Canon John's homily for November 29, 2020

Welcome to the first Sunday of a new Church year.  On this first Sunday of Advent, our readings require some thought, before we can figure out if there is a pattern to them, an overall message that we should take away from them.

As I said last week, Advent readings call us to begin to prepare ourselves for the coming of the Christ child, the Christmas event.  And at the same time, they call us to prepare for the Second Coming of Christ.  In actuality, three things are being thrown at us simultaneously today, and we are asked to catch them all and to try to juggle them, as we consider what we will do with them.  So let’s get started.

First there is the Old Testament prophet, Isaiah.  Today’s passage comes from a section of his writings in which he was bemoaning the fact that the people had forgotten God’s ongoing work in the world, and were acting as if God was absent from their lives.  He says in the section we just heard,

O that (God) would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at (God’s) presence-- as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil-- to make (God’s) name known to (God’s) adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at (God’s) presence!

You can almost hear the anguish in Isaiah’s voice as he pleads with God to please come down from heaven and make Himself known to the people.  The prophet says that the people have sinned because they don’t know who God is anymore and, to Isaiah’s mind, this must make God angry.  But really, Isaiah is calling on God to come home and be with the family.

I’m sure that there are more than a few of you who experienced a time like I did when I was a child.  I was in kindergarten when my parents took me to a large store and I got separated from them.  When I looked up and discovered that the man I was standing next to was not my father, I was panicked.  My father was gone.  I was alone.  And I had a sudden, desperate need to see him again.   That is exactly where Isaiah finds himself.

God, the Father of all things, had been gone – at least in the peoples’ perception – for a long time.  When Isaiah spoke to the people, he was longing for the Father to return home, even if He was angry, just to show the people that the Father loved them enough to come back – although it meant punishment would be meted out when He returned.  And while Isaiah wanted an old-time show of power from God – fire and mountains trembling – he didn’t want these things to come too close to the people.  That is why the prophet said, “Do not be exceedingly angry, O LORD, and do not remember iniquity forever.”  In other words, it is OK for you to be mad enough to shake the earth up a little bit, but please God, don’t be so angry that you get rid of your children.

Now, unlike Isaiah, we 21st Century Christians know the next chapter of the story.  We know that God did, indeed answer the prayers of Isaiah and others, to return to the world in a form in which people could see God.  We know that God came down to inhabit the earth.  This is the second thing we are asked to juggle today; the fact that God did not come back the way Isaiah requested or expected.  Instead of a being a god of strength and power, coming back to the earth to shake things up; God had another plan.

We have the benefit of the New Testament.  And we know that God did, in fact “come home.”  The Latin term, adventus, from which we get Advent, means, “coming,” as in “coming home.”  We are asked today to take this second item and consider that, instead of coming in a blaze of glory and power, God came in the form of a helpless infant.  God came to earth, not as the mighty warrior.  Instead, God came in human form, meek and humble and full of love, so that all the people of the world could see and experience the mightiest power of God – the power of love.

Jesus is the fulfillment of every promise God made to the children of Israel.  God made a covenant (or contract) with the those children, in which God gave them this world to live in.  God gave them dominion over the earth.  And God gave the children the scariest of all gifts, free will.  God then said, “take care of yourselves and take care of each other.  I will be around, but I will not be walking in the garden with you anymore.”  As time went by, God gave the children the law, and the prophets to explain the law.  Then, when the time was right, God came back to earth in human form, to fulfill the promise of a new way of living.

And as we know from the Gospels, Jesus set the standard for living as a person.  He who was completely human, but without sin.  He lived, died and was resurrected to save us from sin, but also to show us how to live in this world.  Through our exercising of that frightening free will, we had gotten so far off course – in Isaiah’s time and on through Jesus’ time – that we no longer knew how to live as children of God.  We had misbehaved badly while the parent was away.  When Jesus came, He came not as the stern, judging parent, but as the example of what we should have done while we thought we were alone.

That brings us to the third ball we have in the air this morning, the Second Coming.  Again, our modern-day prophets are yelling that we have gotten so far off course, we have stopped living like children of God.  In many ways, our world no longer reflects God’s creative love, and it no longer functions as the product of Jesus’ redeeming power.  So some say, we must look to see what it means that Jesus will come back to earth again.

Just as we heard last week from Matthew, Mark tells us that when Jesus returns, it will be like the Father, returning in judgment of those who have misbehaved.  Jesus tells His listeners in today’s passage, that there will be suffering and darkness and all the stars will fall from the sky.  Then, those who have misbehaved while the parent was away, will have to answer for the mess.

So what do we take away from our juggling act this morning?  Since we can’t slow the balls down enough to consider each one separately, we will have to look at the blurred images as a whole.  Here we need to look at what St. Paul said to the Corinthians.

Paul says that if we stay awake and alert, and consistently try to emulate Jesus in our everyday lives, we have already been enriched in Christ enough that we are not lacking in anything we need.  Our Spiritual Gifts are sufficient as we await the day of our Lord’s return.

So the message for us is involved, but basically pretty simple.

God has been in relationship with God’s people since time began.

God’s part of the covenant relationship has always been fulfilled – God has always loved us unconditionally.

We have failed to fulfill our part of the covenant throughout history, by not loving God and each other. 

God came to earth as a human being in order show us, for all time, what it means to be a child of God. 

At some time in the future, God, in Christ, will return and the final era of judgment will be upon us.

It seems to me we ought to be paying particular attention this year when the baby comes on December 25th, so that we intentionally take note of the fulfilled promises of God.  Christ will return in judgment.  But God promised that we would have all we need to be ready.  That promise, like all of God’s promises, has been fulfilled.  We’re ready for the return of Christ, if we want to be ready.  Let’s want to be ready.

In the name of one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

[Advent 1B, Sermon 112920, Isaiah 64:1-9a; Psalm80 or 80:1-7; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9; Mark 13:(24-32)33-37]

Canon John Bedingfield's sermon for November 22, 2020

 

This is the last Sunday of the church year.  Next Sunday begins a brand-new year with the season of Advent — the season of preparation, in which we prepare for the arrival of the Christ child.  So why would we use this week before Advent to celebrate the festival of Christ the King, with all of these odd and worrisome readings?  Quite simply, because of the Alpha and Omega — the circle of life — the beginning and the end.  Next week we will look at the beginning of the story of Jesus, this week, we look at what Jesus tells us about the very end.

In this Gospel reading, Matthew tells us what Jesus has to say about the end of time or the second coming of Christ.  Jesus says that He will come back to earth in glory, with all the angels, and will sit on the throne of righteousness.  Notice the differences between what it was like when Jesus came to earth the first time and what it will be like next time.  The first time He came as a poor, helpless child, born to a teenage mom, in a backwater village.  He was born in the lowliest of all circumstances in the most unlikely of places.  In other words, he was not only like us, he was born into an even more humble beginning than most of us.  And after he was grown, he was an itinerate preacher, depending upon other people for his very existence. Now contrast that with what Matthew describes today.

Jesus will return in triumph and great glory.  With angels around Him and with all nations of the world gathered before Him.  He will sit on the throne of glory, as ruler of the world.  What a difference!  

You see, the first time He came, He wanted to draw us closer to Him and to show us a glimpse of the heavenly kingdom, so that we would know who it was that called us and why it was that we should respond.  Jesus was gentle and humble and healing because that is what humans respond to the most positively.  By his humility, he taught us the power of humility and by his love, taught us the power of love.  But when Jesus returns, it will not be the time for all of that.  As Matthew’s Gospel makes clear this morning, Jesus’ return will usher in the judgment.  Sheep will go one way and goats will go the other.  Some will be ushered into the glory of God’s heavenly eternity and others will be cast into the eternal fire where there will undoubtedly be weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth — as Matthew is so fond of saying.

We in the Christian world are very familiar with this notion of God’s judgment.  Medieval artists have painted foreboding pictures of flames and fire and demons torturing the unfortunate who end up in hell.  In more modern times, we have had movies to show us hell and its agonies.  2005’s Constantine, had scenes where the hero and heroine each got pulled into hell and then rescued.  The director’s vision was a vast, desert-like wasteland, with scorching heat, howling winds and skeletal demons running wild.  No matter who is describing it — from Dante Alighieri’s Inferno to modern movies — images of hell are meant to frighten us.

People have spent lifetimes, and great sums of money trying to “make it up” to God so that they can avoid what they believe might await them when Jesus is the judge of all humanity, or upon their death, whichever comes first.  And it was the Roman Catholic clergy’s practice of selling indulgences — a sort of a “get out jail free” pass that could be purchased to keep one from going to purgatory, or worse yet hell, that was the final straw for Martin Luther, and the catalyst for his founding of the Lutheran church.  

Some of us worry a great deal about God’s judgment and hell and what might befall us at some future date, and Matthew makes it fairly plain that a negative judgment would not be a pleasant thing.  But I’ll let you in on a little secret, if we read this Gospel passage the way I believe Jesus would want us to, we will get an entirely different picture of Jesus as King, coming in judgment.

True enough, Matthew says Jesus will come in judgment, with power and might like we cannot imagine.  But what happens next in this section of the Gospel?  What follows the discussion of separating the sheep from the goats?  The discourse on doing acts of mercy, charity and kindness for the least of Jesus’ brothers.  Jesus says we will all be counted as the “blessed of the Father,” who “inherit the kingdom prepared” for us from the foundation of the world, if we will give Jesus some food, a drink, some clothing, simple nursing care and a visit in time of need.  Jesus says, when we do this to the least of His brothers, we do these things for Jesus himself and we will inherit the kingdom.  That sounds to me like a choice, not like an arbitrary selection of sheep versus goats.  This sounds to me more like us walking up to two signs and seeing “Sheep this Way” with an arrow, and “Goats this Way” with an arrow pointing the opposite way, rather than like a conveyor belt on which we ride until we get to the point where Jesus looks at us and points up or down, without giving us any explanation.  To me, today’s reading is the text which proves something that one of my seminary professors told us many times.  He said, “the gates of hell are locked from the inside.”  That means that we get to hell, indeed we stay in hell, by our choice, not by God’s choice.

John 3:16 tells us that God so loved the world that He gave His only son to the end that all who believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.  That is a great statement of the God whom I have read about and experienced in my own life.  The God of all creation, who made a covenant with the children of Israel and said, “you are my children and I am your God, I will never abandon you.”  That same God has always been faithful to that covenant, no matter how many times the children have been unfaithful.  That same God loves us so much that God became incarnate, took on our very humanity in order save us from our sinful selves.  Jesus died once for all.  His death and resurrection broke the bonds of death and threw open the gates of hell.  But there were still people in hell, trapped in a prison of their own making.  The only thing that Jesus could not and cannot save us from is our own choice to ignore His calls to us.

Today’s discussion of caring for the least of Jesus’ brothers and sisters is a call to us to live a Christ-like life; to do those things that Christ would do in every situation.  With this simple choice — simple to make, not so simple to carry out — we can self-select as sheep and rest certain that we will inherit the kingdom prepared for us when Jesus returns.

Now, here comes the rub — the process of selection is never over.  At least not until our lives on earth are over.  Every day, in every encounter of our lives, there are two signs hanging over our path.  We need to keep those signs in mind as we go about our daily business during the week.  Let Jesus’ words and the vision of the signs guide us as we are faced with decisions like, “what do I do when this homeless man comes up to me and asks me for money?”  Or, “how should I deal with my child, who has disappointed me so badly?’  Or, “what is the best way to handle my boss whose demands are totally unreasonable?”  Or, “How do I treat this member of the congregation who pushes my buttons and gets on my last nerve?”  It is all of one big piece, you see.  How we treat God’s children is, in every instance, how we treat Jesus.  

So the next time you are faced with a situation in which people have been divided into groups or camps, into “us” and “them,” or otherwise given a label so that you are tempted to treat them as somewhat less than human, remember that the signs hanging over the groups may look like, “us” and “them” when we look at them, but to Jesus, they may just read, “Sheep” and “Goats.”  Self-selection is available all day, every day.  Be careful what you choose.

In the name of Jesus Christ, who will come again in glory, to judge the world.  Amen.

[Proper 29A Christ the King, Matthew 25:31-46]

Canon John Bedingfield's sermon for November 15, 2020

 

In the 1994 film, A Simple Twist of Fate, Steve Martin’s character, Michael McCann becomes a complete recluse after his marriage ends badly.  Every cent he earns goes into the purchase of gold coins.  And every so often, he pours himself several stiff drinks, takes his gold coins from their specially engineered hiding place, counts them, and sits in smug satisfaction at his ownership of them.  Then he hides them again and, when he wakes up from his drunken stupor, goes on with his miserable, lonely life.  It is only after McCann’s coins are stolen that he changes, through a simple twist of fate that causes him to open himself up, through taking in an orphan girl to raise.  The rest of the movie deals with his growing in, and learning about love while teaching his daughter those lessons.

Today’s “Parable of the Talents,” has some parallels with Steve Martin’s film, or more correctly, with the novel Silas Marner, which inspired the film.  Jesus told His listeners that a very wealthy man was going on a trip, and while he was gone he left a huge fortune in the care of three of his servants.  Now before we think about the implications of this parable, we need to put it in perspective.  Jesus says that the master gave these servants 5 talents, 2 talents and 1 talent, respectively.  We know what “talent” means to us, but what did it mean when this parable was first told?

In Jesus’ time, a talent was a measure of gold or silver, based upon weight.  Centuries earlier, in the days of Moses, a talent was established as the measure that a man could carry by himself.  Scholars today use 75 pounds as the measure of a talent.  So, if we are talking about a talent of gold, we would be talking about 1,200 ounces.  When I was writing this, gold was selling for $1,868/oz.  That would mean that today a talent would be worth approximately $2.24mil.

So the master brought his three servants in and gave the first one $11.2mil.  Then he gave the second one $6.7mil.  And to the last one, he gave $2.24mil.  And we know what happened then.  The 5 talent servant and the 2 talent servant went out and invested the money and doubled what they had.  But the 1 talent servant did as Michael McCann did in the movie.  He created a very secure hiding place and put the money there, so that no one else would get it and he would have it all when he needed it.  But as with Michael McCann, who ultimately lost all of his money, things did not work out exactly as the 1 talent servant thought they would.

When the master returned, he called all three servants to account for the money they had been given.  Servants numbered 1 and 2 are roundly praised and commended for risking the master’s money, and doing great things with it.  But what of the Michael McCann servant – the one who hid the money and waited?  Even before he told the master what he had done with the money, he started explaining (or making excuses) for his inaction.  He said that he knew the master to be a harsh man who basically got his money without doing any work.  And he said that he was afraid of the master, so he hid the money rather than taking a chance on the master getting angry.  The master then became furious with the third servant.  Ironic, no?

So what does this parable have to teach us, particularly in the season of annual stewardship campaigns?  It is simply this: The 1 talent servant does not get in trouble because of what he did.  He gets in trouble because of what he did not do.  The master in the parable does not get angry because that servant did not make him richer.  No, the master gets angry because the servant does not know who the master really is – and therefore does not trust the master enough to take a risk.  You see, nothing in the story says that the master really was a harsh or bad man, only that the servant believed him to be so.  Because the servant did not know the master, he was unwilling to trust that it would be ok to take a risk with his money.

That is what this parable has to tell us: we have been given talents by God – a God whom we can always trust to know and love us – and we are called to risk it all to bring glory to that God.  It does not matter whether your “talents” from God are millions of dollars (as was the case in the story) or if your talents lie in something more modest, like the ability to teach or welcome or sing or read – or simply a smaller amount of money than the master in the story had.  Whatever your talents may be, you need to risk them in service to God.

In order to risk our talents, we must be willing to put them out there and see what God will do with them.  We must be ready to let go of our control over our talents, to lay them at God’s feet and to say, “Here they are Lord, use them as you will.”  We must look at all our talents, see where we might put them to use, and then – in the words of Nike – “Just do it.”

It is a risk to say, in November of 2020 — the era of COVID-19 pandemics and economic uncertainty — what you will give to the Church for all of 2021.  But trust in the grace and goodness of God, risk your talents, and give back to God as graciously as God has given to you.  Then listen as God, the master of all, says to you, “Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.”

In A Simple Twist of Fate, Michael McCann loses everything that he tried so hard to keep safe.  All of his carefully hidden gold is suddenly gone.  But then, he risks the greater treasure, his heart and takes in an orphaned girl.  And God finds him to be a good and faithful servant, and Michael enters into the joy of his master.  The same can happen for us when we risk everything that is dear to us and try to do what God wants us to do.  What do you say?  Let’s risk it all and enter into the joy of our Master.

In the name of one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

[Proper 28A Sermon 111520, Judges 4:1-7; Psalm 123; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-10; Matthew 25:14-15, 19-29]

Canon John Bedingfield's sermon for November 8, 2020

[The Rev. Canon John Bedingfield will be leading Holy Eucharist each Sunday at 10 am at Christ Episcopal, Saint Joseph.

For those not attending services in-person, Father Garrett Boyte, Church of the Holy Cross, Shreveport, offers Morning Prayer on Facebook each Sunday at 11am.  Father Garrett also offers daily Evening Prayer services on Facebook at 6pm each day. https://www.facebook.com/holycrossdowntown/]

There is a dream that I’ve had multiple times since my ordination.  Every time the details are slightly different than they were in previous versions (I’m in a different place, there are different people around), but it is always a very vivid dream and I always wake up with a feeling of anxiety after I have it.  

Generally speaking, in the dream there is a major church service scheduled.  Sometimes I am at a church that I recognize, other times it is someplace that I’ve never seen in real life.  But regardless, this major service is about to start and the Bishop is there — in fact, in some dreams there are a lot of bishops there.  My role in the service is always the same, I am the one in charge of making sure that the liturgy is well planned, and goes smoothly.  At the climax of the dreams, everyone is ready to process into the church.  The Bishops are in formal vestments, lined up and ready to start.  I look down and discover that, while I am wearing my white alb, I do not have a stole on.  So I start hunting frantically for a stole — any stole — because the stole is the symbol of priestly office.  As I am madly looking for my stole, I notice that I don’t have my prayer book either.  I decide that I can do without that, I’ll go from memory.  But then I see that I am also barefoot.  As the Bishops started to process into the church (oblivious to my predicament) I wake up.

I generally have a dream like this before Holy Week, Easter, Christmas, or Diocesan Convention; those times when there are lots of details to attend to and subconsciously I’m concerned that one or more will be overlooked.  Psychologically, this is not an uncommon dream and its source is pretty obvious – it has to do with getting anxious about the possibility of being ill prepared for a coming event.  That’s what today’s Gospel is all about.

The parable of the bridesmaids is a story about preparedness.  In the Israel of Jesus’ time, weddings were a really big deal.  If you think that the phenomenon of throwing huge, never-ending wedding celebrations is a new one, you’d be wrong.  In 1st Century Israel and Palestine, a wedding was a time when friends and relatives from far and wide would come to share in the joy of the festivities.  And because people had so far to travel, and travel itself was so difficult, the wedding celebration went on for days, with people coming, staying, and going as they needed.  But one of the highlights of the festivities was when the bridegroom came in the night to take his bride from her father’s house and carry her back to his house – to their new home.  When the bridegroom came, his way would be lit by the unmarried women – the bridesmaids – of the village, who would all hold oil lamps for the bridegroom to see where he was going.

The story we just heard is one of Jesus’ parables that is actually more of an allegory than a parable – meaning that there are characters and situations of the story that can be directly assigned to other people or things.  The bridegroom in this story is Jesus.  The wedding feast is the Second Coming – Jesus’ triumphal return to earth — the time when all humankind will be subject to the judgment of Christ.  And the bridesmaids are us – those who will be prepared and those who will not.

This story appears in the middle of a long speech, or discourse, that begins in the 24th chapter of Matthew and continues until the Last Supper and the beginning of the passion narrative in chapter 26.  In this discourse, Jesus prepares the disciples for his departure from them by explaining that He will return at the end of time, on the last day, when He will appear with lightning across the sky, “on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.”  In this story, Jesus wants the disciples to understand that part of their vocation; part of their calling is to be ready for the 2nd Coming.  Part of the message they are to take out to the world after Jesus’ ascension into heaven is that Christians need to prepare for Jesus’ return.

This allegory of the bridesmaids tells us a couple of things about being ready.  First is, we have absolutely no idea when Jesus will return so constant preparedness is the order of the day.  Jesus made it clear, throughout this discourse, that only God knows the timing of the 2nd Coming, so … always be ready.  

The second thing to take from this allegory is what happened to the foolish bridesmaids when they discovered that they didn’t have enough oil.  They asked the other bridesmaids for some of their oil.  After all, they were all involved in the same celebration.  They were all waiting for the return of the same bridegroom.  They were all members of the same village, the same community.  So it only made sense that those with enough oil would share with those who had too little.  Jesus’ hearers must have been thinking of the feeding miracles they had seen Jesus perform.  They must have been thinking, “of course they will all pool their resources, offer them to God and then there will be enough.”  But that’s not Jesus’ point at all.

The oil in this story is not a worldly resource that people need to survive, like bread, fish or water.  The oil in this allegory is the righteousness of the bridesmaids.  It is righteousness that Jesus says we need to be prepared with, before He comes again.  We can be really anxious to see Jesus again.  We can go to bed as excited as children on Christmas Eve, anticipating His triumphant return, but unless we are prepared as righteous people, we will be sorely disappointed.  You see, righteousness is something we cannot pool or borrow.  It is something we have to have, something we have to develop on our own.  The twentieth century Scottish theologian, William Barclay, put it this way,

"This text warns us that there are certain things which cannot be borrowed.  The foolish (bridesmaids) found it impossible to borrow oil, when they discovered they needed it.  A man cannot borrow a relationship with God; he must possess it.  A man cannot borrow a character; he must be clothed with it.  We cannot always be living on the spiritual capital which others have amassed.  There are certain things which we must win or possess for ourselves, for we cannot borrow them from others."

I think Barclay had a good sense of Jesus’ vision of righteousness.  Unfortunately, today when we think of righteousness, what we are really thinking of is self-righteousness; that aura that some folks put off, that they’re better Christians (indeed, better people) than we are because of what they do or how they live.  That is not the righteousness that Jesus had in mind.  Barclay talks about our relationship with God and our character.  That’s what righteousness is really about.

We can do good works all day long and have a horrible relationship with God.  And we can have good character traits; honor, truthfulness, generosity, love, and have no relationship with God at all.  But those are the exceptions.  St. Paul said that works without faith are hollow.  And to paraphrase St. James, show me someone with faith and I’ll show you someone who does works.  Our character and our relationship with God are intertwined.  We need both to be whole.  And both are required for us to be righteous.

We live in a particularly fractured and difficult world right now.  All around us are the voices of people who tell us to be fearful of each other and to treat each other as enemies, simply because we disagree about issues.  There is no righteousness in that mindset at all.  As our Presiding Bishop has preached so often, “If it’s not about love, it’s not about God.”  Being afraid of each other — or worse yet, wanting to see harm come to each other — because we think about issues differently, is very far removed from the righteousness of God.  I don’t care which political party you identify with.  I don’t care which news outlet is your favorite.  When we agree to be divided from other children of God, and we wish them harm, we are walking apart from the righteousness Jesus requires of us.

If we will spend less time trying to “correct each other,” that is, being self-righteous, and spend more time and effort on trying to love each other the way Jesus loves us, we will have all the righteousness we need.  We will not only begin the healing that this world so desperately needs, but we will also be ready for the bridegroom’s return.  And we will have no reason to fear – no reason to dream of being unable to find our shoes at an important moment – because the bridegroom knows if the bridesmaids are ready.  

In the name of one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Proper 27A Sermon 110820,Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25; Psalm 78:1-7,1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Matthew 25:1-13