the Rev. Mark A. Michael, Interim Rector

“And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours. St. Luke 4:6-7

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

“If anything unites America in this fractious moment,” says the New York Times’ David Brooks in a recent column, it is a widespread sentiment that power is somewhere other than where you are.”[1] “The Republican establishment thinks the grass roots have the power,” he continues, “but the grass roots think the reverse. The unions think the corporations have the power but the corporations think the start-ups do. Regulators think Wall Street has the power but Wall Street thinks the regulators do.” He goes on to cite a recent Pew study which asked Americans, “Would you say your side has been winning or losing more?” Sixty-four percent of us, majorities of both parties, believe our side has been losing more.

People respond to this feeling of powerlessness, Brooks says, with “pointless acts of self-destruction.” When we believe we have no power, compromise is suspicious. If we believe we have no power, utopian dreams seem the only possible escape. If we have no power, we must get behind the one who promises to “start winning again,” no matter what real abilities he might have to keep his promise. This sense of powerlessness, Brooks says, is very dangerous in a political system like ours, which attempts to draw together a deeply diverse society through common citizenship and shared institutions.

And as in many past elections, there’s plenty of religiosity in the hysterical rhetoric we’re hearing. Candidates are appealing to the fact that so many of our fellow Christians feel particularly powerless. They can see that church attendance is declining, that religious voices are taken less seriously in the places where real decisions are made.

Episcopalian blogger Rachel Held Evans wondered in a recent post[2] why polls show that the embarrassingly secular Donald Trump is the favored candidate of America’s evangelicals. She found a pretty shameful reason in one of his recent speeches. “I’ll tell you one thing,” Trump told a crowd in Sioux Center, Iowa, “I get elected president, we’re going to be saying ‘merry Christmas’ again … And by the way, Christianity will have power … because if I’m there, you’re going to have somebody representing you very, very well.”

“This is the gospel of Donald Trump,” Held Evans continued, “his ‘good news’ to Christian voters: Stick with me and you’ll be a winner. Stick with me and I’ll give you power, protection, prestige.”  She notes, “It’s also the very thing Satan promised Jesus when he tempted him in the desert.”

Now hear me on this. I don’t think there are little red horns somewhere in the Donald’s big hair. But I do think Held Evans is on to something in holding up this moment in our society against the choice offered by Satan to Jesus, standing on that high peak with all the kingdoms of the world spread before him.

Commentators often rank this as the most serious of Jesus’ three temptations, the defining choice that points most directly to heart of his life and work. The stakes are the highest. The choice is also phrased most directly. Will Jesus bow down to God or Satan? For whose ends will He devote His talents?

Saint Ambrose, who wrote one of the early church’s greatest commentaries on this passage call this temptation ambition, the willingness to sacrifice moral principle in pursuit of a larger aim. Saint Ambrose knew something about ambition. Before his ordination he had been a Roman consular prefect, a man of great wealth and influence. He turned his back on a world dominated by ambition to serve Christ in the church. And he says that ambition is driven by a fear of powerlessness, and it reveals the weakness of the one who chooses it. “That ambition might govern, he says, it makes itself slave to another. It wants to be exalted, but it is made to stoop.”[3]

Satan was inviting Jesus to stoop, to become his slave, to turn away from the Holy Spirit poured out on Him in Baptism.   Satan was urging Him to forsake His beloved Father, to abandon His moral integrity, to reject the purpose for which He had been sent into the world. And because it was Jesus, it sounds at first to us like an impossible choice. Yet the Scriptures tell us that He was tempted in every way as we are, tempted even to ambition, tempted to betray all He was, all He was meant to do.

Because this trade, loyalty for power, stooping so as to be exalted, how often we make it. The temptation to ambition is a constant feature, not just in the world of election cycles, but in the long and tragic history of the Church. Again and again, we have felt powerless, and our leaders have made deals for the sake of a little more influence, a little more money. And sometimes we’ve managed to get ahead, but not without spending a great deal of our moral capital. Exalted in the eyes of world, but feeble and shameful in the eyes of the One whose judgement really matters.

It’s a choice that is before us in this election season, and there’s more than one candidate eager to cut us a deal. But how often this choice also lurks in different ways in all the smaller political arenas of life: the office, the club, the community organization, the family. We hear that ancient voice, don’t we? “Pushing back’s the only way to get a little respect around here.” “She’s spent all her second chances.” “Cut him down to size and they’ll start taking you seriously.” “ Just look the other way and we’ll take care of you next time.”

The true power, that which always endures and conquers, is God’s gift. It can’t be won in an election, bartered across a breakroom table, or bought for millions of dollars. It has nothing to do with fame or flashy talent. The Spirit poured out on Jesus in Baptism rests also on us. By Christ’s grace, the Lenten preface proclaims, “we are able to triumph over every evil, and to live no longer for ourselves alone, but for him who died for us and rose again.” Saint Paul assures us that temptations will come, “but he will provide a way out so that you can endure it.”[4][5]

I think David Brooks is right. People respond to the feeling of powerless with pointless acts of self-destruction. And I expect that in some part of our life, right now, we each feel powerless. And the tempter is there, stroking our ambition, offering some plan that promises to put us back on top of the world again.   That temptation looks like conquest, but it’s actually self-destruction.

The truly powerful act, the one enabled by God’s grace is to stand fast, to hold fast to your integrity, to remain true to the One who has created and will judge all things. Jesus was promised all the kingdoms of this world, and left the desert still a poor man, with no followers, lacking even a place to lay His head. But Jesus held that head high, because in the test of ambition, He had preserved all that was most precious in the life God had set before Him. He’s beside you today, as you face the test of ambition. Will you call on Him for help? Will you let Him make you strong?

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

[1] Brooks, David. “The Anxieties of Impotence.” The New York Times. 22 Jan. 2016, A25. Brooks is quoting the International New York Times’ Anand Giriharadas here.

[2] “Donald Trump and A Tale of Two Gospels.” http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/donald-trump-gospel-liberty 26 Jan. 2016.

[3] In Luc. c.v.11

[4] Proper Prefaces. The Holy Eucharist, Rite II. The Book of Common Prayer (1979), 379.

[5] I Cor. 10:13.

by the Rev. Mark A. Michael, Interim Rector

“The mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’” St. John 2:3

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

A friend of mine made her debut on reality TV a few years ago. Now, this was in England, where they spend even less on broadcast production than here, and where they seem to find the clergy endlessly fascinating. She was part of a series that followed newly ordained clergy in her rural diocese in the West Country.

And when the time came for her to officiate at her first wedding, the BBC camera crews were on hand. She was nervous, of course, and I guess her hands shook a bit, and she would be the first one to say that she’s always been a little clumsy. She took the rings, as she practiced many times before, and laid them on her open prayer book for the blessing. And then she dropped them—right through enormous cast iron grate on the chancel floor, down into the belly of a Victorian coal furnace. I think they ended up calling the local fire department to get them out. Of the hundreds of hours of film they shot that summer, well you can guess which scene got top billing in that episode.

There’s just something about weddings. They seem to court disaster. Take any priest out for a beer and ask him about wedding stories and you’re bound to hear a few stories that will leave you in stitches: the best man who left the ring in the glovebox, the bridesmaid’s wardrobe malfunction, the unexpected but highly entertaining guests, dueling mothers of the bride. Just go home and youtube it. You’ll see what I mean.

We want weddings to be perfect. We spend far too much money on them, and invest every piece of them with emotional drama. There’s a great deal of beauty, but a terrible amount of pressure. You get that many rented suits, pinned tea roses and fondant icing in one place and something is bound to bust loose.

Things had gone awry at the marriage feast at Cana. They’d run out of wine. Ancient Palestinian weddings were multi-day affairs, and all guests were expected to furnish a flask or two for the festivities. And somehow, for this crowd, it wasn’t enough. Maybe the guests were a bit cheap. Maybe they were particularly thirsty. Some scholars even suggest that Jesus and His disciples may have arrived unexpectedly and drained the last of the wine. It was embarrassing. People always read symbolism into wedding mishaps, and this one augured a shortage of joy, a failure to thrive.

There was plenty of water on hand, though, over a hundred gallons in big stone jars for the ceremonial washings of hands and dishes that began and ended the meals. It suggests earnest intentions, a desire to do right by God and the requirements of the law. But the planning hadn’t extended far enough. We intend the best: in religion, in creating a just society, in reconciling people, in creating things of beauty and power. We plan. We work hard. We expect so much. It’s duty that outlasts joy. We keep the form of the thing long after the life within it has spent itself out. Lakes of cold water, and not a drop of wine.

But there was a guest at that wedding. There was One who had come bring abundant life to the world. He was the source of light, the One who blazed forth the Father’s eternal joy. There was a legend that when the Messiah came, he would work miracles—like Moses, who had struck the rock and water poured out, like Elijah who blessed a barrel of flour and a cruse of oil that never ran out. The Messiah would bring wine, the rabbis said, and plenty of it. A Jewish text written at just about the same time as Saint John’s Gospel prophesied that in the Messiah’s day, each vine would have a thousand branches, and each branch a thousand clusters, each cluster a thousand grapes, and each grape would yield 120 gallons of wine.[1]

Unlike the Prayer Book’s marriage rite,[2] Saint John doesn’t describe this event as Jesus’ first miracle. Instead, he calls it, like the rest of the wonders Jesus worked, “a sign.” And, he adds, “he manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him.” God had raised up miracle-workers before, and there were tricksters and conjurers then as there have always been. But there is only One Redeemer. Only one was sent by the Father, “full of grace and truth.”[3] This is no ordinary wedding mishap, this event at Cana. This sign—the cold barrels of water turned to rich wine—that was a sign of His own purpose and mission. It marked Him out as the Promised One and it revealed what He had come to do.

Jesus said to His mother, you might remember, that His hour had not yet come. Just as when Saint John talks of a sign instead of a miracle, that is no mistake. Jesus doesn’t just mean that He isn’t ready to have His talents revealed. His hour is that crowning purpose of His life, that painful duty for which, He would tell these same disciples, the Father had sent Him into the world.[4] He would also be completely spent, you could say, like those flasks that had run out at the feast. He would be regarded as a failure by the world, and a threat. He would go down into the depths, emptied of all but love: condemned, stripped, beaten, crucified.

But then, He would rise in glory. Throwing open the cold stone door of the tomb, He would pour life and joy into this tired world. He would bring hope to troubled people, and awaken courage of the face of despair. He would reconcile enemies, and make saints of the wicked.

He is the new wine of the everlasting Kingdom.   He is the very best, saved for these last days, when God is making all things new. He manifests His glory, and we too, like those ancient disciples, can believe in Him and find what we have long sought. He invites us to drink of Him, and today again we approach His Altar. There He fills us with life no one else can give.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.

[1] II Baruch 29:5 (qtd. In Raymond Brown, The Gospel according to John. Anchor Bible Commentary. New York: Doubleday, 1966, 1:105.

[2] “Celebration and Blessing of a Marriage,” Book of Common Prayer (1979), 423.

[3] John 1:14.

[4] 12:23, 27.

by the Rev. Mark A. Michael, Interim Rector

“Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you, I give men in return for you, peoples in exchange for your life.” Isaiah 43:4.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Hush, little baby, don’t say a word,
Papa’s going to buy you a mockingbird.
If that mockingbird won’t sing,
Papa’s going to buy you a diamond ring.
If that diamond ring turns brass,
Papa’s going to buy you a looking glass.

And on it goes, that lullaby, with its gentle tale of generosity, abundance, and love. It’s a good song to sing to a child, isn’t it? What it says is this: I love you more than anything in the whole world. I would give anything to make you happy. You have nothing to fear, because I care for you. All will be well.

It’s a lovely song, one that sets a child’s life on the assurance of a parent’s love, the most solid place of all for a child to stand. I would guess it was first sung by a poor man, to a baby wrapped in blankets a little too thin. Men who know the price of diamonds don’t go on about giving them to babies. There’s something of hope in it, the promise that it will all work out some way, that in the end, there will be grace.

I haven’t lived so many years, but I’ve met enough people to understand that every baby doesn’t have that song sung to him or her. Lots of people grow up with much darker songs, like: “no matter how hard you try, you’ll never live up to my expectations,” or “there’s something deeply wrong with our life, and it’s all your fault,” or “this world is a cold and dangerous place, and you’d better fight hard if you want to make it.” Now I’m no psychologist, but I do know this: it can be a powerfully difficult thing to unlearn that song your parents sang as they rock you to sleep as a tiny child. People spend thousands of dollars, sit on dozens of therapists’ couches, they turn to all sorts of destructive habits, all trying, well trying–to hear that lullaby that they somehow missed back when they really needed it.

We don’t get to choose that song that was sung to us. That is one of those sad things about human life. We can choose what song we sing to our own little ones, though. It’s one of the most important responsibilities we have if God blesses us with children. And through the working of God’s grace, every new Christian has a good song sung over him or her at the very beginning. The lullaby at the Font, you might call it, the sure promise of God’s unfailing love.

We heard a version of it in that breathtakingly beautiful passage from Isaiah’s prophecy, read as our Old Testament lesson. Listen to it again—and see if you can’t hear that familiar lullaby in it:

Fear not,” God says through the prophet, “for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you. Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you, I give men in return for you, peoples in exchange for your life. Fear not, for I am with you.

You are mine, God is saying to his people. There is nothing so precious that I would not give it to you. Egypt, the greatest civilization of the ancient world, with its thundering chariots and temples that hold up the sky, it would be my gift to you. The wealth of Ethiopia and Seba, those exotic corners of the world, I would pour them into your lap. I will hold you fast in the raging waters, bring you safe through the flames. I love you more than you will ever know, and you have nothing to fear.

These, you should know, are not words spoken by the prophet in a time of prosperity, when Israel was secure and confident. They are promises made to the exiles, preparing to make their way back from Babylon. They are words to a people with no temple, no king, no earthly hope for a future. But God is not just a poor man with big dreams. He is the true Creator, the Master of all things. What He promises, He will deliver.

Great and wonderful promises were spoken over each of us when we were baptized. “You are marked as Christ’s own forever,” we will say again today, as we anoint Emmeline with the Sacred Chrism. “Heavenly Father,” we will pray in the post Baptismal Prayer, “we thank you that by water and the Holy Spirit you have bestowed upon this your servants the forgiveness of sin, and have raised her to the new life of grace. Sustain her, O Lord, in your Holy Spirit. Give her an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works.”[1]

From the very beginning of the spiritual life, there is forgiveness, hope, abundant love. As Jesus stood in the Jordan, the Father announced—“this is my Son, the beloved.” We belong to God, we are made one with Christ. He says much the same to us, and then pours out His gifts upon us: His Spirit in our hearts, courage and love, joy and wonder. The list comes tumbling out—so many blessings, an abundance of the gracious mercy of the Lord. In Holy Baptism, God fills with all we need, all the blessings and graces to do the work set before us, and to continue in fellowship with Him for all our days.

Today we mark, with gratitude, another year in our common life as the people of Saint Timothy’s. It has been a year with a great deal of change, some of it very painful to many of you. I’m sure that it has sometimes felt like passing through the water and the flame as you bade farewell to a number of greatly loved leaders and companions. To some of you, our resources seem scarcer than they have in the past, and you feel a sense of loss about changes in programs and funding that help us to adjust to the realities of a new and more challenging time. But God continues to bless us, even in disorienting times. He remains abundant, raising up new leaders, opening our eyes to new opportunities. Our Latino ministry has grown significantly in the past six months. Our stewardship campaign was a great success, with a great majority of those who participated increasing their commitments over last year. Our youth ministry and mission programs remain very strong, and we’ve been exploring new opportunities for serving the needy in this community.

There’s a word of grace today for all of us. God has committed Himself to us irrevocably in Baptism. And He speaks His good word over us: I love you. You don’t need to be afraid. There will be enough. All will be well.  As you confess your faith, and renew your commitment to following Christ, may you not be afraid to do what He has set before you. May you hear his faithful song of love, the lullaby sung over you by the matchless Father of mercy.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[1] Holy Baptism, Book of Common Prayer (1979), 308.