“The Path to Greatness” (Mark 9:30-37)

This past week I was flipping from one channel to another on the TV, when up on the screen popped Masterchef. I had never seen the programme before and food always interests me, so I watched on for a few minutes while the three chefs prepared their delicacies. Now if you ask my wife Karen, she will tell you without a moment’s hesitation that her husband is no master chef. I do cook the occasional meal, but it is painful for her to watch on when I do. I’m slow. I make a mess. I use far too many dishes. And usually by the time the meal is on the table, something is too spicy or underdone or overcooked.

So I watched on with amazement as the three cooks prepared perfect cheese soufflés and a couple of other dishes, all with flawless timing. Then I began to think: Imagine the pressure. Always under the eye of the camera. Constantly being critiqued by the judges. Never knowing whether your dish is going to come out the way you hoped—whether you’ve achieved exactly the right combination of flavours, how you will score on presentation and a host of other unpredictables. Always on the knife’s edge. Always just one soupçon away from being eliminated.

Now take a moment to imagine what it would be like if the Christian life were like that. Sad to say, there are some people who think that way and we meet with them in this morning’s Gospel reading.

Jesus and his disciples were on their way to Jerusalem. Jesus had already told them that this was to be their final journey together—that “the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again” (Mark 9:31). Now for a second time he warns them: “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise.”

A great mystery

 “But,” Mark informs us, “they did not understand …” Of course they didn’t understand. There is a sense in which the cross of Jesus will always remain a mystery. Somewhere among my books that I am still unpacking there is one with the title, Why the Cross? And I can’t tell you how many times over the course of my ministry there are people who have asked me, “Why did Jesus have to die?” The apostle Paul wrote to his friends in Corinth, “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing… Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” (1 Corinthians 1:18,22,23). Even Pope Francis has confessed that “the mystery of the Cross is a great mystery for mankind, a mystery that can only be approached in prayer and in tears”.[1]

So we really can’t blame the disciples. The apostle Paul and Pope Francis both had the advantage of hindsight. Like us, they could look back on the events of Calvary from the perspective of Jesus’ resurrection. For those first disciples all of this was completely unexplored territory. Now wonder they didn’t know what to think!

But it is Mark’s next comment that I find really revealing. “They did not understand what he meant…” And then he goes on to add, “… and they were afraid to ask him about it.” What made them so afraid? Was it the fear of losing this man who had come to mean so much to them, whose words had become for them the word of life? Or was it the fear of just appearing to be stupid or ignorant? I know there is a great deal of that kind of fear in me. Or should we call it by its proper name—pride?

I’m not good about asking for directions along the road, even when I’m totally lost. When people offer me help, my first inclination is to thank them and say, “That’s OK. I can manage on my own.” We call it independence. Yet so much of what we call independence is really just pride going by another name. And I have a sneaking suspicion that part of the disciples’ unwillingness to ask Jesus what he meant also rose out of pride.

We don’t like people to think we’re ignorant or foolish. I remember many moons ago in my teen years rowing lazily up a little river in Maine with my three brothers. It was getting hot, so I decided to jump in for a swim. As I was enjoying myself in the cool water, some canoeists paddled by and one of them shouted over to me, “Do you realize you’re swimming next to a sewage outlet?” “Of course I do,” I replied, and waited until they were out of sight before scurrying back into our boat to row as quickly as possible back to our cottage and leap into the shower. Now that’s pride with a capital “P”!

Striving to be the greatest

But let’s move along in the gospel story. Jesus and the disciples arrive in Capernaum, the lakeside village that was home to Peter and Andrew and James and John. A chilly silence filled the air. At this point you need to realize that the roads in that part of the world were hardly what we would call roads today. In fact, they were little more than footpaths. And so it was not possible for a dozen or more men to walk along all abreast. They would have been strung out in a long line, singly or at most in twos and threes. While he had not been able to pick up the words of it, Jesus knew that the conversation among some of them earlier in the day had not been pleasant. So he asked them, “What was it that you were you arguing about along the way?” No answer—only an embarrassed silence. I suspect that none of them dared look Jesus in the eye, because they had been arguing about which of them was the greatest. Once again the gremlin of pride comes into the picture.

The word for “great” in the New Testament is megas. You hear it again and again in English. A big personality on TV or in the movies is a star. And we call a really great star a superstar. But an even bigger star is a megastar. So it was that these men weren’t satisfied with just being ordinary disciples of Jesus. They were set on being mega-disciples. Their problem was that somehow they had come to think of following Jesus in terms of Masterchef. It had become all about performance, trying to impress Jesus, all the time constantly worrying as to whether they’d done enough or done it right. And part of that would inevitably have meant comparing themselves with the others around them. Following Jesus had become a competition.

What happens next is as though Jesus took a hand grenade, ripped out the pin and threw it into their midst. He was going to blow their whole world of pride and self-achievement apart. “Anyone who wants to be first,” he said to them, “must be the very last, and the servant of all.” Did you get that right, Jesus? Did I really hear you correctly? Let’s listen to those words again: “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.” And that is the pattern of discipleship as we find it in the New Testament.

You can see it in the life of the apostle Paul. Early in his ministry he describes himself in this way: “I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle”. A few years later, this is what he has to say about himself: “I am less than the least of all the Lord’s people.” Then, finally, as he nears the end of his life, he describes himself as “the worst of sinners” (1 Corinthians 15:9; Ephesians 3:8; 1 Timothy 1:15). “If I must boast,” he writes elsewhere, “I will boast of the things that show my weakness.” And why? “So that Christ’s power may rest on me” (2 Corinthians 11:30; 12:9).

John the Baptist recognized this as he stood on the bank of the River Jordan. Of all the ministries in the Bible, his has to have been one of the most privileged—to have baptized the Son of God. Our Lord Jesus even pronounced that “among those born of women there is no one greater than John”. Yet John said of himself, “He must become greater; I must become less” (Luke 7:28; John 3:30). And who would you say is the greatest figure in the Old Testament? I have no doubt that Moses would rank high on anyone’s list. Yet the Bible tells us that “Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth” (Numbers 12:3). “Of all garments,’’ wrote Bishop J.C. Ryle 150 years ago, “none is so graceful, none wears so well, and none is so rare, as true humility.”[2]

The servant of all

Just in case the disciples haven’t got the point, however, Jesus reaches over and brings a little child into their midst. Holding the child in his arms, he says to them, “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.”

It is difficult for us to understand how radical Jesus’ words would have been. It’s not that children were not loved by their parents in those days, but they certainly did not enjoy the privilege that they have in our society today. They were taught; they helped with the chores; but by and large we could say they were invisible. So for Jesus to focus attention on a child in this way and to tell the disciples that to welcome such a one was their duty and privilege would have been something altogether new.

It was not that different from the time when he had honored Mary in Bethany for sitting among the men to listen to his teaching, or when he accepted the offering of the sinful woman who had anointed him with her tears (Luke 10:38-42; Luke 7:36-50). What Jesus was saying was that those whom we regard as the “least, the lowest, the last and the lost” all have their place in his kingdom and in his family. Here there is no status, no competition, no arguing about who is the greatest or the best. We are all here to serve one another and to serve the world in Jesus’ name.

And that brings us back in a circle to the opening words of our passage this morning—Jesus’ words, so puzzling to the disciples, about being delivered into the hands of men to be killed and after three days rise again. Here we have the very Son of God, the King and Lord of all creation, stooping down to share our human frame, to suffer and to die for you and for me on the cross. In the words of St Paul,

Though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a slave… And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

There on the cross the first became last. On the cross Jesus proved himself the true servant of all, to the point of taking the stain of our sin upon himself. He trod the path of humility to become the servant of all. And now he calls you and me to follow in his steps.

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[1]        http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-francis-approach-mystery-of-the-cross-with-pr

[2]        Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Mark, 187

“Born in a Battlefield” (Ephesians 6:10-20)

I am grateful for the opportunity to come and take part in the baptism of our youngest grandchild, Avery, and to Paul Friesen for his invitation to preach once again at St Paul’s after our eleven-year sojourn in the United States. They were a wonderful, spiritually stimulating time for us in many ways, but it is also good to be back in Halifax, which became home for us during my eighteen years as rector here.

Had we been using the old Book of Common Prayer, we would be hearing these words following Avery’s baptism:

We receive this child into the congregation of Christ’s flock, and do sign him with the sign of the cross, in token that hereafter he shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight under his banner against sin, the world, and the devil, and to continue Christ’s faithful soldier and servant unto his life’s end.[1]

It is a source of sadness for me that we haven’t retained these words, or something like them, in our contemporary forms of worship. I wonder if they weren’t dropped because our liturgical revisers sensed an incongruity between a defenseless baby cuddled in its parent’s arms and the blood and gore of a battlefield. If so, I don’t entirely blame them. Yet, when you think about it, that is almost exactly what the apostle Paul does in this morning’s reading from the last chapter of his letter to the Ephesians.

In the latter verses of chapter 5 and the first half of chapter 6, Paul has addressed his words to Christian households, to the relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and slaves. The whole emphasis throughout those verses is on Christ-like submission and service. The nineteenth-century German Lutheran pastor Karl Spitte put the picture of the Christian family into idyllic form in his hymn that includes the words,

O happy home, whose little ones are given
Early to thee, in humble faith and prayer,
To thee, their Friend, who from the heights of heaven
Guides them, and guards with more than mother’s care![2]

Yet suddenly, from that blissful scene Paul drops us into the middle of a battlefield, with the image, not of a peaceful family home but of a soldier fully armed for mortal combat.

The Action

Why the sudden shift? Handley Moule, one of the great scholar-bishops of Durham, wisely observed a century ago that it is a common experience that “the evil powers often win their worst advantages against us Christians on the quiet and common ground of life”.

Where we are least upon our guard they are most upon their watch… Just at home, alas, it is only too easy for the Christian to be inconsiderate in deed and word, to be quick or sullen in temper, to indulge self in small but dangerous ways, while yet a tolerable face of consistency is maintained in more public and exterior matters.[3]

Do you recognize yourself in the good bishop’s words? I can certainly see all too much of myself in them. Even such a one as the apostle Paul confessed to the struggle between good and evil that raged within the confines of his own soul:

I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. (Romans 7:21-23)

The great Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn made much the same observation when he wrote,

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.

And even in the best of all hearts, there remains … an un-uprooted small corner of evil.[4]

As difficult as it may be to accept, little Avery has been born into a battlefield. At this stage in his life he certainly is not aware of it. But we ask his parents and sponsors to affirm on his behalf:

Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?
I renounce them.

Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?
I renounce them.

Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?
I renounce them.

The Adversary

I don’t know if it was intentional, but those words in many ways reflect the words that we heard from Ephesians this morning. There Paul warns us about the devil’s schemes, about the rulers, authorities and powers of this dark world and about the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

It is important to notice that Paul doesn’t write about evil only in vague, general terms. He speaks quite specifically about the devil. In our post-Enlightenment world we may find the Bible’s references to the devil strange, antiquated, even slightly embarrassing. We may be tempted to set them aside as part of a pre-scientific worldview. If that is the case, then we need to beware.

“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils,” wrote C.S. Lewis in the introduction to his spiritual classic, The Screwtape Letters. “One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors…”[5]

C.E.B. Cranfield, one of the leading New Testament scholars of the twentieth century, has written,

Here we are up against something that presents many difficulties to the modern mind, which is apt to dismiss the whole subject as outgrown superstition. It is important to approach it with as open a mind as possible. To suggest that there may be more truth here in the New Testament picture than has sometimes been allowed is not to wish to turn the clock back on scientific progress or to open the floodgates of obscurantism. The question whether the confident spread of the demons’ non-existence has not been their greatest triumph gets tragic urgency from such twentieth-century features as Nazism, McCarthyism, and Apartheid. And lest we should be prejudiced by the memory of such horrors as the burning of witches, it must be said that they were due, not to taking the New Testament too seriously, but to failing to take it seriously enough.[6]

Even a casual reading of the New Testament should leave us in no doubt that to follow Christ will inevitably lead us into conflict with the spiritual forces of darkness. Satan’s desire is to bring us down, to tangle us in a web of lies—and at times those lies can be very powerful and enticing. Yet all the while we must never lose sight of the assurance that “the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).

The Armour

So how does this work itself out in practical terms? How are we to engage in the fight? Paul uses the image of a soldier—one familiar to everyone in the Roman Empire—to show how it all happens. And it may seem odd, but he begins with the belt. For the belt was possibly the most important component of all. With it the ancient warrior bound together his loose-fitting clothes and so was able to manoeuvre with nimbleness and mobility. When we buckle on the belt of truth, we are encircling ourselves with certain truths about God and about ourselves, truths that we read in Scripture and that we affirm week by week in the creeds. At the same time we are committing ourselves to be men and women of truth, people whose “yes” truly is “yes” and whose “no” is truly “no”, people who really are who we say we are.

The next piece of armour is the breastplate. The breastplate covers and protects nearly all the vital organs, especially the heart. And for the biblical writers the heart stood as the seat of the will. “In your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord,” wrote the apostle Peter (1 Peter 3:15a). Though it is the breastplate of righteousness, it is not our righteousness, but Christ’s, that protects us, conferred upon us by the shedding of his blood on the cross (2 Corinthians 5:20,21).

Third come the sandals. Just it was important for a soldier to have proper protection for his feet so that he could cross any terrain no matter how rough without causing himself pain or injury, so too we are to have “our feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace”. And so we are gospel people, good news people, leaving the imprint of God’s shalom wherever we go.

Then we are to arm ourselves with the shield—and the shield in question was a large piece of armour that covered nearly the whole body. That shield, says Paul, is faith. The word for faith in the New Testament is pistis, which can equally mean “faithfulness”. Thus I prefer to think of myself being armed not with my own faith, which is weak and faltering at the best of times, but with the faithfulness of God, which extends to the heavens and endures to all generations.

Fourthly there is the helmet of salvation. Clearly the helmet protects the brain—and how important it is to have minds that are formed and informed by the truths of God. Paul writes elsewhere of being transformed by the renewing of our minds, so that we may be able to test and approve what God’s will is. He writes of taking every thought captive to Christ (Romans 12:2; 2 Corinthians 10:5). How vital it is that we should be able to think Christianly, to develop our minds in such a way that we can respond effectively to the many intellectual challenges that the world places before us!

Finally, we are presented with the sword of the Spirit, which, Paul tells us, is the word of God. Commentators have long observed that up to this point all the armour has been defensive. The sword is the only offensive piece of weaponry. It was with the word of God that Jesus fought off the attacks of the accuser in the wilderness: “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only…’ ” “It is written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ” “It is written: ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ” I well remember an adviser in my university days pointing out that a sword has two edges, but in most cases only one is blunt, and that is the edge facing away from us. We can be very adept at applying the Scriptures to other people, but if we have any right to do so, it will only be after we have learned to apply them to ourselves. And if the powers of darkness are to be defeated in our lives, that is the way it will happen.

All of what I have been trying to say in these few minutes is most profoundly and beautifully expressed in a hymn which we know as “St Patrick’s Breastplate”. And I’d like to use those words to pray for you and for me and for little Avery as he is enrolled as Christ’s faithful soldier and servant in the sacrament of baptism.

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.[7]

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[1]     The Book of Common Prayer, 1959, page 528

[2]     Hymn 340 in the Book of Common Praise (1938)

[3]     Ephesian Studies, page 322

[4]     Both quotes are from The Gulag Archipelago.

[5]     The Screwtape Letters, page 9

[6]     The Gospel According to St Mark, 75

[7]     Hymn 812 in the Book of Common Praise (1938)

“Finally, Beloved…” (Philippians 4:8-23)

I don’t think it was ulterior. However, there was a motive behind my choosing Paul’s letter to the Philippians for my last few weeks of preaching at Messiah. It was all so that we could come to the verses before us this morning, which begin, “Finally, beloved…” How do we sum up ten and a half years of journeying together in Christ—ten and a half years in which so much water has gone under our collective bridge here at Messiah and yet for me at least have gone by so unbelievably quickly? It seems like just yesterday that Karen and I were sitting towards the back of the sanctuary on a Sunday morning and asking ourselves, “Is this where God is leading us?” As we left the service and walked along Ford Parkway to our car, I well remember her words: “I think I could worship in that church.” And the rest is history.

Now here we are, “Finally…” It should come as no surprise to you after hearing me preach all these years that that word “finally” is not quite as final in the original Greek as it is in English. You will find it translated elsewhere in the New Testament in such ways as “furthermore” or “from now on” or “beyond that”.[1] I recognize that these are my final words to you as your rector, as part of that precious and hallowed relationship that we have enjoyed as congregation and pastor over more than a decade. Yet I want them not to be a retrospective but prospective, looking ahead to the future that God has in store for you. But first just a little retrospection…

Brothers and sisters

In our NRSV pew Bibles Paul addresses his readers as “beloved”. The word he actually uses is “brothers”—or, more accurately, “brothers and sisters” since he clearly intended to include not only the men but also the women in the congregation such as Euodia and Syntyche. While no doubt “beloved” is an appropriate way to address one’s fellow Christians, it seems to me that “brothers and sisters” says something that is considerably more profound, that describes us at a much deeper level.

Three Sundays ago the Gospel reading included the incident in which Jesus was teaching and healing and members of his family came looking for him. We read that Jesus responded, “ ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother’ ” (Mark 3:33-35). In these early weeks of Pentecost in the Eucharistic Prayer we have been making the acclamation,

Leader  We are brothers and sisters through his blood.

All         We have died together,
  we will rise together,
  we will live together.

Our reason for going back to Nova Scotia is to be reunited with members of our family—primarily our son, our daughter-in-law and three adorable grandsons. Yet what Jesus was teaching and what we affirm in that acclamation is that there is a bond that unites us more closely even than the ties of blood, and that is the blood of Christ. Karen and I first recognized that bond with Messiah when Gayle Miels and Paul Saxton came to visit us in Halifax and talk with us about Messiah. We knew that we were with kindred spirits and that sense only grew later that summer when we came to Saint Paul and met with members of the search team, the vestry, the staff and others. Now, a decade later, as we have gone through struggles and celebrations together on both individual and communal levels, those ties have only been strengthened and deepened.

While we will be separated by distance and eventually by death, neither of those barriers can break the deep and indissoluble bond that unites us in Christ. Paul was addressing the Philippians from a great distance, and yet still as brothers and sisters, whom he loved and longed for, his joy and his crown. “It is right for me to think this way about all of you,” he wrote, “because I hold you in my heart, for all of you share in God’s grace with me”[2]—and that is the way Karen and I will always feel about you.

Think on … keep on

So it is, to these dear brothers and sisters, that Paul writes some of the most beautiful and inspiring words in all of Scripture:

Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

I want to pause there for just a moment and smell the roses as it were, to breathe into our lungs the rich fragrance of each of those words.

·      “Whatever is true”—not just in the factual sense, but in the moral sense, the things that are true to God as he has revealed himself in Jesus Christ.

·      “Whatever is honorable”, that is, noble, reputable, lofty, majestic, magnificent, sublime.

·      “Whatever is just”: the word here can also mean “righteous” and is often translated that way. Eugene Peterson translates it as “authentic” and rightly so, as it has more to do with being in right relationships than with being right.

·      “Whatever is pure” can refer to chastity, but at its root it carries the sense of awakening awe, such as we find in Psalm 104: “Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all!”

·      “Whatever is pleasing”—attractive, winsome, admirable, lovely, compelling—being drawn to goodness wherever it is found. And here the opening verse of Psalm 19 comes to mind: “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.”

·      “Whatever is commendable”, which in the Old King James Version of the Bible was rendered “of good report”, that is, worth listening to, or again, as Eugene Peterson puts it, gracious.

·      “If there is any excellence”, and while we may rightly commend the excellence of a great athlete or artist, scholar or leader, what we are looking at here is really moral excellence, virtue. In the words of Psalm 1, “those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; but their delight is in the law of the Lord.”

·      And finally, “if there is anything worthy of praise”—and here Paul means not so much human praise as what brings pleasure to the heart of God.

I took a few moments to see if I could find in the Bible what brings God delight and I came up with this list: uprightness, humility, repentance, thankfulness, purity, truthfulness, mercy, faith, generosity.[3] It sounds peculiarly like the list that Paul has already drawn up for us and given to the Philippians. And so, Paul says, think about these things. Reflect on them. Consider them. Focus on them. Concentrate on them. Probe them. Explore them. Fill your minds with them so that there isn’t room for anything else. It’s all summed up in words that we hear every week and that we will hear later on in this morning’s service: “Lift up your hearts.” To which we answer: “We lift them to the Lord.” And that is something we need to learn to do not just on Sunday mornings as we stand at the Lord’s Table. It is developing a whole posture of mind and heart that we carry with us into every situation, every circumstance, every area of life.

But then Paul says, “Don’t stop there!” Don’t just think: act. “Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me.” I have no need to tell you that the life of discipleship is not just a matter of learning to think in a certain way, but allowing the Holy Spirit to transform the whole of our lives. How many evidences of that have I seen at Messiah over the years, and long may it continue! One of my resolutions as I leave is that I may keep on doing the things that I have been privileged to learn and receive and hear from so many of you.

According to God’s riches

Paul began this passage by writing, “Finally…” Yet more than three hundred words later he still hasn’t finished what he wants to say. I have to admit that I identify with that. There is a part of me that wishes that our time together here at Messiah would never end. A couple of years ago when Bishop Russell Jacobus was preparing for his retirement from the Diocese of Fond du Lac, he told me that he had often wondered how he would know when the time had come. He shared this with another bishop whose wisdom he respected and who said to him, “You probably won’t be able point to anything specific, but you just will.” And so for me also the time has come. I could point to a number of specific factors—age and grandchildren among them. Yet more fundamentally than that, in spite of the regrets and the pain involved, I just know that this is the right time, for me and for all of us. But back to our passage this morning…

Before he concludes, Paul leaves the Philippians with one last gem. It comes in verse 19: “And my God will fully satisfy every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” As I leave Messiah, I do so with that assurance and I want to leave you with the same assurance. I am so grateful to be able to entrust the pastoral care of this church to Mary Gustafson, whom I believe the Lord has sent to us “for just a time as this”. I have every confidence in the leadership of our Wardens, Rachael, Mark and Anne, who not only share a deep commitment to Christ but carry out their office with wisdom, energy and a true servant heart. And the same may be said of our staff, Jeff, Paul, Ann, Janice, Judy, Bobbie and Lori, all of whom work tirelessly to serve not merely the organizational needs of the church (which they do!), but far more importantly, you its people, and above all Jesus, its Lord.

These have been a pivotal ten years. We have seen parishioners go and come. We have seen our building expand and every new corner be filled to accommodate more ministry. We have been challenged financially and yet have never lacked. We have survived General Conventions. We have pondered our place in the Episcopal Church. We have been blessed by the coming of our Karen brothers and sisters. Our life together has had its unexpected twists and turns. (And surely that is more often than not the way of God, isn’t it, who calls us to walk by faith and not by sight?) Yet who can deny that God’s gracious leading and provision have been evident throughout?

In my first sermon here exactly ten years and ten months ago, I concluded with these words:

My hope and prayer for you and me at Messiah is that we may grow as a community that has no doubt about the power of the gospel—that as we proclaim it and live it we may know daily the wonderful life-giving presence of Jesus in our midst and never be the same as a result.

While the path may not have been entirely smooth and there were bumps and potholes and even the occasional sidetrack along the way, I hope that that has been our experience together. It has certainly been mine and I will not leave this place or you people the same as when I came. But I do leave in full confidence that “my God will fully satisfy your every need according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus”.

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[1]     See 1 Corinthians 1:16; Galatians 6:17; 1 Thessalonians 4:1 (KJV); 2 Timothy 4:8.

[2]     Philippians 1:7, alternative translation

[3]     See 1 Chronicles 29:7; Psalm 149:4; Psalm 51:17; Luke 15:7,10; Psalm 69:30,31; Proverbs 11:20; Proverbs 12:22; Micah 6:7,8; Micah 7:18; Hebrews 11:6; Philippians 4:18

“You, Me and the Gospel” (Romans 1:7-17)

This is the first sermon I preached at Messiah Episcopal Church, on 26 September 2004…

 

Preaching on an occasion such as this is a daunting experience. This is really kind of a test run—like Wilbur and Orville Wright standing on the grassy fields of Kitty Hawk a century ago and looking at their newly-constructed flying machine. They had spent months designing and building wings, fuselage, engine, propellers and all that they thought it would take to accomplish the first powered flight, not to mention years of dreaming, studying and consulting from their bicycle shop in Ohio.

In your case you have a search committee that fasted and prayed, studied, met and traveled for more than a year and a half. And I know for a fact that their dedication was mirrored many, many times over by others in this congregation, who have prayed fervently, trusted hopefully and waited patiently as events gradually unfolded.

So here we stand on the runway, and we nervously ask ourselves, like Orville and Wilbur, is it going to fly? On their fourth attempt on 17 December 1903, Wilbur managed fifty-nine seconds of flight, reaching an altitude of 852 feet, and the brothers knew that they had entered the era of human flight. Perhaps some of you are thinking already that a fifty-nine second sermon would be a good way to introduce my incumbency at Messiah. If so, I am sorry to have to disappoint you. Yet my hope for this morning is that we may begin to have some sense that we are at the beginning of a fruitful partnership, and that together by God’s grace we may have the joy of seeing this church truly soar on eagle’s wings. So would you turn with me in your Bibles to the first chapter of St Paul’s letter to the Romans as we embark on our first adventure in exploring God’s word together.

My reason for choosing this passage is that Paul’s circumstances as he wrote were very similar to mine as I stand in this pulpit this morning. This is Paul’s attempt to introduce himself to a Christian community that he soon hoped to encounter face to face. Although he had no doubt met a number of its members as he and they traveled through the Roman Empire, he had not yet had the privilege of meeting them as a congregation. So he spends some time at the beginning of this long letter reflecting on who they are, who he is, and the nature of the ministry in which they share—which is what I want us to do now in the moments that remain to us.

You

The first thing that Paul affirms about his fellow Christians in Rome (in verse 7) is that they are loved by God. I don’t know if you have ever paused to consider what an amazing statement this is. What Paul is speaking about here is not some generalized kind of love. There are no doubt some of you who could say that you love Canadians. And I do not for a moment doubt the genuineness of your affection. But that is not the same as saying that you love me or that you love my wife (which many of you have already shown you do even without really knowing us). In the same way the love of God, of which Paul speaks here, is a very personal, individual love. It is not merely that God loves people (which he does) or that he loves Romans (which he does) or that he loves the Christians at Rome (which again he does). It is that he loves Priscilla and Aquila, Andronicus and Junias, Ampliatus and Urbanus, Apelles, Herodion, Tryphena and Tryphosa, Rufus, and each of the rest individually and personally.

This morning I want to affirm each of you in that divine love. I hope that there is no one who will leave this place this morning without a deep sense that God loves you personally, as an individual. Perhaps you have heard the story of Karl Barth, the greatest theologian of the twentieth century, who was once asked after a lecture at Union Theological seminary what was the most profound theological statement ever made. His answer: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” You may not feel that way—I can’t say that I do all the time. You may not be able to make sense of it—and I would ask who among us does. Yet that does not alter the fact that God loves you more deeply, more constantly, than you can ever imagine.

The second thing Paul says is that they are “called to be saints”, or, as he says in verse 6, “called to belong to Jesus Christ”. You may be here for any number of reasons—perhaps curiosity to see the new rector, perhaps to test the waters, perhaps because you would never be anywhere else on a Sunday morning. Yet in a fundamental sense, whether you acknowledge it or not, you are here because, no less than the fishermen who stood repairing their nets by the Sea of Galilee, you have been called by Jesus Christ—called to follow him, called to serve him, called to become like him.

Paul’s word for it is that you have been called to be saints. It may seem a rather daunting title for us mere mortals. The word in Greek is the same as “holy”. What Paul is saying here is that when Jesus Christ calls a person, he never leaves them the same. Yes, he fully accepts us as we are. But when we are drawn to him, we are drawn into a process of transformation that continues until the day we die and will not leave any part of our lives untouched.

To spend time in the company of Jesus is to find ourselves being changed. And that is exactly what happened to these Romans. In Paul’s words their faith was being reported all over the world. Perhaps Paul was exaggerating a little when he spoke as he did. Yet the fact remained that their lives were being changed to the point that people were talking about it.

When Jesus Christ begins to make a difference in our lives, we in turn begin to make a difference in the lives of others and in our world. We become the salt and light that Jesus spoke about in the Sermon on the Mount. And I know that you are a congregation that is making a difference in many ways in the world around you—ways that do not make newspaper headlines, but I know that there are many whose lives have been touched and continue to be touched through what Jesus is doing in and among you here at Messiah. Long may that continue!

Me

Having said a little bit about his readers in Rome, Paul goes on to reveal a few things about himself. When I met with the search committee, I told them that I saw the role of the rector in a parish as helping people to look outward and upward—outward beyond our comfort zones into the world around us, because it is so easy for us to be so absorbed by our internal life that we become a “holy huddle”; and upward in prayer, because it is always a temptation to do things on a merely human level and to forget to involve the Lord and to look to his guidance.

It seems to me that Paul saw himself doing much the same kind of thing. Twice—in verse 9 and verse 15—he shares his eagerness to proclaim the good news about Jesus. Let me tell you that I share that same eagerness. I can’t claim that every sermon I preach is a “royal George”, but nothing will give me more delight than to explore the Scriptures with you. My goal will not be to help you become some kind of walking Bible encyclopedia. Rather it is, in Paul’s words elsewhere in the New Testament, that you may be “thoroughly equipped for every good work”, that together we begin to catch a glimpse of God’s perspective on life in this increasingly complex world and make a difference in it as a result.

Paul also speaks about his prayers “at all times” on behalf of the Romans. For my part I have not ceased to pray for you since the day I accepted the call to become your rector. And I know full well that you were praying for me long before that. I count myself deeply privileged to enter a community that takes its prayer life seriously. I am humbled by your dedication.

As a result I am not sure that there is much I can teach you about prayer. Yet I trust that we can explore it together. So it is that with Paul, I recognize that we are in a partnership. I pray with him that our relationship may be one of mutual encouragement, that our exposure to one another may make us only want to grow in faith, to go deeper into the love of Christ.

There are some people I love to be around because they bring out the best in me. In their presence I can never be catty or sarcastic, for somehow they help me to become more of the person that I ought to be in Christ. Perhaps you know people like that as well. It is my hope that we can be that kind of person for one another as we seek to serve Christ here at Messiah.

The Gospel

Paul has said something about his readers and something about himself. Yet all of this is really just a preamble to his real subject, one that will take up the remaining fifteen chapters of his letter. That subject is the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ—and I would be remiss if I did not follow in his footsteps and speak about it. Three things:

Paul says that he is not ashamed of the gospel. There are many things he might have been ashamed about: his past as a persecutor of Christians, the mysterious thorn in his flesh that caused him such weakness, his delays in fulfilling his promise to make it to Rome. But one thing he was not ashamed of and that was the good news of Jesus Christ. I don’t know about you, but there are many things I would rather talk about than Jesus—the weather, sports, gardening, my health, to name just a few. To be truthful, the gospel comes rather low on my list. I wonder if the same isn’t true of some of you as well. Not that we need to be buttonholing people and shoving the gospel down their throats, but we do need to learn not to be ashamed of it, even more, to be confident in it. And Paul gives us two reasons why:

First, the gospel is the power of God. Perhaps you already know that the word Paul uses here is dunamis. It is the word from which we derive our English word “dynamite”. And so the gospel is dynamite. Those of you who are involved in Alpha know that. You have seen people’s hearts being set aflame by the gospel as you share it week by week. Over the past couple of days I have been able to spend some time leafing through this marvellous book some of you have written about yourselves. As I read it I find myself deeply moved as I see lives that have been transformed by the gospel. And that has been the experience of my own ministry again and again that, as people are exposed to the gospel faithfully and consistently, it inevitably has an impact on their lives.

Secondly Paul tells us that in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed. Volumes have been written on that word righteousness, but essentially and put very simply it has to do with right relationships. It is through the gospel that we learn how we come into a right relationship with God. And that, says Paul, is through faith from start to finish. But what I want you to note here is that Paul uses the present tense. He does not say, “In the gospel a righteousness from God has been revealed,” but, “In the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed.” That is, the good news of Jesus is self-authenticating. It is not merely a quaint story from the past. So often to the surprise of those who hear it (and sometimes to the surprise of those who proclaim it) the gospel speaks to us in the present and makes Jesus a reality for us today.

My hope and prayer for you and me at Messiah is that we may grow as a community that has no doubt about the power of the gospel—that as we proclaim it and live it we may know daily the wonderful life-giving presence of Jesus in our midst and never be the same as a result.

Father, I thank you
that in your grace you have brought us together in your service.
I pray that in your mighty power you may move among us
to make us a gospel proclaiming, gospel living community
where your love is known,
where Jesus is reverenced and served
and where your Holy Spirit leaves no life untouched—
for the glory of your great and ineffable name.