ST. MICHAEL & ALL ANGELS EPISCOPAL CHURCH
  • ABOUT US
    • WHO WE ARE
    • Leadership
    • Newcomers
    • Pastoral Care
    • Faces of Our Community
    • Contact
  • Transition
  • Worship & Prayer
    • Download Service Bulletins
    • Daily Prayer Services - The Daily Office
    • Sermons
    • Art, Music, & Literature
  • FORMATION
    • Adult Formation
    • Retreats
    • Family & Youth
  • Outreach & Social Justice
    • Casa San Miguel Food Pantry
    • The Landing
    • LGBTQ+
    • Immigration Ministry
    • Navajoland Partnership
    • Senior Ministry
    • ALL ANGELS EPISCOPAL DAY SCHOOL
  • Give
    • Annual Pledge
    • Stewardship
    • Gifts & Memorials

Sermon, The Rev. Brian Taylor, August 21

8/21/2011

0 Comments

 
August 21, 2011
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

Recently I saw a very unusual film called <em>The Tree of Life</em>. My son, who works in film, recommended it to me. He said I shouldn’t expect a normal plot line, that watching it is like going to hear a modern symphony. A variety of things happen, and you just take it all in.

Mostly the film goes back and forth between cosmic images of the universe and a family in 1950’s Waco, Texas. One moment we’re watching Dad try to teach Junior how to box on the front lawn, and in another, we’re seeing nebula, the big bang, the emergence of amphibian creatures. Then back to the kitchen and Mom looking out the window at the wind in the trees.

The film took one little family, with all its dysfunction and repentance, tragedy and love, and placed it on the biggest possible stage. The weird thing is that rather than making the human seem tiny by comparison, it was enlarged and ennobled. There’s something beautiful and majestic about this family’s rightful place in the universe. They contribute to the vast sweep of creation and evolution. And you have the feeling that at some level, they know this. They, along with the audience in the theater, are both actors and observers in the grand drama of which they are a part.

It was the same feeling I sometimes have at funerals. In an old photograph in the parish hall display, we notice a quizzical look on a young, beautiful face. We see more depth or pain than we ever noticed in person. Viewing the whole of their life from a little distance, it seems poetic, almost epic.

While we are alive, in the close-up view, we worry our way forward towards things we want and things we’re obligated to do. But in death, everything opens up. All that is not important, all that is not love, drops away. Sins are forgiven, and there is empathy for the struggle.

This is what religion is supposed to do, especially worship. This is what our readings today point us towards.

Isaiah was writing at a time of real trouble for the nation of Israel. Their very existence was being threatened by attacks from without. Eventually they would be carted off into exile in Babylon. They felt great distress about the state of their world. In our own day, we too, look around us and sometimes feel the same way. And so to his day and to our day, to all the ages, Isaiah wrote this –
Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath; for the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and those who live on it will die like gnats; but my salvation will be forever, and my deliverance will never be ended.

How is this supposed to help? By trying to transcend human life and waiting for pie in the sky? Not for me. I’m very aware of our obligation to make this world a better place for all of God’s people. We promise this several times a year in the baptismal covenant – to strive for justice and peace.

But I want to strive without fear and anger, with an underlying confidence in God’s goodness. I want to know that we are playing out the drama of human history on the stage of eternity. And Isaiah helps me do that.  

In the second reading, Paul wrote to a community of Christians in the city of Rome. They were persecuted, tiny, powerless, in comparison to the great empire in whose capital they gathered. To this ragtag group he said -  
You are the very body of Christ. As members of this body, you display all the diverse gifts of the Spirit – prophecy, faith, wisdom, compassion, and joy. So forget Rome. You are Christ, divinely gifted. See things as they really are. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.
 
It is quite natural to see our little parish in practical, worldly terms. Ordinary people come together and have meetings, struggle over budgets, sing hymns, have a little coffee and conversation, and then go their separate ways.

When we see the church in this limited way, we can get caught up in whether we like this or that, whether we’ve got enough money or people to get things done. When change comes, as it has first in the departure of Fr. Daniel and now Fr. Christopher, we might get nervous, and understandably, we feel real loss. When things go badly in the church, we become distressed. In other words, we see our church as the world sees things, and whose ups and downs take us up and down.

Paul says to us as he did to the small church in Rome, Take the wider view. You are the very body of Christ on earth, divinely gifted, eternal, global. When we remember this, we can weather our ups and downs with patience and humor.

And we can also marvel, as we will next Sunday, at all the diverse manifestations of God’s own Spirit in the many gifts of ministry that will be on display. They ebb and flow, people come and go, we change - just as any body changes over time. But the body of Christ endures from generation to generation.

Finally, in the gospel, Jesus asks his friends Who do the crowds say that I am? “Oh, the usual – some religious nut, a trouble-maker like Elijah, Jeremiah, John the Baptist. Here today, gone tomorrow.”

But who do you say that I am? Peter took a deep breath and uttered what he had not yet dared to admit to himself, let alone say out loud. You are the anointed one, the Messiah, the Son of the living God. In that moment, I imagine that all the air was sucked out of the space around the campfire.

What did this mean to Peter? It would be centuries before the church decided that it meant Jesus was God incarnate. More than likely, Peter uttered these words only because in Jesus, he could see through the veil of humanity into another, eternal, realm.

The question behind Jesus’ question is really Who do you say that you are? Are you just your job, your calendar, or even your daily moods or perplexing problems? Look deeper, Jesus says. Peter had the right vision, the vision of faith. We are anointed, sons and daughters of the living God, divinely gifted, part of the grand sweep of evolution, playing out our little personal drama on the vast stage of the universe.

How is this supposed to help? Are we supposed to transcend our humanity? No. We will always feel partly like an actor who is caught up in a role. But we can add to that a wider perspective, sort of like peripheral vision – that is, the knowledge that there is a much wider field in which we struggle and play. We can be both actor and observer.

This helps us to be aware – aware of our tunnel vision, of our fear or attachment to things that may not really be so important. We can also be aware that all things shall pass, the heavens shall vanish like smoke, the earth shall wear out, but the goodness of the Lord endures forever.

And this makes all the difference in how we live in the here and now.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009
    September 2009
    August 2009
    July 2009
    June 2009
    May 2009
    April 2009
    March 2009
    February 2009
    January 2009
    December 2008
    November 2008
    October 2008
    September 2008
    August 2008
    July 2008
    June 2008
    May 2008

    Categories

    All
    Advent
    Advent Season Year A
    Advent Season Year B
    Advent Season Year B
    Advent Season Year C
    Anniversary Of Women's Ordination
    Annual Parish Meeting Sunday
    Ash Wednesday
    Baptism Of Our Lord
    Baptism Of Our Lord
    Bishop David Bailey
    Bishop Gene Robinson
    Bishop James Mathes
    Bishop Michael Vono
    Bishop William Frey
    Bonnie Anderson
    Brian Taylor
    Brian Winter
    Carolyn Metzler
    Charles Pedersen
    Christmas Day
    Christmas Eve
    Christmas Season Year B
    Christmas Season Year C
    Christopher Mclaren
    Daniel Gutierrez
    David Martin
    Doug Travis
    Easter Season Year A
    Easter Season Year B
    Easter Season Year C
    Easter Sunday
    Easter Vigil
    Feast Of All Saints
    Feast Of Christ The King
    Feast Of Epiphany
    Feast Of Pentecost
    Feast Of The Virgin Of Guadalupe
    Good Friday
    Jan Bales
    Jean-Pierre Arrossa
    Joe Britton
    Joseph Britton
    Judith Jenkins
    Kathleene Mcnellis
    Kristin Schultz
    Lent
    Lenten Season Year A
    Lenten Season Year B
    Lenten Season Year C
    Light Into Darkness
    Mandy Taylor-Montoya
    Maundy Thursday
    Michaelmas
    Palm Sunday
    Paul Hanneman
    Philip Dougharty
    Richard Valantasis
    Rob Clarke
    Rob Clarke
    Season After Epiphany Year A
    Season After Epiphany Year A
    Season After Epiphany Year B
    Season After Epiphany Year C
    Season After Pentecost Year A
    Season After Pentecost Year B
    Season After Pentecost Year C
    Sue Joiner
    Sue Joiner
    Susan Allison Hatch
    Thanksgiving Eve
    The Rev. Joe Britton
    Transfiguration Sunday
    Trinity Sunday
    Valentines Day
    William Hoelzel

Questions about the life and ministry of St. Michael's?
Contact Us!
Click here for information on
​legacy giving.
Picture

505.345.8147                601 Montaño Road NW, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87107                  office@all-angels.com

  • ABOUT US
    • WHO WE ARE
    • Leadership
    • Newcomers
    • Pastoral Care
    • Faces of Our Community
    • Contact
  • Transition
  • Worship & Prayer
    • Download Service Bulletins
    • Daily Prayer Services - The Daily Office
    • Sermons
    • Art, Music, & Literature
  • FORMATION
    • Adult Formation
    • Retreats
    • Family & Youth
  • Outreach & Social Justice
    • Casa San Miguel Food Pantry
    • The Landing
    • LGBTQ+
    • Immigration Ministry
    • Navajoland Partnership
    • Senior Ministry
    • ALL ANGELS EPISCOPAL DAY SCHOOL
  • Give
    • Annual Pledge
    • Stewardship
    • Gifts & Memorials