4th Sunday after Easter

I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling of God is with men

The Bible does not have an abundance of things to say about heaven, but in our first lesson this morning from St. John's Revelation, we have a beautiful image of what heaven is. Building on imagery from the prophet Isaiah, John sees a new heaven and a new earth, and then a new city, descending from heaven. Its descent from heaven is a symbol of its origin in God. He reports, I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. It is interesting to talk to geographers who study where cities are established and why. One major consideration its proximity to water for a supply of fresh water. In New Mexico all almost all of the major towns are on the Rio Grande because of the importance of this water supply in the desert. Before the advent of modern shipping—when eating grapes from Chile in the northern hemisphere would have been unimaginable—easy access to grown food was also important. For provision of housing, forests and trees that can be harvested are needed to make shelters. These considerations have to do with preserving and perpetuating human life, seeing that all the members of the polis have food, water and shelter. Cities are also established for economic reasons. Many of the great cities of the world are on the ocean or on major bays with access to the ocean in order to expedite trade. A region's natural resources can become a boon for a local economy and see the flourishing of new cities. Many of the cities in Oklahoma and Texas have grown to their extent because of oil. Cities are places for the preservation of human life and for commerce, but they are also for communion and fellowship. A visitor to New York City is invariably impressed by the number of languages overhead by simply walking the streets or taking the subway, and yet all these millions of diverse people manage to live together in relative peace.

This New Jerusalem shares some of these considerations in common. For example, we are told that there is stream in this city. In the following chapter of Revelation, St. John reports, And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. These fruits and this stream symbolize the fulfillment of all human longing. No longer will there be the numbing pain of empty stomachs or parched throats. The cycle of hunger, hunt, and satiation will have an end because we will no longer be subject to these bodily needs and will know the ultimate satiation of joy in the Lord. Similarly, though there will not be in this city the clamor of ambition and greed, there will be a kind of commerce. Again, we are told that, the gates of the city shall not be shut at all by day. . . And the kings of the earth shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it. There is powerful symbolic value to these images. The glory and honor of the nations are all the good things that human culture has produced that are not in opposition to the one true God or his glory. All that is beautiful, noble and true will find its home and fulfillment in this city because it is the city of God who is himself, Beautiful, Noble, and True, the source of all human good, whether artistic or moral. Finally, this city will be about communion and fellowship. John is told earlier in Revelation that among the citizens of this city, he sees a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues. It is a New York City but with greater diversity and certainly more peace. But the greatest fellowship of this city will not be with humans, but rather with God. Of this city, we are told, Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. The God who is throughout all eternity who does need or want anything, wills to be in communion with us, and has made a way for us to share in that communion through the joining of divine and human natures in the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Mortal human existence has been taken into the godhead to be transfigured and redeemed.

Today, this communion with God and each other is what we celebrate with the baptism of Charlie Belle is just a few moments. The Bible relates how in the fall of human nature, man has sought to live apart from God and from his brothers and sisters. First Adam and Eve choose to decide what was good and evil, and to live by their own light rather than the light of God in an implicit rejection of communion with God. This breakdown in fellowship was succeeded by its fruit: Cain slays his innocent brother Abel. These are the two principal human lies documented in these opening chapters of Genesis: first the lie we tell ourselves when we say we don't need God, and then, the other lie we tell ourselves when we say that we don't need our brothers and sisters. If you're looking at your fellow human being and saying I don't need or want you, this is more the spirit of Adam than the spirit of the new Adam, our Lord Jesus. Today, we commit Charlie Belle to this communion with God, knowing that today she receives the greatest gift she will ever receive: the Holy Spirit, communion with the body of Christ here on earth, and a place in that heavenly city, New Jerusalem. Thanks be to God. 

Easter Sunday Sermon

My seed shall serve him : they shall be counted unto the Lord for a generation. They shall come, and the heavens shall declare his righteousness : unto a people that shall be born, whom the Lord hath made.
                                                            - Psalm 22:32-33

My text for this Easter Sunday is from the 22nd Psalm. In Matthew's and Mark's Gospels, our Lord's last words from the cross are, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me. They are a cry in the agony and torment of physical pain that is involved with execution on a cross, but Our Lord was also bearing the sins of the whole world. I like the illustration of a sin being like a brick—because we all know sin is a burden that weighs down our spirits. Imagine the weight of all of your sins and my sins and the sins of the whole world which our Lord took as his own on the cross. In those last words, Jesus was also quoting the opening verse of Psalm 22, which was read here on Thursday night at our Maundy Thursday service. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? It is a Psalm that describes great human suffering as the speaker wrestles with God over the trials he is enduring, but at the end of the Psalm it turns into a song of triumph, as the Psalmist sees the victory of God. He says that, no man hath quickened his own soul—in other words, no one has made himself alive again by his own power. And for Christians, we hear in these words again the voice of our Lord. Jesus did not make himself alive again: he was raised miraculously from death by the power of God and working of the Holy Spirit. The Psalm finally concludes with these words, My seed shall serve him (that is, the Lord): they shall be counted unto the Lord for a generation. The Psalmist has gone through tremendous suffering, and has seen his soul quickened not through his own power, but the Lord's, and now he sees his posterity, those who come after him, will be a generation of people who will serve the Lord in righteousness. We celebrate our Lord's death not because it is an instance of unjust suffering, but because there is something good about Good Friday. Out of the side of the reposing Adam, the Lord God took a rib and made the woman. Out of the wounded side of our Lord flowed both blood and water, and the Church is born about of this wounded side. The church is supposed to be the seed, a generation that serve the Lord in righteousness. We, as Christians and as the Church, are engendered to new life by his passion, death, and resurrection. We are his seed, to use the word of the Psalmist, and we are called to be as a generation of faithful souls to the Lord.

This is the idea behind the Epistle this morning. If Christ is truly raised, you are raised with him. Do not focus on earthly externals, but on eternal and abiding truth. We are exhorted by Paul to mortify, to kill, the sin within us that we might live with Christ. And this is what we celebrate this morning. Easter and the resurrection of our Lord is not just remembering an historical event—although it is critical to our faith that we are talking about things that actually happened—but the reason why we gather and celebrate our Lord's resurrection this Sunday and every Sunday is because his resurrection is the power by which our lives can be transformed.

You know, there are a lot of reality shows on television about transformation: someone is going to come in makeover your home, or your physical looks, or even your wardrobe. The problem with these shows, and of our collective appetite for them, is that they are trying to fix internal, spiritual maladies with external changes. The philosophers of long ago observed that simply moving to another place, if you're an unhappy person, won't make you happy; simply changing some external part of your life, won't bring lasting happiness. External changes don't fix internal wounds and maladies.

In the same way, Christianity is not just a set of external actions: go to church, do certain religious activities, refrain from this and that. Rather, Christianity proclaims an inward transformation—a transformation not effected by your own strength and effort—no man hath quickened his own soul—but a transformation that is an internal resurrection. God wants to change our attitudes, affections, and desires, which without him are warped, inordinate, and tyrannical. He wants to put into our mind good desires and give us the grace to act on them, to paraphrase the Collect for Easter. So, the question is do you want to know Christ, and the power of his resurrection? Are you willing to open the door of your heart so that he might come in and renew and transform you? This isn't self-help and it isn't a makeover of the old you. As Paul writes, ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God; when Christ who is your life shall be revealed, ye also shall appear with him in glory.

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.