Sermon (Fr Peay) June 10, 2018

St. John Chrysostom Episcopal Church – Delafield, WI

3rd Sunday after Pentecost (B) – June 10, 2018

The Very Rev’d Steven A. Peay, PhD

                  “Where are you?” That’s the question God asks in this almost idyllic, intimate scenario painted in Genesis 3. But that question carries some heft, it’s not just a “yoo hoo,” if you get my point. God is asking that hard question that I remember my mother asking when I had most certainly done something out of line, and she was looking to get to the bottom of the issue. WHERE ARE YOU?

                  That question still holds, doesn’t it? When we’re wondering where someone stands on a particular issue, how they have engaged – or not engaged – in an activity, name it, we very often ask, “where are you?” And God, the Creator, the One who made us in God’s own image and likeness continues to ask that question of us, and to seek after us. When you give it some serious thought the whole Biblical record is really the playing out of this initial question. God wants to know us, be intimate with us, and we flee – what’s the problem here?

                  Well, let’s look at what this particular account of the Fall, which would give us that great line in the various readers going back to the 1697 NEW ENGLAND PRIMER:  In Adam’s fall, we sinned all.  God goes looking for Adam, and Adam talks about his embarrassment at being naked, so “I hid myself.” God inquires how Adam even realizes that he IS naked, and then asks if Adam has partaken of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam IMMEDIATELY tries to shift the blame elsewhere, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.” Then God asks Eve and what does she do? “The serpent tricked me, and I ate.”

                  It’s like the commercial with the kids – covered in mud – standing on the carpet saying, “It’s not my fault.” Here is the essence of that dreaded three letter word: SIN. It starts with the desire of human beings to be in charge of our own destiny, to take God’s place (or as it says in the first account in Genesis 3:5 when the tempter says to the woman, “for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”) It is a desire to have all the authority with none of the accountability. It is a move toward self-centeredness and self-will – that’s sin. We’ve trivialized sin as a catch-all for various misdemeanors, and missed the reality of how it changes us from being OTHER focused to being self-focused, and concerned with self-justification.

                  What we see here is the continual conflicted state that human beings have been dealing with from our origins. And, that there are two accounts in Genesis  of the Creation and the Fall tell us that we’ve been trying to make sense of our condition for about as long. We see some of this same rather harsh reality in Paul’s Second Letter to the Church in Corinth. He tells them “our outer nature is wasting away . . . .the earthly tent we live in is [to be] destroyed, “   And there’s even struggle that works its way into Jesus’ family, at least that seems to be what Mark is indicating. The two bottom lines, what we can see in these readings, as the late Carroll Stuhlmueller said, intercept one another to give us a solid foundation on which to orient our journey. “The one line declares that sorrow cannot be avoided; struggle is part of living. The other line promises victory in the midst of this struggle, provided a person does not blaspheme against the Holy Spirit.” [Biblical Meditations, vol 5, p. 262] We Christians are not the only ones who grapple with this conflicted state of affairs. If you take a look at the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism you’ll discover that the first one says that life is suffering, and the other three deal with how one gets through dealing with suffering.

                  The last verse from Genesis we read today is traditionally called the Protoevangelion – the proto-gospel or first proclamation of the Good News. “I will put enmity between you and the woman,  and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.” God addresses this to the evil one, the tempter, but early Christians saw in those words the promise of God’s deliverance and the restoration of humanity to the intimacy for which we were created. 

We are, and we will be, engaged in an ongoing battle between good and evil. That’s the struggle, but there is an ultimately positive outcome. As Paul tells the Corinthians, “So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal. For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” Our task is to grow, day by day, more and more into the fullness of the life God has opened to us in fulfilling that Protoevangelion with THE GOSPEL revealed in Jesus Christ.

How do we do this? We do it by growing in spiritual maturity; to use Paul’s words in Ephesians 4: “We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.” Similarly in his letter to the Philippians Paul calls us to, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus…”  How does Jesus say it in Mark’s gospel: ““Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

My point is that we have to be serious about doing God’s will – and not our own. We have to work at the relationship we have with God in Christ which began at our baptism and should be maturing our whole lives. We deepen that relationship every time we spend time in prayer, time in prayerful, intentional study of God’s Word, and especially when we come to the Lord’s Table and receive Christ in the Holy Communion. It is in that divine exchange that we , in the Words of Rite I, as  “partakers of this Holy Communion, may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in us, and we in him.”  And in that mutual indwelling we are transformed, enabled to live, to love, and to serve just as Jesus did, and that’s where we’re supposed to be.

So, where are you?

Sermon (Fr Cunningham) May 27, 2018

            Last Thanksgiving, I was out to dinner with a friend from High School whom I had not seen in quite sometime.  At some point we discussed my decision to become clergy and he asked if this meant that I now had all of my questions answered.  He is not particularly religious and so I am not sure what motivated the question - perhaps he had encountered some religious types who had claimed that they had cornered the market on truth.  Anyway I told him that I certainly had not figured everything out and did not plan on doing so anytime in the near future.  And while I don’t want to disparage those who claim to know everything, it would seem that not knowing is the more intellectually defensible position.  That is admitting that there are lots of things which we will never fully understand.  And if there were ever a Sunday on which to admit this Trinity Sunday would seem to be a very good candidate.  But before we get into celebrating our ignorance, let’s take a moment and reflect on why today is Trinity Sunday. 

Its origins go back to at least Thomas Becket when he served as Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1100’s.  He was consecrated on this day (that is the Sunday after Pentecost) and he declared that this day should be a festival to the Holy Trinity.  I am not sure why he did – there may be a good reason, but I don’t have access to a good library here so I am having to use the internet for most of my research, which is not always the most trustworthy of sources unless what you are looking for involves cat memes.  So instead of relying on the Internet I will give you the reason I think it makes sense.  The Church calendar begins in Advent.  In that season we are introduced to God the Father.  Then comes Christmas through Easter wherein we are introduced to God the Son.  And last week we had the rush of the mighty wind and tongues as of fire, which heralded the introduction of God the Holy Spirit.  So I am not sure if what I am about to say sounds crude, and if so I apologize, but here goes.  If this were a cooking show this is the first Sunday where all of the ingredients necessary to make a Trinity have been assembled. 

And now with that out of the way we can get back to not understanding the Trinity.  There is an old, most likely apocryphal, story about St. Augustine, the great fifth century theologian not the city in Florida.  It seems that after St. Augustine had finished his work, which was entitled “On the Trinity” he went for a walk on the beach.  A little ways down the beach he happened upon a small boy who was digging a hole.  He asked the boy what he was doing and the boy replied that he was digging a hole so as he could put the ocean into it.  St. Augustine is reported to have laughed and told him there was no way that he would be able to dig a hole capable of holding the entire ocean.  The boy replied that this might be true but that he had a better chance of accomplishing this than Augustine had of understanding the Trinity. 

So what this tells us is that not understanding the Trinity is a very proud tradition within the Christian Church.  So why is this?  Why is there this lack of understanding?  Well the Trinity at its most basic is pretty incomprehensible.  It is three persons and one God.  Or in the words of the Athanasian creed, “we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the Persons; nor dividing the Essence. For there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son; and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal.”  It goes on for a while longer, but you get the idea.  Three person and yet one God, distinct and yet one.  If you think about it too long your head might hurt a little.  And if you push it much further than that and start feeling like you are getting it you are probably committing a heresy.  And so this brings up a further question that question is if the Trinity is incomprehensible why do people spend so much time writing about it and talking about it?  Well, I think the answer to that question requires us to go in a few different directions, which may or may not be related.  And since it is Trinity Sunday I will give you three reasons for why we should pay attention to the Trinity, which is also rather convenient because that is all I can think of off the top of my head and so that’s what you get.

First, just because we can’t fully explain the Trinity, it does not mean that we cannot explain any of it.  Most of you have probably heard the Indian fable of the blind men and the elephant.  The brief version goes like this:  A number of blind men go out to interact with an elephant and each of them end up touching a different part of the Elephant.  The first feels the trunk and declares that an elephant must be like a snake, while the second feels its ear and declares that an elephant must be like a large fan.  This goes on with each man touching a different part of the elephant declaring the animal to be a certain different thing.  And there are lots of conclusions one can reach from this story but the one I want to point out is that each man was right in his own limited capacity.  None of them grasped the entirety of the creature, but that does not mean that they did not grasp some of it.  We understand something of God the Father, something of God the Son and something of God the Holy Spirit.  Certainly not all, but something.  And so we should not allow the mystery to keep us from some knowledge.

Second, in explaining what the Trinity is we spend a lot of time explaining

what it isn’t which helps guard against heresy.  This is a bit of a theological point and one that would take much more than a few sentences to properly flesh out, but many of the problems in Christian history have been when people understood the Trinity a little too well.  That is when, in order to make it comprehensible they took some mental shortcuts and reduced much of the majesty of God as understood in the Trinity and gave us an inferior product. 

Which leads us to the third point and that is the Trinity helps remind us, in its  

 incomprehensibility, something of the vastness of God.  The fact of the matter is we need awe and wonder in our lives.  We need to have something to reach up to.  We can certainly be like the blind men and the elephant and stop with the little piece of God that we understand or we can keep longing, keep stretching striving to gaze on more of God.  And while certainly the Trinity reminds us that this side of eternity we will never fully grasp or see God that is not a call to stop looking.  The human heart without being called higher will deform and decay.  I think our modern times could use a little more mystery.  As we have explained more and more things it has made us grow somewhat suspicious of things we cannot understand, but some of the things that make us fully human we do not fully understand.  Can anyone fully explain the love they have for their spouse or the beauty of a mountain stream?  I would argue that there is something in the inability to fully describe that leads us further up to God.  We cannot fully explain love because it comes from God, the same goes for beauty.  Explanations and full understandings are fine when you need to fix the water heater, but when your focus is God it will not work because it is simply too much for our human minds to grasp.  But God has given us more than reason with which to understand him.  The heart strangely warmed as Wesley called it is a perfect and wonderful reaction to the mystery and beauty of the Trinity.  We don’t always have to understand things intellectually because God has given us different ways to understand things. 

So on this Sunday let’s give three cheers (get it) for the Trinity, that most wonderful and beautiful of mysteries which reveals the vastness and greatness of God so that we may be his both now and forevermore. 

Sermon (Fr Cunningham) May 13, 2018

            Today in our reading from Acts we have a mention of one of the lessor known disciples, Matthias, who was the replacement for Judas.  I have generally thought of Matthias in much the same way that I think about Sammy Hagar at the time when he joined Van Halen, in that they both replaced Jewish guys who had left the band over artistic differences – but enough of the wisecracks.  The story we have today is how all of this went down; that is how was a new disciple brought in to replace the disgraced and now dead Judas.  The text from Acts states, “Then they prayed and said, ‘Lord, you know everyone's heart. Show us which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.’ And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias; and he was added to the eleven apostles.”  We don’t know a whole lot about Matthias either before or after this story takes place.  There are legends that he went to Cappadocia and possibly Armenia, but really we know very little of the man except for the very few things that we can discern from this all too brief entry and those things are this: 1. Matthias was a follower of Jesus, 2. He possessed certain characteristics that made him a candidate for replacing Judas and 3. We learn that he was willing to take on the roll of Disciple.  And I think from this very little bit of information that we have we can learn something; that is we can take these small bits and view them as prescriptive for us and how we live our lives.  So today let’s review this information and see how Matthias can be a roll model for us.

            So lets start with the first thing, which is that he was a follower of Jesus, which rather obviously we should be too.  This may seem a pretty obvious thing for a bunch of people sitting around church and also a rather low bar for things to emulate about Matthias, but it is the place from where all things begin.  As Christians we should all be followers of Jesus.  Being a follower of Jesus is different than being a church attender or checking Christian as your preferred religion.  Being a follower is a call on our entire life.  And while something like this may sound rather simple in theory it can be much more difficult in practice, largely because we can be easily distracted and start following other things.  Or the other danger closely related to this is that we deceive ourselves into believing that we are following Jesus when we are, in fact, following something or someone else.  But Matthias is someone who had his gaze firmly fixed on Jesus. 

            The second thing about Mathias is that he was chosen.  That is, there was something in his life that made people notice that he reflected the teachings of Jesus – that is he was worthy of being a disciple.  This may sound like a crude example, but today’s story tells us really about when Matthias went from being in the minor leagues to being called up to the major leagues.  And the reason for this call up, just like in baseball was there was something about him that was different, that showed people just how adept he was at being a follower of Jesus.  It would seem that in being chosen Matthias had shown that he got it.  He had moved from purely an intellectual ascent to the teachings of Jesus to having those teaching permeate his entire being.  For it is one thing to say that we believe that Jesus is who he says he is and quite another thing to actually have it change who we are.  Where our following is exhibited in all parts of our life.  And it is not just doing it, but doing it well and wonderfully.  I don’t want to belabor this major and minor league Christian thing too because all metaphors can become ridiculous if pushed too far.  But I think some of the difference comes down to the fact that both of them know the scriptures and the call that Jesus makes on our live, but it is only the major league Christians that fully follow Jesus and submit their entire will to the will of Jesus.  And when this happens it is something that is recognizable.  Those who do it are followers in thought word and deed –all day and every day.

            The last thing that we see in Matthias is that once he was chosen, he willingly submitted to his new role.  Now I don’t have the specifics of the job description for an Apostle and how it differs from just some dude who followed Jesus, but I am fairly sure that it involves more work and more responsibility.  Essentially, what you see in this is that Matthias was such a follower of Jesus that it showed through in his life, but because of this God asks him for more - and Matthias accepts.  And this is part of the Christian walk that we sometimes forget.  We never reach a point where we are finished.  Matthias is chosen for more because he has done such a good job and God wants to see more of what he can do.  Put into other terms we might call this stretching.  That is when God has seen what we can do and is now asking for us to do more.  Now to clarify, I may be making this sound like God wants to add one more thing to our plate.  That is our reward for doing a good job is that we get more work to do, but that is not necessarily what stretching means.  It is not saying you are good at these two things let’s add two more, but rather it is calling us to something else, something more.  Think of it like when we learned math.  We learned addition, then subtraction, then multiplication and so on.  These things built on one another.  You did not have to continue all of your addition homework when you started to learn subtraction; instead you used your knowledge of the former to better understand the latter.  In 1 Corinthians 3:2, Saint Paul writes, “ I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food.”  In this passage Paul is acknowledging that there is a progression, that the place where we start is not the place where we end up – we move from milk to solid food.  Part of being a Christian is growing more towards God.  The Great fourth century theologian Gregory of Nyssa developed a concept called epektasis, which basically means perpetual progress.  He stated, “never cease straining toward those things that are still to come.”  Matthias shows us today that he was ready for the next step, for the higher calling of God and we should be ready for the same.

            And so let’s review the example of Matthias.  He was a follower of Jesus This following of Jesus permeated his entire being and he was not content with that but willingly strained towards the things that were to come.  Or put another way, he believed, he did and he wanted more.  All in all a pretty good example from a rather forgotten guy.    May we follow the path that Matthias has trod so that we may grow ever closer to God in thought, word and deed now and forevermore.