In order to see what is going on in the story of the sacrifice of Isaac, it helps to review some background into Abraham, and God’s covenant with Abraham. Last week the Old Testament reading was the Covenant with Noah. That story tells how, after the flood, God chose not to respond to human sin by wrath and destruction. Instead of that, God would find a different way. The covenant with Abraham is this different way. Instead of destroying everybody, and instead of other options we can imagine, God chose to reach out to a sinful humanity by creating a new community, a community which would know God and God’s will, and so would make these known to all the world.

All of this was to start with Abraham and with God’s promise to Abraham. Earlier in Genesis, God had promised that He would make of Abraham a great nation, and that through Abraham, all of mankind would be blessed. This was the promise that had led Abraham to leave his home in distant Haran and to begin all those years of wandering. This was the promise that controlled Abraham’s life and his destiny; this was the promise that made sense out of everything that had ever happened to Abraham.

This promise lived in the person of Isaac. Isaac was the miraculous child, the child of Abraham and Sarah’s old age. There would be no more where that one came from. If God’s covenant was to be fulfilled, it simply had to be through Isaac. So Isaac was more than the beloved child. Isaac was God’s promise. Without Isaac, not only was the covenant gone, but so was Abraham’s whole reason for living.

The issue of child sacrifice, as powerful and as important as it is, was never the central issue in this story. It is certainly there, and Israel came to see this story as one of the reasons why Israel had very early rejected such sacrifice. But the central issue in this story is God’s demand to Abraham that Abraham surrender to God that which was most precious, that which was the covenant itself.

In a way, the question Abraham faced was whether to believe what God seemed to be saying to him, or to believe what Abraham and any sane person knew God really intended—which in Abraham’s case meant to preserve Isaac and the promise.

And throughout the history of the three great word religions that sprang from this book; throughout the 4,000 years of human history that embrace the life of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, throughout all of those years, whenever people of the Book have talked about faith, they have always talked about Abraham. Whenever they have wondered what faith looks like, they have always ended up pointing to father Abraham and saying that faith looks like this. Faith looks like the irrational decision to leave your homeland and travel to a goal as yet unknown. Faith looks like a stone knife in a trembling hand inches from the death of the covenant. Faith looks like giving up what every sane person knows God has to want, and following where the holy voice leads. That, we say, is what faith looks like. This is not an easy picture, or a comfortable picture, but it is the truth. Remember, we hear this story almost exactly a month before Good Friday.

And just to make sure we get the point as we settle into Lent, the Church has us hear what it looks like when someone fails Abraham’s test. That’s what is going on in the Gospel. I’m afraid that, as often happens, Peter gets to be the goat on this one. And it came as such a shock to him. Peter was riding high. Immediately before the verses we just heard, Jesus asked the disciples who they thought Jesus was. Peter got it right, he was the first person to recognize that Jesus was the messiah. Peter said it, and Jesus didn’t deny it.

This was what Peter had been waiting for. Messianic expectations were running high everywhere. Lately there had been a whole flock of folks who had claimed to be the messiah but hadn’t been. Now, it seemed that Peter had backed the winner. What was going to happen next, since the messiah had arrived, was common knowledge. The messiah would run off or wipe out the Romans, restore the Monarchy of King David, balance the budget, improve the weather, and begin an era of peace and prosperity.

That’s what messiahs were for. Everybody knew that. They were for kicking around the bad guys and rewarding the good guys—especially those good guys who had joined up early. Peter knew all of this just like everybody else knew all of this.

That’s where today’s Gospel begins. And the very first thing this newly revealed messiah does is to teach, or to try to teach, the disciples that he would "undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed". Hardly what Peter—and everyone else— knew, wanted, and believed. So Peter grabbed Jesus, physically hauled him around, and said "No, this will never happen to you." That’s how Peter failed Abraham’s test.

The Lord was not asking Peter to give up his son (we don’t even know if Peter had a son), but he was asking for what Peter held most precious. Jesus wanted Peter to give up Peter’s most cherished hopes, his greatest dreams, indeed his strongest convictions. Jesus wanted Peter and the rest to hear that just about everything they believed about the messiah was wrong, and that some very unpleasant things were true instead. Jesus wanted them to let Jesus teach them, Jesus wanted them to be willing to change even their minds.

In a way, the question Peter faced was whether to believe what God seemed to be saying to him, or to believe what he and any sane person knew God really intended—which in Peter’s case meant that the messiah was there to win, not to lose.

Peter chose to hold on to his convictions, and to let the messiah know who really was in charge here. That’s why Jesus came down on him like a ton of bricks. "Get behind me, Satan! For you are not on the side of God, but of men" is Jesus’ way of suggestion that Peter reconsider making himself the authority on what Jesus is going to do and what Jesus should do.

Peter learned the same thing Abraham learned. To say "Yes" to God involves saying "No" to self, especially to whatever that piece of self is that is biggest, strongest, and most important. If you do that, then sometimes you get it back, like Abraham got Isaac back, and sometimes you don’t. (Peter never did get the messiah he wanted). That’s not what’s most important. What is most important, is, in Jesus’ words, that one "deny himself and take up his cross and follow".

As is often the case, the bad news is the good news. The bad news is that, in one way or another, the Lord asks of us what he asked of Abraham and Peter. For there is something (more than one something, to be sure, but usually at least one big something) in each one of us that has to die before God can enter us in His fullness. We probably have a pretty good idea of what that something is. It may be something bad, it may not; it may even be something good. But it is not the best, and it is in the way. It keeps us from hearing clearly and responding fully to God’s call to us—to his call for love and service. To say ‘yes’ to God still means to deny ourselves, to say ‘no’ to ourselves.

The good news is that, in one way or another, the Lord asks of us what he asked of Abraham and Peter. That is because the Lord loves us, just as he loved Abraham and Peter. And the Lord wants for us the best, the very best. So he is calling us to himself and away of whatever stands in the way of Him.|| God loves us, just as he loved Peter and Abraham. And, as with them, God is calling us to the fullness both of truth and of new life.

I tried for a while. I even wrote a perfectly swell sermon on cleansing the Temple and the Covenant with Moses at Sinai and the Ten Commandments. Someday I’ll preach if to you. But not today; today, like most of the rest of you, my mind and heart are lost in the fervor of war; and in my hope that it be over very soon, and very successfully, and with as little harm as can possibly be—both in the short and in the long term. So the other sermon will wait.

But I still don’t have much to say. I don’t really have anything to say about the domestic politics involved in all of this. It is not the Church’s place to identify any one political stance or another as the will of God, or the truth of the faith. That’s cheating. It’s too simplistic—and when folks do it, don’t trust it. When it comes to the politics of all of this, I simply call us all to charity, and to forgiveness, and to a distrust of all self-righteousness, especially our own.

And I don’t really have anything to say about the religious content of the war, in the way that is too often presented. The facts that there are over 2 million Moslems in America and over one million Christians in Iraq, and that the language of holiness and righteousness and God’s approval seems to permeate so much of everybody’s rhetoric of these last few months, all give a taste of the complexity and absurdity of much of that. I have neither the arrogance nor the insight to proclaim to you God’s position in this, or even what it would look like for God to have a position. I am no longer naive enough to believe that God can be found squarely and firmly on one side or another of those lines that we draw or those issues that we define.

Except for one thing—there is one thing I do know about God at this time. I know that God weeps for the freshly doomed—adults and children, innocent and guilty—on both sides of the line; and that God weeps with all the rest who weep, and who will weep, for them. I know that about God.

And that leads me to what I say this morning in wartime. I want to tell a real short story—source unknown, I found it on the internet last week—and I want to make a request about this war and us.

First the story:

I like that story, it talks to me and about me, and about choices I have to make, and it talks about all of us. That’s the story.

My request is simply that, in addition to all the different ways that we will pay attention to this war, to what is happening, that we take on the special Lenten discipline of Praying the War. And I mean something fairly special, and fairly elaborate when I say that.

We begin as we would begin anyway, as we must begin, with our prayers for the men and women of our armed services—especially those known to us, or brought to us for prayer—for their well-being, and for their success. But take some time with this, and pray not just for them, but about them, and remember their families; and offer the anxieties and the fears and the pride and the determination of those men and women and those they love to God. Pray for not only their safety, but for the center of their souls—for their deepest needs, and deepest hopes. Pray for their marriages, for their parents, and for their children; and bring your vision of the love that is needed there to the throne of grace.

Pray for our leaders, by name and often. Offer to God the pain of their choices and the reality of their need for God’s grace and guidance. Pray for the leaders of the world, and for their people.

But then take the next steps. Then pray the war. Here are some examples. When you watch a television report, or read a newspaper story, pray for the people you see, or hear. Imagine what it is like for them as the story unfolds, and ask God’s presence, and God’s love, and God’s mercy. Go the extra step from reading about those who are hurt, or liberated, or captured, or who surrender, or who celebrate, and pray for them. Choose one person, or one group, and use the holy imagination of your prayer to enter into their lives the best you can, and seek in them the face of Christ—and seek for them the presence of God, and the best that God can offer.

When you see those maps with arrows on them, showing who is going where, take a minute and pray for the people who are making those arrows move, and for what it is like for them. Pray for the places, and the people, those arrows are moving past, and moving through, and join your soul to the souls of those who make that map, or that story, or that picture, real, and human; and not just a cold, abstract thing.

Or try this: In a random news story, pick a random soldier, or civilian, or commentator, or prisoner, and pray for that person the best you can off and on for a whole day. Make up a name if you don’t know his or her name—but remember them, and what is happening to them, and imagine their hopes and dreams. Do that with as much passion as you can muster; with as much compassion as you can find. Enter their lives, and pray for them specifically.

Pray for the souls of the departed, and for the mercy of God on them, and on us at the hour of our death.

To help a little with all of this there is an insert in your bulletin with some prayers I collected from our Prayer Book. Take it with you, the prayers might make a useful starting point.

Again, instead of only watching and following this war, I ask that you pray it.

Of course, in doing this we will feed one of those wolves fighting within us; and we need to do that. Also, to pray the war is probably the most potent way most of have to help. For, as God grieves the pain and the loss, and as God rejoices in real justice and peace, we can add our own prayers, compassion, and concern to God’s.

And so, in our own tiny, tiny, but real way, we can be part of the healing, and the grace, that God wills, and that God will bring.

That’s what the lessons we just heard are about. They all share a single, important, and refreshing theme—but it takes a little time to find that. They don’t start out very refreshing.

The first reading, the one from Second Chronicles, begins with a long summary of Israel’s failure, decline and defeat. God had done everything for Israel. God created the nation, delivered the people from slavery, gave them the land, the temple, the law; and so much more. What God asked in return was that His special nation respond by loving obedience—by being a faithful witness to God who had done so much for them.

But they failed; they blew it. It was so much easier to be like everybody else than it was to be who they were called to be. It was so much easier to be like everybody else than it was to trust in the protection and care of God. It was just easier to be like everyone else.

Israel’s failure was not really a failure to keep the rules—that’s secondary. It was at its heart a failure of mission. Israel was called to be the place where the world could look and see what life with God was really like; and so, by seeing that, the world would be drawn to God. However, instead of offering the world a vision, Israel offered a mirror.

What happened next Israel understood as judgment. The kingdom was conquered, the land was deserted, the temple was destroyed, Jerusalem became a ruin, the people were taken into exile. One thousand years of Israel’s covenant with God were finished—all that remained was ashes, rubble, and a few slaves in a distant land. No one could blame God—it was the people’s fault. They just didn’t have what it took. The story was over. ||Hold on to that picture—it’s the way into the Gospel and refreshment Sunday.

After all, John’s account of the feeding of the multitude, while a whole lot less intense than the story of Israel’s collapse, also starts out as a story about failure. Jesus has been teaching, and has attracted a good-sized following—a crowd. Also, in spite of having the good sense to be interested in Jesus, it is otherwise a pretty ordinary crowd, almost a mob. Like a lot of crowds before and since, it had much more enthusiasm than good sense. So, when Jesus finished up where he was and moved on to the next county, the crowd just up and followed right along, with no apparent thought for the necessities or the consequences. Not a Boy Scout among them, no one was even close to prepared.

They just sort of wandered along until their stomachs started growling and it slowly dawned on them that it was dinner time and it would sure be nice if they had made a plan or packed a lunch or something. ||So, Jesus points this situation out to the disciples (who probably should have seen this coming and made some kind of arrangements) and they are completely overwhelmed.

Philip misses the point so completely he tries to give a speech on economics; and Andrew attempts to find a way to shift everybody’s attention to some stranger—"this kid doesn’t have enough to fix it, either". There seems to be no where to go but further downhill.

It’s clear that the disciples were ready to announce that everyone had to go home, get their own stuff, and maybe come back another day. (After all, hungry crowds had a long history of getting downright nasty.) Like the story of Israel, this little story was over. Somebody, the crowd or the disciples or both, had blown it, and that was the end of that.

But that’s not what happened. That is not what happened to Israel, that is not what happened to that hungry crowd. And the word of God on Refreshment Sunday is simply that the story is not over—the story of God’s love, the story of God’s covenant, is not over.

The Old Testament lesson goes on to tell how, in spite of everything, and through absolutely no merit or virtue of its own, Israel’s story did not end in exile in Babylon. The people return, Jerusalem is restored, the covenant is renewed. ||There is no deserving here, no justice; Israel does nothing smart or heroic. God simply refuses to let go—so the story continues.

In the Gospel, the crowd doesn’t suddenly wise up and figure out how to manage a quick lunch; and the disciples don’t get any bright ideas about what to do, either. They all just stand there dumb as a post while Jesus, using exactly what Andrew has said will not work, makes sure that the story continues. Once more, deserving and fair and their own best efforts have nothing to do with it.

With God, the story is never over; our story is never over—your story is never over.

That’s what Paul means when he says, again and again, "by grace you have been saved...and this is not your own doing." It does not matter what has happened. It does not matter if you have been as evil as Israel or as thoughtless as that crowd or as stupid as the disciples. (Come to think of it, it doesn’t much matter how good you have been, either, but that’s a slightly different sermon.) None of that matters, because God will not allow the story to be over, God will not allow your story to be over. God’s love is simply bigger than we are. We are never granted the certainty of total defeat, or the luxury of despair.

Certainly, God’s relationship with us demands obedience. Certainly, there are consequences for disobedience and these consequences can be devastating. Sin destroys. We can look at ancient Israel for proof of that if we want to, but it’s probably easier just to look around. But the story never ends there. "By grace you have been saved . . . it is the gift of God—not the result of works". The story always goes on—there is always cause for hope. That is the news on refreshment Sunday. It is simple news, it is old news, it is sometimes hidden and ambiguous news; but it is the truth, a truth running like a thread of gold through all of scripture, a truth just as deeply buried in your life, and in our life together as the body of Christ in this place. The story is not over.

And we live out a little taste of that today, just like we do every Sunday. Because every Sunday it is our turn to sit down on the mountain-side; and we join that crowd in the Gospel. Don’t ever forget that the bread we share here comes directly from one of those twelve baskets of left-overs, and there is always enough. No matter what.

The scene is Easter; it’s the day of the resurrection. As John tells the story, the disciples have heard from Peter and another disciple that the tomb is empty. So they gather. The doors are locked—the disciples are afraid. Perhaps they are afraid that they will now be persecuted as Jesus was. Maybe they are afraid that they will be accused of stealing his body. But maybe they were afraid for still another reason.

Consider this: The last time any of these folks saw Jesus was when he was arrested. They fled. They hid, they deserted him, they denied that they knew him. They did what they could to save their own skins, and they left Jesus completely on his own. Each and every one of them had betrayed Jesus. They had hoped that he would be a messiah who would raise armies and establish Justice. They thought he had failed and died. Now they heard he might have returned.

Under those circumstances, who would you be most afraid of: a few Roman soldiers and a High Priest, or an angry messiah who had come back from the dead to establish justice, beginning with you? What if he had come back? What if he remembered what you had done when he needed you?

The doors were locked where the disciples were. Think about those doors, locked from the inside; think about the guilt, the fear, the uncertainty, the shame and the hurt that those doors kept inside. It might be true that Jesus was alive. Did they want to believe that, or not? What were the disciples trying to lock out and avoid? What were they trying to lock in and protect?

Then Jesus came and stood among them. For a moment there was silence. What a moment. There is no place to hide. Nothing can keep Jesus away—and Jesus knows all about the disciples. There was silence. Then Jesus spoke; he said the traditional rabbinic greeting, a formula, a stock phrase; words they had heard from him hundreds, if not thousands of times.

But the words they heard would never mean the same thing after that moment—their meaning would be forever shaped by that instant. The abandoned Lord stood among his cowardly and failed followers and said, "Peace be with you." Not "Where were you?" Not "Gotcha", not even "You hurt me" but "Peace be with you." Whenever you hear or say these words, especially every Sunday in Church, remember that for us Christians they receive their meaning from being the first words Jesus said in that room with locked doors. That’s a big part of what the peace is all about.

Jesus said that, and then he showed them his wounds—the wounds were still there, they didn’t go away with the resurrection. So the disciples knew it was Jesus, and they knew he did not come in wrath, and they understood a little more about the dangers of wanting justice. Then, the Gospel says, after Jesus had spoken, after he had showed them his hands and his side—only then, "the disciples were glad when the saw the Lord."

Easter became real, Easter became good news, for the disciples, not the moment they heard Jesus had returned from the dead, not the moment they saw him—but the moment he spoke to them his unexpected word of peace, the same moment they knew him wounded.

All sorts of other very important things also happened when Jesus ignored the locks and went to his friends. First, He breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit."

Remember, this is John’s Gospel, and John likes to use images from the book of Genesis. Here he is taking an image from the second chapter of Genesis, where God makes this thing out of mud that looks like a man but is not a man, and then God breathes His breath onto that thing, and it becomes a person, Adam, the first man. On Easter evening, Jesus, the new Adam, the word made flesh, breathes new life into his people—and the human story begins anew. That’s one thing that happened.

Another thing that happened here is that Jesus says to the disciples, "as the Father has sent me, so I send you." The disciples became Apostles—students became people sent—sent to the world as Jesus was sent to them. Notice carefully that Jesus does not send them out any old way, he sends them out in a very particular way—"as the Father sent me". The mission of the disciples is to continue the mission of Jesus. Their lives are to be like his life. In that way, and in that way only, are they sent.

All that went on behind locked doors. In a way, it all happened again a week later for Thomas—so that doubt within the Christian community could be seen both as acceptable and as a part of the journey toward a complete faith.

But then Jesus is no longer in the room, and the doors are still locked. Up to now John’s Gospel has been talking about how the resurrected Lord forms his church. But those doors are still locked from the inside. The disciples are OK, but the world waits. The world waits in fear, behind its own locked doors, hearing rumors about Jesus and wondering what’s going on. ||Easter only becomes real for the world, it only becomes good news for the world, when those who have been breathed upon by the resurrected Lord open the doors and allow themselves to be sent, just as the Father sent the Son. It is not until we walk through whatever locked doors we have placed in front of ourselves, it is not until then, that the world will know what really happened at Easter.

And we are sent as he was sent. Not as we would like to be sent, not as we are expected to be sent, but as he was sent—even as he was sent on the first Easter. First of all, this means that we are sent to surprise and astonish the world by saying, not what is expected, not even what is just, but "Peace be with you." We are sent to amaze as the disciples were amazed when Jesus brought, not what they deserved, but what He wished for them. We are sent to show the world that what it means to meet the risen Lord is to encounter a love as total as it is unexpected. To the extent that we are able to live this and to share this, we are faithful to our mission. That is part of it.

Another part of being sent is that we, like him, are sent wounded. Both Thomas and the other disciples knew, somehow, that to know the risen Lord they had to know him wounded, hurt, scarred and marked. They, and we, and indeed the world, know—at a level of depth, at a level of mystery—that true healing can only come from hands that have been pierced by nails. That continues.

So we are sent as we are, carrying on our bodies and in our lives the marks of the power of the world to hurt and to maim—and continuing to love none the less. Scarred hands have reached out to us. And, somehow combining within ourselves the new breath of the Holy Spirit and the old wounds of the world, we are to reach out in love, and surprise the world.

There we are. Remember those locked doors. Consider what it means to sent, wounded, to offer peace. The risen Lord comes through those doors for us—and so makes ever new the reality and the power of the resurrection. We are sent to continue his ministry, to move through our own barriers, and, together, to move forward in love.

Which is a rather un-Episcopalian thing to do; but one that goes nicely with these very un-Episcopalian lessons we have just heard. They all talk about witnessing, and being witnesses; and they have Peter telling all these people that they have to get saved, and precisely how they have to get saved. By the end of that section from Acts, Peter is almost sounding like some of the most outlandish of the radio or TV preachers. Spooky stuff, really. In fact, it is exactly the sort of thing a lot of folks at St. Mary’s came here to avoid—or at least to ignore.

The fact is, there is something about having someone get up in your face and demand that you tell them whether you are saved, and then proceed to tell you exactly how to get that way, that pretty consistently dims our bulbs as Anglicans—and the idea that God somehow wants us to go out and do that sort of thing is really alien to us. In fact, several of us have been hurt, really hurt, by this sort of thing—which can easily and quickly become a form of spiritual and personal assault, more akin to rape than to sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. So, as a rule, we Episcopalians just say no to that—and for good reasons; reasons that are deeply theological as well and personal and aesthetic, which means, sadly, that that we are sometimes accused of not being evangelical enough, of not sharing our faith the way we should.

But on Thursday we are going to present 19 people to Bishop Ohl for Confirmation, Reception, and Renewal of Baptismal vows.

And they are all good, smart, competent, and committed Christian people who will enrich and deepen the life of St. Mary’s for years to come. And, to the best of my knowledge, not one of them was confronted by anyone at St. Mary’s, least of all by me, and asked if they were saved or told how to be saved. In fact, I know of no one who was brought into our church in that particular way. So what’s going on here? What’s happening? Are we doing something wrong?

No, we’re not. The key to this business of Evangelism doesn’t lie with Peter in Acts. It lies, as it so often does, with John. Notice how John says that he and his friends are preaching about "what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands." Now, in John’s case, this doubtless refers to the story in the Gospel of the disciples meeting Jesus after the resurrection. But that’s not the important part.

The important part is that John is not saying what Peter or anybody else said—or told John to say; and John is not talking about what Peter saw or what anyone else saw, or what John thinks he should have seen—John is simply telling his story. He is offering the truth of his experience—and, by the way, he is offering it to people who have asked him about it, not to some poor sucker he finds walking down the street. ||Nobody gets told how to get saved—instead, John tells his story, and invites whoever asked about it to join with him.

Now, that made some sense, and it also brought me back to where I was—because the meeting I was daydreaming through while I was thinking about all of this was an AA meeting, and one of the things we do at AA meetings is share our stories— our experiences, strengths and hopes, with each other.

We don’t share other people’s stories, and we don’t share what we think our story ought to be, and we don’t share what anyone else tells us to share. We simply tell the truth as we have experienced it. And we don’t grab folks off the street and shove our stories down their throats, either. We wait to be asked.

Both of these—St. John and AA—provide a helpful and Biblical way into Anglican Evangelism; into what that is, and how we live it out. I want to say three brief but specific things about that today. The first is a spiritual fact: most of us meet and encounter God most powerfully, or most consistently, in worship and in the community of the Church. That’s who we are; that’s how God reaches us.

There is something about this place, about sacred spaces "where prayer has been valid", that leads us into the heart of the divine in ways we cannot always express, but can always recognize. That’s one reason why, for many of us, walking into the Episcopal Church for the first time was simply coming home; and we knew it. Not everyone is like this, not everyone is supposed to be like this, but we often are. Our faith journey is generally rooted in places, in worship, and in the community of the church.

Second—and you can see this one coming—evangelism for us is mainly about inviting people to church, and helping them to discover there what we have discovered. Remember, at its heart, faith is God’s gift to us, not our gift to God. So we invite. We tell the truth about what matters to us, usually by saying, "come and see." Or by saying, "here is what matters to me, come and see." Just like St. John says, we share what we know, what we have seen and touched.

There are no formulas and no canned speeches that can have any real integrity when it comes to something as important as this. There is only the truth, and the only truth we can tell is the one we know. And, for most of us most of the time, the best way we tell this truth is by saying, "come and see." That is how virtually all of you got here; and that is a very good thing. There is simply no reason to try to tell someone else’s truth, or to tell what we think the truth ought to be, or—and here is my third part point—to say nothing at all because we feel like our truth doesn’t measure up.

You see, Jesus was really serious when he told us to be witnesses to him; and the business of inviting, of saying "come and see" is a serious response to this command. Remember, we are never to be disrespectful or coercive. At the same time, we need to keep alert for opportunities to invite, and we need, prayerfully and carefully, to be open to such occasions. (Be sure you have a card out of the plate.)

But we don’t make it happen. God will place the opportunities in front of us. God’s grace precedes us, and opens doors for us, and calls us to do small things (as well as great things) that may make a world of difference. But there sure are a lot more of those open doors when we look for them, and pray for them.

And it can take real courage to respond to such opportunities—to invite when we can tell it is time to invite, to tell our truth when that truth is called from us. But that’s all right. God will be there, and God is fundamentally for us; and God will give us not only the opportunity but also the grace to make a difference. It may not look much like Peter in Acts, but it amounts to the same thing; and it is what we are called, and strengthened, to do.

All of this is made double interesting by the fact that today, like every fourth Sunday of Easter, is Good Shepherd Sunday. It is the Sunday we hear Jesus talk about us as sheep, and about himself as the good shepherd. What more could you ask for than preaching to the freshly Confirmed on Good Shepherd Sunday.

After all, this is one of the most familiar and best-loved of all the images of the Lord. Everyone knows the pictures of Jesus as the shepherd, who searches out the lost, offers a safe path all who follow, and is with us when there is trouble. We said it very clearly in the psalm. "We are his people and the sheep of his pasture." That’s a very potent image. Jesus is the shepherd, and we are the sheep.

There are two things I want to say about this image. First of all, I want to say just a word about the traditional picture, the comforting picture, of Jesus the good shepherd.

It is the picture in virtually every children’s Bible and illustrated Bible in the world—the picture of Jesus up to his kneecaps in drowsy looking sheep hauling home some bewildered lamb with a smug little grin on its cute little face.

What I want to say about that picture is that, as overused and poorly drawn and stereotypical as it is—this is none the less a good picture, and a true picture. Jesus really is like this—in ways that matter.

He is the good shepherd. His concern for you, and his constant, passionate, quest to seek you out and to bring you ever more, and ever more deeply, into relationship with him—these are absolutely certain and absolutely constant. They will not falter and they will not fail. Jesus is and will be for you and with you as a good shepherd is with precious sheep. And nothing you ever say, and nothing you ever do, and nothing that other people or the world or life its own self can ever do to you, can change that in the slightest. His love and care are yours, they are forever, they are never at issue and always a gift.

This is one side of Jesus being the good shepherd, and it is just there. That old picture is still a good picture.

At the same time, there is the second things I want to say, which is slightly different perspective on all of this; but is just as important. Have you ever wondered why shepherds keep sheep in the first place? Well, they don’t raise ‘em as pets; as pleasant, cuddly, simple-minded toys who are there just to hang around, look pretty and feel secure. And they don’t do it for the fresh air and exercise, either.

Shepherds raise sheep because they have expectations, shepherds raise sheep primarily for the sake of the mission of the shepherd.

As a rule, shepherds raise sheep for two things, wool and mutton. ||They expect the sheep to put some meat on their bones, and they expect the sheep to produce some stuff that is useful.

The sheep are cared for, loved and protected, not just because the shepherd likes the sheep, but also because there are expectations. Things are supposed to come from all of this care and concern. Those things are mutton, and wool—at least in a metaphorical sense.

The Church’s version of mutton and wool is found in your Baptismal covenant—which we reviewed in the service on Thursday. We have seen it a lot lately. It’s on page 417. Open your prayer books and take a look. After the Apostles’ Creed, the Bishop asks those to be Confirmed, and everybody else, five questions. These questions are about mutton and wool—they are about what is expected.

The first two questions are about mutton. They are about growth. The Lord expects there to be some real substance to you, some heft to your faith, some meat on your bones as a Christian. Growth is the first thing that is expected. Now, growth as a Christian only comes one way. It only comes from the regular and disciplined process of living our life, the life of the Christian Community.

Growth as a Christian only comes from worship, prayer, fellowship, study, and the determined, although always imperfect, struggle to live the Christian moral vision. That’s how growth happens. It’s a life-long process that can be begun or renewed at any time. ||There are no shortcuts. Real meat, real mutton, takes time, and patience, and discipline.

But it is expected, and it is worth it. That’s what the first two questions on page 417 are about. And you promised.

The next three questions are about wool. They are about producing from you something that shows, something that can be put to real use. This is ministry, it is reaching out to others as the Lord has reached out to us. It is about the ministry of sharing the reality and the love of God as you have known them. It is about serving others. It is especially about serving the least of these, those who are at the bottom, those who are hurting, those who are less, those who are different. Such service is the finest wool.

And it is about the ministry of seeking justice and peace among all people, and respecting the dignity of every human being. It is about caring about more than our little circle, as important as that circle is. It is about realizing that God’s passionate love for us is equaled by his love for all of creation; but that we may be the only way that love is made known or made real.

All of that is involved in these last three questions, the questions about ministry. That is the other part of what is expected, of how we fit into the mission of the shepherd. This also you promised, in front of God and everybody.

Mutton and wool, growth and service, that is the other side of the comforting image of the good shepherd. This is what our Lord asks of us, and what he expects of us. This is what we promise to do every time we renew our baptismal covenant. This is what you were bought into as you knelt before the Bishop and received the Sacrament of Confirmation, or were received, or renewed your faith. Growth and service. Without these, we are really more pets than people. With these, and through these, we will begin to discover what Jesus is talking about when he promises us purpose, and meaning, and the fullness of life.

The place to begin is in the first two chapters of Genesis. Those chapters are the background for the Gospel we just heard, and they offer some of the clearest pictures we have of the Holy Spirit. First of all, remember the first two verses in the Bible, starting at chapter 1, verse 1. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters." The first step in creation is that God’s spirit moves over the waters of chaos. It is the first day of the week, the spirit of God moves over the waters, and there is light, and creation begins. Hold on to that image; we’ll come back to it.

Chapter Two in Genesis has a different account of creation, but the role of the Spirit is the same. Here, the focus is on human beings. In this story, God softens the ground, and makes out of ordinary dirt this new, but quite dead, thing. What God makes has the shape of a man, indeed, from the outside, it looks just like a man. But it isn’t a man, it’s only a chunk of dirt—there is no life in it. So God breathes into the nostrils of this thing God’s own breath—the spirit of God. And it was then, it was only when the dirt was mixed with the spirit of God, that there was truly a person.

Only then did it become a living being. The Spirit gives life to the body. That’s a very helpful way to look at what the Holy Spirit does—the spirit gives life, physical life, all sorts of life.

In the section from John’s Gospel we just heard, deeper meanings of this became clear. It is Easter Day, the first day of the week. The disciples, who are the Church, are all but dead. They are alone, frightened, and confused; they are hidden behind locked doors. Now, looking From the outside, they looked just like the Church, the followers of Jesus. But on the inside they might as well have been made of dirt, there just wasn’t anything there. So Jesus comes to them; and Jesus reaches out to them. Then, being very careful to use exactly the same words used in Genesis, John tells us that Jesus breathed on them; and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit". Then the Church became a living thing. See what’s going on.

The Holy Spirit gives life to the body. Here, in the Gospel, the Spirit is doing first what it has been doing ever since—the Spirit is giving life to the Church. As Paul makes very clear in that wonderful section from I Corinthians, everything the spirit does for an individual, every gift it gives, every work it does, these are all for the common good, for the building up and the strengthening of the body of Christ. The spirit gives life to the body. That happens. God did that back then, God continues to do that now. The gift is given; it is there. God continues to pour his spirit upon his people, the Lord still breaths on us.

Today is the first day of the week—like the first day of Creation, like Easter, like that first Pentecost we celebrate. Today Brody, Luke and Hunter will receive the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. As happened at creation, the spirit of God will move over the face of the water in that little font.

The Lord Jesus will breath the Holy Spirit on these three little boys, just as he breathed on the Disciples, just as he breathed on us at our baptism. Just as the Spirit moved over the waters at creation, and something new began.

It is our conviction that, as we keep our Lord’s command to Baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, as we do that, God keeps his covenant and God acts. This morning, God will transform who Brody, Luke and Hunter are, and give them new life. Each will be named a child of God, a member of the body of Christ, and an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven. Each will receive the Holy Spirit as a gift of love from God to him; and each will receive that Holy Spirit so that he may be gift to us and to all of Christ’s Church. All of that will happen. The gift of the Spirit will be given. ||But we have a role to play, too. We have both responsibility and accountability for what becomes of that gift Brody, Luke and Hunter receive today; just as, in due time, they will have responsibility and accountability for it.

So their sponsors at baptism will make vows for the boys, and for themselves. Then we will join those sponsors and make solemn vows before God that we will help these children grow into the reality of the gift of Grace they will receive. We will promise to help them live the life a Christian is called to live. We will promise to help them unwrap the gift.

Now, where is the Holy Spirit Brody, Luke and Hunter receive today? That we have received? It is there, it is within us. But it awaits our response, and it awaits their response. It will become visible, it will become powerful, as it needed and as it is used. As they live the Christian life. Not before.

The breath of Jesus to the disciples became a source of great strength and power when the disciples took the risk of going where Jesus sent them. The tongues of fire resting on the Apostles became real power when they left the house where they were hiding, and began to tell of the mighty works of God.

In just a moment we will move to the font, and something wonderful will happen. New life, the Holy Spirit, will be given. If you want to know what it will look like for Brody, Luke and Hunter, and for us, to live out that gift of the Spirit, then take a careful look at what you are about to say in the Baptismal Covenant—look at those prophetic, engaging, imperatives we take upon ourselves. It is really all there. That is how to unwrap the gift. It is what we promise these little boys we will help them to do; it is what we promise we will do. It is how we bring to life the reality of God’s gifts to us—gifts that are already ours.

Right now is the first day of the week, and the spirit of God is moving over the waters. And the Spirit gives life to the body.

MOVE TO THE BAPTISM

Now, today is Trinity Sunday, and the great temptation is to talk about God, about how the Doctrine of the Trinity is the best shot we, or anybody else for that matter, have taken at describing the real nature, and the details of the inner life, of God. Now, that’s a perfectly honorable thing to do, and I have done that most of the 25 times I have preached on Trinity Sunday. But today I want to move in a slightly different direction; and talk about the Trinity from the perspective of knowing God. Because that’s what God wants most. ||To be sure, God wants us to invest our intellect as completely as we can in our faith, and it is a solemn duty to understand as deeply as we can what we believe and why. God cares deeply about this.

Never the less, at the end of the day, God cares even more deeply about us, and about knowing us and being known by us. The Trinity, at its heart, is God’s opening of Himself to draw us into life with him, with God in God’s fullness, with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Each of these persons, these persona, of God, is, for us, both an open door into God, and an invitation to walk through that door. And the doors are very different from each other to us; and each will be attractive to some folks and incomprehensible to others; and that’s the idea. Still, all of the doors lead into the same room; into the same circle of love.

The Creed is one way to see the various doors into God we are offered. First, there is God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. And some of us are powerfully drawn by God the Father. We see him clearly in the glory of creation, in the infinite, intricate, and majestic cosmos that surrounds us, and fills us with awe and wonder. So we are drawn to the one behind all of this, the Creator, indeed, the Creator we also call father, (not because he is like every human father; but because in him we can see who a father ought to be, what it looks like to be a true father).

And if this is what entices and attracts you, then worship him, and stand in awe and wonder at his works and at his love, and move as deeply as you can into him. In that way you enter one door into the circle of love, into the fullness of God. You will discover there that there are a couple of others the father wants you to get to know. But it is not a problem if you begin with him, and only with him, and move with reverence and with openness the way he leads. He will lead you into the house of love that has three doors.

Second in the Creed is our one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only son of God. For some us, Jesus is the door that draws us.

For some of us it is his total and unwavering humanity, his complete identification with us; or it is the breath-taking scope, richness, surprise, and radical nature of his teachings and his behavior that attracts us irresistibly to this man. We find in him a wise yet challenging companion on our road, someone who is both what he appears to be, and also, somehow, more.

If he is the door that begs you to enter him, then take up his cross, and his life, and follow him. Seek to live yourself what you find so compelling in him—live the life of the saved, and live the life of the savior. For if you follow him he will lead you into the same house, the same circle of love, that the Father will. He will introduce you to his Father, and in that meeting you will discover the Spirit. For if Jesus grabs you, and in seeking your heart he finds it, then he will take you where you need to go—even if, for your own reasons, the very idea of a father is horrifying, or the glory of creation in no way resonates with your soul—that doesn’t matter at the beginning, and by the time you begin to live in the circle of love, well, it won’t matter then, either.

The third paragraph of the Creed talks about the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life. Here, many of us who are unmoved by the Father, and somewhat uncertain about this Jesus fellow, will here find a door; one that draws us and touches us, and sweeps us off our feet. For in that Spirit who blows wherever it will; and who causes new things to happen; who creates community; and makes old dry bones and old dry lives spring up as remade and alive in fresh and unfamiliar ways; in that spirit we find our own souls churning, and we hear the call of God into a new way of being a human being. We might not appreciate the Father, or understand the Son, but for some of us the breath of the Spirit is the breath we feel; and it is the breath we want to breath.

If that is where you are, then go where the Spirit leads. For the Spirit always leads beyond itself and to more. And the Spirit is one door, as different as each of the other doors, into the fullness of God, the circle of love.

It is that community, the community of pure love, the community of God the Father, God the Son, and God that Holy Spirit, (it is the fullness of the one God) that we are, constantly and passionately, asked to enter. And, just as we are often very different one from another—so are we given different doors into that community.

The Holy Trinity is best shot we, or anybody else, have for talking about the fullness of God. But God is not this way in order to confuse or perplex us; although I do suspect that God rather enjoys how confused and perplexed we can at times become as we try to talk about this circle of infinite love. The Holy Trinity is the way God is, for us, so that in all of our rich variety we can be called to God, and be drawn to God, and, by his merciful grace, we can know God—in his fullness, and in the rich variety that is the one true God.

And it truly is the duty, the calling, the responsibility and the glory of the Christian person to know God.

Regardless of how much we might disagree about what it is we need to have in order to fix our lives, or save the church, to cure what ails our culture, or to empower the laity for mission, or whatever it might be, we are pretty much in agreement that there is something missing that we need. (This is part of a cultural world view that sees all difficulties as problems to be solved; but that’s another sermon.)

One interesting way into this is to listen to people, especially Episcopalians, clergy or lay—talk about the simple fact that it is difficult to live out, and to share, our faith in the course of our daily lives. It’s true. All you have to do is try in order to discover that the vocation of being a baptized Christian in the real world is awkward, challenging, and just plain hard to do, for a lot of good reasons.

And, when we talk about this, (not that we do that very often), but when we talk about that, we always talk about what don’t have that makes faithfulness difficult. Being generally an educated lot, we tend to say that we don’t know enough about our faith, or about the Bible, or about what we should do or say. But we also have other reasons—involving time, or those other people, and so on.

But whatever the reason, we are certain that any problems we encounter are the result of what we don’t have, and that things would be ever so much better if we only had more—more education, or more faith or better words or more time or..yadda, yadda, yadda.

With that in mind, the Gospel today is very interesting. Today Jesus sends his disciples out to proclaim the good news. Jesus didn’t go with them and this is something new. It was their first time to solo; and they were to live out, to reveal by what they said and did, what they had discovered by being with Jesus. Notice that if there were ever a bunch of people who needed help to do a job, it was the twelve.

As far as we know none of them had any experience at doing what Jesus was asking them to do; they were sent into a culture that was hardly supportive; and, finally, they hadn’t been with Jesus very long, so they were not all that sure about who he was and what he meant.

They only knew that he had somehow captured them, and that he was now asking them to take on the world. Clearly, some direction from upper management was in order. After all, if Jesus was going to send them out, then he had to give them what they needed for what they were going to do. He couldn’t let them leave unprepared or all they would do was make a mess.

So it makes sense to see what Jesus gave the disciples, to see what people going on that sort of journey lacked, and what the Lord provided to make up for that lacking.

Look again at the story. What did Jesus give them, to make their vocation possible? Nothing. He didn’t give them anything. In fact, he took things away.

He took away whatever money they had; he took away all of their prudent operating reserves in terms of supplies; he took away all of their stuff, of whatever sort; and he also took away any and all chances of personal or social advancement that may have come their way during the journey.

By the time Jesus got through with them, there was virtually nothing left. Which, of course, was what prepared them for their vocation. It was a wonderful gift, that taking away. It made mission and ministry possible. It gave them space inside for the Word to live and to grow. It gave them the silence they needed to hear and to speak. It gave them the freedom they needed to let who Jesus was live through them. So, as they started their journey, Jesus prepared them by taking away virtually everything they had.

I find this haunting and deeply troubling. Like Amos’ plumb line, the disciples’ emptiness is just there for us to look at. It stands in front of us like raw judgment. It raises the issue, the really radical possibility, that the reason our vocation is difficult and the reason that all sorts of things are not the way we want them to be, is not because of what we don’t have, of what we lack.

It raises the possibility that we already have everything we need, that we lack nothing.

It raises the possibility that our problem instead is that we are so full, so bloated by what we do have that there is no room within us for either who we are called by our Lord to be, or what he would have us do, no room for that to grow and develop. Like the disciples, perhaps the greatest gift the Lord can give us is show us the way to some realistic sort of emptiness.

It’s also true that what fills us will vary, and be different among us. To be sure, our stuff, the things we have, and the concerns we have for them and for keeping them and for taking care of them and getting more of them—this fills so many of us so much that there is hardly room left for anything else or for anyone else. While this story from Mark’ Gospel does not demand of us that we get rid of all we have, it does demand that we deal with it. It does challenge us to take regular, careful, honest, and frightening looks at the amount of stuff in our lives and at the role that stuff plays in our lives. It could well be that we need to make some changes. It is certain we need to ask some questions.

But other things can fill us and bloat as well. Our pre-conceptions and our prejudices, our convictions and our certainties, these can take up all the space there is, and leave no room within us for the Word to take root and grow. And it is dreadfully easy to become so full of the noise and business and frenzied hurrying about that fills our world that we can hear neither the still small voice of the Lord, nor the loud and clear pronouncements of his prophets. Or, what fills us might be our ego, it might be our wounds—there are many, many different th