Christian Unity

The Rev. Dr. John Crossin, OSFS, president of Washington Theological Consortium and noted author, was the guest speaker in chapel at Wesley this morning. It was a special chapel service to mark prayers for Christian Unity. His message centered around the motto of the WTC, Pray without ceasing. "I've been working on that for a number of years," he said. It's comforting to know that a man whose whole job is to bring together the many denominational seminaries in the greater DC area struggles with prayer. "We need to ask the Spirit to help us pray," he continued. "We aren't consistent in that. We become so consumed with our own work that we loose sight that we are doing this for the Glory of God." He said that too often he will operate under the "90% for God, 10% for Crossin" principle. "I'm trying to hold on to that little bit for me." And aren't we all. Philippians 2 talks about Jesus as a humble servant. The virtue of humility is essential to conversations around Christian Unity and to our lives as followers of Jesus Christ. Jesus emptied himself & worked for others, and we must also. We live in a world with far too many people out to serve their own interests. I don't know too many folks, myself included, who can put aside their own stuff to work for others. My grandmother, maybe... We don't just have a problem with Christian unity, we have a problem with unity & humility is all of American life. We can't look past our own stuff to see the bigger picture. I think about Jesus' high priestly prayer for his disciples the night before he was betrayed. He prayed that they may be one as he & God are one. It is difficult to be united with people with whom we might disagree, but what unites us as Christians is far greater than what divides us.

Sermon: Third Sunday of Epiphany

Third Sunday of Epiphany, Year A

St. David’s Episcopal Church

May God be in our hearts and in our minds, and may God’s words flow through each of our lips at all times. AMEN

This is the Bible I purchased just before I started seminary. It’s the Access Bible, and it’s all marked up with notes, insights, and thoughts. Important things about God’s people that I don’t want to forget. I show you my Bible because I really like our Scriptures. I guess that is a good thing for a seminarian to say, but I’ve always loved what’s in the Bible. Maybe it is the mystery of it all, wondering what it was really like at the time these things were written. Maybe it’s the majesty that this is not only the Word of God, but also the story of God’s people dating back to the very beginning. OK, so maybe it’s both. There is just something about the Bible that I really love.

The Bible wasn’t written to be a novel or an historical account. We aren’t privy to very much of the emotion or back ground of those who are writing or those who are written about. The Bible doesn’t tell us any information we don’t need to know. For example, we know Jesus got angry and turned over the tables and cause quite a scene in the Temple, but we don’t know what happened leading up to his entry into the Temple. My friend and mentor Jack Sharpe used to ask if Jesus just woken up on the wrong side of the palate that morning. And look at the story of Jonah in the Old Testament. We know that Jonah didn’t want to go to Nineveh, but the Bible doesn’t tell us why Jonah didn’t like that city. All we know is that God said go this way, and Noah went that way. Did he have an ex-girlfriend in Nineveh? Not a fan of their football team? The Bible doesn’t give us any insight in that direction because it is not a novel or a history book. It is the story of the people of God.

Scriptures, especially the narrative parts, are intended to be read as an account of the God’ people. I was reminded of this on Friday night during the festival Eucharist at Diocesan Convention, when out-going Convention secretary Wesley Baldwin read the passage from the Book of Acts about the apostle Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus. (Friday was the day we commemorate that occasion, by the way.) But the fervor and gusto with which Wes read that account… I began to think that it was Wes’s own story of conversion. I had to snap back to reality to remember that he was reading from the Book of Acts.

But that got me thinking of this story in today’s Gospel about Jesus calling Simon Peter, his brother Andrew, and the Zebedee boys (John & James) to be Jesus’ first disciples. Here are these guys just minding their own business, mending their nets after a night of fishing, some of them still trying to catch fish, and this Jesus guy says, “Come follow me.”

And they did.

Now, Jesus wasn’t a stranger to these guys. The first part of our Gospel passage today says that Jesus had made his home in Capernaum, right on the Sea of Galilee. It wasn’t that big of a town, and Jesus was making a name for himself as an itinerant preacher, so in all likelihood, they’d met before this day. But now Jesus has invited them to leave behind their fishing nets and he’s going to teach them to “fish” for something else. I’ve often wondered if the fishing that bad or the call of Jesus that persuasive?

I talked last week in Children’s Chapel about listening for the call of God. We talked about all the people in the Bible who’d been called by God to do various things. Noah—just sitting in his carpentry shop when he got called to build a floating zoo because God was going to flood out the earth. And look at David—before he was a king (and up in our stained glass), he was the lesser of the brothers in his family and was sent to tend the sheep, and look at all God led him to. The Bible, I told the young ‘ens, is full of people who did great things for God who weren’t necessarily making headlines before then. And God calls each of us to do the things big and small to advance the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Some people may be called to do spiritual things equivalent to building a sky-scraper. Others may be called to do what seem like “odd jobs” around the house. Nonetheless, each call is important. And I have no doubt, I said to them, that God will call each and every one of you to something really important.

The beauty of Children’s Chapel is that they aren’t afraid to raise their hands and ask questions in the middle of your talk. I say that it’s a beauty, but it can also be kinda scary. So sure enough, a hand went up while I was talking, and I did something I don’t normally do. Instead of honoring the voice of that young person and letting them ask their question, I said, “Wait! Let me guess why your hand is up. You’re going to ask, ‘But how do I know when God is calling me?’ right?” This young person nodded and said, “Exactly, how did you know?” And I said, “Ain’t my first rodeo, kid, or my first talk like this.”

For each Child of God who has ears to hear and a heart to listen, God can use a different way to send a message. It may be the still, small voice that Elijah heard or a thunderous visit like Gabriel’s announcement to Mary. It might be the blinding light that Paul saw on the road to Damascus, or it might be the tugging of your heart to work for peace and prosperity. One of my favorite quotes is from Henry Nouwen: Your vocation (or call) is where your heart’s deepest desire meets the world’s greatest needs.

But what I said to those little darlins’ last week is what I will say to you this week:

God. Will. Call. You.

God may not call you to wear a collar or celebrate the sacraments. God may not be calling you to work in the slums of Calcutta or to start a non-profit for inner-city kids in DC. But God is calling you to something. Maybe it is something God is calling you to do this week, or this month, or this year. Maybe it is for the rest of your life.

Being called by God is scary. God will often, mercifully, call us to uncomfortable places, to make tough choices. Many times, answering God’s call means dealing gently with other people’s spiritual, mental and physical well-being.

What did Jesus call Andrew, Simon, James & John to do? His first call was simple: “Follow me.” Hearing & following that first call can be difficult. I wish I could say that, like jogging or knitting, it gets easier with time and practice, but the truth of the matter is that it doesn’t. Following Christ’s call can be difficult no matter where we are in our lives or in our walk with Him. But Christ promises never to leave us when we choose to follow Him. God has made the first step in calling each of us to do something, something very special.

It is up to us to listen, to respond, and to be like Samuel who said, “Here am I, Lord.”

AMEN

Sermon: St. David's, DC

St. David’s, Washington
Proper 28, Year C

You know… there’s a lot of pressure when it’s your first sermon as the seminarian. You want to show that you know a little something so you don’t come across as naïve. You also have to be careful against trying to pack a little bit of everything from the past year or so of seminary into one sermon. But you also don’t want neglect that you are indeed a student and very conscious of your continued active learning. Which is good news… because a conversation from my church history class this week led to some inspiration for today’s sermon.

I found myself this week defending, of all things, the use of icons in worship and prayer. An icon, images of Jesus or a saint, is a great tool of prayer IF that’s what helpful to you. I know plenty of people for whom icons are a great source of inspiration for their prayers. We were having this discussion about a work entitled On Divine Images, by John of Damascus, which was an argument in favor of the Eastern Church’s use of icons. One of my classmates kept referring to icons as idols. I stopped her and said, “You do mean ‘icons,’ right, not idols.” She shrugged her shoulders at me and said, “You know, it’s really all the same.”

“Oh, no no no!” I said. “There is a big difference between an ‘idol’ and an ‘icon.’” In short, here’s what I said:

See this bottle. If I were to hold up this bottle and say, “Oh bottle, you are my protector and my salvation. From you, oh bottle, comes all my source of strength, yadda, yadda, yadda…,” then this bottle would be my idol.

BUT!

When I look into the bottle, I see the water. What’s IN the bottle reminds me of all the ways God has used water to full-fill God’s purposes in this creation. I can see this water and be reminded of how God’s spirit moved over the deep, new waters at the creation of the Earth. I can see this water and be reminded of the waters of baptism. I can see this water and be reminded of the water that will co-mingle with the wine at the Eucharist. I’m not worshiping the water it self, but I’m seeing the water as a window to remind me of all the ways that God has used water to carry out the Divine plan.

I was thinking about this story and our Baptism this morning of Phoebe Merritt at the 11:15 service. And then I thought about our Gospel lesson this morning. After thinking, “Woah! Major trial by fire for the seminarian!” I focused in on two things: “I will give you words and wisdom” and “I will with God’s help.”

This is one of the more difficult passages of Luke’s Gospel. Luke, drawing on Mark’s Gospel, is recounting Jesus’ prediction of doom & gloom to a group of followers, many years after the Resurrection, who were already facing persecution from the religious and civil authorities. It’s not easy to hear Jesus talking about wars, insurrections, famines, and plagues. It’s much easier to hear him talk about how the meek shall inherit the earth or how he raised Lazarus from the dead. It’s not as easy to hear “Let the dead bury the dead,” and “whoever does not hate their father and mother cannot follow me.”

But, as they say, every cloud has a silver lining, and ever scriptural passage that sounds hopeless and miserable has more than a glimmer of hope. Jesus says to the nameless crowd around him, “I will give you words and wisdom.”

Every time we witness a Baptism or Confirmation, we affirm that we will continue in the apostles’ teaching, we will proclaim by word and example the Good New of God in Christ, and that we will strive for justice and peace among all people. And we make these affirmations by saying, “I will with God’s help.” We acknowledge our reliance on God to help carry out God’s work in the world, knowing that we cannot accomplish these task without God’s guiding hand.

But what do we make of this line “I will give you words and wisdom”?

In the spring of 1998, three massive tornados swept through downtown Nashville, TN. I was a senior in college and living just outside of Nashville at the time. I saw in the aerial views of the aftermath that one of the twisters had obliterated St. Anne’s Episcopal Church, one of the oldest and most beautiful churches in Nashville. The following Sunday in her sermon (which was broadcast live on two local TV stations), the rector of St. Anne’s said, “It is important to remember that God is not in the tornado or even in this rubble. God is in our response to the tornado and what we, as God’s people, do with this rubble.”

Jesus said to His followers: “I will give you words and wisdom.”

We have a God who loves us more than words can possibly describe or even imagine. Jesus never promised us a rose garden. There is plenty of scripture to back that up. But there is also plenty of scripture to back up the claims of a God who didn’t just put us on this Earth to let us flap in the wind.

When we remember that we do not have a God who has or will ever forsake us, we are free to live out the life God has called us to live. We can be empowered to be the light of Christ that the world so desperately needs to see. God is not the earthquake. God is not the tornado. God is not the rubble, and God is not the water. God is standing beside us in our troubles & trials, giving us words and wisdom, and giving us the help we need as we strive to do God’s work in the world. And God is in the waters of baptism that wash over all of us.

May we be continually sustained by the grace of Christ who seeks to fill our hearts and our lives.

AMEN