Sermon Nov. 12 2017-Father Cunningham

         There are certain things that we say which really have no bearing on reality, but they make us feel better, especially when you are a parent.  We tell our kids to be safe or study hard.  Comments like this makes us feel like we actually are doing something and then if the kid comes home with a bad grade we are off the hook because we told them to study hard and darn it they just didn’t listen.  And if you were being cynical you could say that the snippet we have from Paul’s Letter to the Thessalonians was just this type of advice – sort of a grey skies are going to clear up type thing.  But I am working on my cynicism and so that is not the route that I am going to take. 

          Paul is writing to the Church in Thessalonica and he seems to be initially addressing something that was a prominent question in the early days of the Church, but something about which we don’t give a whole lot of thought to these days.  Most in the early Church believed that Christ would be returning very soon, and by very soon I mean within their lifetime.  And so as time went on, some of those who believed that Christ would be returning before they died, died.  And for those who remained, a concern arose over what happened to those who had died, because the expectation was that none of them would see death before the return of Christ.  That is what Paul is getting at when he says, “For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died.”  In other words he is assuring them that those who have died do not have to worry about anything – they are not going to miss out on the return of Christ and the resurrection of the body and all that.  So that is the reason for Paul writing this section of the letter and while that is interesting historically, I want to take a minute and focus on the other stuff.   And by using the technical term other stuff I mean to ask a question about the assurance that he is offering and why is it more than just happy talk that does not reflect reality?

         The main point of what Paul is saying is that we are not to be as ones without hope, which is why he says, “so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.”  But there is another piece to this that can kind of be missed if you read through this too quickly.  And just in case you are worried let me assure you that we will return to the bit about hope, but I want to start with the first part, which is about grief.  Notice Paul does not say that we should not grieve; it is simply that the grief should not be like those without hope.  And I think this is very important because it dispels an issue that sneaks into Christianity now and then which has to do with the way in which we handle death.  Some Christians, who for charity’s sake we will say, believe that because we are Christian we should not mourn.  Some may even push it as far as saying we should celebrate when a loved one has passed because they have gone onto their reward.  But notice Paul does not say to avoid mourning, only to not mourn as those without hope.  And this may seem like hairsplitting, because mourning is mourning isn’t it?  But really it points to something that is very important. 

          To understand this a little better, we need to go back to the story of Lazarus and the shortest verse in the Bible.  If you remember from John Chapter 11, Lazarus was the brother of Mary and Martha and was very ill and died.  Jesus went after this had happened and was met by those mourning for the loss of Lazarus.  As the story continues Jesus would eventually raise Lazarus from the dead, but in between Lazarus’ death and his raising we have in verse 35 a verse which simply says that “Jesus wept.”  Now think about this Jesus has lost someone that he loved, while at the same time he knew that he had the power to raise him from the dead and yet he still wept.  You could hardly say that Jesus was without hope; I mean he was the Son of God and had control over life and death as he would show.  Yet at that moment when he saw that his friend Lazarus was not there he felt the terrible sting of loss.  And so you see mourning someone does not mean we are without hope instead it represents the feeling of loss, the feeling of emptiness that had previously been filled by another person.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer says that God keeps this gap empty so as to keep our former communion alive even if it causes us pain.  Jesus felt the pain and it is okay for us to feel it as well.  We can miss someone or mourn someone and still have faith and still have hope. 

         But this brings us to the second part.  We realize we will feel pain at loss, but we also have hope and the question is what distinguishes hope from foolhardiness?  I mean Linus had hope that the Great Pumpkin would come for all the good that did him.  And, so, what is the difference between our hope and simple wishful thinking?  Well the answer like many in the Christian faith comes down to the resurrection of Jesus.  The Resurrection was not just a neat trick, but rather it was the sign that death was not the final word.  We know that death is not the final word because we have someone that went before us.  Someone who was dead but rose again.  This signified that there was more.  Death was just a moment before the eternal glory that was to come.  We do not rely on feel good stories but rather we rely on an actual event.  The hope that we have comes from something that happened which shows that through belief in this person who rose from the dead we are able to conquer death as well.  The author of Hebrews refers to Jesus as the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.  He is the pioneer because he went first.  He passed through death and came out resurrected on the other end.  And just like a pioneer we are to tread the way that he trod.  We are to follow knowing that it has and can be done.  We do not live as ones without hope because we have seen that death is not the final word. 

         And I would be remiss today if I didn’t mention the loss of our brother Gerry Bay.  I was taking Gerry communion weekly over the past few months and I would get the question from others of how he was doing.  And I always felt there were two parts to this answer.  There was the physical question to which the answer was that he was obviously declining, but there was also what we would call the spiritual question and the answer to this was rather incredible and rather inspiring.  Gerry was not living as one without hope.  He was ready to go to his reward, he was ready to rush out and meet the Lord.  Gerry was what we are called to be as Christian.  He did not ignore the physical reality.  He knew that his body was failing, but he also knew that there was something beyond this, something to which Christ calls us.  This is the life lived as a Christian, we may mourn, we may suffer, but we also hope.  And we do not hope in an unrealistic way but rather our hope is found in him who died and rose again so that we may have life and have it abundantly both now and forevermore.

Sermon Nov. 5 2017-Father Cunningham

          I am never sure how I feel about All Saints Day, which we commemorate today even though it was really this past Wednesday on November 1st.  The reason for my ambiguity about today is not because I am opposed to all of the saints, or any of them for that matter, it is just that something seems to get lost when all of the saints are lumped into a big bucket.  It feels kind of like the participation trophy of Holy Days.  Sort of like when they decided that Washington’s Birthday would become President’s Day.  In reality what this meant was that Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson were commemorated in the same way as Warren Harding and Millard Fillmore.  I am sure Warren Harding’s mother loved him, but being remembered for the Teapot Dome scandal is not quite as impressive as being remembered as the Great Emancipator.  But back to All Saints.  The history of it is a little tricky, but here is what we know.  In 609 at the rededication of the Pantheon, Pope Boniface IV declared it to be dedicated to St Mary and All the Martyrs, but the day on which he did that was May 13th.  It would only be later, in the 8th century that it was moved to November 1st by Pope Gregory III, and shortened to All Saints Day.  Anyway we commemorate it today and now we now have to decide what to talk about for the next eight and a half minutes.

           The reading that we have from Matthew today to commemorate All Saints is from the Sermon on the Mount and this particular section is generally referred to as the Beatitudes, which comes from the Latin word beatus meaning blessed.  And since most of the verses in our reading start with the word blessed, it is pretty easy to see where it got that name.  I assume this section was selected as a reading for All Saints because it was seen as a kind of description of the saints – the meek, the hungry, those who mourn, those persecuted for righteousness sake, etcetera; which may make us ponder if we really want to be included in the list of all the saints.  By having this reading in such a context, it seems to be saying that this is prescriptive.  In other words, it seems that we are being told to go and become meek and hungry and then we get to go to heaven in a righteous robe.  And while that may be the case of what those who put together the lectionary wanted (I don’t know because I never met them), I am not sure that this is what Jesus was getting at. 

            In this country and probably in others we tend to suffer from an incomplete and often incorrect version of what Jesus came to earth for.  The popular view is that if we believe in Jesus, then when we die, we float up to heaven and strum our harps and dance around in clouds.  And in such a context when you read this passage from Matthew the tendency is to think that it is telling you to just sit tight.  If you are suffering or persecuted it will all be okay once you die and float up to heaven.  The issue with such an understanding is that not only does it put too great of separation between earth and heaven, it also puts too great of a separation between us and heaven.  Jesus is not saying that if you believe in him that he will one day help you get out of this dump, but rather that one day there will be a new heaven and a new earth and in that joining much will be the opposite of the way that it is now.  When God’s Kingdom is ultimately fulfilled a lot of things will be set right.  But see this is the thing with today’s reading; it is not to be read passively.  We are not to sit back and say, “Well that will be nice when God takes care of all of those poor people persecuted for righteousness sake.”  Instead, it is a call and a call that is on us to participate in.  This is the call that was answered by the saints we remember today.  These are the people that set out to comfort those who mourn, to feed the hungry, to show mercy to the merciful.  The reading today is not about something that God will take care of, but rather about something that the saints, through God’s help, took care and are taking care of.   And so really the call to be a Saint has nothing to do with the first half of the statements but rather with the second half.  Jesus is announcing a new a different kind of world and we, if we want to be saints, are called to participate in that new world. 

            And in some ways we might like the first interpretation better because it does get us off the hook.  If we see someone suffering we can just tell them to cheer up because God will fix it after they die.  But God does not let us off that easy; he wants us to help.  He wants us to look around and ask how we may comfort and feed those who are in need of such things. 

            One of the problems that has come as a result of the vast strides in communication is that we know too much about other people’s problems.  What I mean by this is that if you lived in Philadelphia 200 years ago and something bad happened in Charleston it would be several weeks before you heard anything, if you heard it at all.  Now if you pick up the paper or watch the news you have a whole smorgasbord of tragedies to choose from.  You not only hear about bad stuff in Charleston you also get the bad stuff from Miami, Cleveland, New Orleans, London, Seoul and any other place around the world.  We get more bad news quicker than at any other point in history.  And the problem with this is that it can sort of freeze us.  If we do something in our community it seems so insignificant compared to whatever the latest world tragedy may be.  How can visiting the lonely ever be as significant as stopping a mass shooting?  But here is the nice thing about the call of the saint.  It is not about geography or working on only the worst of tragedies.  Rather, it is a call to help with injustices we see in our everyday life or with things you can actually do something about.  Think about Jesus’ ministry.  From the northernmost point to the southernmost point in his three-year ministry it was not much more than 75 miles.  I mean that wouldn’t quite get you to Sheboygan from here.  But should we look at Jesus and say well sure you healed a blind man in Bethsaida, but what about the Lepers in Alexandria – there were like hundreds of those guys. 

            There is a statement about saints that you have probably heard me use, but it bears repeating.  A saint is not an ordinary person who does extraordinary things, rather a saint in an extraordinary person who does the ordinary things that other people will not do.  A saint will probably not solve the fighting in the Middle East or get rid of North Korea’s nuclear program, but they might comfort a friend who suffers or help out at a woman’s shelter.  One of the benefits in commemorating all of the saints at once is that it reminds us that saints come in all shapes and sizes and that we are only really asked to leave the campground cleaner than we found it.  We don’t have to fix everything, but we have make things a little better.  Or as Calvin Coolidge put it “We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once.”  The call of the saint is to make our little corner of the world a little better, a little more like God created it so that we may be God’s not only now but forevermore. 

Sermon Oct. 29 2017-Father Cunningham

           Sometimes when I am preparing a sermon I go and read Biblical commentaries in hopes that they will help unlock some deep secret in the text.  I often emerge disappointed because these commentaries often spend entire paragraphs on verb tenses and sort of forget the whole meaning of the scripture bits.  It can kind of like reading a biography of someone only to have most of the book focus on the person’s digestive system – sure it is part of who they are, but kind of misses the point.  In today’s reading from Thessalonians, I was curious about the line, “For our appeal does not spring from deceit or impure motives or trickery, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts.”  There seemed to be something deeper going on in this passage.  Why does Paul bring up trickery – had he been accused of it or were there others who were using it.  Well, as you might have guessed I learned nothing from the commentaries that I looked at and so what follows is the Phil version of what I think is going on and let’s hope that it won’t be heretical. 

            So Paul contrasts two different ways of delivering a message.  The first as mentioned involved impure motives and trickery while the second method he describes as having been approved by God.  I think there are two different possibilities as to what motivated such a statement.  The first is that Paul and his companions have been accused of trickery and impure motives and so he is tackling that accusation head on, saying that it was no such thing but rather they did what God had instructed him to do.  The second possibility seems to be that he was contrasting the way he and his companions did things with some other group.  In other words, there was some group conveying a message through trickery and impure motives, but Paul and his companions were doing what God had ordained.  I don’t know that it makes a huge difference but I am inclined to go with the second explanation partly because he continues by saying, “As you know and as God is our witness, we never came with words of flattery or with a pretext for greed; nor did we seek praise from mortals, whether from you or from others, though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ.”  In this Paul is calling on those who witnessed him and his companions to verify that he did nothing nefarious.  But all of this points to a larger question, which has to do with how does one proselytize?  Paul is saying that some used trickery while he did not, but where is the line?  How much “sales job” does one need to put into the effort of proclaiming the Gospel? 

            Now fortunately for most Episcopalians this is not an issue because of our belief that proselytizing is tacky and that it’s why God invented the Baptists.  It is hard to be nefarious about something that you do not actually do.  But let’s say we actually decided to talk about the Gospel and actively sought to convert someone.  The question that Paul is raising has to do with how we actually go about that – are we honest or do we do whatever it takes to make the sale?  And when you put it like this the answer is pretty obvious, at least I hope that it is.  But there is a spectrum to this question because while we certainly would not promote deceitfulness, Churches quite often participate in things that are not directly related to the Gospel in order to bring people in.  I did a quick look on the interweb at various churches and how they promote their high school age youth groups.  In reading a description from a particular website I saw that they did talk about growing ones faith, however they also talked a lot about games and gym time.  One even boasted of the amount of snacks provided.  Now I am not picking on them and saying that if youth group is fun you are headed for perdition, but rather to ask the question of what does snack time have to do with the Kingdom of God.  On one level it could be seen as a trick to lure people in.  So what are we supposed to do?  Do we ban all activities that are not strictly related to the Gospel message? 

            Well, here is where it is good to be Anglican.  Please stick with me for a moment because I do get back to a point.  During the Reformation there was some tension over how the Bible influenced what we did in worship.  Some took the tack that if the Bible didn’t expressly say you could do something then you were not to do that particular thing in Church.  A good example of this is the Church of Christ, which does not use musical instruments in their worship because there is no record of musical instruments being used in New Testament worship.  Anglicans (and others) took a different approach to this by saying essentially that if the Bible does not ban it and it does not seem contrary to God’s will then we can do it.  Since the Bible does not say that you can’t use musical instruments and there does not seem to be anything that runs contrary to God’s will then we can use musical instruments, even though I have my doubts about the accordion.  And so employing this thinking in terms of spreading the Gospel we can use other things to bring people in as long as they are not contradictory to the will of God.  And I would add one thing to that which is that they cannot be more important than God.  In other words music is fine, but if worship becomes a concert then it is not fine, just as a fun youth group is fine as long as the fun is in service of the mission of drawing closer to God. 

            But now let’s return to the original question about spreading the Gospel and the way we should do it.  The first thing is obviously that we should do it.  And I know this makes many people squirm, including myself, but if we truly believe that Jesus is the way the truth and the life then we should probably pass that message on.  Secondly and I think this is a question for those of us at St. John Chrysostom and that is what are we doing about it?  Who are we talking to?  Have any of us invited someone to church lately or checked in with someone that we have not seen in a while?  We have probably all seen really bad proselytizing, we have also probably all seen bad Christian sales jobs where the message was lost in the medium but none of that is an excuse for us not doing it.  And I think this is something for us to reflect on.  Are we doing anything to bring more people to Christ?  All of us are supposed to be ambassadors for the Kingdom of God.  So I think the question for us, myself included is what are we doing?  Can we say like Paul that, “our appeal does not spring from deceit or impure motives or trickery, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts.”  We need to speak a message that is pleasing to God so that we may be a participant in the expansion of his kingdom both now and forevermore.