Sunday, June 14, 2020
Monday, June 8, 2020
Trinity A Sermon
Sermon for Trinity Sunday
For. Troy Beecham
This Sunday is Trinity Sunday, when we stand silent before the confounding, yet life giving, mystery of the revelation that God’s very Self is one of loving communion. In other lectionary years, our Gospel reading is part of the Feast of the Ascension, but this year it is the Gospel for Trinity Sunday, where Jesus gives to his Church the Great Commission: to make disciples of all peoples, to baptize them, and to teach them to keep/obey all of his commandments. Then he promises to be with his disciples forever, the promise of everlasting communion with God offered you all people.
So why does the Church use this Gospel reading for Trinity Sunday? Because baptism should be done in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In this way, Jesus reveals to us something new about who God is, and who his disciples are, his Church.
In all of the centuries since that day, when Jesus ascended to the Father, the Church has waxed and waned in fulfilling its vocation given to us by the Risen Jesus. All too often the waning has been due to the Church confusing the Great Commission with other commissions, other identities, other priorities, usually by misidentifying the Great Commission with various political, social, or philosophical agendas.
The Church misidentifies our Jesus given vocation as his body on earth when we lose sight of the evangelical nature of our calling. Being a social justice organization can be a wonderful and necessary thing, but it is not the vocation of the Church as such. Social justice, and any other way of labeling justice, are very much part of the ministry of the Church, but only as it arises out of the living out and proclamation of the Gospel. It is the fruit of the Gospel, but is not the Gospel itself. Jesus didn’t stage anti-Rome rallies. Rather, he constantly proclaimed to all that his Father was bringing his kingdom to earth – the proclamation of which confronted the political powers of the age and caused a violent reaction. He also did not call out the emperor; he did not have to do. Proclaiming the kingdom of God challenges all earthly authorities; but challenging earthly authorities itself is not the same thing as proclaiming the kingdom of God. It is the Gospel itself through which God confronts the powers of our world, and for this purpose Jesus has commissioned his Church to proclaim the Gospel.
We have to constantly be reminded of this lest we begin to confuse the two, for they are not the same thing. If Jesus, the author and perfect or of our Faith, God the Son, chose to spend his earthly life preaching the coming of his Father’s kingdom, healing the sick, raising the dead to new life, and proclaiming the need for all people to repent of their sin and to be baptized, then that is the ministry he entrusts to his disciples. He charges his disciples then and now to take up their cross, emptying themselves of their own agendas, and to follow him as his disciples who’s vocation thereafter is to love God and everyone as Jesus loves them. If this is how God the Son devoted all his energies, then we as his disciples must emulate him, follow, and obey him and pattern our lives after his. Following any other agenda only leaves the Church disconnected from God’s plan for bringing salvation to the people of the world. Herein lies one of the Church’s greatest weaknesses: salvation is no longer thought of as something “real”. That is due, in large part, because the idea of creating disciples of all nations has come to be termed colonialism. And this is followed by a prevailing belief that all religions lead to God, and so becoming a disciple of Jesus is just one way among many. It makes sense if the Church no longer believes in the unique revelation of God in Jesus that we exchange the Great Commission for other means of bringing other forms of “salvation” into the world using purely human ideas and modes of evangelism to try and create our version of a kingdom.
Exchanging this divine revelation and the proclamation of it with political, economic, or social action for its own sake arises from losing touch with our vocation as disciples. If we lose sight of our primary vocation and proclamation, it does not matter if we add the name of Jesus to whatever socioeconomic or sociopolitical agenda we undertake. Anything that we undertake as disciples of Jesus other than the vocation he has given to us may seem to be good and essential, but they are not the vocation of the Church. When we do this, God’s plan of salvation for all people is neglected because God has chosen his Church to be the community through whom salvation is made possible for the world, through the proclamation of the Gospel, the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, and the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Jesus our Savior. This is our vocation and our charter for being, and nothing else. All other ministry arises out of it: acts of mercy, care for the widowed and orphans, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, protecting the vulnerable, standing as witnesses for the love of God for all people. These are the essential fruits of the evangelical life of the Church, but not it’s root. We confuse the fruits of the Gospel for its root to the detriment of the Church, and the loss of the message of salvation to the world.
But when will God’s kingdom come?! We see around us a world in crisis, including our own nation. It is understandable that we lose hope, lose heart, lose faith in God’s plan for the salvation of all peoples. It is understandable that we decide to take up the language and role of kingdom building ourselves. But the kingdom of God will only come when the Father decides. It takes faith, given as a gift of God, to believe, hope, and ultimately trust in God and his loving desire for all people. Until then, we live in the between time of seeing by faith and seeing with the eye.
We must fix our eyes on Jesus, and learn from him, follow in his footsteps, carrying our cross. We follow our Lord, to whom all authority has been given. Authority to do what? Authority and power to serve God. The one to whom all power belongs is using all of that power to empower his disciples to follow him, be faithful witnesses of him, and fearless proclaimers of the Gospel. And this one Lord is the one to whom all of our allegiances belong and in whom we find our identity and vocation.
Admittedly that doesn’t sound powerful, not when nations are at war, the poor are forgotten, and those made in the image of God experience generations of injustice. Proclaiming the Gospel doesn’t sound like it will bring about the justice that is a natural property of God’s kingdom. It would be one thing if God had given us the command to bring about his kingdom, but God has not done so. He has given to us the power to love and to proclaim. His kingdom grows amongst us, and among the peoples of the world, not by our doing, but by his Holy Spirit, through the witness of his Chuch.
It is only through faithfulness to what God has called us to be and do that he brings about the first fruits of his kingdom. The Great Commission to make disciples of all nations through baptism, in which all of us from all nations die to our former allegiances, from all national identities, in which all barriers between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, all fall away. We are called to participate in the affairs of our world as disciples, as pilgrims who live in and among the nations, whose baptism calls us to seek and serve all peoples in the name of Jesus, giving glory to Jesus, and proclaiming the good news of salvation. Placing hope in or giving allegiance to any ruler amongst the nations in the same category as Jesus and allegiance to any national, political, or philosophical agenda in the same category as our citizenship in God’s kingdom indicate a fundamental category confusion, a disastrous mistake, for the Church and the world.
The Cross and empty tomb do not belong to any of us, any more than earthly political power does. In the language of the Faith, Jesus’ sacrifice was full, perfect, and sufficient for all peoples throughout all of time and into eternity. If the Gospel is true, then no one needs ever to be held captive to sin or the powers of this world, and no one ever need follow the rulers of the nations as lord. All of that was decided on the cross and through the empty tomb. This is the hopeful proclamation we have been commanded to live and to show in our lives, as we await the fulfillment of God’s promise.
And this is our hope: God’s kingdom is coming, a merged new heaven and earth, a resurrected humanity renewed in the image of God, and all people invited into communion with God through Jesus, the God who’s very Being is a communion of love. The time of empire, debt, slavery, of the reign of death, is passing away. It will continue to exercise sway only where the death and resurrection of God’s son is not proclaimed by his disciples.
The truth about human empire has been unveiled for all the world to see. It has wielded its most powerful tool — death on a cross — against God’s son as he proclaimed and inaugurated God’s kingdom. Even now, human control of the apparatus of death has been shown to be temporary because of the resurrection of Jesus. By faith we can trust that the kingdom of God has not just begun, it has already won the victory, even when it seems that the world is drownng in sorrow and rage.
Living between two worlds is not easy, even for those closest to Jesus. The whole group of disciples both worship and doubt, even as we do still today. We are standing in two places at the same time, and that can be confusing. Yet Jesus commissions not perfect disciples, but people who both worship and doubt as they stand at the edge of the world that is passing away and the one that is coming. Matthew repeatedly tells stories that recount the ways that Jesus, and sometimes his disciples, cross and blur the boundaries between heaven and earth. It is only with Jesus’ defeat of death by his resurrection that the breach between heaven and earth is being mended. Jesus sends us, his disciples of every age and place, into the world not only to announce the salvation of humans, but also to bear witness to the promise of the healing and new creation of a broken world. Jesus’ commandment at the Great Commission is now a vision of the end of a broken world and the beginning of new creation, the salvation of all peoples, and the desire of all peoples – the coming of the kingdom of God.
Church, the world needs us to be true disciples of Jesus, living the Great Commission, proclaiming the Gospel, the good news of salvation. The salvation of humankind is being made real through his Church, by becoming one with Jesus through Holy Baptism and participation in the Holy Eucharist. Bringing all peoples into loving communion with God through a Jesus Christ is our one, true vocation and calling. The world is waiting in darkness for Jesus’ disciples to be true to their calling. As G. K. Chesterton famously said, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.“ May God give us grace to be found as faithful disciples of his Son, for the sake of the world.
“The Church’s one foundation
Is Jesus Christ her Lord;
She is His new creation
By water and the Word:
From heav’n He came and sought her
To be His holy Bride;
With His own blood He bought her,
And for her life He died.
Is Jesus Christ her Lord;
She is His new creation
By water and the Word:
From heav’n He came and sought her
To be His holy Bride;
With His own blood He bought her,
And for her life He died.
Elect from every nation,
Yet one o’er all the earth,
Her charter of salvation,
One Lord, one faith, one birth;
One holy Name she blesses,
Partakes one holy food,
And to one hope she presses,
With every grace endued.
Yet one o’er all the earth,
Her charter of salvation,
One Lord, one faith, one birth;
One holy Name she blesses,
Partakes one holy food,
And to one hope she presses,
With every grace endued.
‘Mid toil and tribulation,
And tumult of her war,
She waits the consummation
Of peace for evermore;
Till, with the vision glorious,
Her longing eyes are blest,
And the great Church victorious
Shall be the Church at rest.
And tumult of her war,
She waits the consummation
Of peace for evermore;
Till, with the vision glorious,
Her longing eyes are blest,
And the great Church victorious
Shall be the Church at rest.
Yet she on earth hath union
With God the Three in One,
And mystic sweet communion
With those whose rest is won:
O happy ones and holy!
Lord, give us grace that we,
Like them, the meek and lowly,
In love may dwell with Thee.”
With God the Three in One,
And mystic sweet communion
With those whose rest is won:
O happy ones and holy!
Lord, give us grace that we,
Like them, the meek and lowly,
In love may dwell with Thee.”
Sunday, May 31, 2020
Sermon, Pentecost A 2020
Fr. Troy Beecham
Sermon, Pentecost A 2020
Today the Church celebrates the great Feast of Pentecost.
In the Hebrew Scriptures, God promised that in the “last days”, inaugurated by the coming of the Messiah, he would pour out his Spirit upon all people. In Acts (2:14 to 18) the apostle Peter quotes this promise to explain what is happening when the disciples of Jesus are suddenly, miraculously able to speak and understand multiple foreign languages starting on the day of Pentecost (Pentecost is the name given to the Feast of Weeks, Shavuot in Hebrew, by the Jewish scholars who translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek some three centuries before Jesus’ birth). This outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost marks the beginning of the age of the Messiah promised so many centuries before.
But why would God mark this great new beginning, the beginning of the Messianic promise, the start of the Church, by giving Jesus’ disciples the supernatural ability to speak in all the many languages of the world of their time? Why this gift as the first mark of the new Church, and its mission in the world? Later, filled with the Spirit, the apostles would also heal the lame, cure the sick, and cast out demons, as a Jesus said. But why would God mark the beginning of the outpouring of his Spirit by the ability to communicate with others in their own language?
Just as he is ascending into the heavenly realm, Jesus commands his disciples, saying “As you go into the world, make disciples of all peoples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." There it is, the Church’s reason for being, its essential identity, and it is all is about making disciples of all peoples and nations, bringing them into communion with God through Jesus. And this requires language, communication. This is why the first manifestation of the Holy Spirit in the lives of Jesus’ disciples has to do with the communication of truth.
Language, communication, is about so much more than simply understanding words. Language, spoken or otherwise, conveys the totality of a person’s identity, be it cultural, religious, economic, class, sex, and every other kind of social identity. At the surface level, language depends upon the spoken word and that word is always in a particular language: Hebrew, Greek, Chinese, Sign Language, etc. At this level words can express true things, but they can also deceive and lie. Beyond the spoken word, we communicate through body language, tone of voice, volume of voice. Our bodies, our unspoken communication, often speak louder and more honestly than our words. When our lives speak through our words, actions, affiliations....we are revealing what is true about us, truths that sometimes are not congruent with our words. Words can fail us just when we need them most, especially in situations where tragedy, death, and betrayal render us mute, especially in times of civil unrest as we are witnessing today in our country and around the world.
What will our mouths and our lives say in the midst of such fear, rage, hopelessness, and yes, for some, exultation in taking advantage of this maelstrom, stoking it to further their dark ambitions. This is why God gives us his Holy Spirit, that we might continuously be born again, sanctified moment to moment, so that our lives and our words are congruent, full of integrity, full of God’s love. It is only through the Holy Spirit that we have still yet a deeper language. By the indwelling of the Holy Spirit of God we are equally able to communicate with each other true things like compassion, humility, generosity of spirit, joy, peace, patience, goodness, long-suffering, fidelity, gentleness, and chastity, even if we do no speak a common language. These speak through us more loudly and clearly, either in their presence or their absence, than do all our words and gestures. This is the language of God given to us by grace, a language that the human family so desperately needs to hear spoken with fluency by the Church, by each disciple of Jesus.
We deceive ourselves if we think that we are not fooled by each other. We all hear beyond spoken words, bodily gestures, and beyond what we believe that we intend to say to each other. The heart reads the heart and the Holy Spirit recognizes itself wherever it sees itself as manifest in us. Many of us talk passionately about our love for those who suffer: the poor, the alien in our midst, those living under generations of prejudice and violence. But they do not hear us, understand us, or gather round us, even when we think that we speak perfectly in their native tongue. Unless we are filled with the Holy Spirit of God, our words and our lives cannot speak as one of the love of God in Jesus. This is the language, the gift, given at Pentecost by God to all who will receive him.
God offers all people salvation from their sin, individually and corporately, through his Son Jesus, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. In this age of the Spirit-filled church, all people are invited into communion with the Lord and with each other, first communicated through God’s language of love, forgiveness, reconciliation, and hope. As we become part of the earthly Body of Jesus, his Church, through grace by faith and through the waters of Holy Baptism, we can discover the gift of mutual love, forgiveness, humility, and reconciliation. What God is asking for are people like you and me to be willing to give our lives wholeheartedly to him, that the Holy Spirit might live in us and through us, speaking the language of God through our lives and our lips. As we are witnessing the violence in our own country, or the violence perpetrated against the people of Hong Kong who are seeking liberty and freedom from oppression, or the ongoing plague of civil war and mass disease and starvation in Yemen, we need disciples who fluently speak and live the language of God more than ever.
I pray that God will touch your heart, and mine, and help us with his grace that we might be filled with his Holy Spirit for the sake of our human family that is so lost in the babble of our brokenness. Pray with me that God’s Holy Spirit will be felt, heard, and recurved by all who live, that we might truly come to love, respect, and honor each other.
O God, who on this day taught the hearts of your faithful people by sending to them the light of your Holy Spirit: Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgment in all things, to speak only the language of your Spirit, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen
Sermon, Pentecost A 2020
Today the Church celebrates the great Feast of Pentecost.
In the Hebrew Scriptures, God promised that in the “last days”, inaugurated by the coming of the Messiah, he would pour out his Spirit upon all people. In Acts (2:14 to 18) the apostle Peter quotes this promise to explain what is happening when the disciples of Jesus are suddenly, miraculously able to speak and understand multiple foreign languages starting on the day of Pentecost (Pentecost is the name given to the Feast of Weeks, Shavuot in Hebrew, by the Jewish scholars who translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek some three centuries before Jesus’ birth). This outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost marks the beginning of the age of the Messiah promised so many centuries before.
But why would God mark this great new beginning, the beginning of the Messianic promise, the start of the Church, by giving Jesus’ disciples the supernatural ability to speak in all the many languages of the world of their time? Why this gift as the first mark of the new Church, and its mission in the world? Later, filled with the Spirit, the apostles would also heal the lame, cure the sick, and cast out demons, as a Jesus said. But why would God mark the beginning of the outpouring of his Spirit by the ability to communicate with others in their own language?
Just as he is ascending into the heavenly realm, Jesus commands his disciples, saying “As you go into the world, make disciples of all peoples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." There it is, the Church’s reason for being, its essential identity, and it is all is about making disciples of all peoples and nations, bringing them into communion with God through Jesus. And this requires language, communication. This is why the first manifestation of the Holy Spirit in the lives of Jesus’ disciples has to do with the communication of truth.
Language, communication, is about so much more than simply understanding words. Language, spoken or otherwise, conveys the totality of a person’s identity, be it cultural, religious, economic, class, sex, and every other kind of social identity. At the surface level, language depends upon the spoken word and that word is always in a particular language: Hebrew, Greek, Chinese, Sign Language, etc. At this level words can express true things, but they can also deceive and lie. Beyond the spoken word, we communicate through body language, tone of voice, volume of voice. Our bodies, our unspoken communication, often speak louder and more honestly than our words. When our lives speak through our words, actions, affiliations....we are revealing what is true about us, truths that sometimes are not congruent with our words. Words can fail us just when we need them most, especially in situations where tragedy, death, and betrayal render us mute, especially in times of civil unrest as we are witnessing today in our country and around the world.
What will our mouths and our lives say in the midst of such fear, rage, hopelessness, and yes, for some, exultation in taking advantage of this maelstrom, stoking it to further their dark ambitions. This is why God gives us his Holy Spirit, that we might continuously be born again, sanctified moment to moment, so that our lives and our words are congruent, full of integrity, full of God’s love. It is only through the Holy Spirit that we have still yet a deeper language. By the indwelling of the Holy Spirit of God we are equally able to communicate with each other true things like compassion, humility, generosity of spirit, joy, peace, patience, goodness, long-suffering, fidelity, gentleness, and chastity, even if we do no speak a common language. These speak through us more loudly and clearly, either in their presence or their absence, than do all our words and gestures. This is the language of God given to us by grace, a language that the human family so desperately needs to hear spoken with fluency by the Church, by each disciple of Jesus.
We deceive ourselves if we think that we are not fooled by each other. We all hear beyond spoken words, bodily gestures, and beyond what we believe that we intend to say to each other. The heart reads the heart and the Holy Spirit recognizes itself wherever it sees itself as manifest in us. Many of us talk passionately about our love for those who suffer: the poor, the alien in our midst, those living under generations of prejudice and violence. But they do not hear us, understand us, or gather round us, even when we think that we speak perfectly in their native tongue. Unless we are filled with the Holy Spirit of God, our words and our lives cannot speak as one of the love of God in Jesus. This is the language, the gift, given at Pentecost by God to all who will receive him.
God offers all people salvation from their sin, individually and corporately, through his Son Jesus, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. In this age of the Spirit-filled church, all people are invited into communion with the Lord and with each other, first communicated through God’s language of love, forgiveness, reconciliation, and hope. As we become part of the earthly Body of Jesus, his Church, through grace by faith and through the waters of Holy Baptism, we can discover the gift of mutual love, forgiveness, humility, and reconciliation. What God is asking for are people like you and me to be willing to give our lives wholeheartedly to him, that the Holy Spirit might live in us and through us, speaking the language of God through our lives and our lips. As we are witnessing the violence in our own country, or the violence perpetrated against the people of Hong Kong who are seeking liberty and freedom from oppression, or the ongoing plague of civil war and mass disease and starvation in Yemen, we need disciples who fluently speak and live the language of God more than ever.
I pray that God will touch your heart, and mine, and help us with his grace that we might be filled with his Holy Spirit for the sake of our human family that is so lost in the babble of our brokenness. Pray with me that God’s Holy Spirit will be felt, heard, and recurved by all who live, that we might truly come to love, respect, and honor each other.
O God, who on this day taught the hearts of your faithful people by sending to them the light of your Holy Spirit: Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgment in all things, to speak only the language of your Spirit, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen
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