Rev. Mark A. Michael

“Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”  St. Mark 8:38

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

A few years ago, Pastor Allison and I led a mission trip to Washington DC for teenagers from our two churches. We were aiming to help these rural kids understand what urban poverty is really like, and to support a number of ministries that were working among the poor in the city. It was an amazing experience for all of us, and together we lived on a food stamp budget, visited and prayed with the homeless, chopped vegetables at the DC Central Kitchen, and helped serve meals at a shelter. Our Bible studies each day focused on different parts of the Magnificat, the Blessed Virgin Mary’s revolutionary song of praise, which we prayed together each evening.

We also gave the teens an assignment, to memorize the Magnificat over the course of our time, so that its message could form their spiritual lives. One beautiful evening of the trip, we were walking up 14^th Street, on our way back to our dorm from a concert on the steps of the Capitol. Unprompted, a few of our girls joined hands, and started to recite the Magnificat together as they walked down the street. “He has put down the mighty from their seats, and has lifted up the lowly,” they chanted. “He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away.”[1] We were just past the Willard Hotel, about a block from the White House, and on the sidewalks, filled with tourists from every part of the world, all eyes turned to the girls. Now they may have just been trying to learn the lines, but knowing those particular girls well, I think there was something more to it.

It’s one thing to hear those words, sweetly sung by a choir through a wreath of incense in a beautiful church. It’s another thing to hear them at the heart of the world’s most powerful city, against the backdrop of the offices of topflight lobbying firms, with secret service agents subtly making their rounds through the crowd.   There was something subversive to it, this joyful announcement of God’s eternal kingdom in such a place. If people really understood them, without our free speech laws, I wondered, would the girls have been silenced? When Reginald Heber was sent off to serve as the first Anglican bishop of Calcutta in 1823, the East India Company allowed him in on condition that the Magnificat not be used in the Cathedral’s liturgies. It was just a bit too dangerous for public use.

That scene on 14^th Street was so poignant, at least for me, because it brought ultimate questions to the forefront. Who holds the real power over the nations of the earth? Whose justice will ultimately prevail? Whom, above all, do you serve?

In these ways, that scene not far from here is much like the scene described in our Gospel, when Jesus took his disciples to Caesarea Philippi and asked them “Who do you say that I am?” The location is deeply important. First, Caesarea Philippi was in far Northern Palestine, in a mostly Gentile area. The city also had an important past. Caesarea’s ancient name was Panias, and legend had it that the god pan was born in a grotto at the heart of the city. Pan was the king of the nymphs and fairies, a fertility god worshipped all over the ancient world. Half-man, half-goat, he was associated with intoxication, sexual license and the carefree life of the shepherd. A few decades before Jesus and his disciples made their visit, the nominally Jewish local king, Herod Philip, had rebuilt the city and renamed for Caesar Augustus, acclaimed as a demigod, the founder of the Roman Empire. The city was crowded with pagan temples, and its highest hill was capped by a marble shrine to Caesar, trimmed in gold.[2] This is a city that represents both debauchery and iron-fisted power, a kind of cross between Las Vegas and Pyongyang.

Who do you say that I am, Jesus asks, and maybe he gestures at the panorama behind Him. There are alternatives, you see.   The scene is perhaps most reminiscent of that moment in St. Matthew’s Gospel when Satan tempts Jesus by taking him up to a high hill and showing him all the kingdoms of the world. Whom do you choose? What will you worship? How will you live?

It’s interesting that these very Jewish disciples give Jesus very Jewish answers to his question. Some say you are John the Baptist, they note, others Elijah. And even Peter’s answer is rooted deeply in Israel’s hope. “You are the Messiah,” he says, the deliverer promised by the ancient prophets. You have come to restore God’s people, he means, and to forgive their sins. Of course, Peter has spoken the truth. And for now, that is enough. Jesus orders to tell no one what they have perceived.

But in time, when Jesus is fully revealed through His death and resurrection, these same disciples will be sent to speak of Him openly. At the end of this Gospel, He commissions them to preach the word about Him “to every creature.”[3] They will go back to places like Caesarea, among those who openly worship other gods. They will speak subversive things in His name, and their words will open the door to sincere faith in some and to unremitting hostility in others.

If you would be my disciple, He goes on to say, if you have truly believed and commit yourself to my way, you must take up your cross and follow after me. If you bear witness to me, He means, if you speak the truth and stand fast, you will suffer as I will suffer. And of course, they all did suffer, and mostly in public places where all eyes were turned toward them. James, the first of them to die, was thrown from the parapet of the temple in Jerusalem—talk about death in a symbolic place. Peter, rebuked this day at Caesarea, would be crucified at the heart of Rome itself, upside down on the Vatican Hill.

Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” can only be answered with inner conviction. It demands serious thought, and a heartfelt commitment. But we deceive ourselves if we think the religion of Christ is essentially a private matter, relevant only to our opinions and emotions. Jesus must be confessed, the cross must be taken up. And confessions and crosses are intensely public things.

We answer His question, “Who do you say that I am?” here, week by week, when we acclaim Him as the true God, the long-promised Messiah. “For you alone are the Holy One,” we say in the Gloria, “you alone are the Lord, you alone are the most high.”[4] “We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God,”[5] answers the Creed. Our common worship is so important because it centers us in what is truly lasting and significant. It reminds that the Triune God alone deserves our fullest love and most obedient service.

And true worship then leads us directly to discipleship. If Jesus is only a remarkable teacher or a distant hero, it sufficient to admire Him. But if he is the promised Messiah, God’s only Son, our final judge, then He must be obeyed. Those who are ashamed of me in this generation,” He warns us, “of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father.” We show our shame of Christ when we hide our commitment to Him, when we shrink back from the challenge of His way. When we just keep our heads down and politely demur, we are actually turning away from him, forsaking His Cross, the faithful disciples’ burden.

I know that it’s not easy here. One you told me this week that I had moved to the “world’s capital of worldliness.” Another of you said a few weeks ago that he didn’t think I could bless his workplace, but I might want to think about performing an exorcism from out in the parking lot. I know he was joking, but not entirely. Many of you live in a world dominated by false gods, the Pans and Caesars of our times. And that precisely is where Christ asks you “Who do you say that I am?” “Will you take up the Cross?” In the way that power is used around you, in the way people talk about the vulnerable and the weak, in the face of pressure to bend the truth, are you confessing Christ?   Are you taking up the cross when money calls the shots, when sex is used as a tool and a weapon, when angry outbursts are used as a negotiating technique?

Know that when you must speak out and bear scorn for it, you do not stand alone. Think back to those teenagers walking up Fourteenth Street chanting the Magnificat—they were hand in hand. You are but one small part of that “company of all faithful people,” sustained by Christ’s risen power, united in prayer, nourished by His Body and Blood. A hundred thousand martyrs have trod the path before you and the journey ends in glory. He who asks the question gives the strength to make the faithful answer. “Who do you say that I am?”

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

[1] Luke 1:52-53.

[2] Green, Michael. The Message of Matthew. Leicester: Intervarsity, 2000., 177.

[3] St. Mark 16:15.

[4] “The Holy Eucharist.” The Book of Common Prayer (1979), 356.

[5] “The Holy Eucharist.” The Book of Common Prayer (1979), 358.

by the Rev. Mark A. Michael, Interim Rector

“Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap.” St. Luke 21:34

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

I’d been asked to give the prayer for the Law Day ceremony. This was an annual event in the little town where I last served, a gathering of the County Bar Association in the chamber of our handsome Victorian Courthouse. They’d recognize new lawyers, remember those who had died. There was a prayer and then an address, presented this year by Judge Burns, long respected on the bench, looking the quintessence of judicial dignity in his long black robes.

I was expecting something suitably grand and rhetorical on the meaning of law, liberally sprinkled with quotations from the Constitution and Blackstone’s Commentaries. But Judge Burns told us instead about a pending crisis. Cheap heroin was beginning to flood into our rural community. The police aren’t equipped to handle it, he said. We don’t have nearly enough treatment facilities. Petty crime is going to go through the roof. We’re going to see overdoses among the young, a whole new class of people incapable of holding jobs and participating in civic life.

This was about six years ago, and I was shocked, as were a few other people in the room. The tourist brochures said that we lived in “America’s most perfect village,” a place where “serious crime” brought to mind double-parking, not trafficking in hard drugs. But Judge Burns was mostly right, and as the drugs poured in, we were quickly overwhelmed. The hospital developed new overdose protocols. People started locking their doors. The county jail filled up. Parishioners needed to talk about what to do about their kids. By last spring, the church was hosting NARCAN trainings and making plans to send people into the pediatric ward to rock the babies of addicted mothers, who must be hospitalized for weeks until the drugs are out of their system.

And of course it wasn’t just rural communities like Cooperstown, New York that have been affected by this national epidemic of opioid addiction. A story in the Washington Post this week said that almost four in ten Americans know someone who has been addicted to prescription drugs,[1] and though the rates for heroin addiction are lower, they are climbing steadily. In 2013, the last year for which we have complete records, almost 25,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses. Another recent study found that for the first time in recorded history, the life expectancy for working class white males has actually declined, due primarily to rising rates of drug addiction.[2]

Public health experts are scrambling to find ways to explain all of this. In part, of course, it’s a supply problem. But it goes deeper than that. As small-town factories close, mines give out and weeds grow in the crop fields there are fewer and fewer opportunities for workers with limited training and higher education. For those who do go to college, debt loads can be crushing. Family structures are far less stable, with marriage rates continuing to decline among the poor. There are fewer social institutions to provide support and a sense of community in inner cities and rural areas.

And of course, we live in a deeply anxious time. Headlines scream of terrorist attacks and an international refugee crisis, school shootings, racial unrest, crude and divisive political rhetoric, ecological disasters. The Archbishop of Canterbury told General Synod in London this week that World War III has begun.[3] I don’t know if he’s right or not, but it wouldn’t shock me. I don’t think that a downed Russian plane in Turkey convinces a teenager in Northern Virginia to shoot up for the first time. But it’s hard to be hopeful in a world so saturated with there fear and uncertainty.   You can understand why someone would seek that kind of escape, even at the price of life itself.

In our Gospel lesson, Jesus is describing the world turned upside down, an age of chaos and violence, the social landmarks strewn in disarray. This is a notoriously difficult passage to interpret. Sometimes Jesus seems to be talking about the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, other times of his eventual return in glory, and sometimes of the world as we see it now—things falling apart, the center that cannot hold.

There are different ways to live in the midst of times of crisis, Jesus tells us. We can become weighed down with drunkenness and dissipation, consumed by the worries of this life, desperate to escape at any cost. Or we can be expectant, watching and praying for the coming of the only One who can truly deliver us. Country singer Tim McGraw put it this way a few years ago:

Everybody just wants to get high
Sit and watch a perfect world go by
We’re all looking for love and meaning in our lives
We follow the roads that lead us
To drugs or Jesus

Drugs or Jesus. I hadn’t noticed the way that Jesus presents the alternatives so sharply until this week. The theme turns up again in a parable He tells elsewhere in Luke’s Gospel, about the master who comes at an unexpected time and catches his servants drunk. Not just sleeping, or unaware, but drunk.[4] In his first Epistle Peter too, urges the faithful to be sober as they wait for Christ’s return.[5] The recovery community has stressed for decades now that addiction is really a spiritual problem, and I think we can trace that insight back to our Lord Himself. Addiction is not primarily about thrill-seeking or a lack of self-discipline. We live in slavery to drugs, or drink, pornography or the crowded social calendar because we are seeking transcendence and inner strength, and we choose the means that lies closest to hand.   Addiction is ultimately a failure of hope.

And we have such a glorious hope to share with this troubled world. As the world falls apart around us, Jesus urges us to look ahead with confidence. In the end, Jesus will return to judge and heal the world, as our Old Testament lesson says, “to execute justice and righteousness in the land.” There will be perfect peace, swords beaten into plowshares, the poor lifted up, sickness of body, mind and spirit abolished forever. All will be filled with dazzling glory, and we will see Him face to face, our long-desired Savior, the world’s only true king.

And until then, Jesus promises to sustain those who trust in Him. He has given us His Spirit, the certain presence now of what is surely to come. Jesus feeds us with His Sacraments, filling us with the grace that gives us strength to push on in the way He has set before us. He proclaims to us His Word, those sacred promises repeated again and again so we cannot forget His goodness and steadfastness, His complete reliability.

We do not need to hide from the troubles of this world. We do not need to seek a cheap escape or artificial courage. The world is full of pain, but we do not fall into despair. To “remain on guard,” as Jesus calls it, is to look squarely at this world’s troubles, and to commit them to God in prayer, working all the while to do His will, even when we are misunderstood and rejected. We have a glorious hope, and there is no better time to share it. Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus.

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

[1] Bernstein, Lenny. “4 in 10 Know Someone Who Has Been Addicted to Painkillers.” The Washington Post. 24 Nov. 2015 https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/4-in-10-know-someone-who-has-been-addicted-to-painkillers/2015/11/24/c5b71f2a-9224-11e5-b5e4-279b4501e8a6_story.html

[2] Samuelson, Robert. “The Life Expectancy Gap.” The Washington Post. 27 Sep. 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-life-expectancy-gap/2015/09/27/a8051094-63a4-11e5-9757-e49273f05f65_story.html

[3] Welby, Justin. “Presidential Address to the Church of England’s General Synod.” 24 Nov. 2015. http://www.anglicanink.com/article/world-war-iii-has-begun-archbishop-canterbury-tells-synod

[4] Luke 12:45.

[5] I Pet. 4:7.

by the Rev. Mark Michael, Interim Rector

“And [God] gave skill to human beings that he might be glorified in his marvelous works.”
Ecclesiasticus 38:6

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

“Down in Guatemala,” he told me, “I had to be a real doctor, and it scared the heck out of me.” Now don’t get me wrong, according to the standards of the American Medical Association and the licensing agencies of his rather lucrative specialty, my parishioner was very much a real doctor. He had been in practice for decades and was highly regarded in our community, sought out by people in need of surgery. But things were different, he was telling me, when he went to Guatemala on a pharmacyincanada medical mission trip with his son’s church.

They were working in a remote area, with very minimal equipment, you see. There were no MRI machines and it was a day’s journey over rugged roads for an x-ray. They could do simple blood tests, and had a few diagnostic tools, and some basic medicines but that was about it. My parishioner said he had learned all about diagnosis back in medical school, but it was so much easier just to run a test and be sure. Here in Guatemala, he had to listen to the stories, mark just how people described their symptoms. It was really challenging work, and he wasn’t certain about a few of the cases he had seen. There were some maladies he just couldn’t treat.

Malpractice insurance companies, of course, don’t tolerate this much guesswork here, and that’s probably a good thing. But it was interesting to me that my parishioner didn’t think of his work within these narrow limits as useless.   “A real doctor,” that’s what he called himself, someone stretched to use all his ingenuity, to listen more carefully, to treat the whole person and not just the symptoms. He left that time in Guatemala a bit wistful about the more accurate and lucrative way he practiced medicine the rest of the year, and anxious to get back again to a place where he really do justice to his profession.

Today we give thanks to God for Saint Luke the Evangelist, called by Saint Paul, “the beloved physician.”[1] He is the patron saint of those who work in the various medical professions, and our Old Testament lesson appropriately gives thanks to God for the work these people do in bringing healing to the world. Now we don’t know anything at all about how Saint Luke practiced medicine, but as someone who worked in a time when there were even fewer diagnostic tools than my former parishioner found in that Guatemalan clinic, I think he must have gained the kind of skills that made for a “real doctor.”

You can see many of those on display in the third Gospel and the Book of Acts, which he wrote as an “orderly account”[2] of the life of Christ and of his earliest followers for a reader named Theophilus. First, he was a learned man, as all doctors have to be, a master of complicated patterns and unusual symptoms. Of all three Gospels, Saint Luke’s abounds most in historical and geographic detail, and there’s even more of this in the Book of Acts. When historians or Holy Land tour guides want to place a given Biblical event in time, it’s usually Saint Luke who provides the anchoring facts.

Saint Luke was also a very gifted storyteller, someone who had obviously been trained to listen carefully as people described their afflictions. Legend also says he was an artist, and I once saw a painting that was attributed to him, in the Syrian cathedral in Jerusalem. I’m not so sure about that, but Saint Luke certainly painted his accounts with colorful tidbits. And they give us a fuller understanding of, say, Christ’s gentleness toward the suffering and the boldness of Saint Paul. Many of the best known and loved stories from the life of Jesus are recorded only in his Gospel.   The Nativity story, for example: the Virgin Mary’s encounter with the Angel Gabriel, her joyful meeting with Elizabeth, the birth in the stable, the angels filling the Bethlehem sky with song, that’s only told in his Gospel. Those stories from the beginning are matched by extensive and evocative descriptions of Christ’s appearance after his resurrection at the end, especially the story of that mysterious encounter on the road to Emmaus, where Christ appeared to His disciples “in the breaking of bread.”[3] Luke alone recalled Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, and that sequence of tales about the joy of reconciliation that ends with the story of the prodigal son.

He also has what we might call a more inclusive vision, and was especially careful to recall the role of women and the poor in the Gospel stories. The great canticle of praise offered by Zechariah in chapter one, for example, is echoed by another sung by the Virgin Mary a few verses later. Simeon rejoices to receive Christ in the temple, and then so does Anna as well. Saint Luke tends to group Christ’s parables so that one that has a man as the protagonist, like the shepherd seeking the lost sheep, is followed immediately by one with a woman in the primary role, like the woman with the lost coin. He also recalled many of Christ’s teaching about the hazards of wealth, and God’s desire to bless and strengthen the poor, as in the dramatic sermon at Nazareth that serves as our Gospel lesson. Now, Saint Luke might have been more interested in outsiders because he was a Gentile himself. But his profession had also accustomed him to treat all kinds of people, men and women alike, “master or servant, bond or free,” as the Hippocratic Oath has always stated.

“[God] gave skill to human beings that he might be glorified in his marvelous works.” That’s what old Sirach said about the way doctors can lead others closer to God. He was talking of course, about their medical skills. But for Saint Luke, the saying was true in an even deeper sense. Because it was his skill as a doctor that trained him to bear witness to God’s most marvelous work, His redemption of the world through Christ, in a truly powerful and unique way. “Why are there four Gospels?,” I’m sometimes asked. Well because to see Christ in the full, we need four different observers: rabbinical Matthew, breathless Mark, meditative John, and Luke—the historian and storyteller, perhaps the one who had the widest vision of them all. Each of the Gospel writers gave a distinct account, shaped by his own passion, his own experience in the rest of life. God inspired them to write His word in the midst of their own stories, not in spite of them.

In Baptism we all promise to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ,”[4] that is to say, we all promise to be evangelists. We each tell our own Gospel—not that we all write Holy Scripture, of course, but we tell the story recounted in Scripture in our own particular way. Your education, the work that consumes so much of your life, your experience as a spouse, a friend, a parent—these all shape the story you have been given to tell to others about God’s love and His purpose for human life. Maybe you haven’t thought much about this before. How is Christ revealed in the work of a paralegal, an accountant, the third chair clarinet in the high school band? What’s the spiritual value implicit in what you know about lesson plans, defense strategy or professional football? Every talent, every passion, all the truth we have learned, all the goodness and beauty we have created is meant to be drawn up in this noblest task of all—revealing God to the world. Think about your own story and how it tells the big story.   If you don’t know quite know to start, ask the good doctor for some help. He shows us all how to do it so very well.

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

[1] Col. 4:14

[2] Luke 1:3.

[3] Luke 24:35.

[4]“Holy Baptism,” Book of Common Prayer, 304.

by the Rev. Mark Michael, Interim Rector

“If the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” St. Matthew 18:17

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

There is very little direct teaching in the Gospels about the church and its life. What there is, though, is found in Jesus’ discussion with his disciples in the central chapters of Saint Matthew’s Gospel, from which this evening’s lesson is taking. These chapters have come to take on a kind of special importance, especially among Christians who try to base everything the church does on a literal interpretation of the Bible.

For example, this three step process that Jesus describes for dealing with a member of the church who sins against another has been treated by some as judicial proceeding. First, confront the person with the sin. Then bring some witnesses. Then present the person for judgment before the entire congregation. One commentator[1] compared it to reading someone his Miranda rights—did you “Matthew 18 him?” one Christian might ask another in talking about how an inter-church controversy unfolded.

I read a story recently[2] , and the teller swore it was true, about a Pentecostal Holiness church in Southside Virginia where this was not just the occasional, but the annual judicial process. This was a part of the country where nearly everyone made his living as a tobacco farmer. And the official book of discipline of the Pentecostal Holiness church banned not only smoking, but any involvement in the tobacco trade. Now the Methodists and the Baptists, officially, were supposed to look down on this as well, but in that kind of community, their ministers were content to look the other way. But not the Pentecostal Holiness pastor. He was a man of his word, and he expected his people to live by that code of holiness that they had sworn to follow when they became members of his church.

So on a Sunday in May, when the time came to plant the tobacco crop, he would stand in the pulpit on Sunday and read out those words about the sinfulness of the tobacco trade. And the next Sunday, he would stand up in front again, and read those words with one of his elders on either side of him. And then, the third Sunday, he would formally excommunicate every man and boy in that congregation—shun them like “Gentiles and tax collectors.” And for three and a half months, while that tobacco crop was growing, there wasn’t a man or a boy to be found in the Pentecostal Holiness church

But then, the day would come for harvesting the crop, taking it to the warehouse and getting that annual windfall—the tobacco harvest check. The next Sunday, those women and girls would vote every man and boy back into full membership in the church. After all, they needed them to keep that other article of the discipline, which insisted on a full tithe.

Now, yes, I’ll admit there’s something slightly ridiculous in going about the life of a church in this way. Magnifying things into grave sins that aren’t really anything of the sort is to start off on the wrong foot from the beginning. But I wonder if, in its backward, hypocritical sort of way, that pastor wasn’t on to something important about how Jesus means for us to understand the way discipline should work in the life of the church.

It’s important to say, on the one hand, that Jesus meant that there should be discipline in the church. His three part process isn’t really original to him, but is adapted from the standards set out in the law of Moses, the way God told the Israelites to deal with destructive sin in their community. The Church is a community set apart for God’s purposes, called to holiness of life that will reveal his purposes to the world. It can’t be a place where “anything goes.”

We are called, as our First lesson reminds us, to a life of integrity and steadfastness, without “a desire for evil,” not “putting Christ to the test.” God doesn’t merely expect conformity to a minimal code of ethics. Instead, he calls to a divinely empowered, holy life, a consecrated life, as I was discussing this morning. Because God’s standards are high, we will all fail. And sometimes we will fail very badly, and the ways that we fail will become not just a disappointment, but a scandal to others.

Jesus knew this. He did not invite his followers to entertain any illusions about man’s noble nature or instant purification by the Spirit. We will fail each other, and sometimes we can’t all just look the other when this happens. The evil needs to be confronted. We need to speak the truth to each other, to have that difficult conversation about why this thing you are doing is threatening all of us in a very real way.

Not all sin is this serious, of course. I don’t think that Jesus meant for this kind of procedure to apply to every kind of sin, nor do I think that He meant it to apply to any one particular sin in every community. But there will be some kinds of wrongdoing that we cannot tolerate and at the same time remain faithful to the way of life God has called us to share.

I kamagrawiki.com think particularly in our time of the abuse of children by the clergy, and the way that this sin as been such a tremendous cause of scandal in the way the church is viewed by the world. We can’t just overlook this. It must be confronted. The integrity of our common life demands that we confront it.

And so for this kind of sin, and for other kinds of grave scandalous sins, we have disciplinary procedures in the church. In the Episcopal Church there is an established procedure for dealing with serious sins, especially among the clergy. It is based at the diocesan level, and it has these three steps given to us by Jesus, among other safeguards to make sure that the accused are presumed innocent until proven guilty. In my last diocese, I served as an alternate judge on the Ecclesiastical Trial Court, which administered the process. Thankfully, over the years I served on the court, a case was never brought to us. It’s important that we have these rules and procedures, that we take them seriously and that we try to administer them fairly. But they never have the last word.

You see, I think Jesus is intending a kind of irony in these directions about church discipline, an irony that that Pentecostal preacher might have understood as well as anyone else. This teaching comes just after a parable of Jesus, you see, a parable you all know very well. It’s the one about the lost sheep who runs away, and the master leaves the rest of them behind, so much does he love the one that is lost. He leaves them, and goes out to search for that sheep and then he brings him back and rejoices.

And then there’s that way Jesus describes what you should do to this obstinate sinner who refuses to repent even when the whole church has tried to show him he’s wrong. “Let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector,” He says. And how was Jesus with Gentiles and tax collectors? Well, He sought them out, of course, He shared His suppers with them, he lured them into the kingdom of God.

Where two or three are gathered, He concludes this teaching, two or three gathered for a session of the Ecclesiastical Trial Court, to condemn another, to tell him that this sin simply cannot be tolerated—where they are gathered, I am there in the midst of them. And maybe Jesus means “I am with them to second their condemnation,” but to be honest, I’m not so sure.

Because this is Christ’s justice we administer in Christ’s Church. It’s not the blindfolded woman with her infallible scales that stands in the midst of us, but Jesus Christ, with his nail-scarred hands extended. How is it in that old Gospel hymn? “The vilest offender, who only believes, that moment from Jesus a pardon receives .”

We must take serious things seriously. We must speak the truth and call one another to holiness. But with Christ we must also be ready to forgive, to extend mercy, to “overcome evil with good.” There is something more precious than justice, something truer than law. Let us use discipline faithfully, but remember always that Jesus holds the scales.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

[1] Hoeeze, Scott. “Matthew 18:15-25: Comments and Observations” Center for Excellence in Preaching. http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/thisWeek/viewArticle.php?aID=534

[2] Chilton, Delmer. “Sermon.” The Lectionary Lab: Pentecost 12. http://lectionarylab.blogspot.com/2011/08/twelfth-sunday-after-pentecost-proper.html

The Rev. Mark Michael, Interim Rector

“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” St. Mark 9:37

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

“We’re taking a bit of a chance on him,” the headmaster told me, “It will probably be a tough adjustment. Make sure you keep an eye on him.” Joey, let us call him, was one of the students assigned to my advisory group at Saint James School. We classed him as a tenth grader, but he had been in and out of so many schools over the past few years that it was hard to tell where he actually belonged. My first impression was that Joey was a nice enough kid, but he couldn’t really understand social cues. He laughed at things that weren’t funny, and he had trouble following a conversation. He seemed extremely nervous, shell-shocked almost, always fretting about whether he would be able to remember when this class met, or what he was supposed to wear for football practice.

Saint James is definitely a college preparatory boarding school. We didn’t really have what are termed, in the trade “second chance students.” The schedule was tight and there were lots of things to remember, and we left students to supervise themselves a fair amount of the time.

I did watch out for Joey, though, and I could soon tell that he needed it. Nothing seemed to go right for him. He soon fell far behind in his classes. He was danger in hurting himself and everyone else on the football field. His backpack was like the Bermuda Triangle—things went in there, and never seemed to come out again in one piece. And for much of the time, he was an emotional wreck, breaking down in tears or blurting out inappropriate things in class almost every other day. I met with the assistant head of school and looked at his file, quite a few pages of assorted psychological disorders, lots of meds, a broken home. The kid pretty much had everything stacked against him, and the results we were seeing seemed to fit well into what could be expected.

And then, about three weeks into the term, things began to change for Joey. He was still failing most of his classes, and he was still disorganized and all the rest of it, but he seemed to always be smiling. One day, he confided his secret to me, “I have a friend—not just one, but a couple of friends.” This was the best school he’d ever seen, he said. Because at Saint James, people didn’t call him names or beat him up behind the locker room when the adults weren’t looking. They talked to him about ordinary stuff, played video games with him. One kid had actually invited him to go home for the weekend for a sleepover. Joey was 16 years old, but he’d never been on a sleepover.

Later that day, I talked to Grant, the boy who had asked him over to his house. Grant was a good athlete, one of the most popular kids in the ninth grade. The girls all loved his curly black hair. He could have made Joey’s life a living hell—he had that kind of social power. But instead, he decided to fill Joey’s life with joy. I thanked Grant for taking an interest in him and asked him about the sleepover. “Yea, he said, I’ll think it’ll be fun. I mean, he’s a little goofy in the head and all, but once you get to know him, he’s not a bad kid. And anyway, it’s the sort of thing you are supposed to do, isn’t it.”

I was proud of my students when they won the football title and when they got into Ivy League colleges, when they put on those wonderful musicals in the spring. But I don’t know if I was ever so proud of one of them for anything as much as I was proud of Grant for taking Joey home for the weekend. “It’s the sort of thing you are supposed to do”—yes he was right, but how seldom do people really do that sort of thing? How seldom do they really treat the weak and the vulnerable with dignity?  How seldom do they look past the faults that everyone else can see to the person that lies behind? How seldom to they welcome the little child in the Name of Christ.

Grant, you see, wasn’t just popular and handsome and strong. He was also one of my best acolytes. He was in the chapel for services 6-8 times a week. He had grown up going to Sunday School every Sunday. He knew he was a Christian, and he knew what a Christian was supposed to do. Along the way Grant had internalized the message that Jesus explained to the apostles so vividly when he drew a little child into their midst: the test of your fidelity to me is the way you treat the most vulnerable. “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”

Jesus called us to the lowly in response to a dispute among his disciples about who was the greatest. He had told them twice now that he, their king, would be rejected and crucified. But the disciples just can’t get the idea of a worldly kingdom based on violence and ambition and envy out of their mind. For them, a kingdom meant grades and ranks and classes to fill. The apostles wanted to be at the top of the heap, catapulted from obscurity to hobnobbing with the rich and famous.

You don’t get it, Jesus says. Whoever wants to be first in my kingdom must be last of all, the servant of all. The first must be one like me, who pours His life out for you, who gives up all the glory of heaven to take the form of a servant. You shouldn’t be worrying about how well you will fit in with the high and mighty, but how you can www.kamagrawiki.com nurture the weak and lowly.

To demonstrate his point, Jesus pulls a child into their little conclave. It’s the way you treat one of these little children that will show how truly you want to follow me. Ancient Palestine was not a world that swooned over the cuteness of children. There were no clever kids’ sayings email forwards. In Jesus’ time only about half of children lived to adulthood, and infanticide was a widespread practice in Roman society. To be sure, many parents must have been tender and affectionate toward their own children, but children had no social standing and little protection. They were often treated as nuisances, unable to pull their weight.

You need to take the people whom no one else wants, Jesus is saying. You must receive them “in my Name:” for my sake, seeing me in them. Jesus, the one rejected by His friends, the one ridiculed by the crowds, the one who suffered unjustly, without anyone to come to his defense—that’s who you should be looking for when you gaze into the eyes of those forgotten and rejected by the world.

In the rigid societies of the ancient world, this teaching of Jesus was among the most noticed, the most condemned and the most liberating. The Greek philosopher Celsus sneered in the second century, “Wherever one finds a crowd of adolescent boys, or a bunch of slaves, or a company of fools, there will the Christian teachers be also.”[1] That great modern religious philosopher, Jesse the Body Ventura, was, you see, in good company when he claimed a few years ago that Christianity was a religion for weaklings. The Church has long been a place open to all comers, like Robert Frost’s home, “that place that when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”[2]

Almost every church I know has folks who are deeply involved in its life who don’t really fit in anywhere else. They are just a bit too awkward, or to eccentric, or they have a few too many needs.  But in the Church, at least when we’re doing what we’re supposed to do, we welcome them in, we befriend them, claim them as one of our own.  We hope of course, that they will grow in the life of grace, and sometimes we’ll need to intervene and keep them from harming themselves and others. But it’s crucial that we swing the door as wide open as it goes, so that we are ready to seek for Jesus just where he promised we would find him, among the people no one else wants.

Here at Saint Timothy’s, I’m finding that you really get this. The sign out along road says “The Episcopal Church welcomes you,” and you’re putting that into practice in all kinds of ways. Children are welcomed here, and no one scowls when a baby cries or a toddler wiggles under the pew. Many of you have told me that you came here and stayed here because the people were so kind to you. They remembered your name and helped you find a way to use your gifts.

You had an outstanding model for this in your former rector. In the few weeks that I worked with him, I was so impressed by the ways that Father Brad went out of his way to provide pastoral care to some very vulnerable and broken people.  As those of you who staff the food table will know, this is a place where the homeless, the addicted, and the mentally ill are received with respect and compassion. There are people all over this town whose life has been one rejection after another, who have been kicked around by the system, who are truly the little ones of our place and time. And this church is their sanctuary. Here they have found something unique, an outpouring of love in the Name of Jesus Christ.

This is a rare and precious thing in a world like ours.  So many seem anxious to build higher walls these days, so we don’t have to think about those who are suffering. We hear such crude and unsympathetic rhetoric used to speak of the vulnerable. These are times when the Hungarian prime minister claims to be defending his country’s Christian heritage by spending millions on razor wire to keep out refugees fleeing for their lives. Presidential candidates who claim to revere the Bible announce their plans to deport millions of our hardworking undocumented neighbors and friends, our brothers and sisters in Christ. There is such fear and anger all around us, and Christ sends us out to counter it with love, by seeking out and welcoming those people whom the world is so quick to reject.

This will not, of course, be easy. Jesus isn’t looking for armchair activists, and you don’t really welcome the vulnerable by merely spouting slogans about tolerance and inclusion. You have to go to people like Joey, that former student of mine, the awkward, demanding, needy people that God has put right in the middle of your life. You will know who they are unless you’ve already decided to ignore them. Welcome that person into your life. Remember that he or she is Jesus for you, in this time and place. He has promised to hide Himself in them. Share with them the love they’ve been looking for and never finding for so very long. And then, you see if the Gospel of Jesus Christ doesn’t change people’s lives.

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

[1] qtd. in Origen, Against Celsus, 3.55.

[2] Frost, Robert. “The Death of the Hired Man.”

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.