Grace Church in New York

Restoring All People Within Our Reach To Unity With God And Each Other Through Jesus Christ

Grace Church

in New York

Restoring All People Within Our Reach To Unity With God And Each Other Through Jesus Christ

Sermons with Manuscripts

Sermon – February 25, 2024

Deny Yourself

by The Rev. J. Donald Waring

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DENY YOURSELF

 The Rev. J. Donald Waring
Grace Church in New York
The Second Sunday in Lent
February 25, 2024

Jesus said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their crosses and follow me.  (Mark 8:34)

 When I was a growing up my father was the rector of an Episcopal church over in East Orange, NJ.  One of the parishioners was a gracious, elderly woman named Miss Sally Lea.  She had never married, and had lived in her same well-kept house since the day she was born.  Sally Lea would often invite us over to dinner.  These evenings were always a mixed blessing because while our hostess was a great lady, she was not a great cook.  Her signature dish, boiled chicken, was practically inedible, especially if you were a 10-year old.  One evening while we were all sitting around her table I excused myself to find the facilities.  Not wanting to waste the precious moment of reprieve from the chicken, I took a rather round-about route to the bathroom.  On the way I came across a small table near the front door, and on this table were three shining golden coins. 

Almost immediately I felt an irresistible urge to have one of the coins.  I really didn’t know why.  It just seemed that life would be better for whoever possessed such a treasure.  You know the feeling – the feeling you get when you conclude that having a thing will solve your problems.  What thing?  You fill in the blank: a new apartment with more square footage, a country house, the dream job, the perfect relationship.  The solution for life and happiness is right there.  How easy it would have been for me to pocket one of those coins.  Besides, I reasoned, Miss Lea wouldn’t even miss it.  She had two others, and if memory serves, her eyesight was failing.  So there it was for the taking. 

Here was one of those moments when it seems as though on one shoulder you have a little angel saying: “avert your eyes!  Walk away!  Be a good Christian!”  And on your other shoulder is a little devil whispering in your ear: “take it!  In fact, take them all!  You deserve them.”  This was my chance.  Alas, I didn’t act soon enough.  I heard a chair pull out from the dining room table, and footsteps coming my way.  Before I could act one of my brothers, who also wanted to escape the chicken, was at the door telling me to hurry up.  I knew that I had missed a golden opportunity.  The angel on my shoulder had won by default.  I walked away without the coin, “tempted and yet undefiled.” 

Today’s readings from Scripture all teach what is certainly not a new message, but one that we tend to disbelieve and therefore resist learning.  The message is this: Real life – the life for which all of us yearn, and hope to achieve, and strive to attain – such real life cannot be found in all the gold coins and glittering images that the world lays before us.  In today’s reading from the Gospel of Mark (8:31-38) we hear Jesus rather sternly instructing his disciple Peter along these lines.  Peter was following Jesus because he believed that Jesus was the One sent from God to give the Jews all the good things God had been promising them.  But at length Jesus began saying some things that were definitely casting doubts on his ability to deliver the goods: He began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 

Peter had understandable concerns about the agenda Jesus was putting forth, particularly the part about suffering and death – nice though the rising after three days sounded.  Thus he took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him.  But Peter made no headway with Jesus.  In fact, Jesus accused Peter of being the devil on his shoulder: Get behind me, Satan!  Then Jesus told Peter again that most unpopular message, and here I will paraphrase: What will it profit you if you gain the whole world and forfeit your life?  If all you want is to save your life, then you are going to lose it.  But if you want to lose your life for my sake, then you will find it.  Deny yourself.  Take up your cross and follow me. 

How did Jesus come to understand his mission and ministry in these terms of self-denial and even losing one’s life?  I think it’s safe to say that in the Gospel of Mark, when Jesus announced his immanent suffering and death, he was breaking character with all the popular Jewish expectations of how the Messiah should go about the business of saving the people.  In truth, the people had a variety of expectations.  Some thought the Messiah would be a military conqueror who would oust the Romans through force of might.  Others thought the Messiah’s focus would be more political.  He would be a great king on the order of David.  Others thought he would be more of a mystic who would lead people apart from society, out to the desert, for a pure spiritual revival.  Clearly, Jesus was following a script that was different from all of these.  Jesus had in mind the mysterious Suffering Servant foretold in the book of the Prophet Isaiah.  Isaiah described a figure who would save the people through his own suffering and self-offering.  Jesus understood his mission and ministry to be the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecies.  He was claiming to be the Suffering Servant. 

Peter didn’t want to hear it.  Peter and the Jews wanted an immediate, interventionist Messiah who in short order would snatch the gold from Rome or whoever was holding it, and never let go of it again.  If, in fact, the Jews were the chosen people of God, they wanted to show it off in front of the other nations.  They wanted to taste and see their special status, and they wanted the neighboring peoples to envy them.  Israel was to shine.  By contrast, the life of self-denial, the life that Christians would later call the way of the cross was suddenly sounding like no fun at all.

So here we are on the Second Sunday in Lent, and at this point it might be fair to look you squarely in the eyes and ask: how’s it going?  It could be that this year you vowed Lent would be different.  Back on Ash Wednesday you declared that you would deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Jesus.  Anything that stood between you and God would have to go, be it booze, beef, bacon, sweets, social media, or all of it.  For forty days and forty nights, the sorrow of Jesus you would share.  From worldly joys you would abstain.  Come Easter you would emerge a victor in the wilderness, but for now you recognize that all the vain things that charm us most don’t deliver the life they promise.  In fact, they may even deal death when we indulge in them without discipline.  So it’s time to give them up and save ourselves.  It’s time to toughen up and exercise some will power.  So you thought on Ash Wednesday.  Now, just a week and a half into Lent, your zeal for the Lord of Hosts may be flagging.  Self denial and sacrifice is all rather grim and joyless. 

What is more, you may even harbor sophisticated theological concerns about trying to save yourself through the hard work of Lent.  The fact is, having a successful Lent when you personally slay your own demons can lead to the bigger sin of pride, which is the delusion that you save yourself.  The good news of grace is that we don’t save ourselves.  God saves us through Jesus, not weighing our merits, but pardoning our offenses.  Thus, you reason, it might be a spiritually good thing for you to break your Lenten fast.  Doing so will keep you humble and save you from pride.  That bag of chips, that bacon double cheeseburger, that glass of Texas Bourbon: “take it,” says the angel on your shoulder.  Or is that the devil on your shoulder?  Indeed, it can all be a muddle.  But think of Lent this way: the hard work of Lent can be the hard and holy work of grace.  We are trying to learn a hard and holy lesson – a lesson our natural self resists learning.  We are training ourselves to recognize what gives life and what does not. 

Ultimately, it’s in devotion to God where true joys are to be found.  God is the one, true giver of life.  Indeed, you can clothe yourself in purple and fine linen.  You can feast sumptuously with family every day, and in the end wind up not having life.  You have worshipped the gift, and not the Giver.  In today’s reading from Romans (4:13-25), we’ve heard St. Paul reflect on the complex story of Abraham.  St. Paul writes that God promised Abraham that he would inherit the world.  Imagine: Abraham was to inherit the world, but not through his own moral effort or merit, not through the usual means of saving oneself.  Rather, the hard work for Abraham was learning to worship the Giver, not the gift.  Abraham would indeed become “the father of many nations,” but first he had to put his faith and trust in God.  At one point Abraham even believed that God was requiring him to give his only son, Isaac, back.  How was Abraham to be the father of many nations if he committed the awful deed of sacrificing his only son and heir?  How could Abraham walk away from Mt. Moriah without his son?  Abraham never wavered, writes Paul.  Abraham trusted God and had faith in the goodness of God.  What was the result?  Not only did God spare Isaac, God made Abraham the ancestor of a multitude of nations. 

Even still, we tend to trust our things more than faith in God as the likelier path to joy, and we take the message of self-denial with an intellectual grain of salt.  So at this point I want to do two things: first I’m going to tell you something, then I’m going to show you something.  First, what I will tell you is that countless millions of people have found over the centuries that denying themselves, loving God, and following Jesus is not a joyless life full of gloom, doom, and threats.  Rather, it is to experience a peace that passes all understanding.  It is a joy that the world cannot give.  St. Paul said that the surpassing worth of knowing Christ was better than anything else this world could offer (Philippians 3:8), and that the sufferings of his present time were not even worth comparing with what it meant for him to know Christ (Romans 8:18).  Even the Suffering Servant in Isaiah found that God gave him the strength to endure, that God would never desert him, that God would always be present to him.  Jesus said, “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”  Such has been the experience of countless millions of people who have followed Christ.  They have found that the life that lives beyond the grave can begin on this side of the grave. 

But how are we ever going to gain life by losing it?  Here we arrive at the mystery and the paradox of the kingdom of God, and I want to show you something that might help to illustrate.  It’s show-and-tell time.  I want to show you this:

Here the preacher shall display the golden coin.

This is one of the three golden coins from Sally Lea’s table.  She never saw it again after that evening some fifty years ago.  You remember that the table was near the front door.  On the way out we passed by the coins.  If you are thinking that I slipped one into my pocket, you’re right.  You bet I did!  But I only did so after Miss Lea had first gathered them in her hand and said to my two brothers and me, “Boys I’ve been meaning to give you these as a little gift.”  Then, one by one, she place them in our eager hands as if they were Communion wafers. 

All along she had been planning to give us the coins.  Imagine if I had stolen one of them earlier in the evening.  What would have been the profit?  What would I have gained?  What does it profit you to gain the whole world and forfeit your life?  This coin, to me, is a window into the mystery of the kingdom of God.  It’s only a token.  It’s of no earthly value by itself.  But on another level, it conveys all the riches of God’s grace. 

Jesus said at another time, Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom (Luke 12:32).  Boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, God has been meaning to give us a little gift: the resurrected life of Christ.  So seek first the kingdom of God, and all good things shall be yours as well.  Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Jesus. 

Sermons – February 14, 2014

Do You Want to Live Forever?

by The Rev. J. Donald Waring

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DO YOU WANT TO LIVE FOREVER?

 The Rev. J. Donald Waring
Grace Church in New York
Ash Wednesday + February 14, 2024

Jesus said, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.”  (Matthew 6:19-20)

Lately, I’ve been reading about a man who wants to live forever.  What is more, he thinks it’s possible, and he’s working a plan to make it so.  Bryan Johnson is a 46-year old billionaire who made his money acquiring a little start-up called Venmo, and then selling it.  But today, he is an anti-aging guru who devotes his time to an endeavor he calls Project Blueprint.  His goal is to take ongoing, meticulous measurements, or blueprints, of every biological function in his body that is possible to track.  At the same time he subjects himself to a scrupulously healthy lifestyle in terms of diet, sleep, and exercise.  He believes he has the science to show that he is turning back the clock.  He has the maximum heart rate of a 37-year old, the gum inflammation of a 17-year old, and the facial wrinkles of a 10-year old.[1]  Do you see what I mean about meticulous measurements? 

Bryan Johnson claims to have slowed his speed of aging to that of a child, and he wants to share the secrets to his fountain of youth with others.  He has become a social media sensation, and a whole movement has sprung up around him.  “Don’t die” is the mantra of his followers.  They gather for what they call “Don’t die meet-ups,” where they wear black T-shirts with letters across the chest that read – you guessed it – “Don’t Die.”  They take “Don’t die hikes,” and purchase Project Blueprint products: special olive oil, battery-powered hats to stimulate hair growth with red light, vitamin pills, and vegan recipes that reverse the cycle of aging.  Moth and rust shall not corrupt youthfulness.  Time and gravity will not break in and steal vitality. 

Some people have accused Bryan Johnson of starting a religion, not a fitness regimen.  He agrees with them.  “Every religion has been trying to offer a solution to ‘Don’t die.’  That’s the product they’ve generated,” he says.  He goes even further, comparing himself favorably to Jesus.  “Jesus fed people bread and alcohol, impairing and aging them.  I will feed you nutrients that awake and create life.” 

Friends, I hope I’m not the first today to wish you a “Happy Valentine’s Day.”  I promise that Valentine’s Day will have no further bearing on the sermon.  But how could I let the coinciding of Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday pass without comment?  Besides, I can’t really wish you a happy Ash Wednesday.  Happy Ash Wednesday doesn’t sound right at all.  You see, Ash Wednesday is a rather grim day.  Today Christians gather to stare unflinchingly at an uncomfortable truth.  We are all going to die.  Today you have not stumbled into a “Don’t die meet-up.”  Oh my, no.  Quite the contrary.  It wouldn’t be a stretch to call today’s liturgy a “We are all going to die meet-up.”  When you come forward to receive the imposition of ashes, you will be taking a “We are all going to die hike.”  When you leave the church, your identifying garment will not be a T-shirt that says “Don’t die.”  Rather, it will be a cross-shaped mark of ashes on your forehead that says to the world, “We are all going to die.”  We are mortal, formed of the earth, and unto earth shall we return, states the Prayer Book liturgy for the burial of the dead. 

We are all future dead people: you, me, every fitness guru, and all anti-aging actors who want to prolong biological life.  I’m told that in an old New England cemetery, a particular headstone reads as follows:

Remember, friends, as you pass by,
As you are now, so once was I.
As I am now, you too shall be.
Prepare yourself to follow me.

Why would we want to remind ourselves of our mortality?  Isn’t the world – filled as it is with violence, hate, and war – a gloomy enough place already?  I don’t mean to disparage Bryan Johnson and his movement (except the part when he compares himself to Jesus).  I don’t mean to discourage anyone’s effort to lead a healthy lifestyle.  I myself strive to avoid in-between meal treats, and the FitBit in my pocket counts my every step.  So why the solemn warnings of today?  I’ll tell you why.  We’re being honest.  We’re being honest about our mortality, and our utter dependence on God if anything is to follow the ashes that we too shall be.  We have little control over our mortal destinies. 

Ulysses S. Grant was a great Civil War general and later the 18th President of the United States.  In his highly acclaimed Personal Memoirs, Grant writes of a fellow officer with whom he served in the Mexican-American War in the 1840s.  Thomas L. Hamer was “less than 50 years old, and possessed an admirable physique that promised long life.”  Before the war he had been a member of Congress, and he was an able politician as well as a soldier.  In fact, Grant believed that Hamer was on the fast track to becoming the President of United States one day.  Then, just like that, Hamer took ill before a battle and died within a few days.  Grants tells the story to show how little we control our own destiny. 

If you are looking for an easier read with the same message, you may recall a book of dark fiction from 2013 entitled This Is How You Die.  The story centers around a device called “The Machine of Death.”  For those who wish to know the means of their own demise, the infallible contraption will provide the information for twenty-five cents.  I suppose a way to exercise at least a little control over your inevitable death is to know how it’s going to happen.  The chapters of the book have been made into video shorts that you can watch online.  One young woman out for a jog comes across the machine, inserts the coin, and the card she receives reads Old Age.  She smiles, reinserts her earbuds, steps into the street to continue her jog, and is promptly run over by an elderly driver.  Old age got her, just not the way she thought it would.  In another video, a young man’s card reads Parachute Failure.  He looks puzzled.  We assume he’s not a parachutist.  It doesn’t matter.  The next day on the tennis court he’s flattened by someone else whose parachute had failed.  The point of the stories is that we don’t control our own destiny.  We are all going to die. 

By now you may be wondering if I have anything to offer besides existential despair.  Cheer up, friends.  I do!  Bryan Johnson is right insofar as he says that religions all try to solve the problem of “don’t die.”  So what is the Christian response to death?  You know what it is.  It is Easter.  We follow the risen Jesus, the only person in history to have gone through death and come out the other side.  When God raised Jesus on the third day after he died, his new life was not a resuscitation.  It was a resurrection.  God clothed Jesus with an imperishable body, a new body, a resurrection body (1 Corinthians 15).  What is more, St. Paul writes that God shared with him a mystery – the mystery that we too shall be changed: in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.  Death will be swallowed up in victory.  God will save us not from death, but in and through death. 

Later on, when you come forward to receive the ashes, note the shape of the mark: a cross.  Today we receive a visible sign of the cross.  As you know, the cross is the place where Jesus willingly stretched out his arms and died for us, a perfect offering for the sins of the whole world.  If the cross means anything at all, it is that God forgives you.  The cross says that God will go to any length to save you – not from the ashes, but through the ashes.  Again, not from death but through death.  He that spared not his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not also freely give us all things?  Of course he will.  So we put our hope in Christ and his cross.  Note the shape of the mark of ashes: a cross. 

Note the location of the cross: the ashes mark our foreheads in precisely the spot where in baptism we were sealed by the Holy Spirit, and marked as Christ’s own forever.  So the ashes remind us not only of our mortality, but also of the great Christian hope that we belong to the One who raised us out of the dust.  Nothing in all of creation – not even death itself – can separate us from his love.  For those who belong to Jesus, death is no longer an end, but a beginning: the beginning of larger life in the closer company of God.  Note the location of the ashes.  Let them remind you of the waters of Baptism, in which you were buried with Christ in his death, and by which you share in his resurrection. 

Finally, note that these things which we do on this day include the Eucharist.  Yes, bread and wine – not to impair our senses and make us unhealthy.  Rather, bread and wine to fill us with God’s grace and heavenly benediction, and make us one body with Jesus, so that he may dwell in us and we in him.  “This is my body.  This is my blood,” said Jesus on the night before he died.  This is the true bread which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world. 

Do you want to live forever?  If so, then “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal.  But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.”  Eat this bread.  Drink this cup.  Come to Jesus and never be hungry.  Trust in him, and you will not thirst. 

[1] “A Quixotic Quest for Longevity Adds a Sales Pitch.”  Christopher Beam, The New York Times, January 14, 2024.

Sermon – February 4, 2024

Hope When All Seems Hopeless

by The Rev. J. Donald Waring

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HOPE WHEN ALL SEEMS HOPELESS

The Rev. J. Donald Waring
Grace Church in New York
The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany
February 4, 2024

Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.  (Isaiah 40:30-31)

Today’s reading from Isaiah speaks of worldly rulers and princes, and the hope that some would harbor to overthrow them.  In many ways, the passage reminds me of an article I saw in the print edition of The New York Times just a week ago today.  The piece is entitled, “The Unexpected Campaign of a Putin Opponent,”[1] and it tells the story of Boris B. Nadezhdin.  Nadezhdin is a 60-year old physicist who once served in the Russian Parliament.  Today, he hopes to be on the ballot in the upcoming Russian presidential election on March 15-17.  He is running on an anti-war platform, opposing Vladimir Putin because he sees a different vision for the country he loves. 

Nadezhdin believes that Putin’s war with Ukraine is “driving Russia off a cliff.”  By contrast, were he to be elected President, he would make peace with Ukraine, bring the troops home, release the political prisoners, restore freedom of the press, and repeal Russia’s “idiotic” (his word) anti-gay laws.  Nadezhdin envisions a Russia that is peaceful, free, and able to reengage with Europe.  Is he just a dreamer?  Perhaps.  The Kremlin has a way of rigging elections so that their chosen authoritarian leader wins every time.  Political opponents are either puppets of the ruling party, who take stands on meaningless issues to give the appearance of a genuine contest.  Or, they are barred from the election, jailed, exiled, or worse.  So no one gives Nadezhdin any chance of dethroning Putin. 

Nevertheless, so far the mild-mannered physicist has been able to walk a fine line, and his movement appears to be growing.  In order to be on the ballot, a candidate must secure 100,000 signatures from all over Russia, and this he has done.  Supporters stood in long lines, and braced themselves against subzero temperatures in order to record what they call their “collective No” to Putin.  They are daring to hope for a better future for their country.  Interestingly, Nadezhdin’s name shares a common etymology with the Russian word for hope.  He has become a small beacon of hope to people who had forgotten how to hope. 

What strikes me as noteworthy about Nadezhdin and his supporters is the notion of maintaining hope in a situation that seems hopeless.  Today’s Old Testament reading from Isaiah (40:21-31) tells a similar story.  We’ve heard the prophet addressing the people of Israel as they walked through a time of tremendous national and spiritual crisis.  Many long decades ago the Jews had been conquered by the Babylonians, who sacked Jerusalem twice, ripped the people out of their homes, and carried them off into exile.  Those to whom Isaiah spoke in today’s passage were the adult children, possibly the grandchildren, and perhaps even the great-grandchildren of the original exiles.  Many, if not most had never seen Jerusalem, but it wasn’t hard for them to imagine its gilded beauty from the way their elders had constantly talked about it.  Even though Jerusalem was far off and seemingly inaccessible, they yearned for it as they languished year after year in Babylonian internment camps.  They hoped even though all seemed hopeless. 

Even as they hoped, even as they languished, they asked the age-old question: why?  Why does God, whom the prophets tell us is all-loving and all-powerful, allow evil things like decades of exile happen to us?  Why do despots declare that nation should take up arms against nation?  Why do innocent civilians, then and now, lose their homes and lives to the deviant schemes of dictators?  Why do we suffer diseases of body and mind?  Why do bad things happen to good people?  The people lamented that the ways of God were hidden from them. 

Isaiah’s response that we heard in today’s reading might satisfy some.  For others, it might raise more questions than it answers.  Essentially, he told the people that God’s ways were not hidden at all.  In fact, they should be as plain as the earth beneath their feet and the sky above their heads.  God is responsible for all of it: from stretching out the heavens like a curtain, to bringing princes to naught, to taking down every ruler of the earth, to counting every grasshopper.  Our minds simply cannot fathom how the times that try our souls fit into the grand scheme of God’s intentions, so a little humility on our part would be in order.  God’s reply through Isaiah reminds me a bit of God’s reply to Job.  If you recall, Job suffered tremendous loss, and dared cry out to God, “Why?”  Finally, God answered Job out of the whirlwind: Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?  Tell me, if you have understanding (Job 38:4). 

Fortunately, Isaiah wasn’t finished.  He wasn’t content to chide the people for misunderstanding God’s ways as they suffered through exile.  No, he meant to encourage them – to hold out for them a vision that would give them hope.  You heard his vision at the end of today’s reading: Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.  Isaiah’s vision is compelling, and not what you would expect.  The people might have thought that if they ever made it back to Jerusalem, the elders among them would enjoy watching the youth romp and play from the comfort of their rocking chairs.  But no, in the kingdom of heaven, youth is not wasted on the young.  Those of any age who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength.  It’s a vision of vitality borne not out of physical prowess, but trust and confidence in the Lord.  Simply put, Isaiah wanted the people to keep such a vision of hope before their eyes.  Hope would keep them going. 

We can hear the objections of a cynical world, then and now.  Hope is a lovely thing.  But is it not a cruel trick to dangle the object of our desire ever before our eyes but always out of our reach?  It reminds me of a story I once heard about how an older boy would taunt his younger brother.  The older brother would say, “Tomorrow I am going to give you a wonderful chocolate bar.”  “Really,” said the young boy?  “Just you wait and see,” said his older brother.  “Come in to my room tomorrow.”  The next day the younger brother came bounding into the older boy’s room, but received no chocolate bar.  He protested, “You said that today you’d give me a chocolate bar.”  “No,” said the older brother, “I said tomorrow I will give you a chocolate bar.  Come back tomorrow.”  Are God’s promises like that: always pushed off to tomorrow, never to be realized today? 

Well, obviously I wouldn’t be doing what I do for a living if didn’t think God fulfilled his promises.  The truth is, the people did go home and over time they did rebuild Jerusalem.  Then, some 800 years after Isaiah spoke, Jesus came on the scene.  The Babylonians were long gone and the people were not in exile, but now the Romans occupied the land and ruled the Jews in their own city.  Why?  What was the meaning of it, if any meaning could be found at all?  Jesus had a different take on the problem of evil than the explanation Isaiah put forth.  For Isaiah, much of our mental and spiritual anguish was due to the inability of our finite minds to comprehend the infinite purposes of God.  If we wait for the Lord all will come clear. 

As for Jesus, he certainly believed in the providence of God.  He certainly trusted that God knew what he was doing, and would separate the wheat from the chaff on the last great day.  But Jesus had a more militant streak in which he believed we all live in enemy occupied territory.  Who was the enemy?  Not the Babylonians, and not the Romans.  Taking up arms against them would only lead to more death, destruction, and displaced populations.  So who was the enemy?  It was deeper than any one corrupt king or wicked regime.  Jesus believed that God’s good world had been invaded by the powers of evil which sought to corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.  What is more, it was time to serve an eviction notice to Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God. 

As Jesus traveled the countryside to preach and teach, he immediately began to draw crowds around himself.  Why were they constantly searching for Jesus?  What seems to have been so attractive about him is that when he spoke, he didn’t push off the promises of God until tomorrow.  “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” is what he said in his hometown synagogue.  Then he backed up his words with his works.  In today’s reading from the Gospel of Mark (1:29-39), we’ve heard how he healed the sick and cast out demons.  At other times he made the lame to walk, gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and even life to the dead.  Here was someone who embodied the hope that Isaiah foretold.  God was truly on the move.  The kingdom was at hand.  “Follow me,” says Jesus.  Today, not tomorrow.  Let’s go.  For me – and I pray, for you – the emblem of hope that impels us onward is Jesus.  His resurrection gives us a vision of humanity restored.  Jesus is the hope of the world, who shines like a beacon in history, revealing a new meaning and a new purpose to whatever difficult road you have to walk. 

Lately I’ve been reading excerpts from a book by someone who knew better than most what it meant to maintain hope when all seemed hopeless.  In 1942, Victor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist working in Vienna.  As a Jew he and his family were arrested by the Nazis and sent to a series of concentration camps.  For Victor Frankl, the last of these was the death camp, Auschwitz.  In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl describes the brutal conditions: the forced marches through snow in shoes that gave little protection, the threadbare clothes against the bitter winter wind, the meager rations, the hard labor, the disease, the filth, and the certain reality of punishment or even death for those who fell behind.  Many of Frankl’s fellow prisoners who were younger and physically stronger than he was withered and died.  Frankl survived.  Why? 

The answer is long and complex, and Frankl himself spent a lifetime working out the answer.  But if it could be summed up in a word, the word would be hope.  He came to understand that “human beings have a continuing need to be striving for something yet beyond reach[2]” and that to lose faith in the future was to be doomed.  Thus, Frankl held to a vision of his future and would not lose sight of it.  He envisioned reunion with his pregnant wife and other members of his family.  He imagined returning to his practice in Vienna, helping others through psychiatry and neurology.  It finally came down to a choice between hope and despair.  Since the Nazis had taken everything else from him, he determined that they would not take away his hope.  For him, hope was a call from the future, from God’s future, and the voice he intercepted said love.  The truth is, that love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire, he wrote.  The salvation of man is through love and in love. 

Isaiah preached good news to the people in exile to give them hope in their future.  Jesus healed the sick, cast out demons, stretched out his arms on the hard wood of the cross, and rose victorious from the grave to give us hope – hope in a future we call the kingdom of God.  With Jesus leading the way, we press on in hope. 

Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. 

[1] Paul Sonne, Alina Lobzina, and Ivan Nechepurenko.  Sunday, January 28, 2024.

[2] Selections from Man’s Search for Meaning, forward by Alonzo McDonald, The Trinity Forum Reading, Winter, 1998, p. 11.

 

Sermon – January 28, 2024

Liberty in Christ

by The Rev. J. Donald Waring

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LIBERTY IN CHRIST

 The Rev. J. Donald Waring
Grace Church in New York
The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
January 28, 2024

Now concerning food offered to idols … food will not bring us close to God.  We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do.  But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.  (from 1 Corinthians 8)

 Some years ago the extended Waring family took a cruise around the Hawaiian islands.  One day we signed up for a shore excursion on the big island of Hawaii.  It was a bus tour that would take us to Volcano National Park where we would see a volcano called Mauna Loa.  The bus driver explained that one of the most enduring figures of ancient Hawaiian folklore is the goddess Pele – the goddess of wind, fire, lightening, and volcanoes.  What is more, not far from Mauna Loa was the crater of another active volcano where generations of Hawaiians thought Pele lived. 

After walking around Mauna Loa for a while it was time to board the bus again, but before we did the driver told us one more thing about the goddess Pele.  Legend has it that upon those who take rocks and pebbles from her island, Pele will rain down not volcanic ash, but a lifetime of perfectly awful bad luck.  At that moment, the sound of a bus load of tourists emptying their pockets of pebbles on the parking lot pavement resounded like a dump truck releasing a cargo of gravel.  No one wanted to risk the wrath of Pele, neither the superstitious nor the skeptics, nor the cynics. 

On the last day of the cruise we were packing up our stateroom, and I checked under the bed to make sure nothing had fallen beneath it.  There I found a volcanic rock.  Undoubtedly, the previous occupant of the stateroom had sneaked it aboard the ship, then faltered when it was time to take it home.  Now I had it.  What should I do?  It would be a lovely keepsake, I thought.  But what about the curse?  I don’t believe in curses.  I should take the rock and prove how silly it is.  Yes, but what about the curse? I asked again.  In the end, I made the decision – rationally arrived at, I might add – that it would be disrespectful to keep the rock.  But now the onus was on me to return it.  What should I do?  How about throwing it from our stateroom balcony, ten stories down into the waters around Hawaii?  Call it an offering to the gods, or just plain fun, if you like.  I can’t deny that I felt a slight superstitious relief when the rock splashed into the water.  Take a rock with an unclean spirit on an airplane all the way home?  No way. 

In today’s reading from the Gospel of Mark we’ve heard about an encounter that Jesus had with a man in the synagogue at Capernaum.  To say that this man was having a run of perfectly awful bad luck would be an understatement.  Mark describes him as having an unclean spirit.  What does Mark mean by an unclean spirit?  Was the man mentally ill?  Was he possessed by a demon?  Was he under the curse of some pagan deity or sorcerer?  Or was he simply a fragile soul who believed in spooks?  Whatever the cause, the man had lost all restraint and ability to engage the world appropriately.  Witness his behavior in the middle of the weekly gathering at the synagogue.  He stood up and tried to shout down the guest preacher, who was Jesus: What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?  Have you come to destroy us?  I know who you are, the Holy One of God. 

When the man began shouting, Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!”  And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him.  The people were astonished.  Note well: the people were not astonished or even startled by the disruption.  They must have known the man and expected his outbursts.  The only thing that surprised them this time was that someone was finally able to do something about it.  The people were amazed at the authority of Jesus, who was able to heal and restore the man with the force of his word. 

What Mark the gospel writer wants us to take away from the scene is to see and know the authority of Jesus.  The incident in the Capernaum synagogue dramatizes what the Apostle Paul would later write, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:10-11).  For those who belong to Jesus and put their whole trust in him, his authority means that no power is able to claim them.  No pagan god, no sorcerer’s curse, no superstition, neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth is able to separate them from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  If you claim the faith of Jesus and trust in him you are free.  His authority covers you.  The Lord of hosts is with us.  The God of Jacob is our stronghold. 

This gift of Christ’s presence and even power isn’t merely bound to distant years in Palestine.  It can be ours today.  But how?  How can we experience the authority and power of Jesus?  If you read in Mark just two chapters beyond where we are today you will see that Jesus sent his disciples into the world with authority to cast out demons.  In the Gospel of John the promise to those who believe in Jesus is that they will receive power to become children of God.  I won’t bore you with New Testament Greek, only to say that power and authority are translated from exactly the same word: Exousia.  Imagine, the power and authority of Jesus are ours.  The Spirit and the gifts are ours.  Really?  On the one hand, many of us feel inadequate the task of wielding the power and authority of Jesus.  On the other hand, much of society cringes when Christians start talking about stepping out in power and authority.  What do we mean?  The power to control and coerce?  The authority to decree and demand?  No, what we mean is the power of love.  What Jesus demonstrated in the synagogue was the authority of love, and he gives us his presence and power to do the same.

I was amused recently by an online article about proper etiquette when you are aboard a cruise ship.  Specifically, what rude and unloving behaviors should you avoid in order to be an ambassador for Christ among your fellow passengers?  Well, it’s really not complicated.  Don’t hog the deck chairs.  Don’t sneeze over the salad bar.  Don’t hoard the food at the all-you-can-eat midnight buffet.  Don’t be late for your shore excursions.  Don’t let your kids run wild.  Don’t throw things overboard.  (Unless, that is, you are trying to get rid of a rock cursed by the Hawaiian goddess, Pele.  I’ll give myself a pass on that one.)  Then this purely superstitious prohibition: Never mention the Titanic.  It’s true: never mention the Titanic if you are on a cruise ship.  A passenger who is described as a viral TikToker and social media star posted that over lunch one day he said, “Say, did you know that our ship is only one-hundred feet longer than the Titanic?”  He describes how the whole dining room fell silent, the waiters gasped, and people dropped their utensils.  The passenger’s friend scolded him never to mention the Titanic on board a ship.  Why?  It’s a superstition, that’s why.  The Titanic flouted the gods and she sank on her maiden voyage.  Don’t even say the word!  You risk winding up just like those doomed passengers of long ago. 

Such magical thinking and superstitious scruples are nothing new.  In fact, they were roiling the early Christians in Corinth, so much so that Paul the Apostle had to address it in the portion of his Epistle that we heard today.  The Corinthian congregation included new and mature Christians.  Corinth was a religiously plural society with a multitude of temples to gods and goddesses of every sort.  Most of the meat for sale in the market places had been sacrificed in the various temples to the various pagan deities.  The question was, should the Christians partake of such meat?  Those new to the faith said absolutely not: this meat was defiled.  Some sinister spirit hiding in a summer sausage might sneak into your soul, and then you’d be back to the starting blocks with the demon possessed man in the Capernaum synagogue, having a perfectly awful run of bad luck.  “Look what happened to him,” they might have said.  “He probably ate defiled meat!”  Even though the new Christians had begun their life in Christ, they were not entirely free from their fears and superstitions associated with whatever cult they belonged to before.  But the mature Christians knew that they had nothing to fear.  Meat offered to pagan gods was harmless, they said, because the pagan gods had no existence, despite how fervently people believed in them.  With such knowledge they bought in the market place and ate, even in the presence of the new Christians, with no worries about the origin of the meat. 

In the reading we heard today, even though Paul was in theological agreement with the mature Christians, he gave them a pastoral directive.   He advised them to refrain from eating meat offered to idols.  Don’t do it.  Yes, they were correct in their knowledge that the meat was harmless in and of itself.  They were free to eat it.  They were free to each shrimp cocktail, fried catfish, and bacon cheeseburgers.  But take care, wrote Paul, that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.  Not to bore you with any more New Testament Greek, but the word Paul used for liberty is once again the same word Mark used for authority, and the same word John used for power.  Liberty.  Authority.  Power.  It’s the same word: Exousia

St. Paul was concerned that the mature Christians were using what they understood to be their gift from Jesus not to build up the weak, but merely to puff up their own egos.  It’s as if they suffered from a fairly common spiritual malady we might call “amnesia of the already saved.”  They forgot that they too were once new Christians in need of patience and understanding.  Now, as they helped themselves to another serving of sirloin steak sacrificed to the goddess Athena that very morning, they might be looking condescendingly upon the new Christians still working through their fears, and thinking, “Bless their hearts.  There but for the grace of God go I.”  Paul implied that the mature Christians were being needlessly insensitive and rude.  Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up, he wrote.  Use your liberty, your power, your authority in Christ to build people up, not tear them down. 

Dear People of God: Christ has set us free.  No, you are not free to take rocks from a national park on the big island of Hawaii.  To do so is against the law.  Indeed, the most reliable theory to the origin of Pele’s curse maintains that it was invented by a park ranger to scare people into obedience.  Another theory is that bus drives invented the curse because they were tired of cleaning up pebbles that tourists decided they didn’t want after all.  So don’t take the rocks.  It’s against the law. 

Also, out of Christian love you should not feel at liberty to wish a performer “good luck” before he or she goes on stage.  Instead, you should play along and say “break a leg.”  You should avoid mentioning the Titanic while sailing the high seas.  These are superstitions, yes.  But to spook the weak as they work through their fears is not a sign of mature Christian discipleship.  It’s just puffed-up, haughty, and rude.  But in all other matters concerning the principalities and powers, the elemental spirits, and things that go bump in the night, know that you are free: free to walk under ladders, free to live on the 13th floor of your building, free to open an umbrella inside your house on Friday the 13th, free to break mirrors, and step on the cracks of sidewalks.  You are free to drive in the car with the dome light on, free to go swimming right after you eat, free to own black cats.  We have two of those at the rectory, by the way, and they cross our paths every day, especially when they are hungry, which is pretty much always.  Blessings abound.  Christ has set us free. 

Hear again the words of St. Paul, who wrote, But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. 

Sermon – December 25, 2023

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LIGHT AND LIFE HE BRINGS

The Rev. J. Donald Waring
Grace Church in New York
Christmas 2023

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.  (Isaiah 9:2)

 Last Wednesday I read that it’s been 144 years since Thomas Alva Edison first unveiled to the world a working light bulb.  What my little “this day in history” calendar didn’t reveal, however, was a story behind the story.  The year was 1879.  Candles and gas lamps were still the only way for people to light the darkness of night.  Thomas Edison, already known as a great inventor, vowed to create an artificial light powered by electricity.  From his laboratory in Menlo Park, NJ, Edison poured himself into the project as he did no other.  He and his sixty workers performed more than twelve-hundred different experiments.  He sent people all over the world to find and test thousands of materials that would burn brightly without burning up.  He spent over forty-thousand dollars (a veritable fortune in those days) and endured countless failures.  But finally, Thomas Edison had invented an incandescent light bulb, and it worked.  A world that walked in darkness would see a great light.

The story behind the story goes like this: upon completion of the light bulb, Edison disconnected his fragile creation, handed it to one of his young assistants, and gave instructions for him to take it up some stairs to another area of the lab.  On the way, the nervous assistant stumbled, and lost his grip on the precious cargo.  He dropped the bulb, and it shattered on the floor.  The young man was devastated.  What did Edison have to say?  We don’t know, but the only thing to do was to make another one – no easy task, given all that had gone into creating the first.  When the great inventor had completed a second bulb, he then did something perhaps even more remarkable than the invention itself.  Thomas Edison made a point of calling the very same assistant over to his side.  In the hearing of all he gave the same instructions for him to carry the light bulb to the other area of the lab.  Then he placed the wondrous instrument of light into the young man’s hands.  This time the assistant did not drop the light bulb.  For the young man, Thomas Edison’s gesture was a moment of redemption and rebirth.

The story of Christmas is in many ways a story like that.  It is the story of a great light coming into the world.  It is the story of a magnificent gift – a costly creation – handed to the people who walk in darkness: to the lost and lonely, to the frightened and confused, to the ignorant and the arrogant, to the cynical and the skeptical, to the simple and the sophisticated, to the young and the old, to me and to you, whoever you are.  What is this gift?  Isaiah the prophet called it a great light.  John the Gospel writer called it power to become a child of God.  He called it light and life.  It is the light that shines in the darkness: the darkness can’t comprehend it, and the darkness can’t put it out.  The magnificent gift we celebrate tonight is the light and life of God.  At a cost to himself unimaginable to us, God took on flesh and dwelt among us in Jesus of Nazareth.  God emptied himself entirely into the form of this one person.  God poured himself into this project as he did no other, “from the first days of our disobedience, unto the glorious Redemption brought us by this holy Child.”  God became one of us.  God became as small as an infant.  God handed himself to the world – to us, to be a great light for the people who walk in darkness.  Christ is our gift, and our chance for redemption and rebirth.

When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, God handed himself to the world in the little baby Jesus.  God gave us his living presence – not a religion, not a collection of teachings, not a list of commandments, not a set of rules and regulations to be imposed on people.  God gave the world his living, active, light and life in Jesus.  What would the world do with him?  What will we do with him?  No matter how many times I read or hear the Christmas story, I am always struck by the original cast of characters, and the miracle that they took hold of the gift at all, and not drop the light that God had placed in their hands. 

Consider Mary and Joseph.  In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.  Then, as now, people who occupy the corridors of power tend to issue orders for their own inconsiderate gain – orders that send the pregnant, the weak, the children, even the elderly walking in the darkness.  Then, as now, some people really need to look up the word “sinful” in the dictionary.  For Mary and Joseph, Caesar’s decree would mean an eighty mile trek on foot in the ninth month of the pregnancy.  But even before taking on the hazardous outward journey, these two had already covered difficult inward terrain without stumbling.  Mary would have been young, barely a teenager.  We might fear that her youth and inexperience would make her unfit to receive such a gift.  Could she be trusted to bear the Son of God, to raise him and nurture him according to God’s will?  We might doubt it.  Yet God chose Mary – young, naive, trusting, inexperienced Mary – to carry his most precious creation into the world.  Mary said yes.  Mary didn’t stumble. 

God also chose Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus and fiancee of Mary.  As Matthew tells us, Joseph came close to dropping the light God was handing to him.  We know that Joseph was a carpenter.  As such he was probably a practical, level-headed, rational type of person.  Chances are he was much older than Mary.  When Joseph learned of Mary’s pregnancy – a pregnancy in which he presumably played no part – he resolved to end the engagement.  We can imagine his skepticism of Mary’s claims that the child she was carrying was of the Holy Spirit.  Of all things to believe!  How easy it would have been for Joseph to divorce Mary.  Yet God persisted with Joseph, and spoke to him in a dream, and convinced him to take hold of the light that was coming into the world.  God handed himself to doubting, disbelieving, skeptical Joseph on that first Christmas.  Joseph said yes, which is good news for those of us who are naturally inclined to doubt the miraculous.

It is good news because tonight, on Christmas Eve 2023, it’s our turn once again to be handed the Light of the world, the gift of Jesus.  In just a few moments you will find yourself holding a lighted candle, kneeling in your pew, and singing “Silent Night.”  If all goes well the church will be dark.  No doubt, some of the bulbs and electrical systems in this place date from the days of Edison himself.  It’s a miracle that they go on and off at all!  Nevertheless, we will use them to simulate the darkness so that you can hold in your hands a light that shines.  But this year we don’t really need to simulate the darkness, do we?  We have glimpsed what it is to be the people who walk in darkness: in Israel, in Gaza, in Ukraine. 

Perhaps your path is darkened by loneliness.  You walk without the human relationships you crave: without the spouse you lost or never had, without the child you misunderstood and drove away, without the parent you rejected and neglected.  But then, even when we are physically present for each other, we yearn for more.  We have a strange yearning for perfection and permanence that no human relationship can fulfill.  Can any light pierce the gloom of sin and grief?  In heart and mind we go to Bethlehem, we peer into the manger, and our longings on this night are perhaps too deep for words.  On Christmas Eve we yearn for redemption and rebirth.  We hope for another chance.  We pray for peace on earth, or at least in our lives.  We yearn for the holy Child of Bethlehem to be born in us, just as he was born in those people some two-thousand years ago. 

O holy Child of Bethlehem,
descend to us, we pray;
cast out our sin and enter in,
be born in us today.

Well, hear this, all you people walking in darkness: tonight, God is shining a great light on those who dwell in the shadow of death.  Tonight, God is handing us light and life.  How shall we receive him?  It can be as it must have been for the young assistant in Thomas Edison’s lab, when the great inventor placed the second light bulb in his hands after he had broken the first.  It can be the next time you come forward to the altar rail, and extend your hands to receive his living presence in bread and wine.  Imagine Mary looking right into your eyes and asking, “Would you like to hold him?”  Imagine leaving here tonight daring to carry an entirely new perspective on your existence.  You have come into the world not by cosmic chance.  You are, and are aware of it, because God has handed you divine light and life.  St. John wrote, “This is the true light that lighteth everyone who cometh into the world.”  What will you do with the light of Christ implanted in your soul?  How easy it will be for us to stumble in the year to come.  We can dismiss it all as sentimentality, a fairy tale, a myth, a nice children’s story with a happy ending.  But for those who trust themselves to be trusted, Christ the newborn King was, and is, and evermore shall be God’s light shining in the darkness.

A story is told of a small group of people who literally walked in darkness.  They were refugees of war fleeing their country by foot, traveling by night over extremely rugged terrain.  Among the group was a young mother and her tiny infant son.  As they prepared to leave the refugees knew that each person would have to make it on his or her own strength.  They could not imperil the safety of the group for anyone who lagged behind.  The one concession they made was that each person would take a turn carrying the child.  Several days had passed on their hazardous trek when finally an elderly man collapsed and could go no further.  He told the group to go on and save themselves and allow him to die there.  This they began to do.  But then, the young mother took her child, knelt down to the old man, and said to him, “You cannot stop here; it is your turn to carry the child.”  And she placed the infant in his arms.  She handed him that little helpless boy – bone of her bone, flesh of her flesh.  Then the woman stood and began to catch up with the others.  Moments later she turned and saw the old man hurrying after her, carrying the child. 

The story of Christmas is in many ways a story like that.  Hear again the words of Isaiah: The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.  For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. 

 Christmas is your turn to carry the child.  Christmas is your turn to receive God’s wondrous gift of life and light.  It is the light that shines in the darkness.  The darkness cannot comprehend it.  The darkness cannot put it out. 

 

The story of the refugees is adapted from a parable by Joseph P. Klock, which appears in a sermon by Beth W. Ely in Preaching as the Art of Sacred Conversation: Sermons That Work VI, Morehouse, 1997.

Sermon – December 10, 2023

Getting in Character

by The Rev. J. Donald Waring

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GETTING IN CHARACTER

The Rev. J. Donald Waring
Grace Church in New York
The Second Sunday of Advent
December 10, 2023

As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet … “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.  (Mark 1:2-3)

 Here we are on Broadway, and I know that many of you have either enjoyed or are pursuing careers as actors and actresses.  Also at this time our cast of sixty is rehearsing, singing, and dancing its way toward this year’s Christmas Eve pageant.  Amidst all this talent I am humbled to remember my one and only flirtation with the stage.  I was in the fourth grade.  The school system had decreed that it was to be dental hygiene week.  In celebration, our student teacher, Miss Stokes (who was distractingly pretty), wrote a play for the 4th grade to perform at an assembly.  My role was that of a decayed tooth who had to be pulled and leave his friends.  When I landed the part, I thought the starring role was mine.  But as it turned out, the girl who portrayed the dentist extracted me from the stage early in the first scene.  That was it for me: no more openings, no more shows. 

My younger brother had better luck.  Throughout high school and college he tried out for and won a number of significant roles in the theater.  His first character portrayal was that of the doctor in Whose Life is it Anyway?  He brought to the role a stern, strident, unyielding presence.  And although my credibility as a theater critic is not high, I was quite impressed.  His next performance was that of Captain Brackett in the musical South Pacific.  He brought to the role a stern, strident, unyielding presence.  And although my credibility as a theater critic is not high, I thought to myself “Hmm, this looks familiar.”  Then came his portrayals of John Proctor in The Crucible, and Dwight Babcock in Mame.  To these roles he brought a stern, strident, unyielding presence.  Perhaps the problem was of my own perception.  Perhaps it was because I knew my brother too well, but it seemed to me that he was playing the same character no matter what costume he wore, no matter what lines he spoke. 

One day in the spirit of helpfulness I broached the subject of his need to take more of the character into himself: let the character shape you as much as you shape the character.  Get yourself more out of the way.  To these brotherly criticisms he responded by saying that since it wasn’t dental hygiene week I ought to consider shutting my mouth.  A rather stern, strident, and unyielding answer, don’t you think?

Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.  What do these familiar words mean?  We hear them often during the season of Advent.  Nearly three-hundred years ago George Frederic Handel set them to music, as countless others have done since.  Two-thousand years ago John the Baptist spoke them in the wilderness of Judea, and on the banks of the Jordan River.  But even then the words were not new.  The people to whom John spoke had heard them before many times.  They were from their Scriptures.  They were read in the synagogue.  But what did these familiar words mean?

Some five-hundred years before John, Isaiah the prophet first spoke these words.  Isaiah preached good news to the people in exile.  The Jews were captives in Babylon.  The Babylonians had conquered them and carried them away from Jerusalem.  For decades now they had languished in Babylonian internment camps, all the while mourning their separation from Jerusalem. How could they play the role of God’s people if they didn’t live in God’s city?  How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land (Psalm 137)?  By the waters of Babylon they sat down and wept: their costumes didn’t fit, the props were all wrong, the scenery wasn’t right.  Then came Isaiah speaking words of comfort:

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.  Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.  The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God (Isaiah 40).

 For the Jews, Isaiah’s words meant that they would be going home.  The way they would have to travel from Babylon to Jerusalem was long and treacherous: straight across was 800 miles of desert, the more hospitable route was well over a thousand miles.  Mountains, valleys, rough places and rough people would block their way.  But God himself was going to prepare the way.  God brought the Jews home again to Jerusalem.  When they arrived they found the city in ruins.  The Temple was destroyed, but they were home.  Two-thousand five-hundred years ago, that was the meaning of these words.  The joy of the redeemed exiles, however, was short-lived.  The problem was this: Jerusalem turned out to be not at all the heaven on earth they remembered.  Although they were playing the role of God’s people in God’s city again – although they were in the right place, wore the right costumes, and spoke the right lines – they discovered themselves to be the same old characters they had been in exile.  Those who felt distant from God in Babylon still felt distant from God in Jerusalem.  “Hmm,” they must have thought, “this feels familiar.”  A change of scenery wasn’t the answer. 

Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.  Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth. 

When John the Baptist spoke these words again five-hundred years after Isaiah, he brought a stern, strident, unyielding presence to the role of a prophet.  His were not words of comfort.  The great distance he spoke of was not that between Babylon and Jerusalem.  It was the distance between our thoughts and God’s thoughts, between our ways and God’s ways.  The mountains, valleys, and rough places he referred to were not that of any outward landscape, but rather the untamed geography of the inner life.  John preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  That’s a fancy way of talking about a change of character, not a change of scenery.  Our opening hymn today says it well:

Then cleansed be every breast from sin;
make straight the way for God within.
And let each heart prepare a home
where such a mighty guest may come.

Make straight the way for God within.  A phrase I heard long ago speaks of a concept I’ve wrestled with ever since.  It goes something like this: the Christian journey is not so much a matter of getting people into heaven later on, as it is getting heaven into people now.  Once again: not people into heaven, but heaven into people.  How in the world does heaven get into us?  How in the world can heaven break through the cynical, glum, pessimistic, outraged personas of our culture today?  Well, this is a journey that God makes.  Now to say that God makes the journey may strike you as a surprise.  Popular spirituality urges me to concentrate on my spiritual journey, and you yours.  We are all busy wanting out of Babylon and longing for Jerusalem.  But the one on the spiritual journey is God.  God’s destination is your inner depths, and mine — your heart and mine.  Let every heart prepare a home where such a mighty guest may come.  Prepare ye the way of the Lord!

These ancient, familiar words present a challenge to me that I suspect is much like the challenge before an actor or actress portraying a character.  To prepare the way of the Lord is to learn a character – the character of Christ.  If you have ever been on stage or screen you know that to a great extent you have to get yourself out of the way.  Not every mountain and valley and rough place of your personality is fit for the part you are playing.  It is a matter of letting the character shape you as much as you shaping the character.  It is an integration of persons in which neither is lost totally in the other.  Taking on the role of Jesus is what St. Paul meant when he talked about “putting on Christ” (Romans 13:14), and “having the mind of Christ” (I Corinthians 2:16), and Christ “being formed in us” (Galatians 4:19).  We heard the call to put on Christ in the Collect of the Day last week, when we prayed that God would “give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armor or light …”  We hear the call to become Jesus in two of our Eucharistic Prayers, when we pray to God that we may be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell in us, and we in him. 

Prepare ye the way of the Lord!  Put on Christ.  Get into character.  Remember that we are each learning and acting the character of Christ while on the stage of this mortal life.  We are his ambassadors, we are representing him to the world.  Stage directors will tell their performers to stay in character no matter what happens, no matter what props fall over, or what lines are flubbed, or even if a cell phone rings in the audience. The question is, will you stay in character?  When the pressures of life mount and your temper wears thin, will you stay in the character of Christ?  When you face major decisions about money and morals, will you stay in the character of Christ?  When you’ve heard an irresistible piece of gossip at a Christmas party, and now have the chance to repeat it, will you break character with Christ, or will you consider shutting your mouth?  When depression is deep and darkness seems all around you, will you stay in the character of Christ and trust in the Lord one day at a time, or will you give in to despair? 

Will you stay in the character of Christ?  It sounds like an impossible role to play, a task even more difficult than traveling from Babylon to Jerusalem.  But remember, God is the one on the move toward us.  God is the one who first gives himself to us, and rescues us from exile.  God in Christ has acted to take our nature upon himself – to play our role, to stand in our place.  And here I can only say what I have found to be true: that the more I am willing to get myself out of the way, and let the character of Christ shape me, rather than vise-versa, the more I know the Spirit of God alive in me.  Trust me, often I am not very good at getting or staying in the character of Jesus.  But the more I take on the role of Christ, the more his character becomes part of my nature.  And the more his character becomes part of my nature, the more I realize that God is working infinitely harder than I ever could in the transformation of my character.  God has begun a good work within each of us, and will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.  God is planning to give us the resurrected life of Jesus, so that we might say, “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).

Once again, let me say that my credibility as a theater critic is not all that high.  It is not even dental hygiene week.  But we are on Broadway, and it is Advent.  So I tell you: Take the character of Christ into yourself.  Get yourself out of the way, and put on Christ.  Receive his body and blood.  Let his living Spirit fill you, forgive you, heal you, and call you into service.  Let him shape you.

Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.  Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God. 

Let them see it in you, and let them see it in me. 

Worship Services:

Sunday 9 AM, 11 AM, 6 PM. Wednesday 6 PM.

View the Live Stream on this website, Youtube, Facebook, and Vimeo.

Recordings of previous worship services are also available.

 

 

Grace Church

802 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
(212) 254-2000

An Episcopal Church in the Diocese of New York

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802 Broadway, New York, NY 10003, (212) 254-2000