What is of God and What is Not?

 Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

May 29, 2016

4 Proper C

          When I was in college, I spent three summers serving as a camp counselor at Camp Mitchell, the Episcopal Church camp in the diocese of Arkansas.  Those summers were challenging as we worked with the children in the heat of an Arkansas summer, provided activities for them that would help their faith grow, and in general provided them with a memorable week on Petit Jean Mountain where the camp was located.  Those summers were also challenging for us as a staff as we were pushed beyond what we thought of as our limits, practiced patience when we really wanted to scream, leaned on each other and our faith in new ways, and had opportunities to explore what we believe and how we live our lives as people of faith as we helped the children do the same.  How do we learn, as children or as adults, to make good, faithful decisions in our everyday lives?  In my experience, one of the ways we do that is to practice over and over again in the context of Christian community, where ever that community might be.  Once I was ordained, I began to serve as a chaplain at the Episcopal camp in Southern Ohio.  For one week each summer for 16 years, I got to watch campers and counselors alike learn to live together in Christian community and practice making faithful decisions so that when they were confronted with situations in school or at home, they could respond with the tools of faith. 

          At the heart of all three of our readings this morning is the questions “How do we know what is of God?”  This is a similar question to “What would God have me do?”  or “How would God have me act?”  In the reading from 1 Kings, Elijah asks the people “How long will you go limping with two different opinions?  If the Lord is God, then follow him.  If Baal is god, then follow him.”  What is of God and what is not?  The people in 1 Kings figure this out by preparing two bulls.  The people of Baal call upon their God, and the Israelites call upon the God of their ancestors.  Whichever God answers with fire is, indeed, God.   While we might wish for a way to decide what is of God and what is not that is this straight forward, animal sacrifice is not part of our decision making process.  But what is part of our decision process, like the Israelites, is being part of a community of faith, confidence that God will guide us, and connecting with God in acts of worship, which is what animal sacrifice was.  Living in community, confidence that God will act, and connecting with God through worship are tools that we have to make faithful decisions about how we live our lives.

          In the reading from the letter to the Galatians, the apostle Paul is livid.  Paul founded the church in Galatia and converted the gentiles directly to faith in Jesus without first converting them to Judaism.  The gentiles are a new creation in Christ and do not need to follow the laws of Judaism in order to be believers.  But after Paul left, some other Christians arrived.  They were called Judaizers because they believed that the only path to Jesus was through the faith of the people of Israel.  The Judaizers believed that converts to the faith must obey all the laws of the Torah, including the dietary regulations in order to follow the Jewish messiah.  Paul is furious with both the Judaizers and the Galatians, and I imagine the Galatians are a bit confused. How are they to know what is of God and what is not?  The story of the Galatians is that sometimes we come up short when we try to answer the question “What is of God and what is not?”

          In the gospel reading, we see faith in an unlikely place. The centurion, a Roman soldier, seeks healing from Jesus for his slave who was close to death.  The centurion’s faith is so deep and so bold that he sends his friends to Jesus so that Jesus needs only to speak the word and the centurion’s slave will be healed.  How does the centurion know that?  How does he know to send word to Jesus in the first place?  How does he know that Jesus is not just another false prophet?  How does he know what is of God and what is not?  My guess is that he has heard the stories people have told about their encounters with Jesus.  Perhaps he has read the Hebrew scriptures.  The centurion was open to those stories and the power they hold, so he reached out in faith to Jesus.

          How do we know what is of God and what is not?  The reality is that we have a lifetime to work on figuring this out, and a lifetime is required.  Sometimes, like the centurion, we are successful and sometimes, like the Galatians, we are not.  But while we do not have a ritual like the one the people in I Kings had, we do have tools.  We have our community of faith with which to pray, to worship, to practice, to study the ancient stories, to hear about other’s experiences, and to practice living as faithful people.  This morning, we will baptize Vera Perini into the body of Christ, into the community of faith, where she will be able to bring her own questions when she is older and wrestle with what is of God and what is not.  Even as a baby, she has some understanding that being held and fed and loved is of God and being hungry or cold or lonely is not.  But as we all know, life will quickly get more complicated.  This morning, Vera’s parents and godparents promise to raise Vera in the Christian life and faith and to help her grow into the full stature of Christ. They cannot do this alone.  And so we will promise, as the body of Christ, to do all in our power to support Vera in her life in Christ.  These are not just empty words.  These are words that demand action on our part as we bring Vera into this community of the body of Christ that practices discerning what is of God and what is not using all the tools we have been given. 

          What is of God and what is not?  The people in the Bible teach us that answering this question is not always easy, and we will make mistakes along the way.  We need experienced teachers to guide us and communities of faith in which to practice.  And over and over again, Scripture reminds us that God loves us simply because we are God’s children, not because we always get things right.  What God asks, and what we promise in baptism, is that we practice living as God’s children, simply because we are. 

                                                                             Amen.

The Image of God

 Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

May 22, 2016

Trinity Sunday

          In my mind, and in my experience, late spring is associated with three particular events.  The first is graduation.  Graduations are joyful, hopeful occasions that celebrate past accomplishments and look toward future goals, with a big smile and a lump in the throat all at the same time.  Graduation is also a team effort.  Not too many of us make it to graduation entirely on our own.  Parents, teachers, friends, coaches, mentors and others all help us get there when the road is bumpy and the obstacles seem overwhelming.  Not many of us get to graduation without some mixture of success and failure. The truth is, the schools could just mail out our diplomas and they would be just as valid as when we receive them in a hot, over-crowded gym filled with our loved ones.  But we come together for graduations to mark our connection with the graduates and the team effort involved in getting to that day. 

          The second is the Relay for Life.  Perhaps some of you have participated in the Relay for Life in Hudson.  If not, the Relay is a major fundraiser for the American Cancer Society that occurs all over the country in the spring.  One of the ways people can participate is by purchasing luminarias, which are paper sacks filled with sand and a candle, in honor of or in memory of those who have fought cancer.  The Relay opens with a walk around the track by those who are living with cancer and their loved ones.  The track is lined with literally thousands of luminarias with the name of a beloved person written on each sack.  When I walk around that track during the opening ceremony, I look for the luminarias with the names of my own loved ones and the names of other people that I know.  On the one hand, my heart is filled with gratitude for the impact these people had on my life, and on the other hand, my heart is filled with deep sorrow that their lives were cut short by this disease.  The Relay for Life is about both life and death, as we celebrate courage and triumph and mourn loss.  Finding a cure for cancer will take the efforts of all of us, whether we have the skills of research, or compassion, or care giving, or can simply write a small check.

          The third event is Memorial Day.  Many, if not most communities around the country have a great Memorial Day parade, and I believe Hudson is no different.  Everyone comes together to watch the floats go by, or to see friends in the parade, or to hear the high school band.  But primarily we gather along the streets of this country and our community to give thanks for the lives of men and women who won for us the freedom we now enjoy.  Memorial Day is also a day of mixed feelings as, in the midst of our celebration, we are reminded of the cost of that freedom.  Memorial Day is about the cost of both war and peace. 

          In the midst of all these other late spring events, the Church celebrates Trinity Sunday.  Trinity Sunday always falls on the Sunday after Pentecost and is the one Sunday of the year when we celebrate a doctrine of the church rather than an event.   Usually we celebrate the birth of Jesus, or his baptism, or the events of Holy Week, or the resurrection.  Or we hear stories about the things Jesus did or stories he told.  But today we celebrate the God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

          The Nicene Creed, which we say each week, is built around the Trinity.  We say “We believe in God, the Father almighty.”  “We believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord.”  And “We believe in the Holy Spirit.”  In the first chapter of Genesis, we are told that we are created in the image of God. “In the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.”  One of the interesting questions about the Trinity is “What does it mean that we are created in the image of the God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?”  What does it mean to be made in the image of the Trinity?

          If our readings from Scripture this morning would explain the Trinity, that would be helpful.  But they do not, and that is because there are only a few places in Scripture that even mention all three parts of the Trinity in one breath, much less give us an explanation.  In addition to our readings this morning, at the end of Matthew’s gospel, in the great commission, Jesus sends the disciples out to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  The apostle Paul will often mention two of the three persons of the Trinity in the opening of his letters when he says something like “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”  So, with all due respect to both Jesus and Paul, they are not very helpful in trying to understand the Trinity.

          Taken together, however, today’s readings do shed some light on what the Church means when we say that the one God we worship is Father and Son and Holy Spirit, or Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.  In the reading from Proverbs, the Spirit is personified as Wisdom, the female voice of God that cries out to the people.  Wisdom reminds us that she was present when God created the mountains, the earth and the fields, the heavens and the foundation of the deep.  She rejoiced with God in his created world.  From the beginning, Wisdom was present with God and rejoiced in the creation of the human race.

          Paul tells us in the reading from Romans that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and that God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, giving us all three members of the Trinity. God has worked in human life not just as the Creator, but also as the one who has brought us peace through Jesus Christ and sustains us with the Holy Spirit.  And Jesus tells us in the Gospel reading reminds us of the way that God will speak to us through the Spirit of Truth.

          What we learn about the Trinity from these readings is that God has always been in relationship, even before there were human beings.  We have one God who is intentionally and intensely relational in nature. Today’s readings are just a sample of the many places in scripture that tell us that from the beginning, when the earth was a formless void and waters covered the deep, God has worked in human history as the creator, the redeemer, and the sustainer. 

          But what does the Trinity have to do with success and failure, life and death, war and peace?  The Trinity calls us to be the relational nature of God for each other.  We do not struggle with success and failure, matters of life and death or war and peace by ourselves.  Just as the Trinity is one God who is and has always been in relationship, we are called to mirror that by being one body, always in relationship.  God’s love has been poured into our collective hearts, as Paul writes, so that we never celebrate or struggle alone.  By our very nature, made in the image of God, we are always in relationship with God and each other.  Only together do we reflect the image of God to the world.  The Relay for Life, graduations, and national celebrations become parables of the Trinity.  Through those experiences, and others like them, we experience the mystery of being created in the image of God, who is always in relationship.

                                                                   Amen.

          

Outrageous

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

May 15, 2016

Pentecost

         Birthday cakes are a very big deal at our house.  I do not remember when or how the tradition started, but I shipped birthday cakes to Atlanta, Georgia and Ada, Ohio when our sons were in school.  Now cakes get sent to Cincinnati and to upstate New York.  I drew the line at shipping a birthday cake the year our older son Slocomb lived in Ecuador, so he took a big piece with him when he left home.  Slocomb and Caldwell’s girlfriends knew they had become part of the family when they received a birthday cake in the mail.  More than the gifts or the birthday dinner, in our family the birthday cake has become the focus of birthday celebrations.

          The birthday cake is not gorgeous by any means, but the cake is rather outrageous.  The cake recipe starts with fairly ordinary ingredients-flour, sugar, cocoa, oil, eggs, vanilla, and so forth.  Not too long ago, I discovered black cocoa which adds an even deeper, richer flavor to the cake.  Once the batter is whipped up, which is a pretty easy matter, and poured into the pans, an entire bag of dark chocolate chips is sprinkled on top of the batter and the cake is baked.  Once the cake has baked, come out of the pans and cooled, a generous layer of natural chunky peanut butter is spread over the bottom layer, then some of my mother’s recipe for chocolate icing which involves a ridiculous amount of butter and cocoa, then the second layer, then the whole cake is iced.  The finished product weighs about 5 pounds and the center is an amazing combination of chocolate chips, peanut butter, and icing.  While the cake is rather outrageous, so is our love for the person whose birth is being celebrated with such decadence.

          Pentecost is God’s outrageous gift of the Church, born of the Holy Spirit.  In fact, Pentecost is often thought of as the birthday of the Church.  In the gospel reading, we heard Jesus promise that God will send the Advocate, the Spirit, to be with the disciples forever.  The Advocate will teach the disciples everything and remind them of all that Jesus has said to them.  On Pentecost, that promise is fulfilled as the Holy Spirit descends on the disciples with a mighty wind and flames of fire, giving them the ability to speak the gospel in languages that can be heard and understood by all people in their native languages.  On Pentecost, an unlikely group of frightened disciples was turned into the Church, into the body of Christ, and given the gifts they needed to bring the gospel alive for all people.

          The story in Acts tells us that the disciples were all together in one place when they received the Holy Spirit.  Peter was not out on his morning run.  John was not at home making breakfast.  James was not on his way to the office.  The disciples were all together.  Part of Pentecost is everyone being together.  The story also tells us that the Spirit is not tame nor did the Spirit come to do the disciples’ bidding.  The Spirit arrived with a rush of violent wind and tongues of fire to change the disciples. Part of Pentecost is an experience of the unleashed power of God that changes us.  Lastly, the story tells us that the gift of the Spirit, the ability to speak in other languages, made the gospel accessible to all people, bringing together that which had been scattered in the story from Genesis.  Part of Pentecost is the recognition that the work of the Spirit unites that which has been divided.

          Unlike our birthday celebrations with cake and gifts that focus on the person being celebrated, the birthday of the church calls us to come together as one body, to experience the Spirit’s power at work in our midst and allow the Spirit to change us, and to use the gifts the Spirit has given us to focus on the world around us. The Spirit gives us the ability proclaim the gospel to those who have not heard the good news in a language they understand.  The Spirit did not make the Parthians, Medes, and Elamites learn Hebrew or Greek in order to hear the gospel.  The Spirit gave the disciples the ability to speak in the languages the people would recognize.  I wonder what languages the Spirit gives us and calls us to use today.  I’m not thinking about Chinese, Spanish, and German.  I am thinking about a language that brings the gospel alive for those who are lonely, those longing for meaning in their lives, those who need hope for a better future.  How do we speak the gospel in a language people understand?  Pentecost tells us that our work as the church, the body of Christ, is to make the gospel intelligible to those who have never heard it rather than expecting others to learn our language.

          Pentecost is one of two primary baptismal feast days in the church. The other is Easter.   The disciples were baptized with wind and fire to do the work they were given to do.  We are baptized with water and the Holy Spirit so we can do the work we are given to do, which is the same work the disciples were given.  This morning, we will renew our baptismal covenant, and in that renewal we will promise to take our place in the Pentecost story.  We will promise to be faithful in worship, to come together as the disciples were together.  We will promise to repent and return whenever we sin, recognizing that the Spirit’s power to bring us together is greater than sin’s power to divide us.  We will promise to proclaim the gospel in word and deed, working to make the gospel accessible to all people.  We will promise to seek and serve Christ in all people, just as the disciples were sent to seek and serve Christ in all people, and we will promise to respect the dignity of every human being, recognizing the unity of the whole human family.  Once we have renewed those promises, I will bless some oil and invite you forward to be anointed with oil and the words “you were sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”  If you have not yet been baptized and wish to come forward for a blessing, just cross your arms over your chest and I will know that. 

          On Pentecost we celebrate God’s outrageous gift of the Church, born of the Holy Spirit, which empowered the disciples and empowers us to do more for the world than we could ever ask or imagine, and to do more together than we could all do individually.  Pentecost is the birthday of the church, but what we mark today was not a one time event.  Pentecost happens every time the body of Christ comes together, allows itself to be changed by the unleashed power of God, and goes out into the world proclaiming the good news with words and deeds everyone can understand.

                                                          Amen.

          

Expectations

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

May 8, 2016

Expectations

          On my first Sunday as an ordained person, almost 19 years ago, I felt a lot like I feel today.  I was very excited, a little nervous, and eager to see how this new church and I could make a gospel difference in the world together.  I arrived early that Sunday morning, ready for a new adventure.  In the parish hall, on my way to the church, the very first person I met looked me up and looked me down, then she looked me in the eye and said, and I quote, “I think we were expecting someone bigger.”

          I hope we all have expectations for something bigger this morning, even if we cannot articulate that longing with quite the clarity of the parishioner on that first Sunday years ago.  I hear in the voices of the people I have talked with so far a longing to grow in numbers and in stewardship, and those are certainly good things.  In the reading from Acts, we hear the story of the jailer who was in desperate straights when he woke up and saw the doors of the jail wide open.  He was sure the prisoners had escaped and the jailers’ days were numbered.  The jailer was so moved by the faith of Paul and Silas as they stayed in their cell even after being released from their chains that the jailer asked what he must do to be saved.  There is a whole world out there just as desperate to hear the Good News as the jailer was, and we have Good News to share.  And just as Paul and Silas’s focus was on the jailer and not on their own well being, as long as we keep our focus on the Good News we have to share and on the folks who need to hear it, and not on our own perceived needs for more people, we will grow in both numbers and faith.

          Whatever our expectations of ourselves and each other this morning, Jesus has some expectations of us, as individuals and as a church.  While today is the Sunday between the feast of the Ascension, when Jesus ascended to heaven, and the Feast of Pentecost when the Spirit descends on the disciples, in the gospel reading we hear part of the prayer Jesus prayed for his disciples before he died.  Jesus does not pray that the disciples will be successful, or that they will always agree, or even that they will always be right.  Jesus prays that the disciples may all be one as the Father and the Son are one, and that the love with which the Father has loved the Son may be in the disciples. In another place, Jesus commands the disciples to love one another as he loves them and Jesus tells them that the world will know they are Jesus’ disciples by their love for each other.  Jesus expects the disciples to love each other and to live as one.  Jesus does not say this will be easy or painless.  But Jesus expects them live as his disciples, in unity and with love, so the world will know they are his disciples and see that unity and love are actually possible.

          When I was coming to Christ Church back in January to interview with the Search Committee, I contacted a colleague who serves as the rector of the Falls Church Episcopal in Falls Church, Virginia.  Falls Church was a huge Episcopal Church that split in 2006.  The rector and the vast majority of the church left the Episcopal Church, and the property was tied up in a nasty legal dispute for years.  Having once been a church with a membership of over 2800 people, the continuing Falls Church was down to 27 members after the split.  Once the property dispute was settled, and the continuing church got the property back, they wanted to call a rector.  My colleague left a great position as rector of a large parish to become the rector of this struggling congregation in 2012 because he felt called to that ministry.  So, when I was coming to interview at Christ Church, I contacted him for advice on what to ask and what I was looking for as I discerned whether this is the place to which God is calling me.  I expected a laundry list of landmines to avoid and a litany of questions to ask.  What my colleague said was this “You are looking for a spirit of loveliness and a sense of unity…not the desire for unity, but real unity.”  That’s it.  I was looking for a church that was trying its best to live into the prayer Jesus prayed for his disciples.  Without knowing that this is what I came looking for, your Search Committee and your vestry demonstrated those very qualities in abundance.  So, Don and I are here.

          Jesus’ expectation of us is that together, we will grow in unity and love.  Jesus’ expectation is also that our growth in unity and love will push us out into the world, so that the world can see something in us that the world longs to have, much as the jailer saw in Paul and Silas something he longed for.  We heard Jesus pray that the disciples would be united as he and the Father are united so that the world may believe and know that Jesus is the one sent by God.  Unity and love benefit us, for sure, but the reason unity and love are good for us is because those qualities make us good disciples to the world around us and enable us to be the people and the church God calls us to be.

          Our reading from Revelation ends with an invitation.  The words we hear this morning are the final words in the entire Bible, so the entirety of Scripture ends with an invitation.  They are words for us to hear and for us to say as we move forward together into being the church God is calling us to be. 

          “The Spirit and the bride say ‘Come.’

          And let everyone who hears say ‘Come.’

          And let everyone who is thirsty come.

          Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.

          The one who testifies to these things says ‘Surely I am coming soon.’

          Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!”

Jesus’ expectation is that we live together as one so we can offer the water of life as a gift to this thirsty world.

                                                                             Amen.