Sermon on February 28, 2010
Sermon for the Episcopal Church of St John the Baptist, Capitola,
given by Rev. Steve Ellis
The Episcopal Church of Saint John the Baptist welcomes all to worship God and to share Christ's love in the world. We are a parish family committed to provide liturgy, Bible study, music, counseling, and Christian education for children, youth, and adults, and to equip all our members for life and for service to others.
O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy: Be gracious to all who have gone astray from your ways, and bring them again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast the unchangeable truth of your Word, Jesus Christ your Son; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Old Testament Lesson
The word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, "Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great." But Abram said, "O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?" And Abram said, "You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir." But the word of the LORD came to him, "This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir." He brought him outside and said, "Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your descendants be." And he believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness.
Then he said to him, "I am the LORD who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess." But he said, "O Lord GOD, how am I to know that I shall possess it?" He said to him, "Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon." He brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him.
When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates."
Genesis 15:1-12,17-18
Psalm
5 One thing have I asked of the LORD; one thing I seek; *
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days
of my life;
6 To behold the fair beauty of the LORD *
and to seek him in his temple.
7 For in the day of trouble he shall keep me safe
in his shelter; *
he shall hide me in the secrecy of his dwelling
and set me high upon a rock.
8 Even now he lifts up my head *
above my enemies round about me.
9 Therefore I will offer in his dwelling an oblation
with sounds of great gladness; *
I will sing and make music to the LORD.
10 Hearken to my voice, O LORD, when I call; *
have mercy on me and answer me.
11 You speak in my heart and say, "Seek my face." *
Your face, LORD, will I seek.
12 Hide not your face from me, *
nor turn away your servant in displeasure.
13 You have been my helper;
cast me not away; *
do not forsake me, O God of my salvation.
14 Though my father and my mother forsake me, *
the LORD will sustain me.
Psalm 27:5-14 Page 617, BCP
New Testament Lesson
Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us. For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself. Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.
Philippians 3:17-4:1
Gospel
Some Pharisees came and said to Jesus, "Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you." He said to them, "Go and tell that fox for me, 'Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.' Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, 'Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.'"
Luke 13:31-35
Sermon: The Only Hope, or Else Despair Lies in the Choice of Pyre or Pyre
Philippians says:
The Lord Jesus Christ . . . will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory.
Earthquakes. Health care debate. Slow recovery of the economy. Gridlock. When the world is full of such, it might seem almost irrelevant to stop and talk about glory? Yet I think we can do today is just that. I had better talk about glory, and even rival theories of glory. It may be a key to understanding how we want to go about being in God’s world. It may be a key to getting un-stuck.
Let’s start with the big picture. The Christian claim is, the universe is governed by a good God, a Creator, the Trinity, who cares about good and evil, who cares about every living creature, who cares how we treat one another, who created us to join in the love that is already the divine life, between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Let’s move our focus to a smaller frame, human history, one planet in a vast universe, one tiny sliver of time in a universe that is larger than time. In this human story the Trinity was distressed that our love-bond with Itself was damaged, that we who were made to be subject to freedom and glory in the Divine life had become subject to evil, to estrangement from God. And so God came to share our humanity. God is not high and mighty, but loving, and wanted us restored to the glory for which we were created.
God’s glory is the love that is already present in the Trinity, a fierce, sublime respect and delight that is so full and generous that it wants to share itself, and creates us – all creatures – to be, each in their own way – part of that divine economy of delight.
The nature of God’s glory is that the deepest nature of reality – reality, the only reality, the universe – is this love. We are invited to participate. Christ was born to restore us to that standing and participation. Yet he found entrenched opposition. People who hadn’t experienced the divine glory, the majesty and beauty of the divine love, fought it. This is natural because people fight change, and we fight the loss of any advantage that we think we might have over others.
The nature of the divine love is that it seeks to good of all. The nature of the human tendency to fight is that we can’t see past our own advantage, and we don’t want to let anyone get ahead of us, catch up to us, we don’t want to lose the opportunity to be better than someone morally, wealthier than someone, superior to some group or race, smarter than some group we oppose. And as long as we find our identity there, in opposition, we are opposed to the gospel of Christ.
Our identity must be found in the love of Christ, the love that has forgiven us and given us a new place to stand. Then we can love others without worrying about who is first. There is enough to go around. We see that God loves others as well as ourselves, and when our identity is a baptismal identity, we can love that way, too. And the glory of God infuses our lives, a little at a time, with abundance.
The opposition to Jesus mounts in the stories of Lent. Herod wants to kill him is this week’s story, and the leaders of Jerusalem want to fight Rome in Rome’s kind of fighting. Jesus is desolate because God wants Jerusalem, of all places, to quit thinking in “us against them” terms. And so he tells them, through his tears, that they’ve chosen their futile path, and sealed their futile fate, and that the glory of God won’t be theirs until some generation when people receive him as the revelation that God’s glory is in a love for all, a love that is full of forbearance, a steadfast love, a love that is not unwilling to suffer for the beloved, because glory wasn’t in the things that were sacrificed. Glory was in the love that let them go for love’s sake.
How often are we in struggles? How often do we feel that being right is at stake? How often are we afraid of losing face? How often is our stubbornness about wanting to prove ourselves smarter than others, or more powerful? How often to we get wounded at a word or a slight, and feel our integrity is questioned or that we’ve lost someone’s good opinion of us, and become combative? Or withdraw from conversation? How different all this is when the glory of God is the experience in which we stand.
In that reality we are fully blessed, and we can afford to love the other, whether the issue is a domestic spat or making public policy. When the glory of God is apparent to us, we aren’t struggling for every advantage we can get, legitimate or no. We are able to think of the common good, of what will be best for us and the other. That freedom, that love, that ability to grasp my own rights and advantages lightly, and to use them, spend them for the highest good, is the glory of God.
Now this isn’t “being nice.” This is a fierce discipline in the face of difficulty. It is a kind of noble living. It doesn’t always prevail, but it always makes us all stronger. We see it in great people in difficult times, in Lincoln, in Ghandi, in Mandella and Tutu, all of whom made difficult choices for many years without malice even for their enemies, doggedly seeking the common good.
This is why Paul has to say that some are living as enemies of the Gospel of Christ. They don’t have this outlook, they aren’t grounded in prayer and gospel, they live only for their own advantage, they are ruled by their desires, stuck in this death-spiral of self-self-self, poisoning the world in which they work and the homes in which they live. Paul says there is freedom. God will transform our “death-selves” in “selves of God’s glory”. The quote is “will change our bodies of humiliation into the body of his glory”, but the Greek here translated “body” doesn’t mean physical body, it means the whole person or “self”, so we could read it “he will transform our “self-entrapped selves” into “selves of His glory.”
Self-glory is futile. God’s glory is a fierce and wondrous love, but to choose it the “It-is-all-about-me” self has to let go. So we have to decide – do we want God’s kind of glory?