Sermon (Fr. Cunningham) March 4, 2018

          Today in our Old Testament reading we commemorate the time when Charleton Heston came down from Mount Sinai and gave the Israelites the Ten Commandments.  I have to say that the Ten Commandments are funny things.  I mean funny not in the ha-ha, shoot milk out of your nose, type of funny but rather in terms of holding an odd place in our society.  And by odd I don't mean what is in the actual Ten Commandments, but rather how people react to the name of them.  The Ten Commandments are often used as something divisive with one side wanting to post them all around public and private spaces while the other side claims that such a display would be the first step in creating a theocracy, a sort of real life Handmaids Tail.  So the thing that I find funny in all of this is that no one ever talks about the actual Ten Commandments, that is what they actually say. They seem to have become more of a brand name like Heinz 57 or A-1 Steak Sauce.  And as a brand they are a controversial one.  But the thing is there are a number of commandments that I would think wouldn't be controversial at all, unless there is some secret society that is strongly in favor of murder, bearing false witness, taking a day off, stealing and so on.  There are really only two or three that I see as having the potential for controversy and those would be the ones about idols, having other gods and taking the Lord's name in vain.  Honestly, I'm not sure how many Christians even take those all that seriously these days. But since this is Church you have probably already anticipated that I am going to say that Christians ignoring the Ten Commandments is not a good

thing.  So today I really want to focus on one of the commandments that I am not sure anyone cares about anymore and that is number three which states, "You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name." 

I mean it sounds like God is pretty serious about this one and yet on a daily basis we hear people tossing around God's name in vain with reckless abandon.  And so the question is why is God so serious about this and why are we so unserious about it.? To start thinking about this question I want to start with a rather lengthy quote from G.K. Chesterton.  I apologize for its length but I think it is all necessary to get the point.  Chesterton states, "There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, 'I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away.' To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: 'If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.'"  So to paraphrase and put in context where I want to go: Chesterton is saying that modern people do not see the use in not taking the Lord's name in vain so they simply ignore that commandment, but what we should do is to try and understand why such a restriction was there in the first place.     

          Let's first start with just what this commandment is telling us.  It tells us not to misuse God's name, which sometimes gets translated as taking the name of the Lord in vain.  It is essentially saying that there are appropriate uses of God's name and that there are inappropriate uses and that we are not to use God's name inappropriately.  The basic distinction between appropriate and inappropriate is whether we are using God's name as a way to bring ourselves up to him or to bring him down to us.  So to illustrate the difference let's look at some examples.

          First, in terms of appropriate use let's look at the first verse of the 63rd Psalm which states, "O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water."  Now notice the Psalmist does not restrain from using the name of God, in fact he uses it twice, but look at how he uses it. He basically is saying three things about God in the Psalm.  First who God is: he is his God.  Second, he says that he is seeking after God and third, he states that his body and soul needs God for their very existence.  So in this Psalm there is an acknowledgement of who God is, the Psalmists declaration of a desire to be with God, and a statement of the Psalmist's total dependence on God.  It is both a statement of truth and a statement of desire to draw closer to God.  Now let's look at another example of using God's name in a less than proper way and see if we can spot the difference.

For fun I put the term OMG in Google.  Quite frankly I wasn't sure if the young kids were still using this abbreviation, but apparently they are.  For those of you unfamiliar with this term OMG is short for Oh My God.  So after using Google, the first story I saw had the headline, "OMG, I Want this House", which I found particularly funny because it was taking the Lord's name in vain in order to covet a neighbor's house.  It was a two for the price of one in terms of breaking of the Ten Commandments.  But I want to focus on the second one I saw read which stated, "OMG! You Need To See Kylie Jenner's Push Present." For those of you not familiar with Kylie Jenner, you are indeed blessed, but I will ruin that for you and let you know that she is the half-sister of Kim Kardashian.  Also for a little more clarification I learned that a "push present" is something that you get after you have delivered a baby.  So it seems that Kylie's boyfriend gave her a one million dollar Ferrari to thank her for delivering the child.  And if you are curious the car has only two seats and I am relatively certain that Ferrari does not make a child safety seat.  I will leave it for you to judge if this is a statement about the priority of the new child in their lives.  But back to using the Lord's name in vain.  The question with this headline is what does God have to do with this situation?  There is no acknowledgement of who God is or a desire for closer communion with him.  It simply seems that his name is mentioned to add some excitement about this gift.  It's almost like God is called in to warm up the crowd so that they are in the right mood when we hear the really important news about Kylie Jenner and her new Ferrari.  And this is what I mean by bringing God down to us.  The Psalmist mentions his total dependence on God whereas this article about Ms. Jenner mentions God for no greater reason than to bring greater glory to this bit of information.  In one we glorify God in the other God is there to glorify us.

          Now I assume that many would reply that this is not really what it means, that it is simply just a phrase, devoid of larger meaning like how people say awesome to mean that they like something.  I would agree that in most cases it is probably meant as a simple interjection to draw attention to what is going to be said next.  But let's think about it in terms of Chesterton.  Why was there an injunction in the first place?  I think it has to do with our relationship to God.  If we believe that God is the creator and sustainer of the universe that makes God pretty important and quite superior to us.  So part of maintaining a proper relationship is remembering that God is set apart from us.  In fact the term holy simply means set apart.  Just as we wouldn't have the dog eat its dinner off of our grandmother's china we should not treat God in the same way that we would treat common things.  Similarly, we should not treat the name of God in the same way as we treat the word "wow" or "neat."  The injunctions against using God's name in vain are the entry level for treating God as set apart and for seeing with wonder and awe just who God is.  For the thing is, it is only when we properly understand who God is and who we are in relationship to him that we can properly and fully live our lives.

          Our ancestors knew some things and God knows some things as well. And so this rather odd sounding injunction is really about putting us in a proper place in terms of our relationship with God.  Often in life it is the small things, done faithfully, that form the character of who we are.  Not taking God's name in vain is a daily practice, which can help draw us closer to God so that we may be his both now and forevermore. 

Sermon (Fr. Peay) February 25, 2018

“For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?”

            One of my very favorite films is “A Man for All Seasons.” Written by Robert Bolt, the film is based on the life of Thomas More and chronicles his relationship with Henry VIII – it’s a brilliant film. There is a scene where More is confronted by his accusers at his trial, and one in particular, Sir Richard Rich, perjures himself and accuses More of treason. Rich had recently been appointed as Attorney General for Wales and was wearing the appropriate chain of office – embossed with a red dragon. Sir Thomas More asks Rich what the chain is for and, on being told says, “For Wales? Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world, but for Wales?”

            As I look at the situation of our nation and the world I suppose we could fill-in the response with any number of things, couldn’t we? How many people have sold their souls, ruined themselves and their families, in the pursuit of profit, or of political power? How many people have sold themselves to get ahead, only to discover that they’re not even close to being ahead. The tragedy of the human condition is when we simply forget who we are and then try to “gain the whole world” to fill the hole in us that can only be filled by right relationship with the God in whose image and likeness we are made.

            I so appreciate what contemporary spiritual writer Cynthia Bourgealt has to say in her wonderful book Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening. She writes, “Jesus taught from the conviction that we human beings are victims of a tragic case of mistaken identity. The person I normally take myself to be—that busy, anxious little “I” so preoccupied with its goals, fears, desires, and issues—is never even remotely the whole of who I am, and to seek the fulfillment of my life at this level means to miss out on the bigger life. This is why, according to his teaching, the one who tries to keep his “life”

(i. e., the small one) will lose it, and the one who is willing to lose it will find the real thing.” God’s way of helping us not to lose sight of the real thing, of the bigger picture, of the real life to which we are all called – and for which we were all destined – is the covenant.

            What we see in the reading from Genesis is the beginning of that covenant relationship. When God extends the promise of relationship to Abram and to his descendants, which the Romans reading reminds us includes us. What, then, is a covenant? A covenant is a solemn promise made binding by an oath. The oath may be either verbal or symbolic. The oath demonstrated the actor's obligation in making good the promise. The covenant-concept was quite prevalent in the ancient near East, but there are profound differences between those and the Hebrew idea of covenant. Typically a covenant is a bi-lateral arrangement; this is not the case with that entered into by God and Abram and what will become the nation of Israel. The covenant is seen as a gift God makes to the people, which takes the covenant-relationship beyond the level of a contract into that of a bond of communion. The Dutch Old Testament scholar, Theodore Vriezen, has said, "the Covenant between God and the people did not bring these two 'partners' into a contract-relation, but into a communion, originating with God, in which Israel was bound to him completely and made dependent upon him."  To put it into the most basic terms – it’s a relationship.

            While God sacrifices none of his holiness, he extends participation in that holiness to his people. The people may violate the covenant, may depart from the covenant, but they are forever marked by its effect. The implications of this communion are made even more profound when considered in the light of the Old Testament understanding of humanity made in the "image and likeness of God" (Genesis 1:26ff). Or, in the words of the Psalmist: "what is man that thou art mindful of him?. . .Yet thou hast made him little less than God, and dost crown him with glory and honor" (Psalm 8:4-5). The covenant brings a dignity to humans called into this relationship that is far more than any mere contractual arrangement could ever bring.

            In the person, the life, and the work of Jesus Christ the covenant-concept is raised to a new level, as is the divine-human relationship. The law of love becomes the definitive standard for the Christian community, since it was by demonstrating this law in his act of absolute self-giving on the cross that the Christ brought salvation. This is Paul's point when he talks about how it was in faith that Abraham became the father of many nations and reckoned to him as righteousness. It is through our faith in this new covenant made in Jesus that will bring us to that same righteousness and bring us back into the relationship for which we were destined. As Paul says, “Now the words, ‘it was reckoned to him,’ were written not for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.”

            What is more, in the covenant of grace God pursued fallen humanity and brought it back to its original situation. Here the individual believer is given a new dignity, like the dignity given to all of Israel. The relationship entered into by God and a particular person in the covenant of grace implied a relationship between all those who had entered into the covenant, which is undertaken through Baptism. This is why we renew it each year at Easter time.

            The covenant, then, reminds us that there is such a thing as a common good, that there is a bigger picture and of which we are a part of it.. It is very important for us to remember that what happened with Abram, later Abraham, was that God took an individual and brought a people into being. It wasn’t about Abram, it was about God’s gift of relationship and the widening of that relationship from a single family to a much, much wider picture.

            So we have to remind ourselves again and again that our life in faith, our growth in spirituality isn’t ultimately about our own self-satisfaction or our own self-fulfillment. Rather, it’s about being part of the bigger picture and finding our true selves in that relationship. As William Neil points out in his book, The Difficult Sayings of Jesus: “It

has been clear to every martyr what Jesus meant when he said: ‘What does a man gain by winning the whole world at the cost of his true self?’ or in the more familiar words of the King James Version: ‘What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’ For them ‘the whole world’ meant home and family, security and a peaceful life. All of this they were ready to sacrifice rather than be false to their commitment to Christ. It would have meant for them, as the author of Hebrews says, ‘crucifying the Son of God again—and making mock of his death’ (Heb. 6:6).… Self-sacrifice, self-denial, and self-giving are the hallmarks of our true selves, the men and women that God means us to be. This is the abundant life to which Jesus calls us, compared with which worldly success, fame, and fortune are tawdry baubles, which end with our bodies in the grave. But a life lived in the spirit of Christ will never die. It has a quality that is eternal.”

            God’s response to our self-focused condition is to extend God’s self to us through the covenant; a covenant, a relationship which was put into flesh in the person of Jesus the Christ. God’s response to our condition tells us just how much we’re valued. How do we respond to God’s invitation to covenant relationship? How do we demonstrate that we see a picture with a focus larger than ourselves? Perhaps by living as freely toward God as God has lived toward us in Christ? What does it profit……

Sermon (Fr. Cunningham) February 25, 2018

    If there is a theme which runs through today's readings that theme would seem to be that God's ways are not our ways.  Today we hear of Abraham learning at the age of ninety-nine that he is going to start having a family.  In Paul's letter to the Romans we get a further reminder of that miraculous feat and then in the Gospel lesson we learn just how things are going to end up for Jesus, which is the whole being crucified and rising again business.  Now if I were writing a book and wanted to explain the birth of a great nation I probably would not start with a ninety-nine year old dude nor would I create a messiah who gets crucified.  And the reason I probably would not do this is because it just sounds so odd and no one would find it believable.  Human instinct says that when you start a nation you need to find some young virile individuals and if you are going to have a messiah they should be triumphant types, riding at the head of an army, not getting themselves nailed to a tree.  And so what should we take from this?  How are we to understand a God who does things differently than we do?  And how should this impact our lives?

    Such a discussion should probably start with just what we mean by the word "differently."  In the examples we have today, God acts in ways that we would not intuitively act, which seems as good of definition as any.  But the question that this raises is why wouldn't we act as God acts.  For the answer I am tempted to throw down the standard church response of sin and move on.  And honestly it is not a bad answer but it does need some further refinement.  The sin part of the explanation helps us partially understand why we would not pick a ninety-nine year old man for an important task or have a crucified messiah.  And the partial thing that it explains is that we as humans often look to characteristics that are not the most important ones.  We deal with the superficial rather than the whole.  A good example of this comes from the Old Testament.  Think back to the story of Saul.  The Israelites decided they wanted a king and then they decided on Saul to be their king, largely because he was really good looking - I mean you can't have a king that looks like a toad can you?  But of course he turned out to be a lousy king.  Sin blinded the Israelites to the things that God sees and made them choose someone who was a disaster.  Similarly, when Peter rebukes Jesus for having the gall to not act the way he believed a Messiah should act he is again looking at the wrong things.  He is looking at what he wanted the Messiah to look like, rather than understanding what God was doing. 

The sin in both of these instances is humanity putting its will over and above God's will.  And this is really the beginning of all sin, when we think we have a better idea than God.  And when we think we have a better idea than God we generally will miss what God is actually doing.  But I don't want this to be a "shame on you" type sermon where I tell you to be less sinful so that you can understand what God is doing, rather I want it to be an invitation for all of us to walk into some of the beauty and wonder that is God.  To look for the miraculous and to see the ways God manifests himself in our everyday life.  Because seeing God in this world is ultimately a more wonderful and more beautiful way to live.  Today Peter could not see the beautiful act of sacrifice that Jesus was explaining to him because he had preconceived notions of what the Messiah should do.  And if Peter had gotten his way and prevented Jesus from dying and rising again things would look very different for us today and by that I mean that the world would look pretty bleak because we would be without the whole salvation thing, but we can talk about that more on Easter.  Let's return to today's topic and ask how can we better see the beauty and wonder that might be right in front of us.  Well, let me offer three suggestions and those suggestions are to slow down, to keep our minds on heavenly things and to be grateful.  This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but just some things to think about and practice.

    The first thing that that I mentioned is that we could slow down.  And I realize the term "slow down" can be taken in a number of ways, but what I want to talk about it in terms of our mental processes.  Today Peter did not stop to listen and comprehend what Jesus was actually saying, but instead raced right into chastising him for not fitting into a category that Peter understood.  This is obviously not just a problem for Peter, our brains are wondrous and marvelous things but they can also do lots of stupid stuff (I spent four years in a fraternity so I know this all too well).  There is something in psychology known as heuristics (here-is-tics).  This is basically the study of mental shortcuts.  And what the term mental shortcuts means is that our minds will take previously learned knowledge and sort of shoehorn reality into that mode of thinking.  A trivial example of this happened to me years ago when we bought a new toaster.  Our old toaster was white and longish while our new toaster was black and sort of squat.  For months after I would look in the cupboard and be unable to find the toaster that was right in from of me because my brain had built a mental shortcut to look for a long white object, not something with the characteristics of a toaster, because long and white was the easier thing to see and took less mental energy.  Sometimes we need these mental shortcuts, like if we are being chased by a lion, but sometimes they prevent us from seeing something that is right in front of us, like my elusive toaster that was in plain sight.  We sometimes need to slow down and engage our brains to see what is really in front of us, not just see the thing for which we are looking.  Prayer, meditating on scripture and Bible study can all help us attain these "new eyes".  And what we might see with these "new eyes" is what God is actually doing.   

    The second thing that I would recommend is to think on heavenly things.  My reference for this comes from what I find to be one of the most beautiful verses in the Bible and it comes from Paul's letter to the Philippians.  It states, "Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things."  Our minds tend to want to go to places that are more in the non-praiseworthy category.  If you don't believe me watch one of those shows on cable news where people yell at each other or read the comments section on most websites.  But our minds do not have to go to the lowest common denominator; they can be raised and exalted to the heavenly things.  They can think on the things that are of God

    The last thing to think about is to be grateful.  To give thanks every day for all of the blessings in our life.  Gratitude helps us enlarge our view of life and it helps to fill us with joy.  The other thing that gratitude does is it takes us out of the center of the universe.  People who are ungrateful tend to see themselves as the arbiters of the entire world.  They judge what is right and wrong.  Grateful people see things as gifts, allowing them to be free to experience the joys in life and to see the things that are beautiful and wondrous. 

In Isaiah 55 we hear this, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."  These verses are not a call to throw in the towel and say that we will never have higher thoughts but are rather a call heavenward.  While it is certainly true that we will never be God, our goal should always be to reach higher, to ascribe to be more like God.  And part of becoming more like God is to better understand him and see what he is doing.  Some of it may seem odd at first because it can be different from what we usually see on earth, but it is the best thing.  In the person of Jesus Christ God has stooped down to us so that we may reach up to him.  Doing this will take changing some of our normal behavior but ultimately it will be a more wonderful and more beautiful way to live on this earth.  We sometimes miss things that God is doing and believe that it is because God is not doing anything.  But the case is often that we are simply missing it, because we are looking for or seeing something else.  But to see the beauty and wonder that is around us we step outside of ourselves and reach up to God so that we may be God's both now and forevermore.