Advent 4

Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. 

I want to start my remarks with a quotation from the well-known hymn, O God, our help in ages past. The fifth verse opens with these words: time like an ever rolling stream bears all its sons away. Imagine for a moment a swiftly moving river. The current is strong enough that if someone were in the middle of it, it would carry him away. Time according to our hymn writer is like such a river. I think it is helpful metaphor upon which to reflect. In life you see a number of different reactions to the swift current of time.

One reaction is to attempt to get out of the river by swimming to shore. In a sense you are trying to achieve a certain timelessness, an immortality within time. There are those who, like the builders of the tower of Babel, want to make a name for themselves in this fleeting world. They want to build empires of wealth, status or fame in the worlds of business, industry or entertainment. Most who try to exit the river in this manner will live long enough to realize that the river is still carrying them along—they've outlived their fame and success and maybe have even outlived their desires.

A second reaction to the current of time is to attempt to swim against the current to go back in time to what is perceived to be a more pristine and better age. I am sometimes accused of being born in the wrong decade, but the truth is I have no romantic notions about an ideal past either in the church or our society. Any student of history knows that making an idol of an epoch quickly comes to ruin the more you learn about that epoch. People then were not that different from people today, either for better or worse. Those who fight against the stream of time generally are unaware or in denial about the world as it truly is. They are like Don Quixote trying to live by a code of honor that has been rendered obsolete, fighting windmills that are imagined to be giants. Old things are good because they are useful. That is why I think traditional liturgy is so valuable. Our use of traditional liturgy should not be a fetish for the past, but a recognition that our Anglican heritage of Common Prayer is not something that should be hung up on the wall as a mere historical specimen.

Perhaps the most frightening reaction to the river of time would be those who give in; they capitulate the current and are taken under the water. Many cases of suicide are like this, but there is a kind of suicide where biological life continues and we could call this waking death. Waking death occurs when one gives into fear and anxiety, like, for example, when one is always worried for yourself or your loved ones about what lethal ailment is going to strike. One can become so consumed by this fear that very little energy is given to thinking about how to live well with the time that one does have. There are other powerful fears that can strike as well, like the fear that life and one's current circumstances will never get better and that the sadness and loneliness which seem unending are in fact unending. All of these fears and arresting anxieties might be summed in one word: despair; it is a powerful and intoxicating drug, but one that is also lethal.

Using this metaphor of time as a river, I've suggested a few of the common reactions to this reality of time as a rolling stream: there are those who try to exit time through fame and earthly immortality—a contradiction in terms; those who try to swim against the current in a romanticism of time past; and finally those who despair of the current and stop swimming. There is an alternative to all of these reactions. The attitude of Mary in this morning's Gospel gives a suggestive solution. What if the river of time instead of being totally chaotic and unpredictable was actually under the control of a greater power, the providence of God? The Psalmist writes [the waters] go up as high as the hills, and down to the valleys beneath; * even unto the place which thou hast appointed for them. Thou hast set them their bounds, which they shall not pass. My friends, the Lord is actually the Lord of history, he has set the boundaries of time that it shall not pass. Chaos, uncertainty and coincidence are actually part of the complex tapestry of God's merciful and good providence. Don't misunderstand me: I'm not suggesting from the standpoint of faith that we will always and invariably understand why things happen in this world. But faith does give one eyes to appreciate the Lord's hand in the vicissitudes of life, and trust that though we will not always understand, in the long view of history and the light of eternity, the Lord will always be shown to have been good and just.

Christians are called to enter this river of time and allow it to carry us wherever it will, knowing that the as we trust in the Lord, he will care for us and do for us whatever is for our good. The period of waiting for the messiah seemed never ending to those who had to endure it. Again and again the prophets declared a time in which the Lord's judgement and mercy would be poured out on the nations. Over centuries, God's people waited in expectation and a degree of uncertainty: when would the Lord act? Were his promises come to an end? But then in the fullness of time, as Paul writes in this letter to the Galatians, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law. Mary was willing to stand in the long chain of prophets and priests, saints and sinners who awaited faithfully for the Lord's appearance. Though her commission undoubtedly was unexpected and certainly would have not fit the mental image of a young Jewish girl's expectation for her future, yet in humble obedience she bows to the will of God for her: behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me according to thy word. She was not trying to make a name for herself: all generations call her blessed because he that is mighty has magnified her. She was not trying to go back in time to a pristine age, but rather by her obedience she because a new Eve for all humankind. She did not despair of her future though she had to sacrifice the normalcy of a quiet domestic life in rural Galilee and forever wear the scarlet letter of having become a mother out of wedlock.

We too can live by the same kind of trust and surrender as Mary had. We do not have to fear time, to try to escape or swim against it. The Lord is inviting us to lay down our burdens; the overwhelming power of fear and our need to be in control. This is an invitation to live by trust. Its an opportunity to stop trying to escape the stream of time or fight against its currents or despair of its torrents, but to say to the Lord whatever may come, whatever he may call us to do, behold the handmaid, behold the servant of the Lord, be it unto me according to thy word.

Advent 1

The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. . . for now is our salvation nearer than when we first believed. 
                                                                     - Romans 13

I'd like to start off my remarks today with a question: do you think you need to be saved? Do you honestly and sincerely believe that you need help for your life to endure? The long season of Pentecost has drawn to a close, and the start of Advent puts the necessity of salvation before us. St. Paul poetically describes this reality, "The night is far spent, the day is at hand." Now what is salvation? And what is it from which we need to be saved? The Prayer Book identifies our enemies as 'the world, the flesh, and the devil', as we just heard in the Litany. The world is that part of human society that is in rebellion to God's gracious rule, ranging from the mammoth pornography industry to the abuse of the poor to the persecution of Christians in Africa and the Middle East. When the prayer book speaks of the World it doesn't mean the physical geography of our planet; rather, it refers to that part of human society which is in rebellion against the rule and reign of the Father—it is that impulse either collective or individual to live apart from God in our own light The traditional doctrine of the devil is that he is a fallen angel. He and his angels are also in opposition to God's rule, and although we may as materialists be prone to question the existence of the devil, chaos and evil in the world should give one pause: Think of the number of innocents murdered in the 20th century, a century of technological progress and human achievement. When we think about this and other evils, it is not difficult to believe that there are forces of spiritual evil in the world that seek to destroy God's good creation. Finally, the prayer book speaks of the flesh. The prayer book doesn't simply mean the body. It means that part of the human person that is fallen: like when you know the good you ought to do, but you give in to the opposite instead; or when we you are tempted to subject your ideals and morals to a selfish desire. It shouldn't surprise us that we our own enemy sometimes. Suicide is the trap door out of which one may exit life, but lots of other decisions one can make may not cause immediate death but do cause eventual death. These latter types of decisions blossom in addictions, divorces, and all kinds of figurative crashes, the fruits of which are an acute sense of alienation from God and others. The Bible put this stark reality in this way: "The wages of sin is death." Sometimes immediate death, sometimes eventual death.

The world, the flesh, the devil. These are that from which we need saving. Our prayer book emphasizes life as a battle in which we are under attack from these enemies. That is why there are two invariable collects or prayers for peace in both Morning and Evening Prayer. In these collects, one is not simply praying for the security of the state, since to the world peace often merely denotes the absence of war. Rather, the peace we ask God to give us, the peace we want for our lives is security from the world, the flesh, and the devil, as we try to navigate through these tumultuous waters of life.

Now one of the problems of progressive theology is that it does not adequately account for the human need for salvation. The existence of the devil is usually denied and explained as merely a facet of human psychology. A theologically progressive church informed first most by the standards and mores of the World decreasing looks like the Christian church and more like a social action committee or even worse, a dying fraternal organization. Progressive theology tends to minimize the reality and costliness of sin--the flesh--and speaks of sin as denying the image of God in ourselves and others. Reinhold Niebuhr, a 20th century Protestant theologian, was formed in the mold of this type of theology, but through his pastoral work in Detroit he come to the conclusion that progressive theology held a naive view of sin and was overly optimistic about the effectiveness of social action. Concerning progressive theology, Niebuhr wrote, "A God without wrath, brought men without sin, into a kingdom without judgment, through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross." If we are honest with ourselves, the human situation without God is far more stark. We are in a battle which we cannot win without God's help and we need deliverance from the world, the flesh and the devil.
As we approach the darkest day of the year, we are reminded in this season of Advent of our need for a salvation and a Savior. Will you be like those in the day of Noah did not see the coming storm, but were "eating and drinking, marrying and given in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark?" In other words will you live your life as if it were not a battle against the world, the flesh and the devil and in so doing surrender to the enemy. Or will you be like Noah who heard God's word to him and obeyed, entering the hull of ship while water swept over the face of the earth? The truth is that everyday we need God's help.  To borrow a metaphor from Gospel music: the Gospel train is coming, Jesus is the engineer, the conductor is shouting 'All abroad'. Will you get on board?

Now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.

All Saints & Window Rededication

And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.
                                                           - Genesis 28:17


Today we are rededicating our stained glass windows. Last year a specialist in stained glass care and preservation did extensive work on our windows, and many of you helped finance that work and bring it to completion. I am delighted to be a part of and witness to this effort. It is awesome to think that we have preserved these beautiful windows for the next generation. The more I've studied them, the more I am convinced that these windows are a treasure, a treasure that tells a story. These walls and windows tell a story of those that have preceded us in faith. In many historic churches, a graveyard surrounds the church. No one today would think to put a cemetery around a church—the temptation for churches these days is to peddle feel good religion that some thinkers have called therapeutic deism because it has a loose belief in God with the goal of making you feel better. Churches that were built with graveyards surrounding them were not designed to make the worshippers feel better but to put them in mind of the dead who had gone before them. They were faced regularly with the reality of human mortality. An acceptance of our mortality demands that one answer the questions: how shall we then live? How will our pilgrimage end? Will it find us following the good examples of those who have preceded us across Jordan's stream?

Though Trinity is not surrounded by a graveyard like our parent parish, Christ Church Shrewsbury, yet when we come within these sacred walls we are reminded of the faithful departed of this parish. There is the civil war captain, Samuel T. Sleeper, who was a vestryman of this church and who died on the field at Spotsylvania Courthouse, commemorated in a marble plague on the east wall. Then there is Herbert Tilton, a veteran of World War I commemorated in the window of a kneeling soldier before Christ. The windows records of Herbert that he was, and I quote, “A faithful Sunday School scholar, choir boy, and crucifer in this church until his enlistment in the U.S. army. Christ's faithful soldier and servant until his life's end.” This last line is a quotation from the baptismal service, and can also be seen chiseled into the front of the baptismal font. Herbert was 22 years old when he died on December 18, 1918. It was less than a month after the signing of the armistice the formal end to major combat in the war, which gives rise to speculation that perhaps he died of disease or an injury sustained earlier in the war.

The lily window near the back of the church tells another story. It was originally given in memory of Eleanor Currey MacKellar. The text in the window succinctly states that she “died July 11th, 1897 in her eleventh year”. It turns out that she was the daughter of the Rev. Robert Mackeller, rector of Trinity from 1892 to 1931, nearly four decades. It is hard for me to imagine how difficult it must have been for him to bury his own child. One might think that text of the window is too succinct, too formal, but to me, the flowers in bloom in the window say everything that needs to be said about a young girl whose life was tragically cut short. The real feeling is not in the words but in the images. Fr. MacKeller is remembered in a number of other windows including the three windows that are on the back wall towards the bell tower, featuring the ascending Lord Jesus and the angels who appeared with him on that occasion. The windows were given by the members of the guild of the golden rule in thanksgiving for the four decades of his ministry.

The story behind other windows is more elusive. Sometimes all we have are names, and this invites us to imagine what their story might have been, like the husband and wife who are memorialized in the nativity window. The husband died less than a month after his wife. Was he one of those who simply could not go on without his faithful companion and spouse? Similarly, the good shepherd window is given in memory of Mary Garrison Cole by her husband William Cole. Imagine the depth of love and devotion that could move a man to dedicate a window so beautiful and sublime.

This morning we are adding a new layer of meaning to our church building by the installation of the memorial plagues and the re-dedication of the windows. Memorialized in many of the windows are deceased parents, and in a few cases spouses of current members and friends of the congregation. Though these people still feel close to us, yet I imagine that those who come after us will know them simply by a name. Just as for many memorialized around our church, the story has been lost and all that is left is a name. Yet, in God, the story is never lost and the dead we memorialize we pray have their names written in the Lamb's book of life. This past Wednesday we commemorated the feast of St. Simon and St. Jude. Simon and Jude were two of the twelve apostles, but we know virtually nothing about them. Yet, their witness to the crucified and risen Lord mattered, and we know that it mattered because the church on earth was built and began to grow and continues to this day. Our own part and the part of those who have faithfully passed through these doors from week to week is not all that different. Posterity may only remember us as a name, but our faithful work in serving our Lord and building up this church will not be forgotten because this house will a visible testament of our faithfulness or, God-forbid, our faithlessness. The bricks and the mortar, the windows and the walls, will all tell that there were saints (who were also sinners) who faithfully said their prayers in this place and because it was the place where they said their prayers and worshipped the Almighty, they gave towards its upkeep. On this All Saints day, let us be thankful for the witness of all the saints who have gone before us, and especially those members of Trinity who have worshipped, prayed and adored their Lord in this place and so preserved this house of prayer. Let us pray that our Lord would give his Spirit that we might continue this labor to his greater glory and the building up of his kingdom, until we all come to that heavenly city, the city of light, in which there is no temple because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.

St. Luke the Evangelist

Heal the sick and say unto them, the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.


Today, October 18, is the day in which St. Luke is commemorated in the calendar of saints in the Anglican tradition. Luke is remembered as the Evangelist, the author of the Gospel that bears his name, as well as the sequel to that book, the Acts of the Apostles. We do not know a great deal about Luke. According to tradition he was a physician and a disciple of Paul—in Paul's letters there are a couple of references to Luke but little information beyond a name and occupation. The argument is often made that Luke's training as a physician gave him special skills in attention to detail that characterize the books attributed to him. Another noteworthy quality of the Luke's Gospel and the book of Acts is his ability to depict a remarkable sympathy for a variety of people—there is a kind of humanism in Luke's portrayals. Noteworthy for his time, Luke has a special concern for women, Gentiles, the poor, and non-practicing Jews—called in the idiom of the day—sinners. In addition, some of the most moving parables are only found in his Gospel: the parables of the prodigal son, the Rich man and Lazarus, and the parable of the good Samaritan. Also only found in Luke's Gospel are the account of Mary's humble obedience to Gabriel's report that she will bear God's son, the encounter of our Lord Jesus with the tax collector Zacchaeus, and the realistic portrait of the two sisters Martha and Mary, the one who works tirelessly to host Jesus and the other who simply wants to sit and enjoy his presence. Luke reminds one of the sheer variety and diversity of people in the world.

Benjamin Franklin is quoted as saying that the only certainties of life are death and taxes. During their lifetime, most will labor under a sickness of the body. Might we also add that to a certain extent sickness is a certainty of life. I would submit that virtually all of us labor under sicknesses of the soul, and that these sicknesses are much more intractable that diseases of the body. The Collect for the feast of St. Luke reminds us that Luke became Physician of the soul by virtue of writing his Gospel which leads us to a knowledge of the Lord Jesus who is the wholesome medicine for what ails us.

Now a sickness of the soul might sound rather vague so I'd like to offer a suggestive illustration of what I mean by such diseases. In the classic children's book The Little Prince—a book I've been quoted as saying that it is second only to the Bible—a little prince who is an inhabitant of outer space decides to leave his tiny planet and journey to earth. He principle motivation in leaving seems to be a kind of wanderlust—he is looking for something, but he doesn't quite know what. On his journey to earth he encounters a number of fanciful and humorous inhabitants of other planets. First, the Little Prince meets the absolute monarch whose planet has no inhabitant but himself. This king insists that he rules over the stars and galaxies, though the real extent of power is pretty much over himself. The Little Prince quickly leaves the king's planet, remarking to himself, “grown-ups are so strange.”
On the next planet, the Little Prince meets a very vain man, who insists on believing that the Little Prince has to come to his planet as an admirer. The vain man wants the Little Prince to clap for him so he can tip his hat “in modest acknowledge.” On a further planet the Little Prince meets a drunkard who tells the Little Prince that he drinks in order to forget his shame about the fact that he drinks. The Little Prince is perplexed by this circular thinking. The next planet is inhabited by a businessman who gives his whole and continuous attention to adding up a list of the stars he claims he owns. When the Little Prince tries to ask him a question, the businessman distractedly says “I have so much work to do! I'm a serious man” and quickly goes back to his counting. Then the Little Prince asks him what he does with his stars, the serious man says, “nothing. I own them. . . I manage them. I count them and then count them again. . . It's difficult work. But I'm a serious person!”

Collectively these portraits are a satire on how trite human existence can become when it is disconnected from imagination, joy and friendship. The king is working under the delusion of control and power; the vain man is trying to get a sense of self from the praise of others; the drunkard throws himself into a cycle of self-destructive behaviour that has no reason or purpose but to destroy; and the businessman thinks that  his wealth is the reason for his existence. Each of these are a kind of disease of the soul that, I would argue, we encounter everyday and may even be afflicted with. If you've ever acted like you were the absolute monarch of your own life or if you've ever tried to gain a sense of self-worth from other people, if you've ever put yourself in a cycle of self-destructive behaviour, or if you've ever behaved as if the purpose of your life was to accumulate more goods or more wealth, then you too have a sickness of the soul. The bad news is that nearly all of us have one. The good news is that we have a Physician of the soul in St. Luke and the healing of our Lord Jesus.

Our Lord, by his word and actions, gives the healing medicine that to be human is not to live by power and control, like the absolute monarch, but to be human is to live by the laws of surrender, service and love. He tells the disciples that, I come as one that serveth. To those who lack self-worth and have to feed on the praise of men to gain a sense of self, like the very vain man, our Lord comes that he might teach us to call God, our Father, so that as we learn to know God as our Father, we will know that we are his children and don't need to gain a sense of self outside that reality. Our Lord tells us that there is grace for those who are living in self-destructive behaviors, like the drunkard. One of the highlights of Luke's Gospel is the parable of the prodigal son who wastes his inheritance in riotous living and decides to return to his father as a servant only to be welcomed as a son by the father who runs to meet him. The father doesn't wait for the son to come to him but runs to meet him. Finally, our Lord comes to teach us that life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment. Money is not an end in itself, like the businessman thought. We are made to eat and enjoy the good things which the Lord serves us at his table, but our final happiness is in God alone.

Just like if you have a physical ailment, the smartest thing to do, as my wife has to remind me from time to time, is to go to the doctor. So we, whole have diseases of the soul need to go the Physician of our souls, who can make us whole. We need to turn to him in faith and repentance and trust, and say, precious Lord, take my hand.

14th Sunday after Pentecost

There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him. 

In last week's Epistle, we heard St. Paul describe the armor of God. I noted how what Paul describes is mostly defensive gear, though there is a sword, the sword of the Spirit, the word of God. I suggested that the most important battles we fight are internal battles in the heart. In fact, most people spend an inordinate amount of time trying to fix the external circumstances of their lives, and imagining that if they could only change this one external thing, then they would have lasting happiness. They say, if I only had a better job, or lived in a different place or had a better spouse, then I would be truly happy. The problem with spending a lot of time on externals is that they change: material things break or decay; jobs are lost or eliminated; circumstances require a move elsewhere, and finally, the biggest insult of all to our sense of control, people die.

As we talked about at our Vacation Bible School for the fourth day of creation—the day in which sun, moon and stars are created—we live in a world of change, and this is what he heavenly bodies teach us because they are in perpetual motion. I read to the young people that famous passage from Ecclesiastes. You'll indulge me, and let me read it.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. (3:1-8)

Now, I remember as a young person being very perplexed by this passage. Was it really saying that I should hate, and make war and lose things, and even kill?? One day it dawned on me: this passage is descriptive not prescriptive. In other words, it is not telling you this is how to live your life—you've done a little loving, now it's time for some hate. Rather, it is telling us that we cannot prevent life from being this way: there will be times of gain, and there will be times of loss. There will be times of war and there will be times of peace. And much of this, even most of it, will be out of our control. If you're sitting around waiting to be happy until your externals of your life are perfectly arranged, you may have a long wait, and if those stars finally align in perfect coordination, it probably won't last.

This is why the Bible tells us that happiness does not lie in external things. Since we live in a world of change, our Christian faith tells us that true happiness is found in that which does not change, in truth, and joy, and love, and most of all in God. In this morning's Epistle, St. James writes of God as the one in whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In other words, if you put your full trust, hope and happiness, in the one who created you—the unique yet human creature that you are—if you let go of your sense of control and trust the one who calls you by name, has a plan for your life, and has redeemed you for his glory—if you can surrender in these ways, you will find lasting happiness in Him who does not change, and who will never disappoint or let you down. This may sound esoteric, but it comes, as the author of Ecclesiastes relates, from sustained reflection on the way the world is. Trust him who does not change, not the things that by nature change.

In the Gospel this morning, our Lord was confronting an institutional religion that had become obsessively concerned with externals. The Pharisees acted as if it were more important to wash your hands than to have a clean and pure heart. Our Lord instructs his disciples that the change needed in our life cannot and will not be effected by simply following more exactly a set of religious rituals. The problem, our Lord tells us, is within, in our hearts. Your biggest problem is not with the government or institutions, or your boss or that family member with whom you can't seem to get along: your main battle is in the heart. The ancient Chinese philosopher and statesman Confucius understood this. Five centuries before the time of our Lord he wrote that if you want to regulate the State, you have to order your family, and if you want to order your family, you have to look to yourself, and to look to yourself, you have to rectify the heart. What Confucius missed is that in our fallen condition, this fight to change the heart is a losing battle. Our basic instinct without God is to be selfish rather than sacrifice, to seek pleasure rather than the virtues of temperance and justice. At about the same time Confucius was writing, the prophet Jeremiah wrote, The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

So here is one of the great mysteries of our faith: if we cannot blame our problems on outsiders or external circumstances, but have to look to our own hearts, and yet the Bible also says essentially that alone we are powerless to change the heart, how can the heart be changed? The Apostle Paul stated the problem in this way, I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.

The real answer to this mystery is that we, of our power, are not able to cleanse our hearts, but the Lord can. In answer to the prophet Jeremiah's question, who can know the human heart, the Lord answers, I the LORD search the heart. And the prophets also speak about God taking out of us the heart of stone within, and putting within a heart of flesh. You don't need to try harder to affect this. You don't need to follow a set of rigorous religious disciplines. The one thing needful is to die to self and selfishness, to surrender your life, your heart to God. To say to the Lord, take this hard heart of me, with all its uncleanness and make it new. This morning, as we celebrate the making of a new Christian in Holy Baptism, we begin this journey for Mahkalah. We will pray that she will die to sin and selfishness and be raised to new life by the power of God; that her will not be spent in idle pursuit of control over things that she have no power to change, but it will be spent in finding those heavenly treasures that cannot perish like joy, love, gratitude and peace. You too can join again in offering yourself and your life to God. By this surrender, the darkness of the human heart will be put in the light of God. By this surrender, the uncleanness in the heart which our Lord describes will be washed and carried away by the water of the Spirit.

Independence Day Sermon

This morning, we remember as a body of Christians the birthday of our nation, and we give thanks to Almighty God for its founding and continuance. I want you to ask yourself a question this morning, am I a patriot? We live in a time that is very distrustful of such ideas, and many younger people have become disillusioned about politics and many other institutions. What I want to suggest this morning is that part of being a Christian is being a patriot. Now first I have clear away some misunderstandings about being a patriot. For example, I don't believe that being a patriot means that you have to blindly follow our elected leaders or be uncritical of their decisions. On the contrary, part of living in a democracy is the responsibility to be educated and informed about what is going on in our nation. We need to be reasonably informed about national, state and local governments and be able to name some of the key figures in those levels of government. It should also be said that to be a patriot does not mean that you have to hate every other nation that isn't ours. I happen to think that we live in a great nation, but it is also far from being infallible both historically and at present. To be patriot doesn't mean you have to blind to these things, but it does mean you have to open your eyes to its virtues, that are evident, for example, in the founding documents of this nation.

Consider for a moment the word patriot. Like many words in English it is derived from a Latin word pater, which means quite simply father. So you can began to understand what it means to be a patriot in that it is someone who recognizes and honors his fatherland. To put this in terms that might have more immediacy, consider the parent-child relationship. It is by definition a one-sided relationship because the parent cares for the child when the child has no ability to care for itself and certainly not to love the parent in return. A parent meets those physical needs for food and shelter and is responsible for the rearing of the child and so has to see that the child is educated and directed towards a vocation. In addition, the parent has to warn the child of all the lurking dangers that can ensnare us, and parents have the unenviable task to try to communicate this wisdom to young people who are naturally bent on thinking that they already know everything. All of these things result in the truth that children have a debt to their parents, and this is why the 10 Commandments enjoin that we honor our mother and father. We have a debt to them for all that they have done for us. The debt is not reduced or canceled even when we come to that maturity where we can recognize the faults and shortcomings of our parents.

Similarly, we owe a debt, albeit a different one, to the country into which we were born. If you enjoy the freedom to worship as your conscience directs you, and the freedom to move geographically and to advance your private welfare through hard work and healthy ambition, if you enjoy the benefits of public education or public services, like parks and roads, then your response should be a sense of gratitude which manifests itself in being a responsible citizen who takes an active part in civic life.
Perhaps the biggest reason Christians need to be patriots is that being a patriot of your earthly nation, teaches you how to be a good citizen of heaven. St. Paul tells us that our citizenship is in heaven. The Bible begins in a garden in a communion between God and a husband and wife. It concludes with a vision of anew city where the city itself is a temple. The citizens of this city are the redeemed offspring of that first couple. If we're going to learn how to be citizens of heaven, there is no better place to learn than in being good citizens, patriots, of our nation. God gives us this school in order that we may learn the virtues of tolerance and patience and love.

One of the concrete ways we can participate in this school of how to become a good citizen is by practicing civic virtues like industry, thriftiness and justice. Those ideas may sound hopelessly old fashioned, but I think they sound old fashioned because we've neglected them so much that they sound foreign, as if they belonged to our grandparents or great grandparents but couldn't possibly belong to us. We need to rediscover these virtues as a basis of our common life and part of the foundation for a good life.

There is a beautiful prayer in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, entitled a prayer for every man in his work. Among other things, the prayer asks for God to “Deliver us. . . in our several callings, from the service of mammon, that we may do the work which thou givest us to do, in truth, in beauty, and in righteousness, with singleness of heart as thy servants, and to the benefit of our fellow men.” There is a beautiful vision here that we've neglected or forgotten in the perpetual temptation to worship at the altar of mammon, the material wealth of this world. We can get caught up in the frenzy for utility and expediency and forget that we belong to a commonwealth where the welfare of all is to be sought. We can accept in a spirit of resignation the prevailing attitude to treat people as a means to an end, rather than as ends in themselves. As a society, we are tempted again and again to be entertained to death. But lest we despair, wisdom calls us as individuals to cultivate and return to those civic virtues which are the true source for the renewal of civilization in every generation. Today, let us pray for our nation. Let us repent of the ways in which we have put our own private good ahead of the common wealth. Let us pray that the Lord would renew our civilization in our time by the practice of civic virtues and that by perpetually practicing them, we may become fit and made ready to be citizens of that heavenly city.

Trinity Sunday

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost be with us all evermore. 

Today, Trinity Sunday is our feast of title. It is also serves as the crown of the church year, in that the whole sweep of the church year, from Christmas, to Good Friday, to Easter, and finally to Pentecost, is taken up and proclaimed by this special feast of the Trinity. It is the only feast of the church year of which I am aware that commemorates a doctrine, rather than an event or a person, and yet that point is misleading. In a sense, Trinity Sunday is meant to summarize the events that have been commemorated in the past six months, and this leads to the important point, that the doctrine of the Trinity is not something new that philosophers or theologians discovered in some remote labortory of speculative science. Rather, the doctrine of the Trinity is what God has revealed about himself in the advent of Jesus Christ and his saving work and in the coming of the Holy Spirit to be his representative.

Now on Trinity Sunday there will be many sermons trying to explain the Trinity. Many of the preachers will unintentionally promote heretical ideas in order to explain the Trinity. For example, many of you will have heard of the analogy that the Trinity is like water that can appear as ice, liquid, and vapour. However, ice, liquid, vapor are three states, and so this analogy suggests the ancient heresey of modalism which teaches that God has three different modes. It is like God has three different masks that he can wear, the Father mask, the Son mask, or the Holy Spirit mask. In a simillar way you may have heard of the analogy—attributed to St. Patrick—of a three-leaf clover: one clover but three leaves. The problem with that analogy is that the leaves form three parts of the one clover, and the doctrine of the Trinity is not that God has three parts. When I teach the confirmation classes with the youth, I like to tell them that God is not the peace symbol, a pie that is cut into three pieces. A common error about the Trinity in our own day is that the persons of the Trinity are three functions of God. This is implied by the popular gender-neutral substitute for Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer. The doctrine of the Trinity states that the Son and the Holy Spirit cooperate with the Father in the work of Creation, and this point is no less true of redemption and sustaining. If we want an image of the Trinity, St. Augustine of Hippo suggests that we look at man who, we are told by Scripture, is the image of God. According to St. Augustine, this image must be the highest part our human nature in our intellect. He goes on to argue that there is an image of the one in three in the way that the mind exists and understands itself and loves this existence. So there is mind, understanding which is the word of the mind, and love. Mind, understanding, and love, and these three are one. If that is difficult to grasp, it is only an image, says Augustine, not even the fullness of the Trinity.

One of the most helpful phrases on the doctrine of the Trinity comes from the lengthy Athanasian Creed. It states in part, “the Catholick Faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the Persons : nor dividing the Substance.” To confound the persons is to blur the distinctions between the three persons of the Trinity and their role in salvation history, like the example of modalism. The persons of the Trinity are really distinct in their relations: the Son is begotten of the Father; the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. On the other hand, to divide the substance, is to emphasize the differences of the persons to such an extent that the result is a belief in three gods, like the image of God as three parts. The Tri-une God is one Lord, one Almighty, one Being that is not created, one Being that is eternal. This one phrase uproots most of the images of the Trinity that will be heard from pulpits today: “we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, Neither confounding the persons, nor dividing the substance.”

Now, someone will ask, why does the doctrine of the Trinity matter? Isn't belief in one God sufficient? It is an adage of religious studies that you become like that which you worship. If your god is remote and distant and loves in a purely abstract way, that will shape your character and thinking about the world: empathy may not be a distinguishing aspect of your personality. In many false religions, of course, one worships simply a self-image, a god of our own tastes, opinions and prejudices. That is why the idea of God's self-revelation is so important. Rather than creating our own image of God, we allow God to speak for himself. The doctrine of the Trinity is so important because we believe it is who God has revealed himself to be in the person and mission of Jesus Christ. The doctrine of the Trinity tells us that the Tri-une God is an eternal community of love. Love and self-offering is not a learned behavior of God or one of God's modes of acting. Love belongs to the very substance of God in the intercommunion of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Father begets and loves the Son. He gives his divine life to him. The Son loves the Father and gives himself completely in love and obedience. The Holy Spirit is the bond of love proceeding from the Father and the Son. That we worship this Trinity and believe that we are made in his image means that we are created for love and community. As individuals, families, and a community, we want to become like the God we worship, a communion of love with God and fellowman. It is not good for man to be alone, and so we are given families, friends and communities to love freely and unreservedly. Occasionally we get to witness or be part of such communities of love, but even so, the loving communion is still only partial and imperfect. It belongs to the hope of eternal life, to see the perfection and fulfillment of this communion of love in God. The most profound image for heaven in the Bible is a city without church or temple because the city itself is the temple. The society of man is joined to the society of God—the Trinity—and it is joined in and by love. The Anglican theologian Austin Farrer wrote a meditation on this feast of the Holy Trinity. He had these moving words to say, “Belief in the Trinity is not a distant speculation; the Trinity is that blessed family into which we are adopted. God has asked us into his house, he has spread his table before us, he has set out bread and wine. We are made one body with the Son of God, and in him converse with the Eternal Father, through the indwelling of the Holy Ghost” (Crown of the Year 37).