by the Rev. Mark Michael, Interim Rector 

“He has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself.”
Hebrews 9:26

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

Yesterday, the government of Singapore hosted a historic meeting between Xi Jinping, the president of Mainland China and Ma Ying-jeo, the president of Taiwan. It was a historic event because the leaders of the two countries, which are technically still engaged in a civil war, haven’t met for sixty years. The meeting didn’t last so long, about twenty minutes, before dinner at the Shangri-La Hotel.   And all through last week, the media in both countries were trying to ratchet down expectations about what might happen.

Of course, many people are hoping for reconciliation. China and Taiwan are two nations that share a common language, history and culture. Both are important economic powers, and there would be advantages for both in greater trade and security cooperation.

But with a bloody war and decades of hostile rhetoric behind them, it’s almost impossible for the leaders to know how to speak with each other. They had to clarify in advance, for example, that neither of the officials would call the other one president, because that would suggest that both lead legitimate governments. No flags can be displayed. Neither has the freedom to promise another meeting or to make substantial proposals for common action. The words they do use must be chosen with extreme delicacy, because anything either leader says could call up old associations and deeply offend the other, perhaps touching off internal scandals that would only make things worse. There will be a handshake, a photo, maybe an exchange of gifts, but the won’t really solve anything. In its impotency, its nervous gesturing, what it reveals must is just how far off the goal of normalized relations really lies.

I doubt that any of us has juggled a conversation quite as stressful and momentous as the one that took place yesterday in the Singapore hotel. But I’d bet that most of us have been in a meeting something like it: a negotiation session at work, family court, a chance meeting with someone who was a dear friend before that horrid betrayal that leaves you both unable to look each other in the eye. You know what it’s like to try to find the words that couldn’t possibly offend, and to come up empty. You know what’s like to stretch your arms across the void trying to grasp some point of connection but finding no hold. You’ve seen things move in slow motion towards that inevitable point of destruction. It’s deeply frustrating, and we long for a different way, an alternative to the futility of reopening fresh wounds, of hurting one another all over again.

One of the basic assumptions of Christian theology is that this is exactly how it is for us in our life with God. There is a great gulf fixed between God and us, the gaping wound of our sin. There are signs of promise in the long history of our dealings with Him, but over and over again, we have failed God, and the story of the covenant is, like the story of China and Taiwan, a tale of repeated wounding. We can feel deep within us that desire to reach across the great divide. We would be better people, pure in our thoughts, consistent in our actions. We would live together in justice and peace as God desires. We would sit still long enough to hear His voice and then rise to gladly do His will. Our common life would be marked by ready cooperation and joyful worship. But every time, we come up short. “The Lord looks down from heaven upon us all,” says the Psalmist, “to see if there is any who is wise, if there is one who seeks after God. Every one has proved faithless; all alike have turned bad; there is none who does good; no, not one.”[1]

We would hope that there could be just one exception, one truly pure saint, one perfectly sublime act of worship, one project that was so well planned and so carefully executed that it would open the heavens and pour out the long-desired favor of God.

There is a candidate for this in the religion of the Old Covenant, one high-level, carefully orchestrated meeting between the hostile powers, God and humanity. It’s called the Day of Atonement, the Yom Kippur. It’s the highest and holiest of the high holy days of the Jewish religious calendar. All the people would fast and confess their sins. They would gather in the holy city, crowding around the temple, the place that God had chosen so that His Name might dwell there. Their greatest religious leader, the high priest would purify himself and dress in pure linen garments that symbolized the holiest of intentions. He would offer the purest and costliest of sacrifices, which God had set apart as the chief way to open the gates of His mercy. Under cover of thick clouds of incense, the high priest would enter through the curtain, as thick as a man’s hand, into the highest place, the holiest of Holies, treading on ground touched just once in the year. He would take the blood of the sacrifice and place it on the mercy seat, the center of the holiest shrine of the Covenant. As Bishop Wescott, the great commentator wrote, it was the service that “summed up and interpreted the whole conception of Sacrifices, which designed by divine appointment to gain for man access to God.” And it was celebrated by the figure who “summed up the idea of consecration and religious service.”

It was a beautiful moment, often filled, to be sure, with the noblest sentiments. Some of the high priests were hypocrites, but others were deeply holy men who gave their lives to calling the people more deeply into God’s service. I am sure, if you had witnessed that event, it would have deeply moved you. There is, our Epistle writer is sure, no other ceremony in whole history of human religious aspiration that is higher, nobler and more endowed with potential for stretching across the void to the God who would receive us so willingly if only we could we could reach Him.

And yet, it fails. The failure of the Day of Atonement is a major theme of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Today’s lesson mentions just a few of the failures. It must be conducted in a place that is only a distant copy of the true throne room of God. The author doesn’t say it, but the temple is also tainted by a long history of infidelity and greed, as Jesus demonstrated when He drove out the moneychangers. The high priest also must also the blood of another. Blood, in the symbolism of the covenant, represents life, life given over in true devotion. The high priest offers another’s life because it is impossible for him to offer and be offered at the same time. kamagrawiki.com And he must do it again and again. The day of atonement cannot ever be postponed because this year the people have quit sinning. Even the high priest can’t quit sinning—he must always sacrifice two beasts—one for the people, and one for himself, because since last year, he also has fallen away from God’s intention. Even at its best, the author judges, human religion is filled with artificiality, hypocrisy, impotence.

Until the coming of Christ. For there was One righteous man, one sent into the world who knew the Father fully and was wholly obedient to His will. There was one among us who rose up every day and ran the path before Him without stumbling, “who was tempted in every way as we are, and yet did not sin.” And to fulfill the Father’s plan, Jesus mounted the Altar himself, the wood of the Cross. And there, he was both priest and victim. He was completely devoted. He was the pure victim. And His blood, the symbol of His life, was poured not for His own sake, but for the forgiveness of the sins of the world.

And when that hour drew near, and the sky turned black because the whole frame of the world wept at such a sight, remember what happened. ‘It is finished,” He said. And the veil of the temple, that thick curtain that sealed off the holy place, it was torn in two from top to bottom. It was at the ninth hour, one of the Gospel writers remembered—that’s the time of sacrifice, the little daily reminder of the great Day of Atonement. “It is finished,” He said. The void has been bridged, humanity is reconciled to God. All human religion has been judged and found wanting. He has offered the one sacrifice that really matters, what the traditional Anglican Eucharistic prayers call the “one oblation of himself once offered,” “a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world.” He appeared once for all, our Epistle proclaims, to remove sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And when He had risen up and ascended into heaven, to appear before His Father in glory, He carried the tokens of His sacrifice into the true holy place. There He sat down to reign until He returns in glory to redeem us, who wait for Him.

What that means for us is that we don’t have to save the world, because He has already done it for us. It doesn’t all depend on us: to build the perfect congregation, to nurture the perfect family, to offer flawless worship, to solve the deep and intractable problems of the world. The life-giving mercy of God, the most profound thing we will ever experience, doesn’t come from something we do. It flows from that which was done for us: once for all, on the Cross two thousand years ago. We are not responsible for carrying the burden of this world’s ancient sorrows. If He has sat down on the throne of glory, then we don’t always have to be busy either. If He can wait patiently until the promised day of glory, we can be a bit more patient with ourselves and with those other imperfect people that God puts in our lives. The heart of true religion, the best news at the center of the Good News is that it doesn’t all depend on us. We are sinners but He is righteous. We have failed, but He has triumphed. By His Cross, he has set us free.

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

[1] Psalm 14:2-3.

by the Rev. Mark Michael, Interim Rector

“See your children gathered from west and east at the word of the Holy One, rejoicing that God has remembered them.” Baruch 5:5

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

In our family, sometimes we call my mother the sheepdog. She likes nothing better than to herd all her charges into one place. My mother has always loved big family gatherings: the heaping table, decorations all in their places, music playing in the background, children shouting and dogs barking underfoot.  When we all get together there are fourteen now, the majority of us under seven. It can make for quite a racket in a house built for smaller crowds. Sometimes one of my brothers or I will suggest that it would be simpler to host us in batches. It really is easier to talk at a smaller table. There’s no need for quite so many dishes. But she’ll have nothing of it. Since my father died ten years ago, my mother spends most of her time alone. For a woman who gave so much of her life to the things that make for a happy family, that’s sometimes very difficult. When we are all together, I think that for her, it’s a bit like putting life back together again, recovering something of what was lost and can never quite be again.

Of course, this is the season for big family gatherings, when we endure hair-raising traffic and the nightmare of airport security to head back to our home places, to sit around the family table, among old, familiar things.

I met a man who lives in Tennessee
He was headin’ for, Pennsylvania, and some home made pumpkin pie
From Pennsylvania, folks are travelin’ down to Dixie’s sunny shore.
From Atlantic to Pacific, gee, the traffic is terrific,
For there’s no place like home for the holidays.[1]

And increasingly, as our families spread even farther apart, and our work schedules become more demanding, we can’t even make it back together for the holidays. I hear often of families who keep a Christmas together half-way through November, or at Martin Luther King weekend in January. Taylor, our seminarian, is at a family Christmas like that today—the only time when they could all fit in the trip. The liturgical purist in me cringes a bit at this, I acknowledge. But there something about the gathering the loved ones together that marks true festivity—when we can look around and see the old faces and remember together happy times. There are few sweeter blessings God has placed in human life.

But of course, sometimes we can’t all find the time to be together. The warm invitation receives no reply. Sometimes we must sit and wait, and acknowledge with tears that the family which was once so happy together cannot quite be gathered into one again, that we are scattered far and have quite forgotten the road that leads home.

For Israel, this is what it was like to be in exile. Israel had once all been one people, living together in one land under one ruler. They were the descendants of a family of brothers, and once upon a time, they had come together from every corner to Jerusalem to keep the great feasts, to pray and sing and dance and eat, to put themselves together again and remember God’s goodness, His everlasting “promise of mercy.”

But Israel had sinned. They had run cialis-coupon after other gods. They had perverted justice and neglected the poor. There had been a bitter dispute in reaction to a reckless king which had split them into two states, with two temples and two kings. And then the Assyrians had come and conquered the Northern Kingdom, hauling them off to vanish from the pages of history. The Southern Kingdom, ruled by David’s sons from the grand old city of Jerusalem with its majestic temple, it had lasted a few generations more. But it would not repent. It spurned the warnings of the prophets. And God sent the great Babylonian armies against it. They conquered the city, tore down the walls, hauled off the treasures of the temple, led away the people in chains.

And for seventy years they lived in Babylon, unable to come home. They did not lose faith, and eventually God allowed them to return. The Persian king gave them their freedom, and helped them to rebuild the walls, to construct a temple on the spot of the old ruins. The law book was brought out again, the sacrifices were made. There was no proper king, but the arrangements gave them far more dignity than they really deserved.

But it just wasn’t the same as it had been before. For one thing, maybe only half of them returned. Many of the Jews had made out quite well for themselves in Babylon. They spoke the language now, they had good jobs, friends among the local people. It might be nice to die in the homeland, they thought, but the living’s not bad here in the meantime. Maybe once they’d make a trip back for the Passover, to see if it really was as grand as old grandmother had half-remembered—but to move back, to start over again, wasn’t that asking too much?

There had been an initial burst of piety back in the land of Israel, a generation of pioneers that rediscovered the lure of holiness. But faithfulness is the work of a lifetime, not the adventure of a summer’s afternoon. The old sins crept back in again, like weeds that can never quite be grubbed out. Soon the priests were on autopilot again, the prophets were ignored, the people as indifferent as ever.   They needed a deeper kind of restoration: not just construction and moving vans, a complete spiritual renewal. It’s as if they were still waiting to come home, their hearts back on Babylon’s shores even while living in the middle of the ancient city.

The Book of Baruch, from which our first lesson is taken, reflects this sense of so many faithful Israelites that their exile had never really ended.[2] There was a Baruch who had seen Jerusalem fall back in the sixth century. He was the scribe of Jeremiah, whose words had gone unheeded. He fled with Jeremiah and the king from the city as it burned. The Book of Baruch is attributed to him, but almost certainly it was written much later. His name is used, rather poetically, to prove a point. We count Baruch among the writings of the Apocrypha, written between the Old and New Testaments. The scholars mostly date it to the second century, some four hundred years after the first Baruch had died. We have it only in Greek, written for Jews who lived far from Palestine and didn’t quite remember how to read the mother tongue.

It says, pointedly, that Israel is still in exile. Its first section concludes by addressing God with these words: “See, we are today in our exile where you have scattered us, to be reproached and cursed and punished for all the iniquities of our ancestors, who forsook the Lord our God.”[3] It was a rather remarkable thing to say, really, while Jerusalem stood rebuilt, five hundred miles away, while sacrifices burned on the temple’s altars. It’s as if four hundred years of history had never happened. Baruch is still speaking to people far from home. Maybe the best modern analogy would be when the gung-ho tea party folks dress up like George Washington and Ben Franklin at their rallies. It’s still 1776, they’re saying, we’re still living under tyranny with a need for revolutionary change—and maybe they’re being ironical, or maybe they’re rather serious about it—depends on who you ask.

Well this writer, this man who called himself Baruch, he was quite serious. And not just because he was dissatisfied about the way things had fallen out. He believed that God was about to do something new. God had promised more than what they had seen so far, so clearly He must be planning soon to launch a new plan for the restoration of His people, to get the whole family back together again. First, they would need to turn back to God. Baruch’s book includes a great confession of the people’s sins with an expression of their desire to live new lives, to be dedicated completely to their eternally faithful God.

But he ends, as the prophets always do, by looking ahead. Baruch’s last word is this jubilant song of hope, our Old Testament lesson. It is addressed to mother Jerusalem, who sits at the window and waits forever for her children to come home. Look east, he says, and see them coming, from east and west, from every place where they have scattered. God is calling them to return, and paving the way before them. A pleasant path it will be, a level road, shaded with trees. God has not forgotten your sorrow. He knows how much you want to see them all together again. Look east, and see them coming home.

When John the Baptist spoke in the wilderness, calling the people to confess their sins, and be washed clean to greet the Redeemer, he was speaking from exactly the same conviction as Baruch. The exile was about to end. God was about to answer their lonesome prayers. The way must be prepared for all to come home, the valleys exalted, the mountains brought low. Prepare the way, he says, for the Redeemer is coming soon.

And He has come, in the man Jesus Christ. John the Baptist would mark Him out so there could be no question: “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”[4] Jesus came to make a new covenant, to call the whole world into God’s new kingdom, where “many would come from east and west and take their places at the feast.”[5] He would gather home all Israel, and welcome in the Gentiles too. He would blot out sin, and pour the Spirit, and reconcile us once and for all to God who always “remembers His promise of mercy.” The great homecoming feast is what we share in today, the table spread where all humanity can taste and see the goodness of the Lord.”[6]

But sometimes, we still seem to be waiting, don’t we? This world is not yet put right yet, and many of God’s beloved seem to be wandering from home. We hear God’s gracious will for us, as we did when His Ten Commandments were read out today, and we number our own failures. This is a violent world, but we too are angry. There is great irreverence, but we too are distracted and cold. There seem to be no restraints, but we do not check our own desires. There is so much division, and yet our own love is so weak, we are still separated from each other. Because Advent is a season of expectation, it is also a time for penitence. For we still long for renewal, for a return of His transforming mercy. Come and save us, O Emmanuel. Come and forgive us. Come, and bring us home.

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

[1] Al Stillman, “Home for the Holidays.”

[2] c.f. N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992. 368ff.

[3] Bar. 3:8.

[4] John 1:29.

[5] Luke 13:29.

[6] Ps. 34:8.

The Rev. Mark Michael, Interim Rector

“As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see Jesus.”
Hebrews 2:8-9

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

It’s been a heavy week, hasn’t it? The Russians have launched extensive bombing raids in Syria, massively escalating the civil war, with numerous civilian casualties expected. News continues to surface about the extent of Volkswagen’s emissions switch scandal, with maybe more than 11 million cars effected worldwide. Several drug companies have admitted to massive price gouging, with one pill used to treat cancer and AIDS patients rising from $13 to $750 per dose.

And of course, there was another mass shooting, this time at a community college in Oregon, the 294^th shooting this year.   It was a shooting in the kind of place where things like that don’t happen, except there aren’t any places like that any more. We don’t know all the details yet, but eyewitnesses reported that events cialis-coupon unfolded in a distinctive way. The shooter stormed into the classroom with an agenda. He wanted to know who was a Christian. And our brothers and sisters who stood firm and confessed our faith, those who claimed to be one of us, he shot them point blank.

“As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.” We believe of course, that the Bible is God’s Word to us, but if we’re honest, it sometimes seems like a word from long ago and far away. But not this week. Not this word.

One of you remarked to me the other day that there has been quite a lot to pray about this week. There have been so many reminders that the world is broken, that the power of sin is real and destructive. The “evil powers of this world that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God”[1] —we have seen them this week, not yet subject to the prince of Peace, the king of love.

But we do see Jesus. And when we see Him, equal to the Father, crucified for us, risen victorious, seated at the Father’s right hand—when we see Him, we know what will surely be.

The Epistle to the Hebrews is a sermon intended for people living in anxious times, people who are overwhelmed by the chaos that surrounds them and in need of a reminder of what God has truly promised.

The Biblical scholars think that Hebrews was written right around AD 70, the year that the Romans crushed a Jewish nationalist revolt in Palestine, destroyed the temple in Jerusalem and expelled thousands of Jews from their ancient homeland.[2] That crisis changed Judaism forever. It also resulted in a decisive break between Christians and Jews. The earliest Christians, of course, were all Jewish. The Book of Acts describes followers of Jesus who worshipped in the temple, preached in synagogues and kept the laws of the Old Covenant.

But this moment of national crisis was a time for drawing lines in the sand.  More radical Jewish groups, like the Christians, were expelled. A new Biblical canon was drawn up. And a series of daily prayers, the Eighteen Benedictions, were widely distributed. The twelfth of them was specifically directed at the Christians. “Let the “Nazarenes” and the heretics,” it read, “be destroyed in a moment. And let them be blotted out of the Book of Life and not be inscribed together with the righteous.”

This epistle to the Hebrews is a message of hope to those people, the Jewish Christians newly cursed by their friends and neighbors, cast out of the synagogue, trying to make a life for themselves in the face of hostile words and physical violence. The author would note later in his message, that some of them had “drooping hands” and “weak knees.”[3] He describes others who had forsaken the assembly.[4] Out of fear or disillusionment they were abandoning the way of Christ altogether.

Because at some point it becomes hard to hold fast to the faith when so much evidence seems to point in the other direction.  When your fellow Jews all seem to turn against you, surely you must ask yourself: Can I really be sure that He is the promised Messiah? Does He really fulfill all those ancient promises? Do I know for certain that the apostles really saw Him in that Upper Room three days after his death?

We read the headlines today. I pray that none of us aspires to an assassin’s notoriety. But maybe we ask ourselves other questions. Does it really make sense to tell the truth and suffer for it when so many seem to profit from lies? Is decisive violence really more effective than the messy process of making peace? If I was in that classroom and they asked me if I stood with Jesus, wouldn’t I just look the other way?

How do you answer questions like that? What do you say to people who stand at the crossroads of faith and despair? You can try to minimize the drama of the situation, of course, or urge a kind of stoical resolve—best not to get your hopes up, this too shall pass. You can concede that the other side has its reasonable points as well, that we’re best not to be too dogmatic about these things. You can offer emotive reassurances, saying that God is with us in our confusion and pain, that He’s politely sympathetic, even if He doesn’t seem to be leading us out of it in any particular direction.

Or then, you could write something like the introduction to the Epistle to the Hebrews. You could set forth Jesus Christ as God’s final and decisive Word, the One who holds the future in His nail-scarred hands. “We do not yet see all things in subjection to Him, but we do see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death.”

We do see Jesus.   And who is He?   In a majestic sentence, a perfectly turned classical period with seven alliterative phrases, the author describes Jesus in the most exalted terms possible. He is the splendor of God’s radiance and bears the very stamp of His image. He created the world and sustains all things.   He became lower than the angels, one of us, emptied of His glory to make purification for sins. And yet now, He has been exalted to the Father’s side, enthroned in glory with all things subject to Him. The author traces what one commentator has called “the parabola of salvation”[5]—Christ’s eternal majesty, His humiliation and then His glorification, the certain path assigned to Him and to all who belong to Him.

For we are His brothers and sisters, the “many sons” of the Son of Man, who will surely reign with Him then as we suffer with Him now. Jesus knows our pain, for He has borne it also. He sympathizes with our confusion and doubts, for He has faced them too. He has gone down even to death with us. But He does not leave us there. He promises that where He is, there we shall be also. We will share in joy of the Father’s presence. We will see an end to pain and cruelty, hunger and injustice. The kingdoms of this world will become the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ, human life transformed to become what we have so longed for but never found here. Because He is there, in majesty, for us. Because He has gone ahead so we may follow after, because He is our pioneer.   We see Jesus, and we know the end of the story, though all the world denys it—and it what a glorious end it is. Wesley’s great Easter hymn perhaps says it best:

Soar we now where Christ has led
Following our exalted head.
Made like Him, like Him we rise
Ours the Cross, the grave, the skies.[6]

Christ is the source of salvation, the one who holds the keys of destiny. His way of joy, peace and love will finally triumph. He is the new and better way, the fulfillment of the hopes and dreams of all nations. The Epistle to the Hebrews will go on, in lessons we will read over the next two months, to recount just how Jesus comes as the climax of Israel’s story. These troubled Jewish Christians do not need to forsake God’s faithfulness to their ancestors, because Christ fulfills the meaning of the temple. He alone can keep the sacred law of God in its fullness. He has made a new and eternal covenant that brings to fruition all that was hoped for on that great day when the mountain shook and God’s voice announced the precious commandments.

The author shows, you see, an openness to those troubling questions raised by the leaders who had cast out the Christians from the synagogues. He is willing to listen and engage with those who turn against the Christian message. There’s remarkably little bitterness and impatience in anything he writes.

He faces the questions, he hears the doubts, but the author of Hebrews is unshaken by them. He has complete confidence that Christ is the world’s only hope, that Christ will complete what He has begun at Calvary and the empty tomb. “We do not yet see everything in subjection to Him, but we see Jesus.” In those troubling days, that was enough. May it be enough for us as well.

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

[1] Holy Baptism, The Book of Common Prayer (1979), 302.

[2] c.f. for what follows, MacLeod, David. “The Finality of Christ: An Exposition of Hebrews 1:1-4.” Bibliotheca Sacra. 162 (Apr-June 2005), 210-230.

[3] Heb. 12:12.

[4] Heb. 10:25.

[5] Long, Thomas. Hebrews. Interpretation Series. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997., 39.

[6] Hymn 188, (Hymnal 1982), “Love’s Redeeming Work is Done,” verse 4.