Category: Sermons

By Deacon Virginia Jenkins-Whatley

Sermon December 13, 2020

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy
Spirit, one God now and forever. Amen.
In the Webster’s dictionary, “patience” is described
as able to accept or tolerate delays, problems or
suffering without becoming annoyed or anxious.
“Be patient, your time will come.”
COVID is one of the most deadliest if not the
deadliest disease that has struck our country and
the world. We have been confined to our homes
and life as we have lived it has changed
tremendously. Despite the immediate change in
life, family, work and play we have been forced to
learn about patience.
Today is the third Sunday of the Advent season. We
have learned these past two Sundays about being
prepared, holding vigil, waiting and watching for the
coming of our Lord Jesus. He is to come at first for
his birth and then again for his second coming. We

may be surprised how taking a moment, waiting,
and being patient may help in our preparation.
The thought of Jesus’ coming at Christmas brings
joy and excitement with thoughts of family and
celebration . And we cannot wait! The thought of
Jesus’ coming to judge us, on the other hand, can
bring a fair amount of anxiety. For that we could
wait many life times.
Preparation for Christmas offers honest delight.
However due to COVID changes, we rely on
memories from before. Hope for the good times to
come again. Preparation for the second coming
offers a whole different preparation. It is about
living our lives as faithful covenant people,
following God’s commandments, loving one
another, praying and being penitent. Sometimes
patience and waiting seem to have no place in
either.
In the gospel reading this morning we learn who
knows. There was a man sent from God whose

name was John. He came as a witness to testify to
the light, so that all might believe through him. He
himself was not the light, but he came to testify to
the light.
Our excitement for this season of Advent is
building, but we are not being asked to return to an
old life, we are being called to an alternative life, a
new one, to a new place, a place of hope and
expectation. “Something’s coming,”
Last Sunday, John was identified for us in Mark’s
gospel as a baptizer. This Sunday, in John’s gospel,
his role has changed. Here John is to be a witness to
Jesus. Through John’s witness, the world will come
to know the presence of God in Jesus. Through
John’s witness, the world will come to know the
presence of the light to the world. The light in the
ancient world was a symbol for recognizing God and
life everlasting. In the New Testament, the light is
Christ, the light of the world who calls us out of
darkness into his marvelous light.

The good news this Christmas season is this
marvelous light has already entered into many of
us. Here, in our heart and soul, we have received
the light of Christ. Our entry point to this truth is
our baptism.
Baptizing babies, all dressed in white, doesn’t
appear to be so life changing on the surface.
Without it, however, we are lost to a world of
darkness. John warns us, “I am the voice of one
crying out in the wilderness, make straight the way
of the Lord.” Here is a clear and powerful critic of
our lost world of darkness and sin. John’s voice is
crying out to tell where he is and where we are also.
It is from our wilderness of sin that we are to make
straight the way of the Lord. Our baptism becomes
our entry way to making our life straight, making an
alternative lifestyle.
Our conversion to this new life will only be
successful through the steady, patient, intentional,
prayerful, and worship filled new life that we

Christians testify will draw us closer to Jesus and
indeed make us safe and joyous. That alternative
life is one grounded by scripture and enacted
through the tradition of the church. We have both
at hand here with us this morning.
The preparation we face today is one of living and
practicing this new life by remembering the
baptismal light that is alive in our very soul, then
living as if this truth makes a difference. Every step
we take in our preparation for the coming of the
Lord is a step toward a life dedicated to our new life
as an apostle, as a disciple, as one who loves Jesus
more than life itself. Every step we take in our
preparation, in our ministry, as beloved followers of
Jesus Christ, is a step to improve our baptism by
living with increasing hope, faith, purpose and
commitment to honor our calling as children of
God.
God’s Spirit will work where it will and accomplish
its purposes. But often what stands in our way is

our own impatience and our belief that the Spirit in
us cannot be stirred and that we cannot be opened
to new possibilities. When we hide our disbeliefs
and deny our impatience, we find ourselves
committed to the wilderness without the grace to
rethink our position.
It is vital and necessary that we have this Advent
season. It is our time to prepare ourselves for a life
with Christ. Isaiah 61:9 states that, “We are truly
the people whom the Lord has blessed. We are
blessed by God’s presence, by God’s intervention in
our lives, by God’s grace and love given to a people
who often fail to recognize it.”
John tells us that the One for whom we wait often
stands unrecognized. He often appears in
unexpected places and acts in surprising,
mysterious unexpected ways. What then are the
things that prevent us from recognizing this
miracle? If it is our hectic, busy lifestyles perhaps
then we may need to slow down. Being patient

should be enough to make us open our eyes to see
the miracle before us.
Indeed, something great is coming, something
beyond our wildest expectation is coming. These
days, we pray that it doesn’t get any worse.
The message of John is “maybe today!” And this is a
message worth waiting patiently for; this is a
message worth our preparation. Someone great is
coming, his name is Jesus.

By Rev. Robert Shearer
Sermon
Advent II • December 1, 2020
Isaiah 40:1-11 • Psalm 85:1-2. 8-13 • 2 Peter 3:8-15a • Mark 1:1-8

In the Name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
The Gospel according to Mark was the first Gospel to be written,
moving from the oral tradition—stories told within the Christian
community about Jesus and his teachings—to the black-and-white
page. Interestingly, it was not written on scrolls, but in a new form
with a new technology: the “codex,” or ordinary book that we are
used to nowadays.
Mark apparently was not one of the Twelve Apostles, but a
younger disciple associated perhaps with Paul and certainly with
Peter. Some scholars speculate that Mark’s Gospel was narrated to
him by Peter himself before his martyrdom in Rome. Maybe so. In
any case, Mark’s Gospel was the basis for two other Gospels,
Matthew and Luke and was written roughly thirty years after Jesus’
death and resurrection in about the year 62 CE. There is general
agreement that it was written in the city of Rome and reflects the
stories and memories current in that community.
Mark is not, strictly speaking, a biography of Jesus. Indeed, a First
Century church official commented, “Mark indeed, who became
the interpreter of Peter, wrote accurately, as far as he remembered
them, the things said or done by the Lord, but not however in
order.”
Instead of being an orderly historical biography, Mark’s Gospel is
intended to support Christians in their chosen life together. It is
intended to show the church—Gentiles, or non-Jews,
mostly—how the power of the Good News that Jesus proclaimed

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can help them in their daily life. As he says in his first sentence, it
is a telling of “the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
Mark’s Gospel is written in simple “street” language, not the
elegant, educated Greek of Luke and John. His approach is
straightforward and direct. Mark probably was not a Jew, insofar as
he misunderstands some Jewish customs that no Jew would
mistake. He is a Gentile Christian writing for other Gentile
Christians, encouraging his fellow Christians who are just emerging
from Nero’s persecutions but whose lives are uncertain.
Even though not a Jew, Mark and his early Christian community
knew the Hebrew scriptures, and he saw the prophecy in Isaiah
being fulfilled. John the baptizer was the “one crying in the
wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’”
Straightening things out was a matter of confessing one’s sins and
repenting, of turning around.
Alcoholics Anonymous holds eight meetings each week at Good
Shepherd. The essence of their method for achieving a spiritual
awakening is in the Twelve Steps, twelve simple practices that lead
to wholeness. The Fourth and Fifth Steps are to “Make a searching
and fearless inventory of ourselves” and then to “Admit to God,
ourselves, and another person the exact nature of our wrongs.”
I asked a friend about his “spiritual awakening.” He is a long-time
member of AA, and he said his spiritual awakening began with this
searching moral inventory—a catalog of all the wrongs he had
done to others. He avoided this as long as he could, and then was
appalled at the number and severity of the wrongs he had done to
others. As with John the baptizer, his transformation began with
confessing his sins. He woke up. And then his life began to
straighten out.

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When our lives are straightened out, then Messiah can enter in
with power—a power much greater than any of us has on our
own.
In this Advent season of preparation for the coming of Messiah,
we have the opportunity to look again at our lives, to take a
“searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves,” to heed
John’s call to confess our sins. What is at stake is the presence of
the Lord, the entrance of Messiah into the lives of the people
around us.
Amen.

By Rev. Robert Shearer
Sermon
Advent I • November 29, 2020
Isaiah 64:1-9 • Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18 • 1 Corinthians 1:3-9 • Mark 13:24-37

In the Name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen. A person who is listening to another person propound upon
weighty matters, might ask, “Who has influenced this person’s
thinking? What are the sources, what is the background that
influenced this person’s approach to the world?”
For myself, if we are talking about my home, it is my mother who
has set the tone and background structure for me. If we are talking
about being a pastor, it was my first mentor, Reverend Donald
Smith who taught me most of what I know about being a pastor.
If we are talking about liturgy, it would be Canon Edward West of
St John’s Cathedral in New York and Fr Rick Fabian of St
Gregory’s in San Francisco.
But how about Jesus? What were his influences? The first person
was probably his mother Mary—she was an outlier, an unmarried
young woman who was pregnant and who showed Jesus how to be
a non-conformist, an outlier. Then Isaiah, the greatest of the
prophets in the Hebrew Bible, seems to have been Jesus’ major
traditional influence. And then John the Baptist, who was Jesus’
mentor and teacher, and whose rallying cry Jesus
adopted—“Repent! The kingdom of God is at hand.” At least, this
is what I see when I read the stories of Jesus in the Gospels.
Isaiah’s lesson this morning speaks of the intense personal
relationship between the prophet and his Maker. It is an appeal for
God to come down in all his terrifying power, surrounded by
earthquakes and fire—a God who is both loving and also terrible
in his anger at human sin—a God who hides himself and lets us

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suffer the consequences of our bad behavior. “Yet, O Lord, you
are our Father,” Isaiah says, “we are the clay, and you are our
potter, we are all the work of your hand. Do not be exceedingly
angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now
consider, we are all your people.”
This sounds very much like Jesus’ intense relation to his Father in
heaven. There is nothing casual or off-hand about the God whom
Jesus considered his Father. This God is both strict, demanding
that we love one another in word and deed, but also always
forgiving when we fail. The standard that God puts before us is
impossibly high, and yet he is gentle and forgiving when we fail as
we learn how to get through life under his rule. After all, as Isaiah
appeals to the Father, “… we are the work of your hand … we are
all your people.”
Advent, as you know, is the time of anticipation, a time of waiting
for what is to come, a time of “what-is-not-yet,” a time of “what
is-yet-to-come.” So, of course, Advent is the four weeks in
advance of the yearly remembrance of Christmas, the birth of
Jesus. But more importantly, it is a call to be awake to what is
possible, what could be, but what is yet to come.
This is a pretty good attitude to take toward all of our lives, all the
time. To live in anticipation of what is to come, whether terrifying
or comforting, is to be truly alive. With this Corvid-19 crisis, for
example, you and I can stay in fear and anxiety, dreading the
present condition in which we find ourselves. Or we can just take
measures to avoid risks and then anticipate what is to come—the
days when masks are no more, the days when we have the
opportunity to get a vaccination shot, the days when we can hug
each other and eat together.

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Even better, we can be open to the remarkable opportunities that
present themselves every day, chances to be of service if we are
awake to what we are presented with. And what Jesus says to us is
“Stay awake!” Keep your eyes open, he says, the eyes of your
mind, so that you see God as he appears in the form of a little
child, or an old lady, or a grocery clerk.
“Stay awake!” You cannot know when God will appear, or how he
will show himself. After all, the promise is that God will not stay
hidden forever. So, Jesus says, “Stay awake!”
Amen.

Sermon by Rev. Shearer
Christ the King • November 22, 2020
Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24 • Psalm 100 • Ephesians 1:15-23 • Matthew 25:31-46

In the Name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
“As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their
scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep.” God speaks this to
Ezekiel, the Prophet, and Ezekiel passes the Word on to us. This is
the work of a prophet—not so much to tell the future as to listen
for God to speak, and then to tell us what God has said.
So we are like sheep scattered on the hillside! This is not very
complementary description of us humans. But Ezekiel knew sheep
and he watched human behavior, and the similarity was
compelling.
I once had a parishioner who had a flock of sheep. She said they
were scatter-brained critters, subject to easy panic attacks, who
when frightened would run off in all directions. When they ran,
they might easily run off a cliff, or run so long that they contracted
pneumonia. They couldn’t even find water or pasture by
themselves, needing a shepherd and perhaps a sheepdog to lead
them to it.
Doesn’t this sound like a divided and confused America? We are
easily subject to panic and to division; we easily believe the
misinformation spread upon the Internet; we have trouble
following the leader, yet we yearn for a savior. We don’t do a very
good job of extending America’s extraordinary prosperity to all our
citizens, much less the rest of God’s world. We are like sheep
scattered on a hillside.

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But the promise is what is important. “I will set over them one
shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them and be their
shepherd.” David, by the time of Ezekiel, was a synonym for king,
similar to Caesar becoming a synonym for emperor—a personal
name becoming a general word for a leader. This is a promise of a
David, of a Messiah, a Christ, one who will reign over the people
with justice and who would bring prosperity and peace.
In today’s Gospel Lesson, Jesus says, “When the Son of Man
comes in his glory….” Son of Man? Who is this? Jesus never calls
himself the Messiah, the new David. Rather he calls himself son of
man which, in his native tongue, Aramaic, is the equivalent of
human being. It could equally be daughter of woman. He did not object
when Peter called him Messiah, but he did not call himself by that
title.
It seems to me that I’ve given you too many titles and names to
cope with—too complex for any use. I apologize for confusing
things. It really is much simpler than I have made it.
The savior of the world has many names and titles in the Bible, but
they all point to one person. David the king, Messiah the savior,
Christ the anointed one—they all refer to the same person, and
that person is the one that Jesus called the Son of Man, the human
being.
I think Jesus meant something special by this term, son of man.
He meant the whole and complete human being, the authentic
human who is without fault or blemish. He meant the righteous
human who completely and fully loves and cares for his fellow
humans.
Who can measure up to this standard? Jesus, of course, who was
without sin. But who else in the fraught history of human beings,

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who else? Not one that I could name, and certainly no one of my
acquaintance—including the man sitting in my chair.
Unless—unless by some miracle we could be made whole. Unless
we could be forgiven our faults and errors, our headstrong self-
centeredness. Unless we could be restored to our authentic
character as the children of God.
So it is a miracle that, whatever our fallen condition, we have been
made new beings, cleansed of the past and restored to full
membership in God’s family. Not once for all time, but again and
again as we stumble and are forgiven, as we fail and are restored.
And we then are allowed to reign with Jesus as fellow Messiahs,
brother and sister human beings who, when “I was hungry and
you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to
drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you
gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in
prison and you visited me.”
My brothers and sisters, I appeal to you to acknowledge your
brokenness and confess your sins. I invite you to accept the
forgiveness of God and your fellow human beings. And then you
can take your place with Christ the King as one who serves, saving
the world, one person at a time.
Amen.

Sermon
24 Pentecost • November 15, 2020
Judges 4:1-7 • Psalm 123 • Thessalonians 5:1-11 • Matthew 25:14-30

In the Name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
The stories and parables of Jesus in the Gospels only have value if
we can relate to them personally. This means some deep diving
into ourselves, looking for what the message for us might be. As
always, the stories of Jesus are illustrations of the nature of the
kingdom of God. Not Paradise or life-after-death, but God’s
kingdom in the here and now. The stories of Jesus are about how
we can approach living our own lives, in our own circumstances,
with our own gifts and with our own challenges.
Today’s story of the Talents begins with a recognition that we are
not all equal when it comes to what we have been given. We
certainly are all equal under the law in America. We certainly are all
equally loved by our Father in heaven. But that’s about as far as
equality goes.
Each of us has been born into different stations in life, different
qualities of upbringing, different kinds of families, different
interests, different abilities. And each of us has a
lifetime—however long or short that may be—in which to make
use of what have been given.
Remember that Jesus is not a moralist, telling us how to be good.
No, Jesus is a truth-teller. He is one who announces that we can
enter into the joy of the kingdom. Jesus “tells it like it is,” showing
us how life really works, and how we can enter into joy in the
midst of this difficult and fraught world in which God has placed
us.

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The first two successful slaves in the story took whatever they
were given and actively worked with it. They took risks with their
gifts, looking to make what they had been given even better. The
third slave, whom the master calls “wicked and lazy,” was afraid.
He was fearful of losing the one gift he had been given, fearful of
the anger of his master if he risked his gift and failed.
Fear of failure is a great lock on the gates to the kingdom of God.
Frequently in the Bible, whenever God shows up, or an angel
appears, the first words are “Fear not!” The wicked and lazy slave
was correct in knowing that he could fail. He was right in knowing
that failure carries punishments in the real world. His natural
reaction was fear; inherent in risk is the possibility of failure. But
his refusal to risk meant that his gifts were wasted. He buried
them.
So the clear message is that we would do well to take whatever we
have been given and take the risk of producing good out of them.
What have we been given at this point in our lives? Well, some of
us have been given great age. Some of us have been given
precarious health. all of us have been given a pandemic in which
out human herd is passing the virus around at a great rate, resulting
in increasing deaths—almost 250,000 at this point—and millions
upon millions of infected people. And we’ve been given a fragile
economy in which many of us are in trouble.
Of course, these are not our only gifts. Most of us here have a
great deal of wisdom, hard-earned over many years but
nonetheless a gift. Most of us have managed to be economically
stable. By the world’s standards, in which two dollars a day means
being out of poverty, most of us are in the one percent. And we
have been given skills, how-to knowledge of immense value.

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And we have been given other resources. We have Zoom these
days! We have email and messages and phones and TV. These are
profoundly valuable gifts for making a difference when in-person
contact is denied us.
The bottom line in Jesus story of the Talents is this: “To all those
who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance;
but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be
taken away.” The challenge before us, you and I, is to not bury our
gifts for fear of losing what we have. The challenge before us is to
see what needs to be done for others, and to step out, knowing the
risks, and act on behalf of our Master, our Father in heaven.

Amen.

Sermon
20 Pentecost • October 18, 2020
Deuteronomy 34:1-12 • Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17 • 1 Thessalonians 21:1-8 • Matthew 22:34-46

In the Name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Matthew tells us about two distinct events in today’s Gospel
Lesson. The first is a test commonly asked of teachers in Jesus’
time. “Teacher,” they asked, “which commandment in the law is
the greatest?” This was a test for the rabbi’s knowledge of the
scripture, and there were a number of valid answers that rabbis
over the years had given.
The first half of Jesus’ answer is a quotation from the book of
Deuteronomy, chapter six, verses four through nine. The passage
begins with what is now known as the Shema, a prayer that is part
of every Jewish service: “Hear O Israel: The Lord is our God, the
Lord alone.” Then follows the passage that Jesus quotes: “You
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your
soul, and with all your might.” These two verses were, and are,
known by every Jew, then as now, and are central to the faith,
theirs and ours.
What follows in Deuteronomy are instructions to keep this
command central: “Keep these words that God is commanding
you in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about
them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie
down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix
them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the
doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
You probably have seen a little box affixed to the door frame of
the houses of Jewish people. This is called a mezuzah, and it

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contains a scrap of paper on which this and a similar verse are
written. It is a visual reminder of this first and great
commandment. The house Jesus grew up in, and the houses he
visited certainly had such mezuzahs on their door posts. So it is no
surprise that Jesus replies to the question of which is the greatest
commandment with this quotation.
The second commandment is from the book of Leviticus, the
second half of chapter 19, verse 18: “… you shall love your
neighbor as yourself.” The full verse reads, “ You shall not take
vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you
shall love your neighbor as yourself.” So although the full verse
has to do with unforgiveness—holding a grudge and taking
vengeance—Jesus plucked the second half out of the verse and
made it a general principle.
Notice that the commandment refers to matters of the heart.
Grudges and unwillingness to forgive come from the heart, the
same place where love resides. Jesus is not alone is citing one or
both these passages from the Torah, the five books of origins and
laws in the Bible. Other rabbis of the time saw similar
interpretations. But Jesus sees them as central to his understanding
of the kingdom of God, to conforming oneself to the will of God
and to life in the kingdom.
The second part of Matthew’s lesson this morning is quite
different. Jesus sets up a controversy with the Pharisees that is not
very understandable to Twentieth-Century ears. So let’s walk
through it.
First, he asks the Pharisees who the Messiah is, “whose son is he.”
The answer was easy for them: a reading of the Prophets reveals
very clearly that the Messiah will be a descendant of David. The

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writers of two of the Gospels (Matthew and Luke) agreed, working
hard to make it clear that Jesus is a descendant of David. They
wanted to prove that Jesus is Messiah by right of inheritance.
Secondly, they all agreed that Messiah was the coming king who
would save Israel. So David’s descendant, his son (as it were), will
be the great messianic ruler. But how can the son be greater than
his father? No traditional Jew could allow such an interpretation.
Jesus left his listeners speechless, entangled in their own
interpretations of Scripture. But Jesus’ intent seems to be to throw
doubt on Messiah, that he needed to be the son of David. Nothing
more is indicated in this passage.
Here is what I think: First, Jesus understood well his mission to be
Messiah. Second, Jesus did not think his Messiahship had anything
to do with being a physical descendant of David; he got his
marching orders not from inheritance but from the Father’s call.
And thirdly, Jesus seems to be moving toward an understanding of
Messiah that is larger than any one person. His promise elsewhere
to his disciples was that we would do greater things than he was
capable of.
I think that Jesus expected his disciples, you and me, to take on his
mantle of Messiahship and to turn our attention away from
ourselves and toward saving the people around us. I think that
Jesus wants us to be other Christs, other Messiahs, and I think this
is what it means to follow Jesus.
Amen.

Sermon
18 Pentecost • October 4, 2020
Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20 • Psalm 19, 37-45 • Philippians 3:4b-14 • Matthew 21:33-46

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

This parable, called the “Parable of the Wicked Farmers,” is very problematic for the scholars. For example, in this form as Matthew presents it, it is an “allegory,” not a parable. In an allegory, each character stands for some particular thing or person—the owner of the vineyard is God, the workers in the vineyard are the people of the Jewish nation, the representatives of the owner who were treated badly were the prophets, and the son and heir is Jesus himself.

But Jesus rarely, if ever, used allegories. They were a popular teaching tool in the First Century, but not one Jesus normally used. His parables made one central point, telling in a short phrase or even a story, one abstract message.

You probably are aware that Matthew had a copy of the Gospel of Mark in front of him when he wrote his own version of Jesus’ ministry. Luke also quotes Mark. So Mark is the earliest of the Gospels, and is the source for much that Matthew and Luke were able to relate. This story of the Wicked Farmers is now found in all three Gospels.

In Mark and Luke, as it turns out, this story is a parable, not an allegory. It has a single point, one that engages one’s curiosity as to what Jesus means to convey. In this morning’s telling from Matthew, however, it is turned into an allegory. So the chances are that Matthew is embroidering quite a bit.

A second problem is this: In this allegory Jesus identifies himself as the Son of God—something Jesus never did. The Early Church, including Matthew who gave us this version, did call Jesus the Son of God. But Jesus? Speaking about himself? Never. To make such a claim for oneself would qualify one for the looney-bin, or brand one as a charlatan; I am told that insane asylums contain many self-proclaimed Messiahs!

The point in the other version of Mark and Luke is this: The hardness of heart of the established leadership, by refusing to listen to the prophets (and Jesus certainly considered himself a prophet)—such hardness of heart condemns them to live outside the kingdom of God.

What is being rejected is not so much Jesus, but what Jesus came to proclaim. They were rejecting the Word of God and thereby were denying themselves the kingdom.

We are enabled to enter the Kingdom of God by our willingness to listen newly, by opening ourselves to uncomfortable truths, by forgiving others as God has forgiven us, by feeding and clothing the poor, and the like.

Should we reject Matthew’s version of the Parable of the Wicked Farmers? I think not, even though it probably does not reflect Jesus’ teaching accurately. What it does give us is an insight into the faith and teaching of the Early Church. Jesus’ disciples certainly did see him as the Son of God, worthy of worship and example to be followed.

We promised, when we were baptized, to “follow and obey” Jesus as our Lord. Following Jesus means different things to different people, for each of us hears that promise differently. What matters is the intention to follow and obey, and then to actively search out what is the appropriate way for us to fulfill the promise.

What is appropriate to a twenty-year-old will not be the same as a sixty-year-old. What following Jesus means for a working person will not be the same as what it means for a retired person. So it take continual discernment, continual listening to the Word, continual openness to hear what each of our missions in life might be at any particular stage in our lives.

In this, Jesus promises to be with us unto the end of the earth, certainly the end of our earthly life. For we have taken him on as our Lord, our Leader, and our Savior.

Amen.

Sermon
16 Pentecost • September 20, 2020
Exodus 16:2-15 • Psalm 105:1- 6, 37-45 • Philippians 1:21-30 • Matthew 20:1-16

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

A story and a koan we find in today’s Gospel Lesson. The koan is simple—“The last will be first, and the first will be last.” What could this possibly mean? Even though Matthew sticks it onto the end of a story, it is clear that it originally was a stand-alone koan spoken by Jesus to prompt some thinking, some investigation, some inquiry for those of us who are his disciples, something for us to chew on.  

So what does this mean, “The last will be first, and the first will be last.” The first time I really heard this koan when I was 14 or 15 years old, standing with other members of my church youth group—the YPF, the Young People’s Fellowship. We were pushing and shoving, jostling each other as we tried to get to the front of the line for dinner. It was all pretty good-natured. We were doing the natural thing—trying to be first. You probably have done this yourself, trying to get into a crowed subway or maybe pushing your cart a little faster to edge out another shopper in the grocery store.

Our rector came up behind us, said “The last will be first, and the first will be last,” and led the head of the line to the back, reversing the order we had made. It was a shock. It was unfair. It was incomprehensible that he should do such a thing! But … I never forgot what he said, what I later learned was a koan from Jesus.

What does it mean? Well, perhaps it has to do with our misperception of what it means to be first! Maybe we got it all wrong, our striving and jostling, competing with our fellow humans to be first, when we thought that bigger is better, more powerful is more desirable, and richer is best.

Perhaps this is another version of another koan from Jesus—“Except you become as a little child, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” Infants are charming and cute, but they certainly are not big and strong and smart. What they are good at is listening, but that is little valued in this world.

I leave it to you to sort out what this means for you—“The last will be first, and the first will be last.”

The story that Jesus told tells another story of unfair behavior on the part of the kingdom of heaven. remember that this is, as always, an attempt by Jesus to help us as we seek the kingdom.

The owner of the vineyard, at about three-hour intervals, hires day laborers to work in his garden. The first group works 15 hours in the hot sun. The last group works only three hours until the work-day is ended. They all then get off work and are paid their agreed-upon wages. And they all got the same pay. Unjust! Unfair! “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat!”

So perhaps the kingdom of heaven is not about getting fairness or equity or justice for ourselves—that would be just more self-centeredness, more about me-me-me.

Perhaps the kingdom of God is not about our hard work or being good. Perhaps entrance into the kingdom is not a matter of what we do. Perhaps it is only about what God does.

Perhaps entering the kingdom is a function of God’s generosity to us. Perhaps it is a free gift, a gift of grace, a gift that only has to be heard and chosen over what the world has to offer. No payment required.

As with the koan, this story is intended to hook us, to engage us in the inquiry. Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom of God, and everything else shall be given.” Perhaps both story and koan are intended to aid us on our journey, seeking together the kingdom of God.

Amen.

Sermon
15 Pentecost • September 13, 2020
Exodus 14:19-31 • Psalm 114 • Romans 14:1-12 • Matthew 18:21-35

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

Forgiveness is at the heart of all of Jesus’ teachings. Forgiveness—the internal movement of the heart to let go of grievances, grudges, resentments, bitterness, ill will, and the like—forgiveness is critical to being able to access the kingdom of heaven.

We can look at forgiveness in a moment, but first I would like us to notice the ways in which Jesus teaches, his methods for engaging his disciples as we seek the kingdom of heaven.

In today’s Gospel Lesson, we can see two teaching methods, each of which aims at quite different kinds of learning. The first is what I am going to call the “koan” method, and the second I’ll call the “story” method.

A koan is defined as “a paradoxical anecdote or a riddle that has no solution.” There is a famous koan used by Zen Buddhists which you probably have heard: “What is the sound of one hand clapping.” Such a question is meant to derail logical thinking, to short-circuit our ravenous desire for easy explanations and simple answers.

A koan invites us to dig deeper, to look for ourselves at how something can be. This kind of teaching requires the disciple to create his own learning, and to let go of the need to be spoon-fed answers. The koan invites deep inquiry, and Jesus was a master of the koan.

In this lesson Jesus says, in answer to Peter’s question as to how many times we should forgive another: “Not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” An immediate question: “How could you possibly keep count? This is ridiculous!” But then arrives another question, “Is there no end of forgiveness? Are we supposed to let them get away with their bad behavior forever, world without end?” Which invites another inquiry into the difference between unforgiveness—holding onto a grudge—and correcting others’ bad behavior.

A deep inquiry, like one initiated by a koan, leads to multiple questions, and profound, deep knowledge. This is the best kind of teaching, for it leads those of us who are disciples into the hard labor of actually thinking things thorough.

The “story” method that Jesus uses to teach his disciples is just that—story-telling. Cleverly designed stories are a great way to teach, because they can engage the listener with something that connects with our own experience; and it provokes an emotional reaction in us that makes the story memorable.

In this story about forgiveness, a servant of the king owes a great amount of money, which he cannot pay. So the king orders him and his household sold to pay the debt. The servant begs, promises to pay, and the king has pity and even forgives the debt. A simple story of forgiveness that leaves us feeling good.

The servant, however, has a colleague who owes him money and cannot pay. But instead of forgiving the debt as the king did for him, the servant tosses him in debtor’s prison. The king is outraged, as so are we. And it seems right that the unforgiving servant should himself be tortured until he could pay—serves him right!

The story tells the truth that we all have been forgiven multiple offenses by many people—particularly those closest to us—and it behooves us to be generous in forgiving the people around us.

We withhold forgiveness and hold on to resentments and grudges primarily because we hope it will protect us from the other person so they can’t hurt us again. A resentment keeps the other person at a distance, far enough away to that we cannot be vulnerable. It looks like safety to our primitive instincts.

But, in fact, distance isolates us from love. And the kingdom of heaven is a state of being where love engages us with others. And the truth is that without forgiveness, we ourselves end up with a kind of torture, made miserable by our own resentment.

Matthew puts together a koan and a story into today’s compelling and memorable parable. To love one another is to forgive … and forgive … and forgive.

Amen.

Sermon
14 Pentecost • August 23, 2020
Exodus 12:1-14 • Psalm 145 • Romans 13:8-14 • Matthew 18:15-20

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

Jesus preached the availability of the kingdom of God to everyone, and what he declared was pretty much a mystery to his followers. What he said sounded right in some way; his stories and sayings were captivating; but exactly what he was talking about was not really clear.

This was especially true for the scribes and Pharisees, the religious experts of the day, who were very clear about what God wanted from them and how to go about giving it to him. Follow the Law as it was handed down from generations past. Even in the smallest thing, obey the Law. As for Jesus, they saw him as a lax, lazy, and permissive distorter of the absolute truth that had already been received.

And yet, very little of what Jesus taught was new. He was grounded in the Law and the Prophets. Isaiah and Jeremiah and the other prophets were the context out of which he spoke; they were the foundation of his understanding of will of God. From his standpoint, Jesus saw his teachings to be the direct and logical result of the teachings that had been handed down.

This is why, from the very first practice of the Early Church, the Hebrew Scriptures—the Old Testament, as we call it—was always included in Christian worship. They are the foundation of our understanding, just as they were Jesus’ bedrock, his fundamental truths.

So, what was new in Jesus teachings? What did he see in the ancient scriptures that others had missed? Well, what he saw was deceptively simple. He saw that, if your were to get to the bottom of all the Law and the Prophets, what was to be found was the basic principle that we are to love God and love one another. Jesus said, when challenged about the novelty and strangeness of his teachings, that he had not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it.

St Paul grasped this understanding of what Jesus was teaching, even though he never knew him in person. Paul did know through the vision that he received on road traveling to persecute the Jewish heretics in Damascus who called themselves followers of Christ. He also knew Jesus from the stories and instruction of others who had known Jesus personally. He did, however, get the essence of Jesus.

In today’s Second Lesson, Paul writes to the church in Rome, “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” He was a student of the Law, but after he saw Jesus he became aware that all the dictates of the Law were intended to keep us from damaging each other. Indeed, the Law encouraged us to be a benefit to each other, to care for each other, to love.

Paul says that to refrain from adultery, murder, theft, and coveting “are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”

Far from being simple or lax, this is a much stricter version of how to live than merely following the dictates of the Law. The commandment to love each other requires each of us to sort out what would be good for the other person, to discern what would damage them or contribute to their wellbeing.

This process of discerning what is best for another person changes from moment to moment, so that if we are to love each other we have to listen intently; we have to be aware of their needs and wants; we have to be conscious of where they are coming from. It requires us to “read between the lines” in what others say to hear what their true meaning is.

Sometimes people describe the Episcopal Church as “Catholic Lite.” In some ways, this description of our beloved Church is exactly true, and in others, it misses the mark completely. I have always found it amusing for exactly that reason.

Far from being an insult, it gets to the heart of our faith. We have a long history of rules and regulations, built up over two thousand years of church life. But in every generation, there have been those among us who gradually relaxed the grip of inflexible Law and opted in favor of love. Throughout Christian history, some have seen that all we need is love, and also that to love requires a lot of work.

Amen.