Baptism, and the Holy Spirit

Genesis 1:1-5
Psalm 29
Acts 19:1-7

Mark 1:4-11

Today is the first Sunday of Epiphany, the season when we remember God’s self-revelation in the Biblical narrative and look for her revelation in our own lives. Today’s Gospel reading is of Jesus’ baptism and God’s declaration that Jesus is indeed God’s son. But the Church has placed this gospel within the context of two other readings: the movement of the wind or Spirit of God at Creation, and an experience of baptism in the early church – an occasion when the baptized was also publicly blessed by the Holy Spirit. So our focus today is on the work of the Holy Spirit as we seek to deepen our understanding of God’s self-revelation in Jesus’ baptism and by extension, the revelation of God in our own baptism.

Pentecostal and charismatic Christians point to passages like the second reading to argue that every believer should have two experiences of baptism; one with water and another with the Holy Spirit. The Baptism of the Spirit is a spiritual experience which results in spiritual gifts like speaking in tongues, prophecy, gifts of knowledge and so on. During the late 60s through to the mid-70s there was a big resurgence of charismatic experience in the Episcopal Church which seems to have started in Van Nuys!

I often wonder why God does not seem to work in the same way with everyone at all times; why are we not all baptized in the Spirit and speaking in tongues?

I honestly don’t know the answer. I do know that if you read through the book of Acts there isn’t a clear pattern. Some people spoke in tongues before they were baptized, others after, and some not at all. I also know that God works in many different ways. So rather than dwelling on the spiritual experience known as Baptism in the Spirit, I want to spend our time this morning thinking briefly about the difference between the baptism of John and the baptism of Jesus and then use that understanding to think about the role of the Holy Spirit and baptism in our own lives.

At the time of Jesus and John it was believed that the coming of the Messiah would be preceded by widespread repentance, so John’s baptism was a sign of the coming of the Messiah, also understood as the coming of the Kingdom of God. To be baptized by John was a sign that you repented of your sins in preparation for what was to come. In Jesus the new revelation of God, the new kingdom was manifest.

So to be baptized in the baptism of Jesus is not preparation, it’s the real thing - full initiation into the kingdom of God. It not only takes away sin but restores us to the fullness of life we were meant to have. Cyril who was a 5^th century Patriarch of Alexandria thought that through his incarnation, Christ honored the flesh of all bodies and became the new tree of life. He said,

“If because of the tree of food they were thus cast out of Paradise, shall not believers now because of the Tree of Jesus, much more easily enter into Paradise?... Adam by the Tree fell; you by the Tree are brought to Paradise.”

Baptism grafts us into the Tree of Jesus.

Here’s a different analogy, this time from Gregory of Nyssa who lived a century earlier;

“Because our nature is mixed with the divine nature, our nature is made divine…. In the baptism of Jesus all of us, putting off our sins like some poor and patched garment, are clothed in the holy and most fair garment of regeneration.”[1]

So Cyril saw baptism as grafting us into the Tree of Jesus and Gregory saw it as making our human nature divine as we shed our sin and are made new people in Christ.

In Romans 6, Paul says

“Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” (Rom 6:3,4)

We too may live a new life. This, I think, is where the Holy Spirit comes in. Let’s go back to that image from the Creation story.

“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.”

When the earth was just a formless void, the Holy Spirit – the wind of God – swept over the waters and God spoke the creative word. Words are carried on breath. God’s creativity is carried by the breath of God, the wind, the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit sweeps over the face of the waters of baptism making us new. As a result of our baptism we are changed. The trajectory of our lives is changed forever. But it is the breath of God blowing in and through and around us which brings that change from being a nice idea hidden deep under the layers of human stubbornness into tangible reality.

It is the Holy Spirit who grafts us as branches into the Jesus Tree; it is the Holy Spirit who clothes us in the garments of regeneration; it is the Holy Spirit who raises us with Christ into the dawn of resurrection life.

In our baptism we are sealed as Christ’s own for ever. But this is not just a sacrament which shows our relationship with Christ, we are baptized in the Name of the Trinity – Creator, Word and Holy Spirit. It is a sacrament that brings us into new relationship with every member of the Trinity. It translates us into the Kingdom of God.

Making that a reality in our everyday lives is the work of a lifetime. We are already in the kingdom of God. Jesus told the Pharisees, “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say “Here it is” or “there it is” because the kingdom of God is within you.” (Lk17:21). We are in the kingdom and the kingdom is in us. Our task is to let it out.

Our task is to live every moment as if that is true. Our task is to manifest the kingdom of God here on earth, in our homes, in our work places, in our friendships and our families. Our task is to invite others into the kingdom with us.

We don’t have to do it alone. That’s the role of the Holy Spirit; to work with us and through us to bring the kingdom of heaven into full manifestation.

I suggest that you adopt a simple spiritual practice. Whenever you wash your face or take a shower, remember your baptism. Remember that you are sealed as Christ’s one for ever, that you are part of the manifestation of God’s kingdom. And ask once again for God to transform you into the Christ-like being you were made to be. Just a simple prayer, “Come Lord Christ” or “Make me new” prayed intentionally whenever you wash or shower will make an amazing difference.

For the Holy Spirit is waiting on tiptoe for us to come into our own.

---

[1] Brock and Parker, Saving Paradise, p.133

Baruch Hashem - Blessed be the Name

I expect some of you were surprised by our opening hymn this morning – you probably came to church this morning expecting to sing carols. But today is the day that we, the Church, celebrate the Feast of the Holy Name. The Feast of the Holy Name; at first glance this seems a little obscure. Why celebrate a name?

Today’s gospel reading records the baby of Bethlehem being circumcised, as all Jewish boys, and given his name, Jesus. The New Testament reading from Philippians told us more about his Name. In a hymn from the early church we heard:

"Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. "

When the angel Gabriel spoke to Mary about her coming child he said, “You are to give him the name Jesus.” (Lk. 1:31) And to Joseph he said “Mary will give birth to a son and you will call his name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.” (Matt. 1:21)

Jesus means “The Lord Saves."

For the ancients, names were very powerful. They represented the person and his or her attributes. So the Name of Jesus is in itself powerful and venerable. I think it may be a little like the American flag. When we take the pledge of allegiance we aren’t committing ourselves to a flag but to what it represents. But we honor the flag precisely because of what it represents. Even if we don’t stand to attention, we take notice when it is raised or lowered; and we use it to give military honors to those who die having served in the military.

For many years there were laws against “flag desecration” which were nixed by a 1989 Supreme Court decision in favor of free speech. Similarly, the third of the Ten Commandments says, “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God” (Ex 20:7). This is not about swearing in the sense of using bad words but in the sense of undervaluing the most sacred and precious thing there is. The Name of God is so sacred in Judaism that often Jews will call God HaShem which means “The Name”.

When we say a familiar name it brings with it a sense of the person. Just think about these names:

Mother Teresa

St. Francis

Gandhi

Martin Luther King Jr.

Hitler

Hitler has a totally different feel than the others doesn’t it? Because the name brings to mind the nature, character and spirit of the person it represents. A name has more power than just a label.

As today is the first day of the New Year, it is a good time to ponder what kind of name we each have and what kind of name we would like to have. When someone says your name, what comes to their mind about your nature, character and spirit? What do you want your name to mean? What are you doing to build those characteristics?

When someone says “St. Benedict’s” what does it say about us as a community?

Every time we gather together to worship or to serve we gather in the name of Jesus who said “Where two or three come together in my name, there I am in the midst of them” (Matt 18:20). I think Jesus was speaking as much about intention as about physical togetherness – whenever we gather our thoughts and intentions together in Jesus’ name, God is in the midst of us.

That is what gives us the hope that we can have a good name. We do not have to do it alone. We do not have to transform our hearts and lives on our own without help and assistance. God is with us. That’s another name given to Jesus – Emmanuel – God with us. Whatever the challenges you are facing today, the fears, the hopes, the anxieties as well as the joys, Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. Proverbs 18:10 says “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe.” God’s abundant love is available to us – it is as close as the Name.

In Acts the apostle Peter says, "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved." (Acts 4:12) Of course it would be superstitious to imagine that we are saved simply by saying “Jesus” – yet when we intentionally call upon the name of Jesus, it is truly powerful, because we are actually calling upon the nature, character and person of God.

Because it is so powerful, many Episcopalians choose to briefly bow their heads whenever the name Jesus appears in the liturgy. Because it is so powerful, and because Jesus told us to pray in his name, we often end our prayers “in the name of Jesus”.

Baruch HaShem; Blessed be the Name.

In a little while we will pray together, “Our Father in Heaven, Hallowed be thy Name”; Let us pray it in a different way today, remembering that a name is not just a label and the Name of God is holy and powerful.

In ending I want to return to the question of what our names represent. When someone says my name, what does it communicate about my nature, character and spirit? Here’s a poem that encapsulates my hope:

School Prayer

Diane Ackerman

In the name of the daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,

I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.

In the name of the sun and its mirrors
and the day that embraces it
and the cloud veils drawn over it
and the uttermost night
and the male and the female
and the plants bursting with seed
and the crowning seasons
of the firefly and the apple,

I will honor all life
—wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell—on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars.

© Vintage Books.

Salvator Mundi

The National Gallery in London has just unveiled a newly discovered painting. In 1958 Sothebys sold it for less than $100, and a few years ago it turned up in this country in an estate sale. Then it was a dull and dark painting of little merit, thought to be a poor copy of a missing painting by Leonardo de Vinci which scholars knew had once hung in the court of Charles 1. It took years of painstaking restoration to remove the layers of grime and added paint in order to reveal the original, a beautiful de Vinci painting – Salvator Mundi – the Savior of the World.

I suspect that for many of us, the Christmas story is like that painting. We know about it but we have put it away at the back of our minds to be pulled out once a year. It is covered by years of neglect, it has been painted over and changed into a minor thing of little beauty or importance except commercial hype. We have lost sight of the possibility that under the over-familiarity and the Hallmark glitz there is something of great worth.

We are cynical about the gospel narrative – scholars tell us that there is no independent account of the census which sent Joseph and the very pregnant Mary to Bethlehem. How likely is it, we ask, that she was a virgin? How likely is it that shepherds saw angels and went rushing to the town to find a baby in a stable? In our skepticism we lose sight of what is important – it’s not the details of the story but the meaning underneath.

The brief reading we heard from the letter of Titus sums up what is important in six words. “The grace of God has appeared”. The grace of God is always present, has always been present throughout eternity but now, in Jesus Christ, it has appeared. Jesus is God’s grace given physical, human form.

That is why we are here tonight. We know instinctively that somewhere underneath it all is something that we need, something that we long for, the knowledge of God’s grace and God’s salvation.

I love the word grace. It carries a number of meanings – it suggests beauty or elegance; it is pleasing or attractive; it can mean love and kindness or a favor bestowed by a superior; and finally it means mercy, clemency or pardon. God’s grace. God’s grace is found in Emmanuel – God-with-us. This is the astonishing news of Christmas which is always new because we so quickly forget – God is with us. God is elegantly and lovingly with us, holding out his hands to help us, always ready to welcome us into the mutual relationship with the divine which is the one thing that makes life fulfilling.

Let us briefly consider what it might mean to say that Jesus is the embodiment of God’s grace. In his earthly life we are told that Jesus healed, he cast out demons, he taught people to love and forgive, he transformed lives and then, betrayed by his friends he died an excruciatingly painful death only to be resurrected a few days later. What does this tell us about God’s grace?

It tells us that the grace of God-with-us brings healing, freedom from the things which enslave us and transformed lives as we learn to love and to forgive. It tells us that God-with-us has experienced the pain and difficulty of being human and living in a physical body and that whenever we are betrayed and let down by our friends, whenever we are hurting and in pain, that God is especially present. It also tells us that death is not the end. So we can take risks and experiment because life goes on, life always triumphs.

In the busyness of everyday living, of the innumerable activities that make up our lives it is easy to forget God’s grace and to think that it is all up to us. But God’s grace is always available. It is never forced on us. Like any Christmas gift we have to receive it and open it. We all get many opportunities in our lives to turn towards God and ask for God’s grace. Each time we turn God down it becomes harder for us to open and receive her gift. But tonight, tonight is one of those special times when the curtain between the seen and the unseen is very thin. Tonight is an opportunity. Tonight God’s grace is offered to you.

The painting which was hidden under the centuries of grime and amateurish over-painting was the Salvator Mundi – the Savior of the World. In this icon Jesus has his right hand raised in blessing while in his left he holds a crystal globe. The Salvator Mundi is not holding a symbol of the individual soul, but a symbol of the planet. At this time of planetary crisis, when climate change is threatening life as we have known it, it is good to remember that God’s grace and salvation are not just for us as individuals.

God’s grace is available for the whole planet as we go through this tumultuous time. Sometimes people ask me why God allows suffering to happen. For God to intervene without our invitation would be to remove the gifts of freewill and creativity which he has given us. God does not do the work for us - she does it with us. God-with-us, Emmanuel.

So the big question is: are you willing to accept God’s gift of grace and to work in co-creation with him to transform yourself and the planet? Are you willing to roll up your sleeves and do the hard work of restoration, co-operating with God in clearing away all the blocks that prevent you from being a clear channel for God’s grace to flow through you into the world bringing healing and transformation? Are you willing to take your part in bringing God’s grace to our troubled planet?

Are you willing to be part of the great work of bringing the true face of Salvator Mundi to the world?

Make Straight The Way of the Lord

Canticle 15
John 1:6-8, 19-28

I have been pondering the role of John the Baptizer as the voice crying in the wilderness. I’ve always thought of his living literally in the wilderness, but perhaps the wilderness can also be understood as the state of people’s hearts. They had wondered such a long way from the path of God that they could no longer hear and respond to God’s voice.

Perhaps if John had not prepared the people for Jesus by his own message of repentance and baptism, Jesus’ ministry would have been much more difficult. John’s message and John’s witness changed the way people thought about the world so that they were ready to hear Jesus. Have you noticed how the Occupy movement has helped to change the national conversation from focusing on debt to a focus on the gap between the top 1% and the rest of us? John’s message started people thinking about repentance and change, and prepared the way for Jesus.

Advent is the season of preparation, the season to consciously focus on the work we need to do to be ready for the second coming; to prepare for Christ to become more fully the center of our lives. God does not exist to do our bidding. Although we know that we are at our most vibrant and alive when we are Spirit filled and Christ centered, we cannot demand that the Spirit fill us or insist that Christ be reborn in our hearts. God is radically free. We know that He always hears our prayers and answers the longing of our hearts but we cannot control how and when She acts.

What we can do is prepare the space. We can start to live as if it were true. What difference would it make if your life more radically Christ-centered? How would you behave differently if your life were more Spirit-filled? Start to live like that.

What do you need to clear out of your mental attic or sort out in your psychic basement? Where is there a lack of integrity or a withholding of love? Where do you lack the confidence in God’s love to step into the person you know yourself to be?

So often we hold back. We allow ourselves to be too small. Whether it’s because of laziness or lack of confidence, we don’t step into our place as the daughter or son of God. It is time now for us to start living as if we really are God’s children. It’s time for us to occupy the space that God has prepared for us. In one of those wonderful paradoxes that fill our spiritual lives, God has already prepared the space for us to occupy even as we are preparing ourselves to open a greater space for God to occupy.

This is not a one way relationship. When we pray, God does not have to jump to do what we say. Neither does God tell us what to do without allowing us to make our own choices. Amazingly enough, our relationship with God is the relationship of one free being with another, and it is a relationship of love. So in her immense and indescribable love for you God is already preparing the place for you to step into as you decide to prepare your life for God to step into.

It’s fortunate that God is not a genie in a bottle who appears to do our bidding, because we often do not know what it best for us. The three wishes that we think will bring happiness often lead instead to greater misery as we focus on ourselves in isolation from Spirit and in isolation from each other. God’s will for us is not something to be feared – why would God ask us to do anything that is against our basic nature or against our flourishing? God’s will is always generous and spacious even when it is the opposite of what the people around us tell us to do.

As we step into the space of God’s generosity we find increasing connection and spaciousness as we loose our tight grip on trying to make things better for ourselves and allow ourselves to experience the Body of Christ – the people of God gathering to worship and serve God in a way which none of us can do as individuals.

So this is the season not only for preparing gifts but also for giving to God the things that stop us being generous and spacious. The places that we hold tight and secret. It’s time to let go of the anger you have cherished against your father; it’s time to let go of the pride which stops you asking for help; it’s time to ask God to gracefully remove all the things in your life which prevent you from being the vibrant, generous Christ-like child of God you were created to be. As you seek to make straight the way of the Lord in your heart, you will find that angels are working with you, you will find that Jesus himself is there, you will feel the wind of the Holy Spirit blowing newness and hope through the windows that you unshutter.

John was not the light, he came to bring witness to the light. We are not the light but Christ living in us and working through us is the light. It is our task to continue everyday to occupy that space. It is our task every day to work together with the Holy Spirit to change the attitudes and habits that prevent us from fully allowing the light to shine. It is also our task to witness to the light – to help others to see the hand of God at work in the world, and to bring hope.

Wherever we look there are people and situations in need of hope. Our hope is in God who will work in, and through, and round us to bring new life to all who seek Her.

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; *
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed: *
the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name.
He has mercy on those who fear him *
in every generation.

Are we ready?

Isaiah 64:1-9
Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Mark 13:24-37

Well we’ve got Thanksgiving out of the way and the folk on my street are getting their Christmas lights out, it’s the beginning of Advent when we prepare our hearts for the coming of the Christ child, and we come to church only to be hit with a gospel reading – the so-called Good News – all about cataclysm.

Jesus said to his disciples, "In those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.”

We have this reading today because Advent is not just the season of preparation for Christmas, but also the season when we specifically remember that scripture talks about a coming time when Christ will return. And the big question is, will we be ready?

According to Hopi and Mayan teachings 2012 will be a turning point for the planet. We have seen many end time predictions come and go, and Jesus is quite clear that we will not know when the second coming will happen. But we can be quite clear that life as we have known it on this planet is over. There are already too many greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The climate has changed and will continue to change. Some places will become hotter, others colder. Some places will become drier, others wetter. Animals will migrate, some will become extinct. Large numbers of people will migrate trying to find a way to survive, and many will die.

It’s not a pretty picture. And it seems that as a nation we are paralyzed and unable to make decisions or do anything positive to reduce the impact of the changes that are already happening.

So the question of whether we are ready for cataclysm is no longer just for preachers. It is real and here for each one of us. We are all facing disaster, whether the personal disasters that come with living – ill health, the death of loved ones, bankruptcy, destitution; the gradual stripping away of old age as we can do less and less of the things that gave us joy and supported our identity; or the natural disasters of a changing planet – earthquake, flood, drought, fire, storm. We are all facing cataclysm. Are we ready?

This is a good time of year to consider whether you have water, canned goods, flashlights and all the things they tell you we should have on hand in case of disaster. But the question for us as people of faith is a deeper one. How prepared are we spiritually for things to go wrong?

It’s pretty easy when things are going well to give thanks and praise God. In fact, many of us tend to think that when things are going well it’s a sign of God’s blessing. But when things are not going well we think that somehow we cosmically screwed up, or God is mad at us, or God has forgotten us. Yet life is full of good times and bad times, even without climate change. God’s love for us does not change. The story of Job is a constant reminder that bad things happen to good people and God still loves us.

Spiritual preparation means letting go of our attachment to things going well. If we are only okay with ourselves and God when it’s a sunny day and life is easy, then we will not have the strength of faith and character we need when disaster comes. The way to let go of this attachment is to deepen our faith in God, deepen our relationship with the divine however we understand her, and to practice serenity and giving thanks.

Our readings speak of being alert and waiting for Christ’s coming and for God’s revealing of God’s Self. In our baptismal vows we declared that we turn to Christ. Being alert is a daily, a minute by minute turning to Christ. This is not just something we reserve for Sundays or for times when we worship together, this kind of turning to Christ is a life work, a daily discipline.

The contemporary mystic Andrew Harvey talks of the importance of preparing for the coming cataclysm even though we have no idea what it will be. Harvey suggests that we will be able to be midwives of the new, that we can be part of God’s new work. We know that out of disaster God always brings resurrection. That is the basic mystery of our faith. Resurrection follows crucifixion. New life follows death. God is doing a new work in our midst even as we stand here. Even as the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases, God is preparing resurrection. We can be part of that new work even if we do not survive to see it some to fruition.

We can be part of that new work in two ways. Firstly, by deepening our spiritual practice, and secondly by refusing to become paralyzed. Find something, anything, that you can be passionate about that touches the need of the world, and do it. Frederick Buechner famously described this as the place “Where our deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet”. But we can get paralyzed trying to find that place. We can get paralyzed thinking that nothing we do will have an impact. But everything we do has an impact.

Today you may feel no passion, there may be no cause which calls to you, no campaign that you want to take up. In that case, ask God what you should do and then trust that he is guiding you as you find something, anything, that uses your energy to bring good to the world. Work in the Abundance Shop, walk dogs at Animal Services, volunteer at the Prado Day Center, write letters to the President, read books to shut-ins, re-invent your life so that you create no greenhouse gases. As Nike said, Just do it.

And give thanks. In all things, give thanks. When you look at your unpaid bills, give thanks, when you look at a flower, give thanks, when your joints ache, give thanks, when the sun rises, give thanks. This is a sure way to deepen your walk with God. In every circumstance, however good it seems, however bad it seems, give thanks to God “who will also strengthen us to the end, so that we may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful.”

Thanks be to God!

Loving God

Matthew 22:34-46

You’ve heard me say it before – our faith is not primarily about right belief, nor is it about right action, though both are important and both have their place. Our faith is primarily about right relationship, and in this morning’s gospel we have it from the lips of the master himself,

"`You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: `You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

The whole of the faith tradition, the law and the prophets can be summed up in these two commandments – both commandments to love, to be in right relationship.

But often when people tell me, it’s all about being loving, I shudder. Because this isn’t about sentiment. It isn’t about warm fuzzy feelings. The kind of love that Jesus is talking about is not easy, it doesn’t necessarily feel nice and it isn’t always pleasant. It isn’t about smiling at people in the supermarket or helping an old lady cross the street. This is the kind of love that gets us into trouble. The kind of love that leaves Jesus strung out on a cross. An inconvenient love.

"`You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: `You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

Sometimes people want to make Christianity all about being good to other people and they forget the first commandment, to love God. So this morning let’s just try to reflect on what it might mean to love the Lord our God.

There are preachers who argue that to say our faith is primarily about a relationship with God is misguided if not downright foolish. How, they say, can we have a relationship with Ultimate Being, with spirit who blows this way and that and no-one knows where it is coming from or where it is going?

From their perspective, by over-emphasizing relationship we run two risks.

The first is that we domesticate God – we imagine her as a kind of human – someone rather like us – we get into thinking what a friend we have in Jesus and soon we’re pals with the All-Compassionate, which reduces the awesome God who hung the heavens to the status of an invisible friend. The other risk is that we imagine that each of us will experience relationship with God in the same way and if mine doesn’t look like yours then one of us must be wrong, or inferior, or better. Which can lead to someone thinking that somehow they’re doing something wrong because they don’t have that “joy joy joy joy down in their heart” all the time.

Just recently we’ve learned that Mother Theresa didn’t experience a warm loving close relationship with God for much of her ministry – she experienced the silence and apparent absence of God – all she had to go on was her faith. This is true of other saints too. So it may be that those of us who have good warm or exalted feelings of God’s presence are the absolute beginners and those of us who keep wondering if God really exists are actually much further along the spiritual path!

If you’re having warm feelings about God it’s fairly easy to think about loving God with “all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” But if you’re not, if your experience is closer to Mother Theresa’s then how do you know that you are loving God? What does it mean to love the ineffable?

Now you might say, you know that you love God when you love other people but I think it is possible to love another human and not love God. Love is a multi-faceted thing. Some love is a selfish, clinging unhealthy love, but it’s still love. I don’t think that loving which is dependent and demanding and focused on getting our needs met is the kind of love that Jesus is talking about. Nor is the superficial love which is generally friendly but doesn’t cost anything.

If we are followers of Jesus and believe that he gives us the ultimate example of how to be fully human, and we are learning to love in the way that he loved, it’s going to be costly. It’s going to require an effort. It’s going to mean letting go your own desires and reining in your reactions so that you can be truly present and open to the other person and the situation.

Which may be how we show that we love God.

So this morning let’s ponder these three questions:

How do we imagine God?

How do we know that we love God?

How do we show that we love God?

…

The Wedding Robe

Matthew 22:1-14

Did any of you hear Prairie Home Companion yesterday?

If you did you will know that in the News from Lake Woebegone, Pastor Liz was worrying about her sermon for today because the gospel reading was, in Garrison Keillor’s words, such a “cranky bit of Scripture”.

It certainly is. And it highlights one of the difficulties of reading Scripture on your own without the benefit of a faith community. If we take this on face value we end up with a judgmental and vindictive God who picks on people for not wearing the right clothes. Since that’s not the God we know, we need to put this in a context which can help us understand it differently.

It seems that both Matthew and Luke drew from a written source which is not longer in existence. Scholars think this because they both include parables and sayings of Jesus which are remarkably similar but do not appear in Mark or John. But in this case there’s quite a difference in the way Matthew tells the story from Luke’s version. It seems that Matthew rewrote it to make it into an allegory of salvation history – a way of telling what he sees as the central movements of God’s actions and plans for all of human history.

Since it’s an allegory and not a parable, we don’t need to bother too much about whether the details of the thing make sense the way they do with regular parables. So, for example, we don’t need to worry about how the king keeps dinner warm while he makes war against the first set of invited guests, destroys their city, and then has the banquet in that same city on pretty much the same day. That sort of thing is no problem in an allegory.

In this allegory, the first guests stand for Israel. The first two sets of slaves who issue the invitation represent the prophets of the old covenant, which is why some of them are beaten up and killed, hardly the usual way of declining an invitation. The city that is destroyed represents Jerusalem. If you detect some similarities between this story and last week’s story about the vineyard workers who killed the messengers sent by the owner, you are on the right track.

In the second part of the allegory, the slaves who are sent into the main streets to invite just anybody are the apostles, the followers of Jesus after the resurrection, who brought the church together. And the church, Matthew knew all too well, was filled with both good and bad, righteous and unrighteous, deserving and undeserving. After all, “everyone” means everyone: good, bad, and indifferent. The second crowd is very different from the first group, just as the church was very different from the leaders of Israel.

Matthew is expressing the early Christian belief that, in spite of the words of the prophets and of John the Baptist, Israel, especially Israel’s leaders, had repeatedly ignored God’s invitation to his great messianic banquet for his son Jesus. So they are rejected, and the church is formed by the apostles. Remember, the apostles are represented in this allegory by the slaves who are sent to everybody else, to the lower classes, to women, to the gentiles, to the ones who had been ignored. And the apostles are told not to judge, but to invite.

Not to judge but to invite. I’m going to linger here for a moment because in Luke’s version this is pretty much where the story ends (Lk. 14:16-24). Jesus adds that none of those originally invited will have a taste of the banquet – why? Not because they are bad but because they refused the invitation.

The image of a heavenly banquet is an important image in the Old Testament when the Lady Wisdom invites all who wish to come to her house to eat and drink wisdom. It is also important in our liturgy. We think of our Eucharistic meal as a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, a foretaste of the time when we will gather with all the saints and feast together in God’s house.

Our task is like that of the apostles – to invite, not to judge. I know I often judge whether it’s the “right time” to mention God or St. Benedict’s in my conversation. Sometimes people are receptive and sometimes they are not. It is not my place to judge whether they are someone who would fit in here or someone who seems receptive to God. It is my place to invite. Having said that, there can be risks involved, as these poor servants found when they gave the invitations to the original guests and had their throats slit in thanks. So it is I think, important that we are prayerful in our interactions with friends, neighbors and strangers. Prayerful so that we can hear when it is the best time to speak and the best time to refrain from speaking.

But make no doubt about it, it is our job to invite and not to judge the person or the outcome.

Ok, so what about the poor guy who isn’t dressed properly? Pastor Liz of the Lutheran church in Lake Woebegone concludes “Well sometimes life’s a bitch.” That’s certainly true and I imagine most of us have had experiences where we feel like we stick out like a sore thumb, because we misread the situation in some way.

But that’s not where Matthew is going.

Ever since being a child I’ve wondered where all these people kept their wedding garments. I have tried to imagine the beggar getting up from the dusty roadside, saying “Wow, a wedding” and rushing to some shower and locker room where all the poor of the city keep their wedding garments.

Better minds than mine have struggled with similar questions. Scholars have spent a lot of time guessing what the reference to a “wedding robe” or a “wedding garment” meant back then. Since nobody really knows what a “wedding robe” means, the guesses have included everything from ordinary clean clothes to a robe everybody supposedly had hanging in their house if they would only take a second to pick it up, to the white garments often given to newly baptized Christians.

Some interpreters even say the problem is the man’s silence, not his clothes. Still others like to talk about an inner state or condition. Some say the wedding robe is a metaphor for a “garment of good works.” Saint Augustine said that the wedding robe was “love that springs from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and a genuine faith.”

Another theory is that the wedding garment was a robe that the host gave to the guests as they arrived that the guests put on over whatever else they were wearing.

But remember, what is happening here is not supposed to be a precise example of Palestinian social customs. Concern for accurate detail has gone out the window. This is a story about the final judgment!

Perhaps what Matthew is saying is that the church is full of people at different stages of spiritual growth, and that we can’t impose our own ideas of what is true and good on anyone else. Just like God does not impose on us. We still have free will. Here at St Benedict’s we have name tags to help those of us (like me) who have sudden senior moments not to embarrass ourselves, and also to help us learn each others names quickly. But we don’t insist that everyone wear them.

You don’t have to conform. You don’t have to wear the wedding robe. God invites everyone and it is up to each one of us how far to accept the invitation. There may be people sitting here this morning who are really here because they like the company and the coffee is so good. That’s just as OK as the people who are sitting here because they hear God’s calling and are saying yes to growing more and more Christ-like despite the cost. We do not get to judge one another.

I know there are people sitting here this morning who wonder why they’re really here. Who feel a bit like the guy without the wedding robe. So perhaps the message of this parable to them is that’s ok. You are a free being just as God is Free Being and you can decide. However there are consequences to your life decision.

Just as there are consequences for all of us. Have you accepted the invitation but neglected to take on the “garment of good works” or the “love that springs from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and a genuine faith”? In every moment there is an opportunity to change your mind and get a clean, new, shiny wedding robe.

Let’s do that today.

With thanks to the Rev. James Liggett and Sermons that Work:

http://www.ecusa.anglican.org/sermons_that_work_129784_ENG_HTM.htm.