Fr.
Jim Liggett P.O. Box 2949; Big Spring, TX 79721
(432) 267-8201 (phone)
Stmarys@stmarysbst.org
The Lessons for today:
Exodus 24.12-18, Psalm 99; Philippians 3.7-14;
Matthew 17.1-9
A list of Sunday Scripture readings, with links to the Biblical Text:
Fr.
Jim Liggett
P.O. Box 2949; Big Spring, TX
79721
(432) 267-8201
(phone)
Stmarys@stmarysbst.org
The page background is courtesy of Windy's Page designs.
This page last updated on
November 18, 2006
Ash Wednesday,
February 9, 2005
There
is something compelling about Ash Wednesday, something that draws us here in
both numbers and intensity quite unusual for a weekday. It’s more than just
habit or duty, somehow more than just the beginning of Lent. What we say and
what we do on this special Wednesday has power.
I believe a large part of that power lies in the fact that today the Church
speaks words of truth, words that cannot be ignored, or disputed, or evaded, or
denied. Today we say—and confirm with a touch—“Remember that you are dust, and
to dust you shall return.” There it is. Much else that we say in here we may
hope is true, or fear is true, or believe, or doubt. But this we know. We are
mortal, we were born, and we will die. From dust. To dust. As if hearing the
words were not enough, they are literally rubbed into our faces. Ashes mark
us—and our fate is plain for all to see.
Then Jesus goes one step further. He reminds us that dust is the destination,
not just of our bodies, but of most of what we consider to be worth living for
as well. Moth and rust and thieves can—and will—reduce to dust virtually every
goal, every dream, every value, every treasure for which we long and toward
which we struggle. And we know that to be true, too. These words of simple,
absolute truth give us a perspective the world tries to hide, and to deny, a
vision we usually ignore. Dust and ashes. These are what we see if we look ahead
honestly enough, and far enough. This is the final return on virtually every
investment we make. Today we say that, and we know its truth, and its power.
And that looks like bad news—unmitigated bad news, even though we have known it
all along. Those grim, honest words can be devastating. We all know the personal
crisis that comes with that first mature realization of the absolute certainty
of our own death. We know how jarring that is—and this day we are reminded of
that, and brought closer to that. From dust to dust. To find the Good News here
we need to begin with the past, and with a conviction we Christians hold as
firmly as we know the certainty of our death. That is the conviction that we are
created by God, that we did not just happen, that we did not emerge willy-nilly
by some cosmic fluke. The dust of our beginnings—the dust from which we came—is
not a matter of chance, and it is not without meaning. Our lives are gifts of
God. Nothing less. Our dust was molded by the very hands of God and His spirit
breathed life into it.
Part of the good news is that we have been made from dust. The Grace and power
of God are present at the beginning of our existence. Our dust is holy, our
ashes are blessed by the power of God. What appears a threat—‘you are dust...’,
becomes, if we will pay attention, a promise. The Grace and power present at our
creation will see us through our physical disintegration, and beyond. God is
with us from the very beginnings, and before. Our dust is holy, and cherished by
God.
Notice something else. These ashes that we put on our forehead are not tossed
there, or scattered at random. They are placed in the form of a cross; so that
today we are connected with both Good Friday and Easter morning. Today we
remember the promise that, as we have risen from the dust to mortal life, so
with Christ we shall arise from the dust of death to eternal life. Yes, to dust
we shall return, but with Christ—and he works in us his new creation.
Dust and ashes are good news: They point us to the power and love of God—both at
the beginning, and at the end. And they remind us that, because of that Good
News, we are called today, as we live between dust and dust, to repent and to
return. To return to our risen Lord. That’s what repent means—To turn, to change
the direction we are looking and to look in a new direction. That call to us to
return does not center on fear, on what will happen to us if we do not; and it
does not center on guilt and duty—on what we think we ought to do.
God’s call to return, to repent, centers on the divine love. On the love that is
the heart of our creation—on the love that is seen most fully on the cross. It
centers on the love that transforms ashes into a symbol of hope.
Such turning—such true repentance—is not something we can think ourselves into,
it is not something we can pay lip service (or forehead service) to, and have
happen. It depends upon concrete action. We don’t think ourselves into a new
state of mind. We live and we act our way into it.
Scripture and the acclimated spiritual insight of our tradition, tell us that
the classical and ancient disciplines of prayer, fasting, giving, service, are
powerful helps as we hear and move toward obeying God’s call to return. Jesus
commands these, and goes the extra step of insisting both that we practice them,
and that we do so privately—indeed secretly. By the way, Jesus is being quite
straightforward here, quite literal. God simply ignores the actions of those who
deliberately attract attention to their religious deeds. So we are counseled to
wash our faces, and go about in quiet obedience. In that way our reward—our
growth into Christ and his growth in us—will be something quite safe from rust,
and moths, and thieves.
So, remember that you are dust—and rejoice—for God is with us; in the beginning,
at the end, and now as we live in between.
And repent, return to the Lord—In joyful obedience. For he who created us is
calling us to himself. It is for this reason we have the special gift of Lent—a
time to allow us to hear that call, and to respond.
Lent I, Year A,
February 13, 2005
The first Sunday in Lent is always about temptation. Every year hear
the story of the temptations of Jesus. This year, we also hear the very first
temptation story—the story of the creation, temptation and fall of the human
race. I want to look for a while at how these two stories are alike, and how
they can help us begin Lent.
Each story begins with a gift; indeed with the same gift. First of all, the
story from Genesis makes it clear that creation is best seen as a sign of God’s
love for humanity. In the beginning, God gives. One of the many gifts God gives
the man and the woman is the gift of relationship. He gives them relationship
with themselves, with one another, with the created order, and, primarily, God
gives them relationship with Himself. The garden is the symbol of a relationship
with nature where creation is a pleasant and abundant place. Their nakedness is
symbolic of an uncomplicated relationship with themselves and with one another.
And, think about this, it is God’s commands, in particular the command not to
eat of the fruit of that one tree, that is symbolic of their relationship with
God.
You see, there must be mutuality in relationship, there must be some level of
expectation and interaction. The primary reason God gave the command not to eat
was so the man and the woman would have the opportunity to obey; so they could
behave in a way that was expressive of their response to God’s goodness. So they
could say “thank you”.
(After all, if God were mainly concerned with keeping them away from the tree,
there were lots of more effective ways of doing that. He could have hidden the
tree, for heaven’s sake—we are talking about God here. But keeping them away
from the tree wasn’t God’s main concern.) God knew there could be no real
response, no real relationship without the opportunity say ‘no’. So, in order to
provide a way for the man and the women to love Him back, God gave them the
command not to eat of the fruit of the tree. That was a gift. It was something
they needed. Then the serpent shows up, people face temptations and have to make
choices, and the Garden of Eden becomes the Wilderness. What was really at issue
with listening to the serpent, eating the fruit and all of that, was whether the
man and the woman would be faithful to God’s gift of relationship with Him.
Would they live and act in way that demonstrated that their relationship with
God was central to who they were? Or, would they try to define themselves apart
from God, apart from what God had given them?
That’s always the issue in temptations. Behind the immediate question of “What
will I do?” is the larger question of “Who will I be?”; which is really the same
question as “Whom will I serve?”
Something very similar is going on with the temptations of Jesus. Immediately
before the spirit drove him into the wilderness to be tempted, Jesus’
relationship with the Father, his identity, had been revealed to him at his
baptism.
The Father had said, “This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.” The
gift of relationship had become unmistakably clear to Jesus. He was especially,
indeed uniquely, beloved of the Father.
Now, in the wilderness, Jesus had to decide how he would live that out. He had
to decide whether he would be faithful to that gift, or whether he would define
himself apart from God, and settle for something a little easier, a little less.
Jesus’ temptations did not have to do with proving whether or not he was God’s
beloved son. Both Jesus and the devil knew that. The temptations had to do with
whether Jesus would act like it; with how he would live it out.
I’ve said before that you don’t ever have to tell a dog how to be a dog. There
is no need to say, “now spot, while I’m gone, you be a dog”. They just do it,
they just know. It’s natural. Their nature and their behavior are perfectly, if
sometimes inconveniently, united. On the other hand, it is necessary, sometimes
more than once, to remind an adult to act like an adult, and to remind a
Christian to act like a Christian. That’s one of the ways we are different from
dogs. We need both to remind ourselves (and to be reminded) who we are, and to
tell ourselves to act like who we are. It isn’t always natural.
That’s because, like Jesus in the wilderness, like Adam and Eve in the Garden,
we are balanced on the knife’s edge between what we are given by God, and how we
choose to live that out—between gift and response.
And we need to remember that Jesus’ choices, like the choices in the garden of
Eden, were real choices; and they were hard choices. They had to do with things
Jesus really wanted, with things he really feared.
After all, it is much easier to change stones into bread than it is to offer
your own body as bread for the world. And it doesn’t hurt nearly as much. And it
would no doubt be a lot more fun to rule the world from the top of a very high
mountain than to do the same thing hanging from a cross. Finally, throwing
yourself off the pinnacle of the temple is almost certainly safer, and much more
spectacular, than carrying your own cross, and watching your friends run away,
and your enemies laugh.
And Jesus was alone in the wilderness; and he was hungry, really hungry. That
wonderful moment of clarity at his baptism was just a memory, and he had to
choose how he was going to live, now that he was all grown up. The choices were
real, and they were hard.
In the garden, the man and the woman were alone, too. The only voice they could
hear was the voice of the serpent; God was strangely silent. And wouldn’t it
feel really good to be “as God”, and to know the difference between good and
evil? Besides, if God really didn’t want them to do it, He could just stop
them—He was God, wasn’t He.
You see, temptation is always about real, and hard, choices. It is about being
faithful to the gift of relationship; it is about who you are going to be, now
that you are grown up.
Lent has to do with this. It has to do with deciding one more time whether we
will live out what it means to be beloved of God, to be named as Christian; or
whether we will settle for something less, for something easier and softer,
something that looks like it will get you quickly and painlessly out of whatever
wilderness you are in. (By the way, that’s another big part of temptation.
Temptation offers a quick way out of the wilderness, it offers to make things
easy. After all, if you turn stones into bread, then you have plenty of bread,
and you are not hungry anymore, the wilderness is gone. If you take the fruit of
the tree and eat it, then the silly serpent will stop bothering you, and it will
be paradise again.)
Of course it doesn’t work that way, and we know that. The man and the woman
discovered that. We have discovered that. When they betrayed their relationship
with God; then every other relationship went bad, as well. They blamed each
other, they were ashamed, they hid from God, and the soil itself, nature itself,
became their enemy. There is no quick way out of the wilderness.
But there is a way through. That way through has to do with remembering who we
are; with remembering God’s gifts to us. We are beloved of God. Our temptations,
whatever they are, whatever they will be, will all have us forget this. They
will have us settle for something else, for something less, for something
easier. Our call is to hold fast to God’s great gift to us of identity, of
relationship. It is to remember that for us also have the heavens opened, and to
us as well the voice of God Almighty has spoken—“This is my beloved Child”. This
is our constant. This is always where we begin
The Lessons for today:
Genesis 2.4b-9, 15-17, 25--3.7; Psalm 51.1-12;
Romans 5.12-21;
Matthew 4.1-11
A list of Sunday Scripture readings, with links to the Biblical Text:
Fr.
Jim Liggett
P.O. Box 2949; Big Spring, TX
79721
(432) 267-8201
(phone)
Stmarys@stmarysbst.org
The page background is courtesy of Windy's Page designs.
This page last updated on
November 18, 2006
Lent II,
Year A, February 20, 2005
In his sermon last
month, John Marshall mentioned a haunting line from a Michael Crawford song, the
line was “what a strange way [for God] to save the world.” I am captivated by
that, and I want you to let it sort of hover over the sermon today, because the
lessons we just heard, like so many in Lent, are about exactly that, they are
about the strange way God has chosen to save the world, and us.
It begins with Abram, who we know better as Abraham. It begins with him for
everybody. All the great historical religions of humanity—Christianity, Judaism,
and Islam—they all begin with Abraham as the picture of what faith looks like,
as the picture of how God set out to save the world.
Remember, in the Bible, the section we just heard about Abram comes right after
the story of the Tower of Babel—that powerful account of how humanity tries to
become like God, and as a consequence is divided by language, culture, and
distance, and scattered across the face of the earth. (Babel is a sort of second
telling of the story of the Fall). Abram is God’s response to the world after
Babel, to our world, the world we know—a world of people out of touch with our
own selves, with each other, and with God. It is with Abram that God begins his
great work of putting things right.
Now, if you were God, how would you save the world? Think about it; what would
you do? It’s a good question; and if nothing else, our answer might help us to
see what our expectations of God really are, and those are good to know. But
instead of anything we might imagine God doing—like snapping his fingers and
making everything and everybody just the way God wants them to end up, or giving
everybody the same language and bringing them all together again, or even wiping
everybody out and starting all over again—instead of any of that, God calls this
one person to go somewhere else (he isn’t told where) and to begin a new family,
a new community, that will be the means by which the whole world is blessed.
Abram is picked out by God, he is chosen, he is blessed. But notice that he is
not primarily chosen for privilege or for personal advantage. Instead, he is
asked to do a very hard thing. He is asked to leave behind everything that gives
him identity and status and security and to set out for an unknown future. God
asks Abram to enter a new world, a new life, a new birth.
And none of this was Abram’s idea. For all we know, he was perfectly happy where
he was, and had no driving personal desire to be the instrument of God’s
salvation. But something happened to Abram, something that gave him such a solid
center in God that he was able to set out to the very edges of his imagination,
far beyond his experience and his own best judgment. God spoke to Abram, and
Abram heard, and he went. And so it began—for him, and for us. This is how God
sets out to save the world.
The story about Nicodemus is really the same story. It is night, just as the
world was a dark place when Abram was called. God is still at work saving the
world—and with Jesus a new chapter has begun. Nicodemus is offered a special
place in God’s work of salvation. He is offered a place in the Kingdom of God.
He is given the chance for a new life, a new beginning—a beginning that comes,
not from his present position and status and wealth and security, but from
above, from the wind, the spirit, the breath of God. And Nicodemus, bless his
heart, does everything in his power not to understand; he works at it. I suspect
this is because he understands only too well. He understands that accepting
Jesus’ offer means that everything would be different, everything would be new;
and that he, Nicodemus, would not be in charge either of what any of it looked
like, or of where it led him. After all, Nicodemus is a leader, a member of the
ruling council. His knowledge and his status are what give him his identity.
So he pretends to be too stupid, or too old, or too set in his ways, or too
something. He is not about to put himself in the position of being tossed around
by a wind that blows were it chooses, and not where Nicodemus chooses. His
center is in himself, and that center is not strong enough to let Nicodemus risk
going to the edge. So, Nicodemus refuses to loosen his grip on precisely those
things that Abram was willing to surrender for the sake of God’s call.
There is a curious consistency here. Joining up with God as he goes about his
strange way of saving the world always begins with loss, or with what seems like
loss and feels like loss—and it is always connected, in one way or
another, with
mission, with being, not for ourselves alone, but for others.
That is how God saves the world—with people like Abram, and Nicodemus, and you
and me—people who are given the chance to move to a new center, a new beginning
point in our lives, and from there to reach out to the very edges of our
imagination, from there to be willing to blown by the Spirit of God to new
places, whether they are new places within ourselves, or other sorts of new
places we have never considered.
It can be very hard to remember this. It can be very hard not to agree with
Nicodemus and his insistence on clarity, certainty, and security, and so to
leave Abram safely in the past.
It can be very easy, very tempting, to seek in the Word of God words of comfort,
consolation, and confirmation only, and not to see what Abram embraced and
Nicodemus feared—a new center in God, and with that a willingness to let the
Spirit blow us where it will, into new places of life and of service.
But this is the way God has chosen to save the world—by offering us the Kingdom,
and in doing that creating a new community—one that includes us whether we know
it or not—a community that would be both the place of God’s work of salvation
and the vehicle of God’s work of salvation. Instead of by magic, or by the use
of great force or conclusive argument, or by destruction and a whole new ball
game, God has chosen, well, us—as heirs of Abram and peers of Nicodemus, to be
his answer to the world’s pain. It is puzzling and—properly understood—more than
a bit scary, but there it is. God’s work of salvation goes on, and there is a
place for us in that. We are called, we must choose; and we must act.
What a strange way to save the world.
The Lessons for today:
Genesis 12.1-8; Psalm 33.12-22;
Romans 4.1-12,13-17;
John 3.1-17
The page background is courtesy of
Windy's Page designs. This page last updated on
November 18, 2006
A list of Sunday Scripture readings, with links to the Biblical Text:
Fr.
Jim Liggett
P.O. Box 2949; Big Spring, TX
79721
(432) 267-8201
(phone)
Stmarys@stmarysbst.org
The reading from John about the man born blind really took me back to the
Adult call we had in Epiphany called “Where is God”, as the tsunami brought to
center stage those tough questions about God and suffering. How can an
all-loving, all-knowing and all-powerful God allow unmerited suffering to exist
in the world God created and loves? We didn’t get any easy answers, simple
solutions, or nice, neat conclusions then, and we don’t this time, either.
Jesus saw a man blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who
sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” This question, this
desire for a satisfying answer, is one of the basic human responses to the
reality of tragedy, pain, and suffering—especially tragedy, pain and suffering
that make no sense, that we can neither understand nor explain.
We know about this. We know that much of our pain, and the pain in the world, is
hard to understand or to figure out. It is like the fate of the man born blind.
It just happens. So we all ask our versions of “who sinned, this man or his
parents”. We ask why marriages fall apart, why people, especially good people,
get sick or get hurt, when it isn’t their fault; and why way too many die far
too young. We wonder why families so often do not work out the way they should
work out, the way everybody wants them to work out. We wonder about earthquakes
and tsunamis. We wonder about a lot of things.
The disciples wanted to understand the tragedy of the man born blind. Now, if he
had become blind because of his own carelessness, or if someone else had blinded
him on purpose, it would still be a tragedy, but it would make more sense, it
would be easier to deal with. But that isn’t what happened, and the disciples
wanted to understand.
In order to explain this sort of thing, one of the traditional answers had been
that tragedies such as this are a case of God visiting the sins of the parents
on the children. The parents sin, the children suffer. While that’s not
particularly reassuring, it does at least offer an explanation.
It shows how God, who had to be a part of everything, could be a part of this.
But that theory had a big problem. The prophet Ezekiel, as well as other
important thinkers in Israel’s tradition had objected; and they had very
strongly insisted that God did not skip generations, that God treated people as
individuals, and not at heirs of someone else’s sin. So another explanation was
sought.
Later, some other rabbis came up with an interesting alternative. Perhaps, they
speculated, a child could sin while it was still in the womb. Being born blind
would be punishment for that sin. Again, while it was a weird explanation, it
was at least a sort of answer. There was some justice to be found, some sense to
all of it.
So, when the disciples asked Jesus their question, (“who sinned, this man or his
parents...”) they were asking him to choose from the two standard answers to the
ancient question of “Why?”. They were asking for an answer to the ancient cry
for meaning and justice.
It is important to realize what Jesus does when he responds to this question.
First of all, Jesus rejects both alternatives. He says “No” to both of the
possible explanations. In doing this, Jesus rejects all answers to the question
of “Why?”. Jesus does not say, “no, that is not the reason, but this is”.
Instead, and this is very different, Jesus refuses to make sense out this
inexplicable tragedy (or any such tragedy) by explaining it in terms of either
the divine will or human sin.
So he rejects the explanation that bad things like this happen because the
victims are bad, or because the devil makes them happen, or because people don’t
have enough faith, or whatever explanations folks had come up with before and
have come up with since. Neither Jesus nor the Christian faith offers a clear,
logical explanation of such senseless suffering. Neither Jesus nor the Christian
faith gives us answers in the way we want answers.
Instead, we are left with the fact that we live in a world that really is not
fair, that is marked by ambiguity. We live in a world where tragedy happens for
no apparent reason to folks who absolutely do not deserve it. The point is not
that if we have enough faith the questions won’t matter and we will understand.
The questions do matter, but we will never understand to our satisfaction, at
least not on this side of eternity, and it doesn’t do any good to pretend
otherwise.
But that is not all Jesus says. Jesus says two more things. (But these are not
answers to the question of “why?”; and we make important mistakes if we treat
them like answers.) The first thing Jesus says about the man born blind is that
through him the works of God can be made manifest. That is, the place to look
for God in this tragedy, or in any tragedy, is not at the front-end of it,
causing it to happen. God won’t be found there. God does not sit up in heaven
passing out cancer cells, birth defects, earthquakes, strokes and car wrecks
like some hideous dealer at a high-stakes cosmic poker game.
The place to find God is in the middle of the mess, in the very worst parts of
it, working there to bring forth something new—not something that fixes the
mess, but something that redeems and transforms it. And the God who is found
there, the God who is active there, is the God who has scars on his hands and
feet and side. It is the God who knows, who cares, who remembers what suffering
is like—the God who shares our suffering and pain, and who takes it into himself
in the vastness of his compassion and love.
Remember, this is not an explanation of what happens. God did not poke the man’s
eyes out before he was born, and so condemn him and his family to years of
misery, poverty, and humiliation, so the guy would be handy for Jesus to use as
a sermon illustration. That’s not the point.
Instead, the point is that God can be found, in very real ways, in the very
heart of the pain. That’s the first thing Jesus says.
The second thing Jesus says is this: “We must work the works of him who sent me,
while it is day”. Notice that Jesus says “We”. We must work the works of God.
Tragedy, pain and suffering are also calls to ministry and to service.
Now, this may or may not be a call to fix whatever the problem is, (sometimes we
simply can’t do that), but it is always a call to reach out, and to care, a call
to discover, to bring, and to share the presence of God in the heart of the
tragedy.
This is not an explanation, either. That is, terrible things don’t happen so
that we can have an opportunity to minister and serve. God doesn’t work that
way, either. But the call to such ministry and service is part of Jesus’
response to the reality of tragedy and suffering.
These two things are what Jesus says to the question “who sinned, this man or
his parents, that he was born blind?” They are the way Jesus responds to our
cries for explanations.
For us Christians, what makes sense out of our lives, and what makes sense out
of the world’s suffering, and our own, is not answers or explanations. Instead,
what makes sense out of these, is the presence of a God of compassion and love,
and the opportunity to serve. What makes sense out of tragedy is not that we
understand it. Instead, it is that God has taken it upon himself, and that God
is present in it and through it; and that God calls us to love Him, and to serve
Him, and to find Him, in our own pain, and in that of our brothers and sisters.
That’s may not be the explanation we ask for; it almost certainly is not the
answer we want. But it is the truth, and it is honest, and it promises that we
are never alone, never forsaken. For God is indeed with us, even in the very
heart of the very worst. And that is enough.
The Lessons for today: I Samuel 16.1-13; Psalm 23; Ephesians 5.1-14; John 9.1-38
A list of Sunday Scripture readings, with links to the Biblical Text:
Fr.
Jim Liggett
P.O. Box 2949; Big Spring, TX
79721
(432) 267-8201
(phone)
Stmarys@stmarysbst.org
The page background is courtesy of Windy's Page designs.
This page last updated on
November 18, 2006
Easter II, Year A, April 3, 2005
The disciples were behind locked doors, because they were
afraid. They were behind locked doors on Easter Day, and a week later, they were
still huddled behind locked doors, frightened, hiding, and, at least in Thomas’
case, filled with doubt. They hardly appear to be the beginning a movement that
will transform human history. But there they were.
In one way or another, we all know what the disciples were doing. We know how it
feels to be in exile, or cowering behind strong, locked doors, hiding from
things that frighten us. For us, this usually takes a different form than it did
for Peter and the rest. What locks us in tends to be things like our fears and
insecurities, our illnesses, our compulsion or addictions, our past—the hurts we
have experienced and the hurts we have caused—the relationships we have, or do
not have, our doubts, our self-righteousness, our uncertainties, and our sin.
Stuff like that. It is because of these that we know about living behind locked
doors. It is because of these that we can place our selves in this story.
And we are not alone. In a lot of ways, this is the human situation. What it is
like to be a person is like living behind those locked doors, confined by our
stuff, whatever that stuff may be.
Sometimes we stop there. Sometimes we decide that our stuff is what matters
most, and that living behind those doors, if not inevitable, is at least the
best we can have. So we stay there, and there we are.
But the story of Easter doesn’t stop there, it goes on. It has more to say. The
central thing the Easter story has to say is that God has gone through our
locked doors, just like he did in the Gospel; and that God has come to us. Just
like that. God did this before we were fixed, even before we were better. Jesus
didn’t wait for the disciples to figure out that they didn’t need to be afraid
any more and unlock the doors themselves. Jesus didn’t wait for Thomas to stop
doubting. Jesus didn’t wait for any of them to do anything different, or to be
anyone different. He showed up. And he loved them. That’s all. That’s what he
did, that’s what he does now. He comes through the doors that are there, and
right into the middle of whatever the stuff is; and he loves us. That’s what the
resurrected Lord does.
We know that, too. Again, probably not in exactly the same way as the disciples.
Still, we know that somehow or another, in some way or another, God has come
through our locked doors, into the very middle of whatever our stuff is, and
loved us. We might or we might not know with any clarity exactly what happened
or precisely when it happened. We might or we might not know what it means. We
might not even like it. None of that matters very much.
But in one way or another, we do know that God is up to something, or that God
might be up to something, as far as we are concerned. (Almost nothing other than
this sort of knowledge will get folks to church on Low Sunday.) So we know a
little bit about what it is like for Jesus to come through the locked doors, and
to love us.
Now, this is not magic. When God comes to us and loves us, everything doesn’t
suddenly become perfect. Remember, all of the disciples lived and died in ways
we would probably consider tragic. Legend has it that all of the Apostles died
young except John, who spent his last years in exile. Our stuff is still there.
It doesn’t vanish. The desire and the reasons to stay behind the locked doors
are still there. There is work to do. But things are different. Even if we don’t
realize it, or totally believe it, things are different.
As I said before, if we stop at our stuff, at whatever keeps us locked up, then
the Easter story goes on, but we don’t. But even if we go farther, even if we
admit that, yes, we have been met wherever we hide, and, yes, maybe God is up to
something with us, even then, if we stop there, the story will still go on
without us. Because when God loves us he doesn’t stop there. He does something
to us—actually he does at least two somethings to us. The first thing God does
is the first thing we just heard Jesus do for the disciples on Easter Day. He
gives them the gift of the Holy Spirit.
He gives them His power, His grace and His guidance. This is what Jesus gave to
the disciples when he breathed on them. This is the Spirit we were given at our
Baptism; and this is the gift we have been given, over and over, as God reaches
out to us and makes of us a new creation—whether we are aware of it or not.
This is real, it is a part of who we are right now. We don’t have to know it for
it to be true. When Jesus first breathed on the disciples, nothing much happened
to them right then. A week later they were still hiding behind locked doors. The
gift just sat there. It sat there because it took them a while to understand,
and because, for whatever reason, it took them a while to begin. (That happens
to us, too.)
You see, when Jesus came to them through their locked doors, and when Jesus
loved them, and gave them the gift of the spirit, he did one more thing—to them
and to us. He said, “as the father has sent me, even so I send you.” He gave
them mission; he called them to service.
And what the disciples discovered was that it was only as they tried to live out
that mission and ministry, it was only as they tried to follow the Lord’s
command to be servants, it was only then that they discovered within themselves
that ability and strength that Jesus had given them. It was only then that they
discovered that the spirit Jesus had breathed on them was a holy spirit of
power, and of fire. They didn’t discover that until they stepped out from behind
those locked doors. It wasn’t there until they really needed it. Then things
changed. It still wasn’t magic. They still weren’t fixed, but things were
different. Most of their stuff was still there, but there was also something
else. They discovered that it was possible to be more than they had imagined,
and to do more than they had imagined. In this way the story that had started
with Jesus continued as the disciples’ story.
That is were we are, each one of us and all of us together. Jesus has walked
through our locked doors and come to us in love. He has breathed on us the
breath of the Spirit, and he has sent us into the world as he Himself was sent
by the Father. That’s who we are. That is who you are. What you do with it is up
to you; what we do with it is up to us; but that is what is real.
You are a people loved, and given power, and sent into the world. Always
remember that. The Easter story continues, and we can continue to be a part of
it.
The Lessons for today:
Acts 2.14a, 22-32; Psalm 111; 1 Peter 1.3-9; John
20.19-31
A list of Sunday Scripture readings, with links to the Biblical Text:
Holy Week Preaching, 2005
Back to St. Mary's Homepage
Fr.
Jim Liggett
P.O. Box 2949; Big Spring, TX
79721
(432) 267-8201
(phone)
Stmarys@stmarysbst.org
The page background is courtesy of Windy's Page designs.
This page last updated on
November 18, 2006
Easter IV, Year A, April
17, 2005
The fourth Sunday of Easter is always Good Shepherd Sunday, a Sunday we hear
words from John’s Gospel about Jesus as a shepherd and his followers, the
Church, as those he cares for and leads.
Today we hear Jesus say that he is the gate for the sheep. From what we know
about gates and cattle and sheep pens, this seems pretty clear. Jesus is the one
who opens or closes the gate, and so who decides who gets in and who gets out—a
sort of Pastoral St. Peter with the keys to the kingdom. So we somehow have to
please or satisfy the gate-keeper if we want to get into the place that he is
guarding or protecting. Jesus metaphorically checks our ticket to make sure we
have either paid our dues or have the right whatever it takes to get in. Then,
if we have the proper credentials, we are past him and into the real show, what
is really important, the Kingdom of God, or heaven, or however we see the place
Jesus is guarding and protecting.
And all of that is well and good, but it does seem a bit mechanical, and very
much taking our ways of doing things and assuming that, in Jesus’ day, they did
things the same way. Also, I have always thought there was something a bit
inadequate about this picture of Jesus as the guy who stamped your
passport—especially in John’s Gospel, which is so rich and complex in its
concern with who Jesus is, and what it means to be in relationship with him.
With that in mind, I did a little looking into shepherds and sheep and sheep
pens in first century Palestine, and learned something that puts a very special
light on Jesus’ claim that “I am the gate for the sheep”. It seems that it was
common in those days for sheep pens to be rather crude enclosures, usually made
from whatever rocks were handy, and to have a single narrow opening—just wide
enough for one sheep at a time to pass through. And there wasn’t a gate that
opened and closed like we’re used to. There wasn’t a gate at all. There was the
shepherd. The shepherd stood in the gate, and slept in the gate, and was the
entrance, and the exit, for the sheep. Now, I think that is really fascinating,
and that it suggests all sort of ways of looking at Jesus that show him to be
more than just a ticket-tearer at a movie theater.
Jesus is the gate, not the gate-keeper. To come to the Father is to come, not by
Jesus, but through him—almost literally through him. He does not guard our way
to God, but he in fact is our way to God—and more. If we are to know, or to be,
or to live, in any way with and about God, it will be because we somehow share
the life of Jesus. If any part of our lives is to be lived in the presence and
the life of God, it will be because we live in the presence and in the life of
Jesus.
During Eastertide we are not only reminded of how Jesus is with us, which the
Gospels have stressed these last two Sundays, but we are also reminded who it is
who is with us. We are reminded that the fully human man from Nazareth is also
fully God to us and for us.
On a more or less intellectual level, this means that what we can know truly and
fully of God we can only know through Jesus. “He who has seen me”, Jesus tells
Philip in the Gospel we will hear next Sunday, “He who has seen me has seen the
Father”. If we want to know who God is, and what God is like, and what God
values, and what God thinks of us and what God wants of us, we must first go to
Jesus. Any other place we may choose to go to find out definitively about God—be
it our own ideas, or what someone else may say, or even my beloved philosophy,
anywhere else we go is to cast our lot with the thieves and the bandits.
Certainly, there are all sorts of ways to deepen and expand our ideas of God,
but whatever we end up with must stand the test of who Jesus is. The simple fact
is, to see anything, or any one, other than Jesus is not to see the Father—it is
not to see God.
But there is also a deeper, more intimate, piece to all of this. After all, the
core of Christianity is not intellectual, it is relational and volitional—it is
about how we choose to be in relationship with God and with one another. It is
this sense that Jesus’ words about being the gate strike most deeply. If I want
to move toward God, toward the very heart of what is real and lasting and
beautiful and good and filled with hope, then our faith calls me to move—not
toward an idea or a principle or a book or a vision or a plan—but toward a
person, this one person—toward Jesus. I am called to listen to him, to love him,
to worship him, to imitate him, to strive (with his help) to see with his eyes,
to love with his heart, and to serve with his wounded hands.
For it is only through choices for such intimate relationship that we can enter
the gate, that is, live the life, of the one who is that gate, the one who leads
us to the Father—not by standing back, out of the way and letting us pass by,
but instead by bringing our human life into his life, a life he shares not only
with us, but with God.
To do this is to discover a love so fervent that it can draw us away from all
the alternatives, all the other little gods that clamber for our attention, our
energy, and our allegiance, and draw us, through whatever struggles we may face,
to itself, and draw us into itself. For, in Jesus, God seeks us out, and calls
us in his unfailing love to new lives of compassion, faithfulness, and service.
And we can only know about that clearly if we bind our lives to the life of
Jesus, and so enter the gate that is the Lord himself.
In our worship, in our learning, in our prayers, and in our love of scripture,
this is what our Church is about. We are about Jesus. Perhaps that’s why there
are no uniquely “Episcopal” doctrines or beliefs, nothing that has not been part
of the Christian faith since the Scriptures and the Councils of the Ancient
Church. (Heaven knows we owe no real theological, [let alone moral] debt to
Henry VIII). Perhaps that’s why we tend to point to Jesus, rather than carve out
in stone long lists of required beliefs and the details of personal behavior .
We are struggling, and struggling together, to enter through the gate of the
sheep—to know Jesus, to live his life and to share his life, and to do so with
some humility, and with joy, and with the certainty both that we are not walking
alone, and that the love that calls us and the love that awaits us is the same
love, the same person, the same hope we all share, of God in Jesus Christ.
The Lessons for today:
Acts 6.1-9, 7.2a,51-60; Psalm 23;
1 Peter 2.19-25;
John 10.1-10
A list of Sunday Scripture readings, with links to the Biblical Text:
Holy Week
Preaching, 2005
Back to St. Mary's Homepage
Fr.
Jim Liggett
P.O. Box 2949; Big Spring, TX
79721
(432) 267-8201
(phone)
Stmarys@stmarysbst.org
The page background is courtesy of Windy's Page designs.
This page last updated on
November 18, 2006
Easter V, Year A, April 24, 2005
I want to build a little on what I said last week, but I’m going to get there
from perhaps an odd starting point. Those familiar words about Jesus being the
way, the truth and the life came alive for me from a different direction this
time—and I feel a little like Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes.
Do you know something I hate—I hate those stupid polls that everybody is always
taking that ask silly questions that are nobody’s business, or that nobody
answering the poll has any reason to know anything about the answer. It seems
that every two minutes somebody produces a new poll that is supposed to prove
something or another. It’s tiresome. But the absolute worst, as far as I’m
concerned, are the ones you can take yourself. Lots of so-called news shows and
other specials come equipped with their very own little phone numbers so that
anyone with a telephone and bare literacy can call in and cast their vote on
whatever the current issue or concern is. Amazing. And the Internet is full of
them. The CNN interactive news’ website has at least one poll a day, where you
can click in the little box and speak up on who should be the next Pope or the
rightness or wrongness of the membership in the UN, or whether or not Michael
Jackson is guilty (O.K., some are easy) and more.
What’s more, the results are instantaneous. You click on another little box and
there they are. So many say ‘yes’, so many say ‘no’. (There is also some fine
print that says the poll and its results are not scientific, which I guess is
all that stands between us and absolute rule by CNN interactive news.)
Now, what bothers me most about all of this is that we can come to regard this
sort of fanciful activity as a way of discovering moral or personal truth—as a
way of really finding out, for example, whether we should have laws requiring
extraordinary medical procedures, or impeach Tom DeLay, or whatever.
That’s where John’s Gospel comes in. I do not doubt for a minute that one of our
most significant problems as a culture, and, all too often, as individuals, is
that we have come to believe that we are the way, the truth, and the life. If we
need to know something, we come to ourselves, and we look within, or we take a
vote, or a poll, or we ask around, and that pretty much decides things, that
pretty much settles the matter. So, truth can be found by counting the number of
times a bunch of on-line bubbas click on a little box in a CNN poll. As weird as
that sounds, that seems the way we are going.
And that’s really troubling; that’s really scary. One of the things that I am
convinced of about us human beings of is that if we try to follow a way that
comes solely from within ourselves, then we will become lost, and we will remain
lost. If we wed ourselves to a version of truth that is totally of our own
making, that comes from ourselves alone, then we will be forever trapped in
lies; and if we seek primarily to preserve, to serve and to sustain our own
lives, then we will lose them, and we will live as impoverished shadows of what
a human being can be.
We are not the way. Our collective history and our personal experiences will,
upon even the most superficial reflection, make that abundantly clear. We need
something else, something more than the best we can do; something beyond the
best anyone can do. We must be guided by a light that comes from outside of
ourselves.
When Jesus makes that dreadfully important claim that he is the way, and the
truth, and the life, he is offering us that light, that alternative to our own
selves, that can take us beyond the best we can figure out alone. In this there
is hope and direction, and all sorts of possibilities.
We are not the way. Not even if the polls are scientific. But that’s not all.
Somebody out there who thinks they have all the answers, even, maybe especially,
somebody religious out there who thinks they have all the answers, they are not
they way, either.
No list of things to do or not to do, no collection of wise sayings, no program,
no agenda, no schedule, these are not the way, either.
Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.
This means, as I suggested last week, that if we want to know the way, then we
have to know a person. We have to know Jesus. Not just know things about Jesus,
although these are helpful and useful; but we have to know Jesus. You can’t take
just one saying, or one event, or one action, even from the Biblical stories
about Jesus, and say, ‘this is it, now I know what I need to know’, any more
than you can do that with any other person.
Much of the challenge and the discipline of the Christian life consists of this,
of getting to know him. The business of growing in the faith—of prayer, worship,
study, sacraments, of exploring the Scriptures and serving our neighbor—these
all have to do with ways that we can come to know the Lord, and so come to know
what it means in our lives, and in the life of our parish, for Jesus to be the
way, and the truth and the life. You really can’t know a lot of the details of
what this will look like in advance; and no one can hand you the finished
product and save you the trip.
If Jesus is the way and we are not, then we have to begin with him, and nowhere
else. We set out to know him, and we leave ourselves open to where that may lead
us. We try to conform our lives to that distinctive vision of what life can be
that we see in him.
Now, this doesn’t mean that decisions and directions and conclusions are all
nice and simple and easy. That might be true if the way, the truth, and the life
were a book, or a list, or almost anything other than a person. But it isn’t. I
have no doubt that the variety of conclusions, opinions, and convictions that
have always characterized the Christian Church will continue to thrive.
But this does mean that what unites us is stronger than that. It does mean that
we share, and that we are bound together in, a common, sacred task—that of
discovering who our Lord is, and who he will have us to be. We are in this
together, and for the sake of one another, as well as for him.
This search for truth and direction means that we are companions together on a
holy journey, a journey into the Lord’s life, and into our own life; a journey
that seeks the truth in the person of Jesus, a journey that is both with him and
toward him. It is a journey that might not always lead each of us to the same
place at the same time, but it is one that can create in us a great respect for
our fellow-travelers. After all, this is a relationship with a person, and a
relationship with a person is always the meeting of two mysteries, of two
freedoms.
That’s a far cry from clicking the little boxes on CNN—or however we might look
to ourselves alone—to find the truth. It’s not as clear-cut, but it is real, and
it is the way of hope, it is the way that leads to life.
Jesus said, I am the way, and the truth, and the life. And he is; and we are
not. Thanks be to God.
The Lessons for today:
Acts 17.1-15; Psalm 66.1-11;
1 Peter 2.1-10;
John 14.1-14
A list of Sunday Scripture readings, with links to the Biblical Text:
Holy Week
Preaching, 2005
Back to St. Mary's Homepage
Fr.
Jim Liggett
P.O. Box 2949; Big Spring, TX
79721
(432) 267-8201
(phone)
Stmarys@stmarysbst.org
The page background is courtesy of Windy's Page designs.
This page last updated on
November 18, 2006
Easter VI, Year A, May 1, 2005
Every three years we hear these two lesson.
We hear Jesus say to us “abide in me as I abide in you”, and we hear the story
from Acts about Paul preaching in Athens. And every three years these words put
a special focus and intensity on what I see as the absolutely key and central
religious issue Christian people in our country and in our society generally are
facing. I want to try to deal with that just a bit. The place to start is Athens
in Paul’s day. After all, Athens is the true birthplace of a big part of our
culture—arts, music, politics, mathematics, drama, science, philosophy and
careful, critical thinking in general, all of these were, at least in part,
gifts to us from Athens, and from the cultures Athens inspired.
When Paul preached in the Areopagus around the year 51, Athens was well aware of
its reputation and its legacy. It had become the ultimate University town, and
it wrote the book on intellectual openness. In Athens, all ideas were equally
welcomed and equally examined; everyone was very understanding. What was
important was that you would discuss and listen; and that you were both clever
and sincere. There were lots of intellectual and religious alternatives, but
there was no shared vision. That was the world Paul entered when he stood, quite
literally, where Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had stood, and tried to preach.
But that world of openness, options, and variety was, for better or for worse,
about to change. Within a relatively short time Christianity became the
official, and then the dominant, religion in the Roman Empire. Next thing you
know, a Christian emperor had closed the last of the ancient schools in Athens
and run the remaining philosophers out of town; and, between the Church and the
barbarians, the sort of intellectual smorgasbord that Athens had offered and
epitomized vanished from the West.
The era of Christendom had began—an era where Christianity was the preferred,
proclaimed and protected religion of our entire culture.
During this era it was assumed that Christianity had a unique place and a
special claim not only on the social and political institutions of the society,
but also on both the content and limits of acceptable thought and the options
that were available to civilized individuals and groups. In Christendom, all
ideas were not considered equal, and the traditional faith was assumed to be the
backbone of the society. This was the way of our part of the world for at least
1,600 years. That’s a long time. And there are still sizable chunks of
Christendom hanging around. In fact, most of grew up with many of the
assumptions and preconceptions of Christendom as natural to us as the air we
breathed.
What has happened, or one of the things that has happened, to us and to Western
Culture in the last several decades is that, again for better or for worse,
Christendom is dying; and Athens is back. For the first time in well over 1,600
years, the Athens that Paul knew has become the norm for western civilization,
and even for our little part of it. Christianity may receive lip service from
many, indeed most, people, but it is slipping away as the live and lively faith
of our culture. Variety is becoming the live and lively faith of our culture.
When we walk out of that door, into the world we are to serve, we are back in
Athens. And nobody has been there for a long, long time.
We can no longer assume that there is much if any of a shared core of values and
traditions in our culture, or among the folks we meet. Even in Big Spring. Where
I see this most clearly is with my students at Howard College, and with the
folks who come in for help with the discretionary fund. They include the first
truly unchurched generation in American history; and it’s a little spooky.
One small but telling example is that I have discovered that I can’t make
references to even the most well known Bible stories and expect to be
understood—Even Adam and Eve often get blank stares.
(Now, at the college, I can’t make references to Shakespeare, either; but that’s
a somewhat different problem.) None of us has to look very far to see the same
thing. It’s everywhere, it’s where we are.
This means that there is a special immediacy to what Paul says and does. Maybe
we can learn something from him about abiding in Jesus and living in Athens.
Probably the best way to get at this is to begin by noticing what Paul does not
say. On the one hand, he does not say that the people of Athens are immoral
fools, stupid, ignorant, wrong-headed, hell-bound secular humanists who are
going to burn forever and who ought to burn forever. He doesn’t say that they
know nothing and that he knows everything. That’s the first thing he doesn’t
say. On the other hand, he also does not say that, since they are religious and
sincere, then he, Paul, really doesn’t have anything to say to them. He doesn’t
do that, either. Paul knew what vine he was grafted to. Paul knew where he must
abide. So he doesn’t cop out, either.
What Paul says to the people of Athens is that they are very close. In a sermon
unlike any other we ever hear from him, using Greek methods and images—Paul’s
first few words are a direct quote from Plato—Paul says to the Athenians that
their search is the universal human quest for God, and that they have come very
close to the truth, to the goal of that quest; but they are missing one thing.
One vital thing.
Listen to this: They are not missing a better philosophy, or a more useful
morality. They are not missing a good tool for success or a better building to
meet in or a more exciting form of worship. Paul says that their real problem is
neither an ignorance of mystical secrets nor a lack of self-esteem. In fact,
they are not missing anything they can find by themselves or within themselves;
instead, he insists, they are missing something they can only get from Paul.
They are missing Jesus, and the community Jesus creates. That’s what it all
boils down to. The fullness of God, and of God’s love—these are what they are
missing.
That is what Paul preached, finally. He did this without attacking, without
histrionics, without self-righteousness and (for a while) without a whole lot of
success. But he offered what he had, and he said they were so close they could
almost taste the truth.
I suspect that is what we have to say to Athens as it exists outside of that
door. Our world, in all its silly, evil, and death-centered madness, is really
quite close. Our world is seeking in a pathetic frenzy the same unknown god to
whom Athens (having, if nothing else, better taste than we do) built statues.
Our world knows there is more to life than the egoism, acquisitiveness,
sensuality and simplistic relativism that seem to drive its thinking these days.
Without always knowing it, it is seeking the one whom we do know, the one who
rules us from a cross.
We don’t have to say much else, but we do have to say that. We have to talk
about Jesus. Somehow. Maybe even with words. And, as a parish and as
individuals, we need to try all sorts of things, from a web page to radio ads to
actually inviting people to church—things that point the way, things to invite
and to welcome, to make space and to make time for people desperate to know what
Paul knew, and what we know.
There is a great spiritual hunger out there, just as there was in Paul’s time,
and, like him, we are called to name the healing for that hunger that we have
found—not self-righteously, not as a part of any other agenda or as a smug
put-down, but as the honest sharing of a gracious gift we have received. If we
do anything other than this, we do something less. For we are part of one vine,
and we must abide in that vine. That’s who we are, and that is part of the
truth.
Athens is back, it is right out there. Our clever neighbors, like the crowd
around Paul, are listening a little to what we have to say, and looking very
closely at who we are and how we live. And, like Paul in the middle of the
Areopagus, it is our time to say something.
The Lessons for today:
Acts 17.22-31; Psalm 148;
1 Peter 3.8-18;
John 15.1-8
A list of Sunday Scripture readings, with links to the Biblical Text:
Holy Week
Preaching, 2005
Back to St. Mary's Homepage
Fr.
Jim Liggett
P.O. Box 2949; Big Spring, TX
79721
(432) 267-8201
(phone)
Stmarys@stmarysbst.org
The page background is courtesy of Windy's Page designs.
This page last updated on
November 18, 2006 Underlying
the story of Pentecost we just heard in Acts is the Biblical story of the Tower
of Babel—you know how it goes; it’s sort of a second story of the Fall. People
are in a good and easy place (there is one language, just a few words, folks can
understand each other and work together) but they are prideful, and they want to
be in control. So they build a tower to reach to heaven, in order to be as great
as God. A list of Sunday Scripture readings, with links to the Biblical Text:
Holy Week
Preaching, 2005 The page background is courtesy of
Windy's Page designs. This page last updated on
November 18, 2006
The Day of Pentecost,
Year A, May 15, 2005
So, as a way of keeping the people from getting above their raising, God
scatters them over the whole face of the earth, and confuses their languages, so
they can’t understand each other. It’s a wonderful story, and, like all the
stories in this part of Genesis, it is not really a story about them, way back
then. It’s a story about us, here and now, and it tells us what who we are, and
what it is like to be a human being in the world today—which is to be scattered
and divided and unable to communicate with each other; separated from one
another by the reality and the consequences of sin. It’s a true story.
It’s a true story because we are, in fact, living in the rubble of Babel. That’s
how it is. What’s more, even speaking the same language doesn’t always help very
much, and each of us knows what a struggle it can be to reach out, to
understand, really to communicate with one another—and we know both what a joy
it can be when that happens, and how painful it can be when it does not.
Now, the account of Pentecost in Acts, is, of course, offered as a sort of
vision of what it will look like when God has healed this wound of sin, and made
all of creation both new and whole—when people can once more hear and understand
on another, and Babel is destroyed.
We acted out a little of the Pentecost story this morning, hearing the Gospel in
the native languages of several parishioners. It’s a fairly common practice on
Pentecost, and we’ve even done it before (which really makes it all right). But
there is also a particular irony to doing this. It really reminds us more of
Babel than of Pentecost. That is, most, if not all of us, could not understand a
word that (Ben, BeeBee, Adriana, or Mark ) said. Here we are, two thousand years
after Pentecost, and the words are just so much noise, so much babble. It might
be nice to have one language and just a few words, so we could always
understand. But that’s not where we are. All of this can make the Pentecost
story seem even more distant from today than the Tower of Babel, which at least
describes reality fairly well.
But what I want to suggest this morning is that, just like the story of Babel,
the Day of Pentecost is also about us, here and now, as much as it is about
them, way back then. The reason it’s easy to miss this is because we usually
miss part of the story. Notice how Pentecost was not just about talking: it was
also about hearing. It was about the gift to all of those folks from all over
the world of being able to listen to strangers, to foreigners, and to hear from
those strange mouths the truth of God’s deeds of power. It was the gift that
allowed those people not just to know the words, but to hear with the heart and
with the soul, and so to discover, not just a neat linguistic trick, but the
very presence and truth of God.
God the Holy Spirit gave, and God the Holy Spirit continues to give, to pour out
upon his people, this gift of listening with the heart as well as the ears, this
gift of being able to overcome the distance of being scattered throughout the
earth by our differences—be they differences of age, race, background,
nationality, whatever, and so to hear in those different voices the word of God.
When you think about it, we’re more like those first hearers at the Day of
Pentecost than we are like the Apostles. The word of hope and of new life is
given to us in our own language. It comes to us in all
sorts of ways, from all sorts of different faces, with all sorts of accents.
Today is Youth Sunday, and we have heard, and will hear, some new voices opening
the Scriptures and leading us in prayer and song and worship. We know there is
something special going on here, just as we know there is something special
going on in these other languages we have heard. We know that because, as our
children and our friends come forward to offer their gifts and their words, we
hear with our hearts as well as with our ears, and we know, as the first hearers
at Pentecost knew, that these voices come to us from God, and that they can move
us, and lead us.
This gift, the gift of hearing with the heart, this gift of discovering the Word
of God in unexpected places, and from unusual voices, continues to be one of the
central gifts of the Holy Spirit. It is the ability to hear in love, and to
respond, even if the words don’t quite work, even if the voice is unfamiliar,
even if words are said strangely.
Such special hearing asks of us a special openness, a special willingness to
listen in all sorts of places and situations for the particular words that God
may have for us. They are out there. We need to listen for those voices that
draw from us the best that there is inside us, and more; for voices that move us
to places we where need to go and want to avoid, for voices that draw us
together and build us up (that’s what Paul was talking about in I Corinthians),
for voices that bring us words we need to hear.
This is one of the ways that Pentecost is very much with us today, and that
Babel is being healed—beginning with us, with the gift of hearing with the heart
as well as the ears, and beginning with the language we speak and, most
especially, with the language we hear.
Also, Pentecost is one of the Church’s Baptismal Sundays, and so we will stand
and turn to page 292 to renew our Baptismal Covenant.
Back to St. Mary's Homepage
Fr.
Jim Liggett
P.O. Box 2949; Big Spring, TX
79721
(432) 267-8201
(phone)
Stmarys@stmarysbst.org
By Deacon Connie Fowler
Jesus
said, “Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord’, will enter the kingdom of
heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. Everyone who
hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his
house on rock.”
Like any good architect would recommend, we have to build on a solid foundation
if we don’t want our homes to sink with the first hard rain. The core of this
foundation is faith. Faith that if we plan and build well, our home will stand
for a very long time. But it’s not enough to say we have a good foundation—we
have to believe it by our actions. Jesus knew there was a problem. You see, all
around him people professed their belief in God, but as soon as things got
rough, they fell away--like people who build their houses on sand, their faith
collapses in the face of the storm. We come to church, pray, sing praises, we
listen to the sermons and some may even read the bible. But like most, as soon
as we walk out the door, we go back to doing what we always do—forget what the
Lord has taught us. We find some excuse to not do what Jesus told us to do. We
forget to pray for those who hate us; forget to turn the other cheek; forget to
be non-judgmental; forget to treat others as we want to be treated. It is much
easier to judge a homosexual person than it is to love him. It is much easier to
throw teenage drug users in jail than it is to transform them. It is much easier
to pay off victims of sexual abuse than to do what is truly necessary for
healing. It is much easier to stereotype Arabic people than to understand them.
It is much easier to make war with another than it is to make peace. It is much
easier to ignore the poor and blame them for their situation than it is to
address root causes and work to eliminate poverty. We simply act human and have
faith that God will understand our behavior. In fact Jesus never told us to do
things like sing a certain hymn or memorize verses of the Bible. What he did was
to instruct us to love each other. What good does it do to believe in Jesus if
it doesn’t change the way we live?
Which comes first or which is more important—belief or behavior? The answer is,
not one or the other but both. The measure of our belief is in how we love. And
the motive for our love is found in what we believe.
As a church, we are blessed to have many people who have such a strong
relationship with God, that they are willing to go just about anywhere, at
anytime to do anything to serve the Lord. Their belief inspires faithful
behavior and God’s love is spread all over the place because of them. If you are
such a believer, I want to urge you to actively embrace the behavior that Jesus
calls us to. Volunteer at a hospital, nursing home; become a Sunday School
teacher; become a foster parent; GIVE of yourself. Your belief must connect to
loving behavior to have any effect.
Remember earlier I spoke of how a good foundation is the core of our faith? What
is faith? Faith is the belief that things we cannot see do exist. It’s the
assurance that the promises of God are true. Promises like: Those who believe in
Jesus will have eternal life. The promise that God will always be with us. If we
believe in only what we can prove and what we can see, we limit ourselves. There
are tons of examples of faith that show us how people are able to reach beyond
themselves to something greater.
One example I want to discuss today has to do with American soldiers who
believed and had faith that if they went to war to defend their beliefs, the
world would be a better place. Tomorrow is Memorial Day, a day we remember the
sons, daughters, brothers, fathers who gave their lives in our nation’s service;
the ultimate sacrifice so that you and I can live in a free society and worship
as we please. Abe Lincoln said it was the “last full measure of devotion.”
Originally called Decoration Day, Memorial Day was first observed in 1868 to
commemorate the fallen soldiers of the Civil War by decorating their grave
sites. It was not until after World War I the holiday was changed from honoring
just those fighting in the Civil War to honoring all Americans who died fighting
in any war.
Today most Americans look at Memorial Day as just another day off or a 3 day
weekend; having forgotten the meaning and traditions of the day. At many
cemeteries, the graves of the fallen are increasingly ignored and neglected.
I did a private poll asking people of all ages and educational backgrounds what
was the significance of Memorial Day. Their answers :
I don’t have the slightest idea.
It has something to do with Veterans
It’s to honor Pearl Harbor
It’s to honor vets of Vietnam
It’s the same as Veterans day
It’s to honor all the dead in the world.
One person, one of the least educated, least sophisticated knew the answer.
With all that’s in the papers and television, I was appalled at the responses.
Here’s a sampling of Americans killed in wars:
American Revolutionary War: 4, 435
US Civil War: 643,000
WWI: 116,708
WWII: 407,316
Korean War: 54,246
Vietnam War: 58,168
Gulf War: 293
Iraqi War: as of 5/26/05: 1642
To help re-educate and remind Americans of the true meaning of Memorial Day, the
“National Moment of Remembrance” resolution was passed in December 2000 which
asks that at 3:00 p.m. local time, for all Americans “To voluntarily and
informally observe in their own way a moment of remembrance and respect, pausing
from whatever they are doing for a moment of silence or listening to “Taps.”
In all my years working for the Veterans Administration, the most memorable days
are of taking some of the elderly vets to the Memorial Day Ceremony. Often they
could not remember what year it was or what they had for lunch the day before,
but they always seem to know the meaning of Memorial Day. I can still
See the tears of those unashamed to show their love and sorrow for their fallen
comrades.
So tomorrow if you are out and about in the vicinity of a cemetery, stop and
visit and place a small flag or flower on the grave of our fallen heroes. If at
home fly the American flag at half-staff until noon and remember at 3 p.m.
(wherever you are) pause and think upon the true meaning of the day.
Let us always remember and cherish the memories of those who sacrificed so much
for the sake of those they loved. Let us hope that our children will learn to
choose wisely the ways in which they will want to build their lives, serve their
families, serve our country and serve
our God. Let us always take very seriously the responsibility we have not only
to our families, but here to our church and to our community.
Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of
heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” AMEN
The Lessons for today:
Deuteronomy 11.18-21, 26-28; Psalm 31;
Romans 3.21-25a, 28;
Matthew 7.21-27
A list of Sunday Scripture readings, with links to the Biblical Text:
Holy Week
Preaching, 2005
Back to St. Mary's Homepage
Fr.
Jim Liggett
P.O. Box 2949; Big Spring, TX
79721
(432) 267-8201
(phone)
Stmarys@stmarysbst.org
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This page last updated on
November 18, 2006
Archive of
St. Mary's Sermons from August 15, 2004
Fr.
Jim Liggett
P.O. Box 2949; Big Spring, TX
79721
(432) 267-8201
(phone)
Stmarys@stmarysbst.org
This page last updated on
November 18, 2006