we still proclaim our unwavering belief in the Lordship of Jesus Christ, our wholehearted devotion and worship of Him as our Saviour, and the mission and ministry of the church which he founded.

So, what does that term have to do with us and our lesson from I Corinthians? I'm glad you asked.

One of the things that Paul exhorted his hearers to pay attention to was the dangerous temptation that exists in trying to keep things in balance and keep things in their proper perspective. There is always the temptation to swing from one extreme or the other and swing from strict legalism on the one side to extreme laxity on the other. The danger of becoming just like the Pharisees one the one hand, and making statements like the French enlightenment philosopher Voltaire said on his deathbed, "God will forgive me, it's His business." Or as the Anglican poet W.H. Auden once wrote in his poem The Christmas Oratorio, "Every corner-boy will congratulate himself: 'I'm such a sinner that God has come down in person to save me.' Every crook will argue: 'I like committing crimes. God likes forgiving them. Really, the world is admirably arranged!" On the one extreme there is a moralism that says I can do it if I simply try a little harder, the other says that no matter what I do I'll never succeed so why bother trying. Our Christian life is lived in the via media, the middle way of these two extremes.

One Anglican priest I've begun following speaks of this middle road as follows:

There are a lot of struggles in the Christian life, but as I've walked with Jesus myself and as I've talked with fellow brothers and sisters over the years, one that keeps cropping up over and over is the balance between the extremes of legalisms and license. I think it's fair to say that at different times we've all fallen into the ditches on both sides of the road. Fr those of us who identify as "conservatives," we're probably more likely to be so often thinking of sin and recalling to mind all the Bible's do's and don'ts that we fall into the trap that we can earn God's favor by "keeping the rules." The biggest danger in that is if we don't manage to get back on the road-if we keep walking in the ditch of legalism-we inevitably become self-righteous as we compare ourselves to others and to our own lists. The cross falls out of our vision and the witness and ministry of the Church withers and dies. But we can run off the other side of the road too. Like the Corinthians we can remember that because Christ died for us, we are free from the condemnation of the law and in that knowledge we can start asserting our rights and our freedoms to the point that we forget what it means to walk in love and to live as new creations. Instead we simply insist our freedom and we end up just like the world around us-and again destroy our witness and ministry. But regardless of which ditch we find ourselves in, we strayed off the road and ended up there because we took our eyes off the cross.

When we start trying to earn God's favor it's because we've lost sight of the fact that Jesus, on the cross, has already earned God's favor for us. And when we fall into license because we know we don't have to earn it, we're forgetting the high cost of our freedom-we're forgetting that to pay the penalty for our sins, God himself had to come to earth and die in our place. When we fall into license we forget the price God paid for our freedom, when in fact, that high price should motivate us to serve him, to do what we know to be pleasing to him-ultimately to be supremely loyal to our redeemer-all out of gratitude. Legalism and license: they're both the result of losing sight of the cross.

We are called to live in that via media, that middle of the road between legalism and license. Both extremes are dead end roads that ultimately lead to naught.

Fr. Bill Klock concludes his commentary on this passage from I Corinthians when he says:

We can never earn our salvation or earn God's favour, and yet our love for him and our knowledge of how merciful and gracious he has been to us ought to motivate us to a radical obedience-not because it'll get us brownie points, but because we seek to be loyal and because we're grateful for what he has done. We come each week and are reminded at his Table that we are members of the body of Christ. How then can we leave his Table and go back to a life in which God is not our first and highest priority? We aren't making a sacrifice before a false god, but we still engage in idolatry. Sin, no matter what the specific form, is always at heart a rejection of God's plan for us and a substituting of our own. It's treason against our Creator and Redeemer. As Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount: you can't serve God and mammon-or for that matter demons, whatever form they might take in our modern world. Knowing the grace and mercy and love of God, how can we be against our Lord. His invitation to us to gather and eat around his Table and it partake of the benefits of grace and freedom never give us license for religious and moral licentiousness. No, instead, what it really does is bind us together-all of us-in a common fellowship in, with, through, and around Jesus Christ and his new covenant, in such a way that our behaviour - what we do and how we live-is radicalized toward what Paul calls "the law of Christ"-toward a radical obedience driven boy a profound love for God - a love that itself is rooted in gratitude for just how much he has done for us.

Our church is oriented in a particular fashion to direct all of our attention to one place - the altar and the cross. The cross is the place where the once for all sacrifice took place to atone for the sins of the whole world. Those repeatable sacrifices upon the altar of the Temple are replaced by a never to be repeated sacrifice of the Son of God. Everything that we do, the fundamental component of our worship finds its focal point upon the work of Christ upon the cross. License must be abandoned because of the price that was paid on our behalf. Legalism must be abandoned because all that we do must be borne out of love, not out of some favor we think that we have earned.

The via media is a difficult road to walk because it means that we too must bear our own cross along the via dolorosa or the way of suffering as our Lord did on His way to Calvary. The principal difference comes in knowing that we have the assurance that Jesus has walked that same road before us, and willingly will do so with us as we seek to follow and serve him all the days of our lives; and at the end, the way of suffering ultimately leads us to the way of life everlasting, the destination of those who love God and submit our wills wholly and completely into his never-failing care and protection.

Sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity
St. John’s Church – Moultrie, GA
August 14, 2011

One of the hardest things about reading Holy Scripture is the reality that our experiences, culture, upbringing all affect the way that we read and then interpret what the text is saying. Eisegesis is the process where we read something into a particular text based upon many of those factors I just mentioned. Basically, we’re reading into it what we want to hear, or worse, we have already decided what it really says before we begin. One the attributes about Holy Scripture is that it is the Living Word of God, and if it is living, one of our goals should be to have the Scripture interpret us and dissect us as hearers more often than the other way around.

This same thought crossed my mind when I read the collect appointed for today when our prayer opens with the line, “O God, whose never-failing providence ordereth all things both in heaven and earth.” What exactly is the word ordereth getting at?

It’s certainly very easy to fall prey to the temptation to think when things go very, very wrong in our lives to say to ourselves, “Ah Ha, if God so ordered everything here on Earth, then He’s to blame for this mess I’ve gotten myself into.” Or, perhaps from another angle, “Why did God allow this particular event to happen to me in my life?”

However, I think we need to take another look both at what the word ordereth means in this context, as well as, the collect as a whole.

First, in order to end up at the right place, we really need to start at the right place. The phrase itself is an acknowledgement about who God actually is. It is an appeal to the reality that all Order comes from one particular source, and that source is God. If we take time and carefully study Genesis 1 and 2, one of the overarching themes that comes across is the particular order by which God creates out of nothing.

One particular Study Bible I consulted has this subheading for Gen 1:1 – 2:3, “God’s creation and ordering of heaven and earth.” Sounds remarkably like our collect this morning.

The editors went on to say, “The book of Genesis opens with a majestic description of how God first created the heavens and earth and then how he ordered the earth so that it may become his dwelling place. Structured into seven sections, each marked by the use of set phrases, the entire episode conveys the picture of the all-powerful, transcendent God who sets everything in place with consummate skill in conformity to his grand design. The emphasis is mainly on how God orders or structures everything.”

Cambridge physicist and Anglican clergyman John Pulkinghorne said that one of the most important points to extract from Gen 1 can be summed up in the eight-fold repetition of the six words, “And God said, ‘let there be…’”

Before God spoke, that which we know about our world, our universe was chaos and disorder. After God spoke, order displaced disorder, and we continue to live in the Light of God’s handiwork.

Misinterpretation occurs when we neglect the whole of the story. In the beginning God ordered all things rightly, and then gave man one simple command – do not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Yet, the three-fold temptation took hold, and Eve saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desired to make one wise. She ate of the fruit as did Adam, and the course of human events was altered in an instant. The one thing that Adam and Eve never knew was that in their attempt to become wise and like God they were attempting to exchange their view of order for God’s. They simply saw the forbidden fruit as pleasing for food, beautiful to behold, and possessing something they thought they had to have. It did not work then, and it certainly doesn’t work now. Doesn’t that sound familiar in our own lives? We see something we simply can’t live without; something forbidden comes in an awfully enticing package; all I need is just this one item more.

It happens all too often, we exchange God’s order for our own, and usually it comes with undesirable results.

God calls each of us to live our life striving to conform to His Will – His Order.

From the very beginning, he gave us the example for the right ordering of the family. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.” These same words from Genesis are quoted by Jesus as recorded in both Matthew and Mark, as well as, by St. Paul in his epistle to the Ephesians. The right ordering of husband and wife is a direct commandment from God. Jesus also adds a clinching caveat, “Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.” When man and wife come together in the bond and covenant of Holy Matrimony, God binds the two into one, and they are no longer the same as they were before. The two have become one flesh. This is why the Church treats Holy Matrimony as a Sacrament, and thus so much more than just a service of the church. That is why the debate that continues to plague The Episcopal Church, and now the Presbyterian Church USA, and the United Methodist Church and others regarding human sexuality, and the debates going on across this country regarding gay marriage or civil unions is that we are exchanging human notions for what we think order is, and these notions stand in direct contradiction to Holy Scripture and God’s intention for order regarding the family and the right ordering of society as a whole. Our calling something right that God says is sinful and wrong doesn’t make it so – it makes it an even more egregious sin against the very One who ordered all things rightly from the beginning of creation.

One of the critical components of the right ordering of the family is that God is and absolutely must be the central focal point of that relationship. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks conveyed this in an article he wrote dated 7/25/09 entitled “We must guard love in this world of easy pleasures.” He opens with these words:

One day I was called on to officiate at two funerals. The families involved were old friends of ours, but they lived in different parts of London and did not know one another. In both cases, the wife had died after a long and happy marriage. One couple had just celebrated, and the other was just about to celebrate, their diamond wedding [anniversary].
What was striking was that both husbands said the same thing to me, in virtually identical words: “I loved her as much as the day we first fell in love.” To hear that once, after 60 years of marriage, would have been rare. To hear it twice on the same day seemed like more than mere coincidence.
Both couples were religious. Prayer and going to the synagogue, celebrating Sabbath and the festivals, and giving time and money to others, were integral to their lives. They knew that in Judaism the home is as sacred as a house of worship. Did these things, I wondered, have something to do with the strength and persistence of their love?
We tend to think that emotions, especially one as capricious as love, are simply what we feel. We don’t choose our likes and dislikes, our fears and joys. They catch us unawares. They can hold us helpless in their grip. The words “passion” and “passive” are related. So we conclude that we can’t help feeling what we feel.
Recent developments in psychotherapy suggest otherwise. Cognitive behavioural therapy is based on the premise that what we feel is influenced by what we think, and we can change the way we think. Positive psychology has had success in turning pessimists into optimists by reframing people’s perceptions. Martin Seligman, the pioneer in this field, calls pessimism “learnt helplessness”, and what can be learnt can be unlearnt.
So it is with love. Someone who believes that marriage is “just a piece of paper”, that sex comes without commitments, and that pleasure is the measure of all things, will have one range of emotions. One who believes that marriage is a sacred covenant, that love is inseparable from loyalty, and that what we love we make sacrifices for, will have another. Because they think different thoughts, they will feel different things.
…He concludes with these words that I believe connect what I’ve been alluding to this morning.
To see love as the force that moves the Universe, to love God and know that God loves us, to celebrate love in ritual and song and know that it means constancy and faithfulness, to understand that love gives and forgives, and to see in the birth of a child the love that brings new life into the world: these give love a better chance. And in a world of easy pleasures, short attention spans and fragile relationships, love needs a better chance.
That is what faith does. Sanctifying love, it protects it from the thousand temptations to which it is daily exposed. That day when I heard two old friends in the midst of grief speak of a love undiminished over time, I thought of Dylan Thomas’s famous words, “Though lovers be lost, love shall not; and death shall have no dominion”, and knew that loving God helps us to love one another.
Why do we hear each and every time we celebrate the Holy Eucharist either the Decalogue or the Summary of the Law? The only way that we can begin to comprehend the grace of God in Christ’s Body and Blood is through constant re-ordering of our lives and wills toward God. Lives lived centered on the Great Commandment will then begin to embody what the rest of our collect speaks about, and prays for.

If we go back to our collect for this morning, the only way we as individuals can ever discern what is harmful for us and what we need to put way is if we acknowledge our necessity to call upon the One who ordereth all things in heaven and on earth. Then and only then, will we begin to receive those things which are profitable for us.

God’s desire is to bless us more than we can ever imagine. Those blessings came with a price, and they still do. It means as St. Paul told the Ephesians that they and we must constantly put off our old self and be renewed in the spirit of our minds and put on the new self (Eph. 4:22-23). It means that we must take up our cross daily and follow Christ. It means exchanging our interpretation of order and exchanging it for God’s. If we are humble enough to do so, then our Lord allows us to receive those good things which are profitable for us, and will ultimately last for all eternity.

Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Trinity
St. John’s Church – Moultrie, GA
August 7, 2011


There must be a very good reason why three times a year we hear the story from the Gospels regarding Jesus' miraculous feedings. We hear John's account of the feeding of the five thousand twice, on the last Sunday of the church year and then again in the middle of Lent. Today we encounter Mark's telling of the feeding of the four thousand. I can't say that I have a definitive answer as to why this one theme is repeated three times, but it is clear to me that our forefathers wanted us to hear multiple times during the year that we are forever in need of heavenly food and partakers of a meal that has divine origins.

How are we to hear these feeding stories when we hear them three times a year? What thoughts are they meant to invoke when we hear them year-after-year?

I believe that the first point to remember when we contemplate these events is the order in which things happen. The people who were out in the wilderness didn't go out there expecting a miraculous feeding. They went out into the wilderness first to follow this incredible new teacher wherever he led them because they wanted to hear what he had to say. He was saying something to them that they needed to hear, wanted to hear, and had longed to hear. They followed first. That's our calling and mandate as well.

Our call to being an apostle of Jesus comes with the express command to first be a follower. Jesus' first actions upon his return from His temptation in the wilderness was the calling of the first apostles and his first words to them were follow me. We don't hear of them asking first what was in it for them. There were those would be disciples who asked if they could bury their dead first before following or those who needed to say their goodbyes before setting off to be a follower, but if you remember Jesus told those folks to let the dead bury their own dead, and if you need to cover all of your bases first you are perhaps not quite ready for what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

Those who were listening to Jesus' words that day were seemingly unconcerned with their physical needs. They were following with an almost reckless abandon to the notion that they were eventually going to need to eat and where was that food going to come from. Are we able to approach discipleship in those same terms? Are we willing to follow regardless of the cost and follow wherever we are led? Are we prepared to give of ourselves in terms of our time, our talents, and our treasure to the point that it beings to be uncomfortable? Those 4,000 some odd followers did just that and we are called upon to do the same.

What is it going to cost us to do so?

Well according to the story, if we are sent away with no nourishment for the journey ahead we will be famished and will become faint along the way. Following Jesus is not an easy thing. It requires a death to our way of doing things and an acceptance of God's way of doing things. The word for repentance means just that, a giving up of going in one direction, doing a complete 180, and going in another. As St. Paul declares in our epistle lesson, the direction that we are going in on our present trajectory is a dead end that ultimately leads to death - for the wages of sin is death. Repentance, metanoia, is a turning and rejection of that path and accepting God's free gift which leads to life - but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The crucial point for us to remember is that it will require all that have and all that we are to continue on this road. There is one piece that still remains and it is of course the crux of this feeding miracle which is the food itself.

Jesus had compassion in the crowds. I know I mentioned this in a previous sermon that the word for compassion here has the connotation of being moved at a depth and level that permeates to the pit of one's very soul. The word here denotes a profound stirring of the emotions, and that is the level to which Jesus is moved in recognizing the crowds need for nourishment for their being sent forth. Thus, Jesus being moved to compassion is preparing to give them sustenance for what lay ahead. That nourishment comes in a most remarkable form.

Order here is everything. What do I mean? In one sense the crowds were already being fed. They were feeding and feasting on the Words of Jesus which is of course the Bread of Life. Their first and foremost source of nourishment was Jesus' words which they had been hearing for the past three days. They followed first, and then before they were to be sent forth were they fed with physical bread for their life lived in the world.

We too are called to reenact that same order. Our first mandate is to follow. Follow with that complete abandonment in which we like St. Augustine find our rest and repose in God. When we do this we will of course be famished and faint along the way if we are not being fed by Jesus. That of course comes in two forms. First, we must daily feed upon His word - Holy Scripture. As we pray on the 2nd Sunday in Advent, we are to hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the words of the Bible. You notice that last clause to inwardly digest is the only way that true nourishment can take place.

Second, we must feed upon Jesus himself which we do each time we celebrate the Holy Eucharist. Before Jesus fed the crowds to performed a Eucharist - he gave thanks for that which he was about to bless and give. So too do we give thanks for what Jesus has already done and prepares to do again each time we gather around his holy altar to celebrate the mystery of His Most Precious Body and Blood. We give thanks through the hymns we sing, the confession of our sins, through the alms we give for the mission of the church, and for the bread and wine that will become for us heavenly food and drink.

There are two additional points that we are to glean from this story.

We must recognize that when our Lord feeds us we are fed with an abundance that we simply cannot fathom or comprehend. In both of the feeding miracles recorded in Scripture, we read that the crowds were completely satisfied, and there was an abundance of fragments left over. In the Eucharistic sacrifice, we believe that through the power of the Holy Spirit simple elements of bread and wine become for us the very Body and Blood of Jesus fully and completely. There is nothing left out. The ordinary becomes something extraordinary. We receive Jesus into us through the abundance of his never failing grace and mercy.

Finally, the crumbs that were left over were not carelessly discarded but were commanded to be gathered together. Why? Why is this detail carefully preserved in each of the feeding miracles? The fragments left over are to be used to repeat the process by us as we are sent forth as Jesus' disciples and apostles. We are to take the nourishment that we receive as his followers and then go and nourish others. We are to take Jesus and make him known to a broken, hurting, and famished world. We have the one and only source of food that will truly satisfy the hunger of those who are fainting along the way. We have received the Bread of Heaven and the source of life and it has been given to us in order that we might then share it with others.

We are both disciples of Jesus, ones who follow and we are his apostles, ones who have been sent to feed and nourish others. But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. The renewal of our strength comes through our following of the Lord Jesus, through the feeding of our souls from His Holy Word and His Body, and our mission is taking those precious fragments and feeding the fatigued and fainting world through the power of God's Holy and life-giving Spirit.

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Trinity
St. John’s Church – Moultrie, GA
July 31, 2011


“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.”



If you noticed the citation at the beginning of this morning’s Gospel lesson you will see that it comes from the fifth chapter of St. Matthew, and thus, a portion of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. How appropriate to have a portion from the Sermon on the Mount as our adult forum over the past few weeks has been taking a look at the beatitudes and sermon in a bit more depth.

I don’t know about you, but this passage makes me rather uncomfortable. I want to shrink back from a passage such as one like this and simply wallow in my impassable situation of not being able to attain to the standards by which I am called. After all, we didn’t have to look very far in the beatitudes to discover those places where we don’t quite measure up or where we fall woefully short. And what are we to make of the verse that we opened with that declares that unless our righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees we will not enter into the kingdom of heaven. I might as well sit down, and we might as well pack up and go home because no one is going to be able to exceed that type or righteousness. Or can we? What is it that Jesus is trying to say here and get us to understand?

As we all recall, the scribes and Pharisees were not exactly high up on our Lord’s list of people to praise and exalt. Like his cousin before him, Jesus had some very scathing words for these keepers of the law to the nth degree. They called them broods of vipers, Jesus told his disciples to beware of the yeast and leaven of the Pharisees, they were referred to as whitewashed tombs full of dead men’s bones. What is going on here? Are we called to exceed that type of righteousness? That doesn’t exactly sound like the kind of thing we are called to emulate.

Two of the most faithful expositors of Scripture within Anglicanism are the late nineteenth century Bishop of Liverpool J. C. Ryle, and the late Dr. John R. W. Stott, rector emeritus of All Souls Langham Palace who died earlier this week. Their writings are so helpful in unpacking some of the more troubling portions of the Gospels and I resort to their works regularly. Their understanding of these verses and this passage in particular I think will help to shed light on what we have just heard.

One of the points that these two Anglican Divines highlight is that Jesus is here praising the scribes and the Pharisees in the sense that they do in fact recognize and hold on to the teachings of the Law, and their full acceptance of the fact that God’s authority is writ large in the words of the Law. They understand that a piece of their very identity as Jews and the People of Israel is that they are the benefactors and recipients of the Torah, the Law. In other words, a portion of their being considered righteous was in their faithful keeping of the Law. This was seen as something good, and Jesus is in fact saying that the Pharisees were accorded some measure of righteousness because they were faithful to the Torah.

However, the twist comes when we examine what it really means for us to exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees.

God is not doing away with the law. God is not telling us that because he sent Jesus into the world all bets are off, and the law doesn’t apply to us any longer. That doesn’t hold water with what our Lord said in the passage I quoted at the beginning of the sermon. Jesus didn’t come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. Nothing from the law will pass away until all has been fulfilled, which happens through Jesus’ atonement and death upon the cross. Those who teach that the Old Testament is no longer applicable to the Christian life do not teach the Christian faith. I realize that is a rather harsh statement, but it is the truth. Anyone who says that they belong to a New Testament only Church are not a part of the church catholic.

The fundamental difference comes in the why. Why do we obey and follow the Ten Commandments? Why do we still read the Old Testament as a part of sacred scripture, for our learning and instruction? We don’t do it, or at least we shouldn’t do it, just as a matter of checking off things on a to-do list. The major flaw with the Pharisees and lawyers and religious authorities was that they were keeping the law with their head and Jesus is calling for a keeping of the law with our heart. This is the only way that our righteousness can exceed that of the Pharisees. Only when we heed the words of the prophet Jeremiah, “But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.” Or from Ezekiel, “And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.” Or as the Psalmist declares, “BLESSED is the man that hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, * and hath not sat in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the LORD; * and in his law will he exercise himself day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the water-side, * that will bring forth his fruit in due season….But the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous; * and the way of the ungodly shall perish.”
The Christian life is the life lived in full recognition that the very God who gives us life gave us His law, and then sent Himself in the form of His Son Jesus Christ to be the complete fulfillment of that law. He gave us the law not to simply show us who we are, but to show us who He is. The law is an expression of his love. In a way that sounds quite oxymoronic. How can the law be an expression of God’s love?

It is an expression of God’s love in exactly the same way that we do the same things for our children. We give our children laws and rules not to exercise some arbitrary, authoritarian rule over them, but to give them complete freedom to enjoy the wonderful things of this life within an established set of boundaries. What happens when those rules are broken or the boundaries are pushed? Well, in the best case scenario there is simply discipline to help them understand why the rules are there and why they should be followed. In a worst case scenario, someone is hurt, or maimed, or killed.

Love is the underlying principle behind the law. Because God loves us he gave us his Law and then gave us Himself who is the perfect fulfillment of that Law so that we then might be able to see what true perfection looks like. We are then free to gaze upon that perfect fulfillment which is Jesus Christ and look to him as the “author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

How are we to exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees? By living out the words of our liturgy in which we come to God in faith and offer and present unto Him our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice. That means meditating upon his Law and seeing it for what it is. It means giving our selves wholly into his never failing care and service. It means the life-long journey toward wholeness and health that comes only through faith in Jesus Christ. It means rendering unto God true and laudable service in the worship of Him and in the outworking of that worship which is service toward our fellow Man.

“Blessed are those that are undefiled in the way, and walk in the law of the Lord….And my delight shall be in thy commandments, which I have loved. My hands also will I lift up unto thy commandments, which I have loved; and my study shall be in thy statutes.”

O GOD, who hast prepared for them that love thee such good things as pass man's understanding: Pour into our hearts such love toward thee, that we, loving thee above all things, may obtain thy promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Trinity
St. John’s Church – Moultrie, GA
July 17, 2011


We’ve all had down times. I don’t believe that anyone here can say that life has been nothing but peaches and cream. Now, if I’ve mischaracterized someone, please be sure to meet me after church. We go through ups and downs in life; there are good days and there are bad days; there are blessings and there are curses; we have intense spiritual highs and at times deep spiritual lows. These are the cold, hard facts. Life doesn’t always serve up exactly what we need, exactly when we need it or desire it.

Now that I’ve begun on such an upbeat, positive manner, I want us to take a closer look at the Psalm that we’ve just recited a few moments ago and see what the Psalmist wishes for us to hear. If you remember back a few weeks ago, I said that throughout Trinitytide we would be reciting the 119th Psalm in its entirety over the twenty-two weeks of this season. We read the fourth octet this morning and we began with a most stark assertion, “My soul cleaveth to the dust.”

I have sat with that phrase all week long.

“My soul cleaveth to the dust.”

The overarching message of this sermon deals with those six words. There is a tremendous depth in the brevity of that phrase and I pray that we might understand the significance of what is being conveyed to us this morning.

To begin with, this verse makes a stark shift from the preceding verse. Last Sunday when we ended on verse twenty-four, we ended on a high note when we declared, “For thy testimonies are my delight, and my counselor.” The Psalmist declares that because he is a keeper of God’s law, he has become, as it were, a “stranger upon earth,” and that, “Princes also did sit and speak against me.”

We are going to find that out as we grow deeper and deeper into the full stature of Christ that things are going to be different and appear so more often. We might as well get used to the fact that one of three things is most likely going to happen: we will be ignored by those who are apathetic to what we say or do; we will be mocked and perhaps persecuted by those who hate what we have to say and are doing; or we will bring along with us those whose hearts, and minds, and souls are touched by what we have to say and what they’ve seen us doing. As I see it, those are the only three choices.

In returning to our Psalm it seems clear that he is not going to concern himself with the effects of the first two groups – the apathetic who make him feel like a stranger or the Princes who speak against him, but rather, that he is going to occupy himself with God’s statutes and delight in God’s testimonies for they are his counselors.

So far, so good; life beings to kick in, temptations fall his way – our way, a false sense of longing and security from the things of this world creep into his thoughts and we begin to hear an honest plea of the Psalmist’s spiritual condition, “My soul cleaveth to the dust.”

What are we to make of that phrase? I would hope that we might understand it as a cry of the heart as an acknowledgement of our true nature. When we pray in the General Confession of Morning or Evening Prayer that, “there is no health in us,” we are in essence repeating the first half of the 25th verse of the 119th Psalm.

Since we were formed from the dust of the earth, and since we are reminded each year on Ash Wednesday, “Remember, O Man, that thou art dust, and unto dust shalt thou return,” that a part of our very essence is wrongly trying to get back to our point of origin – the trying to return to our false home. The problem is this earth is not our true and ultimate home. We aren’t destined to live here for eternity, but rather in the fully realized presence of Almighty God.

It’s important to make not here the incredible parallels to the creation narrative as found in Genesis chapter two. We recall the familiar passage where Scripture says, “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” At the end of that chapter God institutes the sacrament of Holy Matrimony when He says, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh.” The three central words in our Psalm are found right here in Genesis 2 – soul, cleave, and dust. The issue at hand for us is the fact that the words from Genesis 2 speak of a rightly oriented use of those words, and the passage from Psalm 119 speaks of a soul incorrectly oriented.

What we have in these first six words of this portion of the Psalm is the admission of a low point in the Psalmist’s life. It seems to indicate that he is honest enough to admit that even though his heart’s longing is for the Law he is facing an uphill battle with his soul’s corrupted bend toward its improper origin – it is cleaving to the wrong thing.

Let us remember that our souls rightful slant should be toward its true source – God Himself. However, when Man headed the words of the serpent our longing shifted away from God and toward that from which we came prior to God’s Spirit being breathed into us. Adam and Eve sought protection and cover from the garden to hide their nakedness rather than protection and cover from their Maker. They tried to seek solace in the creation rather than from the Creator.

When Adam and Eve fell Mankind received a curse for its disobedience but so did the serpent. “Thou art cursed above all cattle…upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.”

This earth and the dust of its surface will one day pass away, and ever since the Fall the serpent, Satan, has been feeding upon the dust of the earth. The dilemma that the Psalmist declares and that we too must admit is that in our times of being downtrodden and weak there is the ever present temptation to cleave to the one thing that is merely an illusion of stability, comfort, and peace – the dust and the things of the earth. Thankfully the Psalmist does not remain in this position forever for we hear him declare that the only true source of life is not in the cleaving to the dust from which we were formed but in the cleaving to the Spirit that was breathed into us at creation and is expressed in God’s Logos – his Word. Certainly here we are referring to God’s Word written, but implicit in that statement is God’s Word who became incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ.

The question for us is whether or not our soul will cleave to the dust or will it cleave to the one who created the dust and gives us his Word. Will we be like Judas whose soul never ceased cleaving to the dust of the earth and ended in despair and death? Or will we be like St. Peter whose soul was cleaving to the dust of the earth as he declared with fervent conviction that he never knew Jesus, and upon hearing the cock crow went out weeping, feel upon his face, and cried out for mercy?

Many times throughout our lives, probably before this day is over, we will with complete certainty come to the realization that our soul is cleaving to the dust of the earth. When that happens and we come to that realization may we ever pray with the Psalmist for the Lord to give us life that comes only through the hearing, heeding and obeying His holy Word.

Sermon for the Third Sunday after Trinity
St. John’s Church – Moultrie, GA
July 10, 2011


I really need to be sitting in the congregation today listening to someone else give this sermon. I need to hear these words because they address one of the hardest struggles in my own life as one who is striving to live the Christian life and attempting to take small steps toward holiness. Now before you begin to squirm in the pew and think that I’m about to turn the pulpit into my own confessional you can breathe easy because that is something that I will never do. The pulpit is never the place for the preacher to work out his own issues and bear his own burdens. No, I’m simply placing myself in the position of the patient; I, like you, am coming to hear the words of the Great Physician who administers his healing balm for our souls at all times if we are willing to submit ourselves to His never failing care and protection.

That being said, I am going to make one self-disclosure that I believe will help ground what I am about to say regarding that insidious sin of pride that draws us further and further from God’s presence because of its very nature. I think some of you have perhaps heard this before in other settings, and it pertains to my days as a high schooler. Most of you probably remember those awards that each class hands out where they select a boy and girl as most likeable, or best dressed, or biggest flirt, or most outgoing. I was the proud recipient of the award for being the most right. This was not an assessment of my political leanings, but was actually a most truthful statement of fact. I hated to be wrong. I never wanted to lose an argument or have my position questioned. I was the Andrew Wilkow of my school – I was right, they were wrong, that’s the end of the discussion.

Unfortunately, the more things change, the more they stay exactly the same.

We heard in our Epistle lesson from First St Peter about the attitude of Christ’s disciples and how they are to humble themselves toward one another. Our lesson began mid-chapter, and the first few verses that precede what we just heard speak about the relationship between the elders and the younger members of the community. Peter declares, “The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed: Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; Neither as being lords over God’s heritage, but being ensamples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away. Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder.”

There will always be the temptation to lord over others with our knowledge or our position of influence or our status in life. It’s very easy to think that because of who we are there will always be others who will need us or what we have to offer them and thus, gives us the license to be proud or prideful.

I’m sure you can call to mind examples of people who have exhibited this type of attitude in which you were made to feel like you had absolutely nothing to offer and as long as you knew your place as the dutiful student or subordinate or co-worker everything was fine.

How did things work out in the long run? What was the long term relationship with that supervisor or teacher? It was probably tenuous at best, fraught with animosity at worst. Why?

Pride is perhaps the worst of sins because it is a direct affront to that most noble theological virtue of charity. One who strives to foster a spirit of charity seeks the love of the other over one’s self. Charity always seeks to displace pride.

St. Paul in the First Epistle to the Corinthians in the thirteenth chapter, which we hear read on the Sunday before Lent begins, tells us that if we speak of earthly things well or of heavenly things well that if we do not have charity we are nothing. If we can prophesy, or understand incredible mysteries, or have remarkable knowledge of things temporal or spiritual, but don’t posses love, then we are nothing. Suppose we have the strongest faith so that we could remove mountains or give away all our goods to feed the poor, or even suffer death on behalf of this faith, but do not exercise charity, it does us no good. “Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth.”

All of these attributes of charity, of love, are the counter virtues of the vice of pride. If you leave today and re-read I Corinthians 13, I believe you will see that St. Paul dedicates an entire chapter to a letter to a church in the most wayward of places, Corinth, to keep their pride in check. He is admonishing them to remember that the only way that they were going to stand out amongst the crowd in the See city of hedonism, materialism, humanism, pluralism, pantheism, and any other ism you’d like to add, was not through some type of new moralism, but by loving God with all of their heart, and loving their fellow Corinthians as counter-cultural as that was. Charity not pride is to be the benchmark of a Christian disciple.

So how do we get to the place where charity reigns, and pride is arrested?

We must begin in the one place that all who have sought this same task have begun – in prayer. We must ask God to help us. “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.” Our collect for this morning exhorts us to the same task, “O LORD, we beseech thee mercifully to hear us; and grant that we, to whom thou hast given an hearty desire to pray, may, by thy mighty aid, be defended and comforted in all dangers and adversities.” What greater adversity and danger is there than to fall prey to the sin of pride? There truly is no greater danger because pride is the sin that led to the fall of Lucifer, the prince of darkness. It is the sin that displaces God from His rightful place as the Lord of life and light.

We are to come seeking solace and comfort and grace from God’s Holy Word and the most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. We must have our lives shaped and formed by these two great gifts that we have received from our Lord. We receive the Word of God through our study, devotion and worship, and through His precious Body and Blood. When we deprive ourselves of these great benefits we do so to the peril of our very soul.

Finally, we must share what we have received with others in a spirit of joyful thanksgiving. As is often said at the offertory, “let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” The world must see us as the new creatures that we are as the children of our heavenly Father.

Praying for the gift of charity is one thing. Study of God’s Word and the reception of the Sacraments is yet another thing. Taking this Good News out into the world is yet another and a mark of a true disciple. We can’t keep this to ourselves, but rather, we are commanded to take this message into the whole world.

“And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, [even] unto the end of the world.”

We have work to do. It is hard work, tedious work, challenging work, but it is work that has supreme benefits not just for today or tomorrow, but for all eternity. May Almighty God empower us for the task that lies ahead as His disciples. To Him be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and power both this day and evermore.