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Fr. Joe Britton - Fifth Sunday of Easter - April 24

4/25/2016

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 “Who was I, that I could hinder God?” (Acts 11)
 
 
Having been a pastor for a number of years now, I’ve come to think that there are two maxims which are pretty much true of all of us: first, we tend to reveal more about ourselves in what we say than we ever intend or realize; and second, we all change more over time than we expect to.
I want today to concentrate on the second of these two maxims—that we change more over time than we expect—because the lessons are all about change. Big change: the kind of change that turned the world upside down for those who experienced it.
The theme of change is vividly highlighted for us by our reading from the book of Revelation, which describes John the Divine’s vision of a new heaven and a new earth—a vision that is cast in the form of the idealized city of Jerusalem. This is not the Jerusalem of history, torn by strife and divided against itself, but the heavenly Jerusalem that has been changed into a city in divine peace, where God dwells among mortals while “making all things new.” It is a vision of a city transformed, rebuilt, reconstituted.
This theme of change was given a more concrete expression in the first reading, taken from the Acts of the Apostles which relates the development of faith among the earliest Christians. This particular passage tells us about one of the most pivotal moments in all of Christian history, when Peter explains to his fellow apostles how God has led him to realize that their community of discipleship should rightly be expanded beyond its Jewish origins, to include the Gentiles as well. This realization, he says, came to him in a dream which he had three times in succession, in which he was commanded to kill and eat the flesh of animals that any good Jew would consider unclean. His first natural reaction was to object, but each time he was assured by a heavenly voice that what had been profane, has now been made clean by God—a radical reversal which Peter reads as indicating that the former exclusion of Gentiles from the faith should now be reversed as well.
By way of confirmation of this interpretation, Peter goes to a Gentile house where he encounters the Holy Spirit coming upon its residents, just as it had upon Jesus’ own disciples. So interpreting this as an act of inclusion, Peter concludes that it is not for him to object or interfere, but to accept this new opening as God’s will. As he says rather disarmingly, “Who was I that I could hinder God?” So we see that Peter’s whole worldview has been changed, and with it, the face of Christian faith itself has changed. Going forward, it will no longer simply be a movement within Judaism, but an ever-widening circle of faith that even Peter himself will participate in by taking his faith with him on his missionary journey to Rome—something he could never have imagined even in his wildest dreams until it happened. But like I said, we all change more than we ever expect.
So that point is all well and good, but I don’t suppose it really gets us very far, does it? Simply to say that we change, as we move through life, is perhaps a bit too much of a truism. So we might want to ask something more, like how do we change, and why?
The gospel reading I think has something to say about those questions that might help take us further. Here, we are returned in John’s gospel to where we were on Maundy Thursday, present at Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples where he gives the command—the mandatum from which Maundy Thursday takes its name—that we love one another. “Just as I have loved you,” Jesus says, “you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Now, the inclusion of this text with the other two in this set, seems to suggest that there is something about love which is itself identified with the kind of change about which the other two lessons speak. Perhaps it is this: if we are to love someone else as Jesus commands, then that means that we are to make room in our own lives, for someone else to exist fully as themselves within it. To love someone is to allow another person’s individuality and place in the world to impinge on our own, so that we feel some sense of responsibility and obligation to them. Think of what it means as a parent to love a child, or as a spouse to love a partner: in either case, that person’s own well-being and flourishing becomes our deepest desire, such that we readily give sacrificially what we can of our own resources and abilities to help make that flourishing possible.
But by creating space in our own life, for the presence of another, we also open ourselves to be influenced by—and yes, changed—by that person. Parents, for example, know what it is like to be drawn by their children into experiences and ways of looking at things that they would never have imagined for themselves. Or spouses find their horizons stretched in new directions by life with their partner. I’m sure my Baptist parents would never have imagined their son as an Episcopal priest; and I would never have paid architecture much attention but for my wife’s profession as an architectural historian. But the love of parent or spouse makes room for that kind of transforming expansion of oneself in the presence of the other. In short, to love is to open ourselves to be changed, to be stretched, to be challenged, to be enriched by the one whom we love.
So seen in that light, what might it mean to say that we also love God?
Well, at the very least it must mean that we are prepared to open ourselves up to be constantly challenged about our understanding of ourselves and the world around us, to learn to see it as God sees it. Religion, of course, is usually associated in the popular imagination with stability and resistance to change—and indeed many of its institutional forms are quite ossified and static. But if it is true that the experience of love changes who we are, then the internal dynamic of placing the love of God at the center of religious life necessarily leads to the kind of change that is implied by words like transformation, conversion, renewal, and reformation. And these words therefore are more authentically descriptive of the true nature of the spiritual life.
Now, if that’s true, then the reassurance that we seek in religious faith is not derived from its stability, but rather from its promise of change. We have hope not because we count on God to hold things steady as they are, but precisely because as the one whom we love with our whole heart, and mind, and soul, we anticipate that God is at work changing the interior nature of who we are. And at least to me, that is good news indeed, for would any of us want to remain just as we are the rest of our lives, without any growth in understanding, or increased generosity, or deeper wonder, or larger commitment?
We are all, as it were, works in progress. Just as the forces of wind and water have sculpted the magnificent landscapes of the desert southwest, so too the spiritual life in which we are engaged in this community of faith is similarly at work forming each of us into something wonderful and magnificent that we have yet to become. We come here to be changed by our faith, not merely reassured by it, and in that there is much to anticipate and to celebrate. As we sang in our gospel hymn today:
 
O Father, Son, and Spirit, send us increase from above;
enlarge, expand all living souls to comprehend your love;
and make us all go on to know with nobler powers conferred,
the Lord has yet more light and truth to break forth from his word.
 
(“We limit not the truth of God,” Hymnal 1982, #629)
 
 
 
© Joseph Britton, 2016
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Pr. Kristin Schultz - Fourth Sunday of Easter - April 17

4/25/2016

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The Rev. Joe Britton - Third Sunday of Easter - April 10

4/11/2016

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“Simon Peter, do you love me?” (John 21)
 
One day in 1928, a young printmaker named Willard Clark was on his way from the East Coast to settle in California, when out of curiosity he stopped off in Santa Fe along the way. Like many before him, he never left, choosing to settle in northern New Mexico where he made himself into a renowned wood engraver and printer whose work is still highly valued as capturing something of the essence of this region. He printed, for instance, the daily menus for the Fred Harvey restaurant in the La Fonda hotel, which included drawings of the animals and people that made up the street scene around the hotel in Santa Fe.
Clark is part of a long tradition of people who have come to New Mexico to remake themselves. Some, like the painter Georgia O’Keefe, seemed to find their creative spirit especially stimulated by the imposing landscape. Others—like Mabel Dodge or D. H. Lawrence—came more to escape something oppressive, finding in the cultural diversity a sense of freedom and release. Some came for health reasons, seeking to find renewed physical strength in the dry air and abundant sunshine. Others came to invent something radically new in the secrecy of the desert, like Robert Oppenheimer and the other physicists of the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos.
Some of us here today have likewise come to New Mexico from someplace far away, seeking a new life—perhaps as retirees, or adventurers, or like myself, as someone who has returned to something old and familiar yet entirely new and captivating all at the same time. Even for those of you who are natives, I think there is a sense in New Mexico that one is continually inventing oneself anew, influenced by the sheer expansiveness of the space and the complexity of the culture. At some level we all are shaped by being in New Mexico’s unique environment of—well, for lack of a better word … enchantment!
So as New Mexicans, we might find this morning’s lessons especially intriguing, because they tell stories about two individuals—Paul and Peter—who also radically remade themselves mid-stream in their lives.
In the first instance, the reading from Acts tells of the conversion of Saul, persecutor extraordinaire of the first Christians, into Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles. Saul’s hostility against the Christians, is suddenly reversed by his becoming one of them.
So the story is this: there’s Saul, walking one day along the road to Damascus (in pursuit of some Christians), when suddenly he is blinded by a bright light and a voice (the voice of the Lord) speaks to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” He is directed to go into the city, where a Christian named Ananias then lays hands on him at the Lord’s command, and Saul receives back his sight. He then immediately desires to be baptized, and now as Paul he begins the new ministry to which he has been called as the instrument through whom the good news of Jesus will be brought beyond the Jewish community to the wider world of the Gentiles. From persecutor, he remakes himself as apostle, leaving his past entirely behind with what can only be called the zealous enthusiasm of a true convert.
Then in the gospel, we encounter Peter once again—poor Peter, the one who is still smarting emotionally after his three-fold denial of Jesus on the night before the crucifixion. But now, on the other side of Easter, the risen Jesus appears to Peter and the other disciples as they are fishing in the Sea of Tiberias, and he quietly invites them to join him for breakfast on the beach. At the end of the meal, Jesus turns to Peter (who must have been dreading this moment, fearing that now would be the moment of reckoning for his perfidy). But instead, Jesus simply asks him three times if Peter loves him. With these three questions, Jesus gives him the opportunity to set right the three denials, with three affirmations. And then based on this restitution, he commissions Peter to follow him—Peter, who in addition to Paul, will now remake himself from betrayer into one of the two greatest apostles.
So in each case—Saul’s conversion and Peter’s restitution—Jesus gives these two men opportunity to remake themselves, to move beyond what they had been, to what he is now calling them to become. And I think that there is a clear message in all this for us: we too have the potential to become something more than we have been, because Jesus is always opening up for us a future that holds the promise of something new. It’s like moving to New Mexico: a whole new world opens up before you, and you step into it with curiosity, amazement, and a sense of being transformed by the experience.
That in and of itself is good news, I suppose. But there is something deeper that amplifies the hope that is contained herein. In neither case—either Paul or Peter’s response to the risen Lord—does Jesus dwell upon their past, forcing them to reckon with who they were and what they did. Rather, Jesus simply takes their mistakes and blindness as a given, and then helps them to move on. It is as if he builds the new Paul and Peter on the foundation of their former selves, drawing out the raw material with which each of them will be transformed from within their former blunders. From Saul, Jesus takes his passion, enthusiasm, and thirst for righteousness—and turns it into evangelical zeal. From Peter, Jesus takes his intense though weak-kneed desire to be near Jesus (Peter was, after al, apparently always within earshot of Jesus, even while denying him, for Jesus turns to look at him when the cock crows)—Jesus takes that desire and turns it into the steadfast courage of an apostle whose life will from now on be centered in spreading the good news, even as far away as Rome.
And that, I think, is the true good news that these stories of conversion bring to us: Jesus can take us as we are—everything that we have done and everything that we are—and make something better and greater of us, if we put our trust in the path into which he calls us. And isn’t that the essential meaning of forgiveness, which is at the heart of the gospel? In effect, Jesus puts the same question to us that he put to Peter: “Do you love me?” And as we answer “yes” to that question by learning to love the Christ that is in each one of us, Jesus works in us that same transformation that came over Saul and Peter—perhaps not as dramatically or suddenly, but over time every bit as profoundly.
This Easter season in which we find ourselves, therefore, comes to us as an invitation to move on, to leave behind whatever it is that has held us back from becoming who we most fully can be. It is a time to remake ourselves, to encounter a vaster landscape of possibility than where we have previously been. Easter is, if you will pardon the rather awkward metaphor, a time to move to our own spiritual New Mexico.
So let’s be on our way. Amen.
 
 
 
© Joseph Britton, 2016
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Pr. Kristin Schultz - Second Sunday of Easter - April 3

4/4/2016

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​In the church year, today is the second Sunday of Easter.
We have just celebrated the greatest festival of the church year.
The day we remember God’s triumph over death and sin.
The day we celebrate our own entry into eternal life and salvation
            through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
 
So it’s curious that this is the day of the church year when the story leads us so often to focus on  – doubt.
Doubting Thomas, the story is called –
            and whether that is a fair moniker for someone who only asks to see the same             thing all the other disciples have already seen –
it’s a name that has stuck.
 
The story begins with all the disciples hiding in a room.
Thomas may have gotten stuck with the nickname, but it seems that all the disciples are doubting – all have forgotten what Jesus has told them –
            that he would rise from the dead.
So they are hiding from the authorities who may, after all, come after them too.
And they are trying to figure out what they will do next.
And suddenly, Jesus is there among them.
He says, “Peace be with you,”
            and he breathes on them.
And with his breath he gives them the Holy Spirit, whom he has promised to them.
He literally in-spires them – fills them with his breath, with his risen life.
 
But, the story goes on, Thomas was not there that night.
And he is adamant in saying, “there’s no way I will believe unless I see it for myself.”
The witness of his friends is not enough.
 
A week passes
I wonder what the disciples were doing all week.
How did Jesus’ appearance change their plans?
What did they think they might do next?
Whatever happened that week, on the first day of the week, the disciples were again gathered -  and this time Thomas was them.
And it sounds as if Jesus comes to Thomas and offers to him,
            look, see my hands and feet – here, touch my side and see that it is me.
Jesus is gracious in his response to Thomas’s doubts.
 
Yet, with his next words, Jesus talks past Thomas,
            past everyone in the room with him, really.
In a movie, this might be a moment when Jesus looks past Thomas and right into the camera, to address the audience directly:
            “Blessed are those who have no seen and yet have come to believe”
The audience is the community for whom John is writing – a community of believers who have not seen Jesus.
And the audience is us – all of us, throughout the generations, who have come to faith in many other ways.
We have heard the witness of the community; received the Holy Spirit in our baptism; received the body and blood of Christ in Holy Communion; known God in nature and human love and in our own experiences of prayer.
 
Perhaps you have heard a sermon in the vein of “be like those who believe without seeing – do not succumb to doubt, like Thomas, but let your faith be strong.”
But I don’t think that’s where this story points us.
Because Faith is not always the same.
It looks different for different people, and at different times in our lives.
Which is why I think it is important, on the 2nd Sunday of Easter, to talk a look at the idea of doubt.
I think it’s important to recognize that vigorous, vibrant faith can only grown when there is freedom to question, wonder and doubt.
 
Seminary President and weekly preaching blogger David Lose wrote this week,
            Indeed, I think that if we don’t have any doubts we’re probably not taking the     story seriously enough. I mean, really – think about what we confess when we come together on Sundays: that the Creator of the vast cosmos not only knows    we exist but cares deeply and passionately about our ups and downs, our      hopes             and dreams, and all the rest. This confession is, quite literally, in-credible (that   is, not believable). And yet we come together and in hearing the Word and         partaking of the Sacraments and by being joined to those around us       through prayer and song, we come to believe.
 
We come to have faith –
            but sometimes that faith is strong and sure, and sometimes it is a struggle.
 
Faith can be believing completely that Jesus was fully human and fully divine,
            that he was born of a virgin mother and lived as a 1st century Jew in Palestine, that he was crucified, buried, and resurrected from the dead.
And faith can be wanting to believe the story. Questioning, along with Thomas, the full truth of the story – wanting to believe, but wanting to see for ourselves as well.
 
Faith is trusting completely that we are in God’s hands –
            and faith is also wishing fervently for such trust in our hearts.
 
One some days, faith is certainty and trust.
And on other days, faith is doubting, but still acting as if we believe – longing for the certainty we see in others or once had in ourselves.
And some days, faith is sitting on near despair and crying out, “Where are you, God?”
 
And you know what?
I’ve lived all these sorts of days.
And I think one reason God calls us to live out our lives within a community of faith is because most of us have all these sorts of days – days when trust and belief come more easily, and days we are holding on to God by a thread.
And we gather here so that those of us who are stronger can lift up those who are weaker.
Because those of us who are stronger today know that someday,
            we will be the ones who need support.
And, sometimes it’s just knowing that I’m not the only one who’s struggling –
            that even though when I look around here it looks like everyone but me has it all together and has never had a day of doubt in their lives –
that isn’t really the case.
When we can share our doubt and grief and fear with one another,
            as well as our facebook-posting days of pride and joy,
                        then we are acting a community of God’s people,
                        encouraging one another in love and faith.
 
 One commentator I read this week pointed out that “we might remember the     example of Thomas, who inability to believe could have put him outside the             circle of the disciples, but who is still among them now a week later. We do not know whether it was hope or friendship or despair in other options that kept           him from leaving, but let it be noted that the fellowship of disciples was elastic             enough that he could be there.”
 
The other night, the Newcomers ministry met – about a dozen people new to St Michael and All Angels, and about a dozen of the “old-timers” – current members who volunteer in the ministry to offer support to our newcomers.
We went around the room and each person shared a bit of their journey,
            and what brought them to St Michael’s.
Over and over I heard, from newcomers and “old-timers” alike,
            that one thing they appreciated at St Michael’s is that sense of elasticity.
St Michael’s is a safe place to bring my questions and doubts, people said.
St Michael’s is a safe place to be myself.
 
So this morning I invite your doubts, your questions, your fears, your grief, and your anger.
I invite you to bring those questions to worship, to prayer, to small groups and adult forums and Bible studies and book groups, and, if you wish, to speak with Fr. Joe or me.
We can bring all of ourselves, and offer it all to God,
            trusting in the God who hears our doubts and fears
            and knows our hearts
            and always loves us and welcomes us home.
 
Thanks be to God – for this place, for all of you,
            and for God’s infinite love and grace.
Amen.

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