“I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you…” (1 Cor. 11:23).

In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Maundy Thursday is the entry point to the sacred Triduum of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, the holy days that draw us toward the celebration of the resurrection on Easter Day. It has two main themes: the institution of the Lord’s Supper, emphasized in the reading from First Corinthians, and the obligation of humility, emphasized in the Gospel of John, where the call to humility is exemplified in the washing of feet as a sign-act illustrating the new commandment that we love one another.

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

This commandment becomes a core teaching and central aspect of the identity of the early Christian community, and it is illustrated in the practice of foot-washing, which is attested in many places, though not uniformly observed. And, of course, it is a sign of what is supposed to be universally observed, which is not the washing of feet, but the love that Christians are to have for one another. This love for one another fulfills Christ's new commandment. And in doing so, it draws us deeper into the great commandment itself: to love God and our neighbors.

This teaching has to be passed on, and it is a teaching that can only be passed on through a combination of both teaching and instruction in a historical sense, hence the reading of Scripture and the significance of preaching, but it is also a core aspect of identity that has to be lived out through action. The washing of feet is an illustration. But if all we do is wash feet as a liturgical act, and it does not touch our daily lives, and we do not actually live out the new commandment that Christ gave, then it is not serving its purpose.

“For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you,” Paul writes before recounting the institution of the Lord’s Supper and summarizing its significance (1 Cor. 11:23). This line is, and should be, significant for all Christians, because what are we called to, if not to hand on to others what we have received from the Lord? To share with others the forgiveness that we have experienced in Jesus, to share with others the love that we have known in Christ, to share with others the knowledge of God’s love enfleshed in Jesus.

“For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you…”

We are, all of us, as Christians, called to preach the gospel with words and with actions, to share the good news, to be able to give a reason for the joy that is within us, and to imitate our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in our manner of life and way of being.

“For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you…”

This sentiment should be especially compelling and significant for the ordained. James reminds us in his letter that not many should seek to be teachers, for they will be judged more strictly (cf. James 3:1). James’s warning reminds us of the gravity of this calling. Those whom God calls to teach are charged with handing on what they have received with particular faithfulness — an exemplification of the way all Christians ought to pass on the love received in Jesus, the salvation found in Christ, and the good news of God’s mighty acts, which we recount this week and on Sunday.

But the ordained have a particular calling. For the deacon, the emphasis is on embodying the new commandment to love through service. This emphasis is then carried into the work and life of a priest, who, in our tradition, is first ordained as a deacon and then as a presbyter. To this life of service—which exemplifies adherence to the new commandment by serving others in a loving and faithful way—is added the distinctive characteristic of the priesthood as elder: the guardianship and stewardship of the tradition. This responsibility is both sacramental, which is why we reserve the administration of the Eucharist to priests and bishops, and instructional, as it is the responsibility of the priest, the presbyter of the community, to form Christians in the faith day-to-day and week-to-week.

This role is once again intensified in the life and work of a bishop, for whom guardianship takes a more central place as part of oversight, and the authority to teach and interpret Scripture within the community, and for its well-being, is a particular task to which the bishop is called.

So again, we should all be able to say, “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you.” We should all be able to say that and look at our lives as Christians, seeing the ways in which we have handed on to others what we have received from the Lord. This is a communal responsibility, and Maundy Thursday reminds us of just how much we have received from Christ, and gives us the opportunity to be reminded through Scripture readings, through the act of washing of feet, where that is observed, what it means to be a follower of Christ and a servant of our fellow human beings and children of God.

Today, I encourage you to consider the commandment that Christ gave, the new commandment: “that you love one another, just as I have loved you” (John 13:34). Just as Christ has loved us, we should love one another.

Have we handed on to others the love we received in Jesus? Have we offered others the acceptance that we found in Christ? Have we, through our life, example, faith, and daily dealings, handed on all the good we’ve received in Christ?

This is something for us to examine. But I would suggest, brothers and sisters, that if this were not at all the case, none of us would be here. If this were not at all the case, if there had not been people faithfully handing these things on to us, and if we had not handed these things on to others, there would be no community that would gather at a Maundy Thursday service or tomorrow’s Good Friday observance.

If no one had handed on what they received, then there would be no celebration of the Easter service on Sunday. But, not to spoil anything—there will be.

So yes, we are called to be more faithful, more diligent—but we will never do that if we neglect the evidence of Christ’s work that has already borne fruit in our lives. We should give thanks for it. For the people who have handed this faith on to us. Think for a moment: Who has shown you the love of God? Remember them. Give thanks for them. When you receive communion today, or at other times, consider that discerning the body, recognizing the presence of Christ, also means recognizing the other members of Christ’s body, the very people that we come to the table with, and those who’ve made it possible for us to gather round the altar, whether they are physically present or not.

For what we have received from the Lord, we also hand on: in bread and wine, in the foot-washing, in kindness and love offered to fellow Christians, to neighbors, even to enemies. This is what it means to follow Jesus tonight, tomorrow, and always. Amen.

Recently, I was asked to select a reading from the tradition for an Evensong service, and I had the opportunity to share it as part of the liturgy. My Latin has always been fairly elementary, and through lack of use, it has become even more rudimentary. Even so, I find myself returning to it from time to time, if only for the quiet discipline of working slowly through a text.

For this occasion, I selected a portion of Augustine of Hippo’s On Catechizing the Uninstructed (Chapter 4.8). Ever since I first encountered this passage, I have been struck by its central image: Christ, the humble God. It is an image that holds together what we naturally seek to separate. Rather than something abstract or distant, God’s love is embodied, enacted, and offered to us collectively and to each of us individually.

In Christ, that love is enfleshed. He moves into the center of our human world, accompanies us, and in the end bears the full weight of our alienation from God and one another. In that climactic moment, what appears to be defeat is revealed as the very means of our salvation and reconciliation: a pathway opened, here and now, and carried forward into the fullness of God’s future, which is now also our future.

I do not know a more fitting image as we enter Holy Week than this—Christ’s humility and love intertwined.

What follows is my own translation of that passage, offered not as an expert rendering, but as an act of attention and gratitude. It is, perhaps, a small way of listening again to a voice that continues to speak with clarity into the life of the Church.

May the love of God, made known in Christ, be revealed to us all in new and deepening ways this Holy Week.

Translation:

Therefore, if Christ came especially for this: that humanity might know how much God loves them, and that, knowing this, they might be set ablaze in love for the One by whom they were first loved, and might love their neighbor as Christ commands and demonstrates—he who, by loving not one who was near but one far off and wandering, became neighbor himself—then all holy Scripture written beforehand announced the coming of the Lord, and whatever has since been written with divine authority proclaims Christ and urges love. It is clear that the whole Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments: the love of God and the love of neighbor; and not only these, but whatever has been written later for our good likewise proclaims Christ and exhorts love.

For, in the Old Testament, the New is hid; in the New Testament, the Old is revealed. According to that hiddenness, those who understand only in a fleshly way are subject to punishing fear. According to this revelation, the spiritual—those who knocked in humility then, and had even what was hidden opened to them, and those now who do not seek in pride, lest even what is open be closed—understanding spiritually, are set free by the gift of love.

For nothing is more opposed to love than envy, and the root of envy is pride. Therefore, the same Lord Jesus Christ, God and man, is both the sign of God’s love for us and the example of human humility among us, so that our great swelling might be healed by a greater and contrary remedy.

For great is the misery of the proud, but greater still the mercy of the humble God.

Therefore, with this love set before you as your end, to which you refer everything you say, whatever you proclaim, speak it in such a way that the one who hears you may, in hearing, believe; in believing, hope; and in hoping, love.1

A few thoughts regarding some parts of the translation. I nearly used a few compound words to try to get at some sense of the Latin that English doesn’t convey well in one word, or because translation loses the word-play. In the sentence “Si ergo maxime propterea Christus advenit, ut cognosceret homo quantum eum diligat Deus” rather than “loves” I considered using the term “lovingly regards” so that it would be “so that humanity might know how much God lovingly regards them.”

The most obvious question was whether to stick with “man” for the translation of homo. Given the context where I will be reading this, I opted to go for humanity and use a singular they (I know, I know). I considered “person” but thought it brought too much theological baggage related to God (divine persons, etc.) as well as humankind or human being. In the end, I thought humanity preserved some simplicity.

For the phrase “For great is the misery of the proud [man/human], but greater still the mercy of the humble God.” in Latin “Magna est enim miseria, superbus homo: sed major misericordia, humilis Deus” there’s wordplay between misery (miseria) and mercy (misericorda). Misery and mercy in English aren’t etymologically related, as mercy comes from the Anglo-Norman merci, deriving from classical Latin’s fee, wages, or price, and in post-classical Latin, “gift” (which may be why it takes on its current meaning and comes to translate misericordia). Despite that, they have a similar sound in English, and I thought that was better than trying to use some sort of compound words to hammer home a relationship that I think readers/listeners can get to just fine without the explicit wordplay. I considered “seeking-misery” and “loving-mercy” but thought they clouded more than they revealed.

From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Sermon:

May the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

Not long ago, I took my sons to breakfast at the Waffle House, and it was my younger son’s birthday. As we got close to the end of the meal, he shared with the server that it was his 11th birthday, and she congratulated him there at the table, but then she stepped back and said, “Hey, everybody, this is his 11th birthday!” Spontaneously, the entire restaurant cheered and clapped, and it simply delighted both my sons, but especially my younger son, to have such a display of enthusiasm and joy for his birthday.

In our reading from Second Corinthians, Paul is writing to the Corinthians, and it is almost impossible not to sense the joy that’s coming through as he writes about the reconciliation wrought by Jesus and this new creation. “If anyone is in Christ, new creation” — it’s like it’s pulled out of him. He can’t help but say it. Paul is enthusiastic about this. He is celebratory, and he’s inviting us — he’s inviting you and me — to be part of this celebration. In fact, we are called, he says, to be ambassadors of Christ, to be the ones who go out and share the reality and the truth of this reconciliation with others. We’re called to celebrate and invite people in to something in which they already are participants and yet don’t know.

But how can we be ambassadors of the new creation when there are so many things about our lives and about our society which seem to be evidence against the reality of the reconciliation of humanity with one another and with God? How do we do that? This world is full of what you might call contrary evidence.

I’ll give you an example. This was also at a Waffle House. I went to a Waffle House near my work one morning, and I was by myself. I was sitting at the tall counter, and the cook and one of the servers were having a conversation. It became clear very quickly that they were talking about a third employee who wasn’t there at the time but was coming in later. The server mentioned this person to the cook, and he just went on a tear about this young woman who wasn’t there. He started talking about how — well, you know — “Obviously I know she’s supposed to be in recovery, but you’ve seen her. She’s all padded up. How is she ever going to accomplish the things that she hopes to accomplish? She’s never going to get custody of her child again.” It just went on and on for about five minutes, almost, and the server, who had mentioned something to him, had just been sort of standing there and didn’t really know how to respond.

Then I heard the door open, and it closed, and I heard the server, in a sort of awkward way, say, “Oh, hi.” It turned out it was the young woman that they had been talking about. The cook in particular had seen that woman through human eyes — through eyes of the flesh — and he had heaped judgment upon her and had constrained her possibilities in his own mind. Now, when she came in, he did greet her, and then he turned to go back to his work. He didn’t say any of those things to her face, which honestly almost made it worse. Perhaps it did make it worse.

It is all too easy to see people from a human perspective. Paul wants us to celebrate. Paul wants us to testify to the new creation, and it may be that in order for us to testify to it, we first have to understand what it is we’re testifying to. What is it that is so powerful about this? What is it that elicits this exclamation from Paul — “new creation”?

I would suggest to you that it is the fact that God in Christ has unilaterally declared peace and put an end to the enmity between humanity and God, which was always one-sided, and put an end to the enmity between humanity. This is something to celebrate. It’s something to testify to. It’s something to invite people into.

Paul’s understanding, I believe, is that this is something available to all people. This particular passage, where Paul says “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation” — I believe this is one of those times where there are multiple meanings to this text. If any one person is in Christ, they are a new creation. If any one person is in Christ, they testify to the reality of the new creation in which we all participate. If anyone is in Christ, then they themselves participate in a new creation that all are called to participate in. Various translations back this up — some talk about “if someone” or “if a man is in Christ, he is a new creation”; others talk about “if anyone is in Christ, then there is a new creation.” They testify to the new creation. You can see this diversity of meaning in the diversity of translation, but all of these are getting at Paul’s true meaning. It’s not just one — it’s all of them — because each of these things is true, and we are to be ambassadors of this.

But how can we be ambassadors of this if we see people heaping judgment on others, constraining the possibilities of other people, assuming the worst? How can we be ambassadors of hope in a world that too often lingers in the hopeless?

I have a third story from Waffle House to complete the triptych. A number of years ago — it was still on the heels of the Black Lives Matter protests; we had just been able to start going out to restaurants again — I’d taken my sons to a Waffle House again to have breakfast. I was getting up to pay, and in front of me in line was a Black man, probably in his mid- to late twenties, and he had a young girl with him, maybe three years old. He was paying for their meal, and as the server at the register rang them up, she said, “How was everything?” He responded, “Very good.” Then he leaned down to his daughter — she was smiling and jumping around — and he said, “Can you tell the nice lady thank you for taking care of us?” Which the little girl did.

Then something else happened. In order for you to understand this, you have to know that when I was standing at the register, if I looked to my right, over in the corner at the low bar, there was an older couple, perhaps in their seventies. The man was a bit older than the woman. He was in a wheelchair and had a Vietnam veteran cap on. I don’t know what their story was, but the little snippets that I caught as my sons and I were eating let me know that, in spite of the fact that they were very jovial and interacting with the staff, they were having some difficult times.

So the young man in front of me leaned forward to the woman at the register and said, “Excuse me, ma’am, I would like to pay for their meal.” She said, “Okay, let me get their ticket.” She got their ticket, rang it up, and he paid. He and his daughter left the restaurant, and so I got to be there, as I was waiting to pay, to see the server walk over to the older couple. When they asked for their check, she said, “It’s been taken care of.” I saw the surprise on their faces. The man sort of laughed and shook his head, and his wife teared up.

Now, what made this interaction all the more powerful is that this man and this woman were white, and this young man who had paid for their meal was Black, and it was in the context of a time in which we were — as we still are — wrestling with issues of race and discrimination in our country. I have no idea what may have motivated that young man. I don’t know what his faith background may have been. I don’t know if he was a veteran or if he had family members who were veterans. I don’t know if maybe he was just being kind. But regardless, he saw something. He saw an opportunity for kindness.

So, what are we to do in a world where there’s so much evidence built up against the reality of reconciliation, so much evidence against the reality of a new creation? How are we ambassadors? How are we to invite people to participate?

Well, the thing about being an ambassador is you’ve got to know a little bit about your country. The thing about being an ambassador is you’ve got to be able to interpret to other people. The thing about being an ambassador is you have to invite people to come and take part and experience something new so that they can know it themselves.

So our job as ambassadors is to point to the signs that we see, to point to the evidence of the kingdom — those moments of kindness. Now, here’s the thing. Some people might say that the Spirit only works in believers to do these things, but I’m going to say to you that no, the Spirit blows where the Spirit wills, and God works through all people in all places. Our first task is to look around. If we’re to be ambassadors, our first task is to look around and to see where God is already active.

And then, if we’re to be ambassadors for the kingdom, if we’re to be ambassadors for Christ, we are the ones who are called to interpret the signs. We are the ones who are called to share with other people what it means for there to be kindness in a world where really it sometimes appears that there can’t be — or shouldn’t be — any more kindness. We are, in other words, the ones who share the good news of the reconciliation of all people to God in Christ, and we’re the ones who share the evidence. And we rejoice in every example — like that server and the breakfast on my son’s birthday. We are called to announce the reality. We are called to announce the need for celebration. We may just be surprised how people will respond.

If anyone is in Christ — new creation! Amen.

To view the service, check out Trinity’s YouTube channel.

May the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

It is football season in the South, and it’s a good year for fans of college football in Tennessee—two top-25 ranked teams, Vanderbilt and Tennessee. Vanderbilt beat LSU yesterday, and some people have already celebrated that this morning. Regardless of what happened between Tennessee and Alabama, Tennessee will probably remain a ranked team.

Even though I played football throughout my childhood, I don’t have a team I root for. I like to watch because I enjoy the strategy. My university didn’t have a football team, but when I went to Sewanee—the University of the South and the School of Theology—it didn’t take long for me to hear a story many of you may know: the story of the 1899 Sewanee Tigers, known as the Iron Men.

Sewanee was one of the founding institutions of the predecessor to the Southeastern Conference, and that 1899 football team was famous for a ten-day journey in which they defeated five teams in six days, all by shutout. They beat Texas, Texas A&M, Tulane, Ole Miss, and LSU—and as the story goes, they rested on the seventh day.

It’s been a long time since Sewanee could say anything like that against teams of that size, but back then, the playing field was more even. One of the players on that team was William Sterling Claiborne, who later became Archdeacon of East Tennessee and was instrumental in overseeing and supporting various mission churches—seventeen of them by 1930—supported by what was then Otey Parish, now St. Mark and St. Paul. Many of those congregations still exist in the Sewanee area. He was very much an exemplar of that late-19th- and early-20th-century movement known as muscular Christianity, which also gave us the YMCA and YWCA.

The team was called the Iron Men because they played both offense and defense. They didn’t substitute players. That’s something rarely seen today—usually only when a team has too many injuries to field a full squad or when they’re playing a stronger opponent and want to give themselves a chance by using their best athletes on both sides of the ball. It’s a gamble: can you do enough before you wear out?

You can probably think of times in your life when, if life were a game of football, you felt like you were playing on both offense and defense, with no subs, and maybe even that the refs were out to get you. Imagine then if the referee were not just inept but actually out to get you—odds stacked against you, weary and worn out. In that kind of situation, what a relief it would be to hear another phrase sometimes used about players on a team: “They were all over the field.”

Someone who’s everywhere at once, doing everything.

The hope for us is that God is all over the field in our lives when we face difficulties. And that, I believe, is the message of the parable Jesus tells today.

The Parable of the Widow and the Judge

Luke sets it up for us: Jesus told his disciples a parable “about the need to pray always and not lose heart.” Yet this parable about prayer contains two striking absences. We never hear that the widow prays, and the only reference to God is an unjust judge who “does not fear God.”

So why does Jesus tell us this story about a poor widow under such strain? She’s speaking for herself in the courts—going to the gate of the city. This indicates she has no male relative to stand for her, no brother, son, or nephew. It’s even possible the person she’s seeking justice against is a male relative. She has no advocate, so she goes to the only place she can—the judge—and she goes again and again.

She goes, and he denies her. She goes again, and he denies her.

We know from the start that this is an unjust judge, because he neither fears God nor respects people. That description alone would have told Jesus’ audience that he was a bad judge. In Scripture, the two essential qualifications for a good judge are precisely those: to fear God and to care for people.

Justice, in the biblical sense, requires attention to particular cases and circumstances. There’s even a term from Greek philosophy for this: epieikeia—reasonableness or fittingness. True justice can’t be achieved by applying laws abstractly; it must take account of real people and real situations.

This judge fails completely. Yet the widow persists. She continues to seek what is rightfully hers until she wears him down. Eventually, he relents—not because he’s just, but because she’s relentless.

As Jesus says, the unjust judge relents—she wears him down. In the end, he’s afraid she might come and “give him a black eye.” That’s the literal reading, and just as in English, it has a double meaning. It could mean he’s literally afraid she’ll strike him, or more likely that she’ll damage his reputation. The one thing he cares about—himself—is now at risk because of her persistence, and that’s what finally moves him.

Where God Is Found

Where is God in all this? And where is prayer?

Prayer is found first in the widow’s persistence—the energy and determination that keep her from losing heart. Prayer empowers us in the face of daunting odds. And prayer is not something we generate on our own. It is something God does in us through the power of the Holy Spirit. God inspires prayer—literally breathes it in us. Prayer sustains and directs us, keeps us from despairing, and enables us to do what needs to be done.

Prayer is also present in the parable through the widow’s actions. St. Bonaventure, the medieval theologian, wrote that to “pray always” means prayer of desire in the heart, prayer of petition on the lips, and prayer of disposition in our work and actions. The widow’s desire for justice is prayer in her heart; her appeal to the judge is prayer on her lips; and her persistence in returning again and again is prayer in her actions.

So prayer is there, and God is there.

Sometimes people read this story and wonder where God is in it, but Jesus himself is the one telling the parable—God in the flesh. He sees the plight of people like this widow. He uses her story as an example of faithfulness and persistence. “Look at this widow’s faithfulness,” he’s saying. “She acts despite the odds. You must pray like this if you are not to lose heart.”

This parable comes in response to the disciples’ question about when the Son of Man will come. Jesus’ answer is clear: if you are going to follow me, be faithful. Trust that God is far better than this unjust judge.

It’s what theologians call an argument from lesser to greater: if even the unjust judge eventually relents, how much more will God, who loves us, give what we need?

God is present in the telling of the parable, in the inspiration of the widow’s persistence, and as the ultimate judge who will set things right. While the unjust judge may not fear God, everyone hearing Jesus’ words would know that God will set things right. The Son of Man will return; the question is not if, but when.

And Jesus’ final question lingers: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

Will there be people like this persistent widow—faithful, enduring, acting for what is right?

Jesus promises that when God acts on behalf of God’s people, it will happen swiftly. It may appear that nothing is happening, and then suddenly, God’s justice breaks in. Some translations say “quickly,” but others render it “swiftly” or “suddenly”—a reminder that God’s action may seem delayed and then come all at once.

There is hope for the future, yes—but justice also comes through the persistence of God’s people: thousands of widows seeking justice, thousands more who witness their persistence and join them, who refuse to let the unjust rest. Their faithfulness becomes the instrument of God’s justice.

Faith That Persists

In the end, God is all over the field—in our actions, in our prayers, in our endurance, and in our hope.

So what does this mean for us today? For Trinity Church?

You are in a process of transition. Many of you will be called to new things, to new ministries, to take on new responsibilities. You’ll be doing unfamiliar tasks or engaging familiar ones with renewed purpose. In all of it, prayer must remain central—in your heart through desire, on your lips through petition, and in your work through faithful action.

When Christ returns and asks, “Will I find faith on the earth?”—I trust and believe he will find it here at Trinity. Today, next week, and in the years to come, you will be a faithful people empowered by God.

When we pursue justice, when we act faithfully and prayerfully, we are never alone—because God is all over our lives, and all over the field.

Amen.

Scripture: Acts 9:36-43; Revelation 7:9-17; John 10:22-30

It is good to be with you all here this morning on Good Shepherd Sunday, to be able to reflect on what it means to call Christ the Good Shepherd. I would submit to you, as we begin this reflection, that it means far more than we often consider. That we call Christ the Good Shepherd—that we call Christ the Lord—these titles are bound up together. In fact, Messiah, Lord, Good Shepherd—they all flow into one another. Each of our readings, in their own way, reflects some aspect or lens through which we can come to understand who Jesus is, and who we are because of who Jesus is.

When we look at Acts, we see a witness to what the disciple is to be and how a disciple is to act. When we look to the Gospel of John, we see what Jesus’s Messiahship entails. And when we look to Revelation, we see Jesus’s identity presented clearly and repeatedly through powerful imagery. In all three texts, we find a testimony to the hope that is ours through faith in Christ.

Years ago—more years than I care to count—I was an undergraduate and heard a lecture by Dr. Michael Budde entitled Jesus on the Job: The Corporate Exploitation of Religion.1 His thesis was an interesting one. He argued that advertising companies and others actually benefit from our "post-Christendom" culture: the general disaffiliation of people from the Church. We are far enough removed from the Church that most people no longer have deep formation in it, yet close enough that religious language and imagery still hold resonance.

And here was the key insight: people are familiar enough with the imagery to find it meaningful, but not formed enough in the faith to recognize blasphemy when they see it. So the culture is ripe for the misapplication of Christian imagery, faith language, and symbolism. This matters because many of us, even within the Church, unknowingly absorb these misuses of faith. We may mistake charisma for authority or equate moralism with the Gospel.

Now, Budde was naming something about our culture, but I think what he was really pointing to is a misuse of faith and of God that has always been present, across times and places. Here’s what I mean: whether we're talking about spiritual leaders, political leaders, family leaders, or institutional authorities, there are always people who will presume for themselves the kind of loyalty, authority, and status that rightly belongs only to God.

So I want to lift up two phrases from our readings today—two that I hope you’ll carry with you. First, from Revelation: "Salvation belongs to our God” (Revelation 7:10). And second, from the Gospel: "No one can take them from my hand” (John 10:28). These two declarations—That God alone is Savior, and Jesus never loses what the Father has given him—give us the foundation for understanding faithful leadership and discipleship.

These declarations guide us as we consider leadership in all its forms—spiritual, political, and familial. In each of these situations, people should not present themselves in such a way that they have somehow presumed the place of God. In other words, they should not be saying something that sounds like, “I am your salvation. I am the one that you should listen to.”

Now, that doesn’t mean there aren’t people with authority. Obviously, Scripture tells us we should show respect to our parents and to those in positions of leadership. But here’s the key: if someone is standing in my position and they say something like, “Trust me; I know what’s best,” and they’re not pointing you to Jesus, they’re aggrandizing themselves. They’re lifting themselves up.

If someone is standing in another place of authority and they’re saying you should give them the sort of obedience that belongs rightly only to God, or if they’re saying that their ideology or their perspective is where you’re going to find salvation—in other words, if anyone in any place is telling you that your salvation depends upon obedience to them rather than faithful obedience to God—they’re misleading you. That’s not the voice of a shepherd, but of someone attempting to take the Shepherd’s place.

We are given the gift of discernment to recognize the difference between good shepherds and false ones. Scripture teaches us this. In the Old Testament, “shepherd” is often royal language—kings were meant to be shepherds of the people. Later, this image extends to prophets and priests. But predominantly, “shepherd” means “king.” What’s fascinating in the New Testament is that this kingly image is redefined. The King is also the Servant. The Shepherd is the one who lays down his life.

Christian leadership—whether in the Church or outside of it—must take the form of service. Those who would lead must love. We are called, in every part of our lives, to identify with and imitate Jesus.

We see this in Acts, where Peter visits the grieving community after the death of Tabitha, a beloved disciple. There’s no indication that they expected him to raise her. They just hoped he would come and comfort them. This was a pastoral call. But Peter, imitating Christ, goes into the room and, in a scene that closely echoes Jesus’s raising of Jairus’s daughter, he tells her to arise. In Acts, we're told that Peter says, "Tabitha, get up” (Acts 9:40)—words that closely echo Jesus’s command in Luke: "Talitha koum” (Luke 8:54) ("Little girl, get up"). The resonance is not accidental. “Tabitha, get up…” Tabitha koum. Do you hear it? Tabitha, Talitha? Luke, the author of both accounts, invites us to hear Peter’s ministry as an echo of Christ’s own—right down to the syllables.

This is what it means to follow Jesus: to imitate him. And through that imitation, wonders can happen—not because of our power, but through God’s. People ought to be able to tell where we are taking our direction—from whom we are receiving our voice and values.

In John’s Gospel, we see another dynamic of Messiahship. Jesus is confronted at Solomon’s Portico and asked plainly, “Are you the Messiah?” And he essentially says, “I’ve already told you—but you cannot believe because you are not of my sheep.” It’s a matter not of clarity, but of recognition. For John, faith is not first about intellectual assent; it’s about following. Faith leads to understanding, not the other way around.

Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice, and they follow me (John 10:27).” To follow Jesus is to live like him, to walk his path. Think of John 14:6: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6). Jesus is not just the truth to be believed; he is the way to be walked. Discipleship is about behavior as well as belief.

When people say the Jews of Jesus’s day were expecting a “political” Messiah, they are partly right—but what they mean is a military leader who would overthrow Rome. Jesus is political, but in a radically different way. He fulfills the vision of Isaiah 11, where the Messiah from Jesse’s line will judge not by what he sees or hears, but with righteousness and equity: "He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth (Isaiah 11:3–4)."

The hope of Isaiah—and of the entire prophetic tradition—is that God himself will shepherd his people. God will not abandon us to merely human rulers. The critiques of bad shepherds in the prophets all build toward this climax: God will be the Shepherd. And in Jesus, God is the Shepherd. The Good Shepherd.

The Good Shepherd brings the flock together—a great multitude as we see in Revelation. The shepherds condemned by Scripture are precisely those leaders who seek to bolster their own authority by dividing people and alienating us from one another. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, operates differently, and so should we.

Revelation brings this into sharp relief with its layered imagery: God on the throne. Then the Lamb, the Shepherd, at the center of the throne. One throne. One God. And Jesus—fully God—is the Shepherd who saves. He is priest, sacrifice, and Savior.

And so, the message for us today is this: if our leaders lead with humility, if we ourselves act in ways consistent with the behavior of Jesus, we are on the right path. But when someone demands a kind of obedience or allegiance that places themselves at the center, that divides people while aggrandizing themselves, that should be a red flag.

Salvation belongs to our God (Revelation 7:10). That is both a word of warning and a word of hope. Because salvation belongs to God in Christ, it has been given to you and to me. And as Jesus says: "No one can snatch them out of my hand." No one can take us from him.

Amen.

Additions to Esther (Apocrypha) 14:1-14

Psalm 138

Matthew 7:7-12

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

I've been thinking a lot recently, about love of neighbor, and about love of enemy. As one commentator put it, the two are often the same. Love of enemy, is actually an expansion and commentary on love of neighbor. And in looking at our Gospel texts today, Jesus here is making a traditional argument from lesser to greater: if you who are evil, if you who are imperfect, if you who are sinful, desire good things for your children then how much more will the good Lord, how much more does God, how much more will God, deliver good things to God's children?

And then we come to this golden rule. Jesus' summary of ethical teaching: in everything, do to others, as you would have them do to you, for this is the law and the prophets. So of course, this is Jesus summing up his own summary of the law, to love God and to love one's neighbor. And then now he's summing it up, again, an even shorter, more concise way to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And I would argue that that positive statement also includes within itself, the negative portion, or the corollary of that, which is, do not do to others that which you would not want done to you.

I think we're living in a time right now, where we look around the world, there are a lot of things happening--There's a lot of cruelty being exhibited. There's a lot of inhumanity and plain evil being visited upon others by people. And in this time, it seems that we all need to be reminded of both aspects of each of these things: that love of neighbor includes love of enemies, and that doing unto others as we would have them do unto us, also implies not doing the other foot we would not want done to ourselves. Jesus empowers us, I believe, to become able to keep these teachings. Sometimes I think our preaching can slip into a sort of moralism that says, go forth and do these things that are righteous, you who are righteous. And yet it is only through Christ, that we're righteous and it's only through Christ, that we're able to do these things. And I know in myself, the times where I have felt myself stretched to love another. I pray that we would be a people that is open to that sort of stretching, and is open to following Christ. And that we would challenge one another and our leaders to be stretched in loving others. Amen.

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.”

It is a little-known fact that Jesus spoke these words to the disciples shortly after delivering a rather long and philosophically intense Trinity Sunday sermon.

Well, actually, what Jesus was doing was preparing the disciples for what was to come.

We ourselves are here today on Trinity Sunday, one of the principal feasts of the Christian year. Some have said that it is unique among the principal feasts in that it is a feast set aside to celebrate a doctrine rather than an event, or, as in the case of All Saints, particular saints of the faith.

I would push back against that a little and say that, in reality, both the doctrine and the feast of Trinity Sunday are meant to celebrate and direct us toward the revelation of God’s divine identity. That matters because it reveals that God’s identity is historical, personal, and hopeful.

It is historical in the sense that God interacts with God’s people through history. It is personal in the sense that God is the community of three persons, one of whom we encounter in the person of Jesus Christ. And it is hopeful because, when we come to know God as revealed in Jesus Christ, it becomes the foundation of an unfathomable amount of hope.

So here we are on Trinity Sunday, and our Gospel text is actually a good introduction to what it means to talk about God as a community of three persons. We see all three persons of the Trinity recognized and active in Jesus’ words to the disciples.

Jesus begins by recognizing that they have not yet been able to understand all of his teaching. While there are many more things they need to come to understand, they will not be able to comprehend or receive those teachings before Jesus goes to the cross. They will not yet understand the importance of what Jesus has already been teaching them before Christ is glorified and ascends.

In fact, there will continue to be more things for Jesus’ disciples—for the Church—not only then, but even down to us today, to come to understand.

That is what this text from the Gospel of John is about. Jesus recognizes that the disciples could not yet receive the fullness of divine truth, that this truth would need to be revealed to the community over the course of time, and that there is a consistency and unity between the teaching of Jesus in his earthly ministry, the will of the Father who sent him, and what the Holy Spirit will proclaim in the future.

There is consistency and unity because, as Jesus says, the Holy Spirit will take what belongs to him and proclaim it. All that Jesus has belongs to the Father, and all that the Father has belongs to Jesus the Son. There is unity. There is a community working together in unity.

So the Trinity as a doctrine is a wonderful example of exactly what Jesus was talking about in the Gospel text: a truth that would need to unfold and be revealed over the course of time and history.

Sometimes we get bogged down in the idea of the Trinity. There is an old joke that rectors are prone to invite seminarians or new curates to preach on Trinity Sunday. It is easy to get bogged down in the doctrine.

I think one reason for that is that we have a tendency to look at the doctrine from above. In other words, we treat the doctrine of the Trinity as though it were intended to answer the question, “Who is God?”

But in reality, the doctrine of the Trinity was not constructed from above. It emerged from the community of the early Church, and it was not originally an answer to the question, “Who is God?” Rather, it was an answer to the question, “How can Jesus, whom we know to be God, be God?”

The truth that Jesus is God in the flesh came to be celebrated in hymnody, prayer, and action before it was understood in a theological or philosophical way. Over the course of centuries, the Church worked out the theological and philosophical underpinnings of what it had been experiencing from the beginning—from the moment Thomas said, “My Lord and my God,” and from the time the early Church replaced the name of God from the Old Testament with the name of Jesus in its hymns, elevating Jesus and recognizing his status as God in the flesh.

So the reasoning began with experience. The Church said, “We know Jesus is God, and we know that in Jesus we have seen God. How can this be the case?”

Our Gospel text highlights an aspect of the Trinity that is sometimes described with a Greek term meaning “moving around,” or even “dancing.” It expresses the idea that the persons of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—move into and out of one another, surround one another, without overwhelming or erasing one another: perfect unity, perfect love, perfect relationship.

This is an example for us because we are brought into the community of divine life as those for whom Jesus died.

There is also a Latin term I want to use because its literal translation is an image I want to leave you with. The word is circumincessio—or, in its anglicized form, circumincession. It simply means “to move around” or “to walk around.”

That was one description of the divine life: the persons of the Trinity moving into and out of one another in perfect relationship.

But we can expand the image further. Think about the beginning of John’s Gospel: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Literally, “pitched his tent among us.” God walking around in the person of Jesus Christ.

So the Trinity is historical.

It bears some relationship to other ways of naming God that we hear in Scripture. Think about one of the most common names for God in the Old Testament: “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” It is a name that stems from story and relationship. It is historical because, when people hear “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” they know what that refers to. They know what God has done in the past, and therefore they understand the sorts of things God will do in the future.

This God is not only the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but also the God of Hagar, who named him “the God who sees.”

So we have these names of God, and the Trinity is another way of doing this.

The creeds themselves are Trinitarian in structure. At the eight o’clock service we read the Nicene Creed, as we usually do. Today, because there is a baptism, we will use a form of the Apostles’ Creed in call-and-response format. Both are structured around God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

The Nicene Creed, in particular, is also historical because it deals with specific moments in history and references specific people. It names the divine persons and Jesus, the human and divine person, but it also names two human beings by way of contrast: the Blessed Virgin Mary, who said yes to God, and Pontius Pilate, who represents those who say no to God.

The Creed itself tells the story.

The names of God are always tied to the experience of the people of God and to God’s revelation to God’s people.

One of my favorite ways of talking about who God is comes from the theologian Robert Jenson, who referred to God as “the one who raised Jesus Christ from the dead, having first raised Israel out of Egypt.” I think that is one of the most concise ways to describe both the historical and personal nature of who our God is.

You can narrow it down even further to the statement with which I opened the sermon: “In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

In that title there is already a story.

The Father is Father because the Father is named so by the Son. The Son is Son because Jesus claims the name for himself. The Holy Spirit is the one who enables the future of the Father and Son together and enables us to participate in that divine life.

And that is where the hope comes in.

We can be part of the divine life of God. We can have hope and faith and trust in who God is because God has revealed God’s self in a person.

The incomprehensible becomes comprehensible because the incomprehensible becomes relatable in the person of Jesus Christ.

We can understand the love of God for us because we can see the love that Jesus exercised in his earthly ministry and the love Christ calls us to exercise in our communities with one another.

So the Trinity is about community, faith, and hope.

It is not abstract. It is not a generic God we worship. It is not a generic “Fatherhood of God” that we talk about. Rather, it is the specific, historical, and personal nature of God as the one whom Jesus names as Father—not an archetypal divine version of human fatherhood, and certainly not a divine container into which we pour our own understandings of fatherhood.

Instead, it subverts our notions of fatherhood, just as calling Jesus “Lord” subverts our notions of lordship.

It calls us to be different. It calls us to love one another in the way Jesus has demonstrated, and in the way only Jesus can empower us to do through the power and work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, expanding our capacities beyond what they would normally be.

That is what is happening today in these baptisms.

When Evelyn and Maylee are baptized, they will be welcomed into a community: a community Christ has brought into being, a community the Holy Spirit has nurtured, a community intended for love, a community intended to care for others, a community in which the God who walked around in Jesus Christ continues to walk around in the Body of Christ, in the people next to you right now.

These are the people called to profess God as a community of three persons—a community that calls us into communion with God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

If Christ is made the sure foundation, then surely the Trinity is part and parcel of that foundation.

And when we say that God is love, when we call God Jesus, we know what that means and the actions to which we are called.

Amen.

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

“…Be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks” (Luke 12:36).

Today, we celebrate the ordination of a new deacon in Christ’s Holy Church. Another leader called, equipped, and now ordained from the midst of God’s people. Charlie, the ordination you receive today is a gift. Today, when Bishop John lays hands on you and consecrates you as a deacon, he will do so for the Church. Through that apostolic authority, the power of the Holy Spirit indwelling the Church will make you a deacon. You will become part of the order of deacons, and you will bear the responsibilities of the order. And everyone here will be reminded of the gift and the obligations they bear to God and God’s Church.

Our Gospel text gives us a good summary of that obligation: “Be like those who are waiting for their master… so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks.”

This teaching is given to all Christians, but it is a particular call for those who are ordained to aid all Christians in honoring it.

Our orders do not belong to us, even though, to properly exercise them, we must embrace them and let them shape us. In a way, ordination is the simplest thing in the world. So central is it to the exercise of the church’s ministry that, if we didn’t have it, we would have to invent it; someone, after all, must lead services, teach, and preach. In another sense, it is strange. How, to paraphrase Stanley Hauerwas, can an individual be ordained to do what only the whole church can do? Hauerwas was speaking specifically of officiating at the Holy Eucharist, but the same question can be asked of each of the orders that make up the three-fold ministry. These orders are a gift from God for the benefit of the Church. Instituted by Christ and the Apostles, and later guided by the Holy Spirit in development, they are the means whereby the people of God have ordered our common life and ensured the apostolic witness, teaching, and ongoing faithfulness. They are particular embodiments of the way the church has pursued faithfulness to Jesus.

This important aspect of each of the threefold orders is highlighted in the preface to the Ordination Rites, which at the end says “It is also recognized and affirmed that the threefold ministry is not the exclusive property of this portion of Christ’s catholic Church, but is a gift from God for the nurture of his people and the proclamation of his Gospel everywhere” (BCP 510).

They are the possession neither of us as individuals, nor of our communion within the Church Catholic. Yet we must own them in the sense of fulfilling their purpose and honoring their example–whether as lay or ordained Christians.

While other traditions may disagree, we have never seen ourselves as doing anything other than continuing the means by which the church set out, under the Spirit’s guidance, to organize itself. This means that while we are ordained in the Episcopal Church, our orders are not strictly of the Episcopal Church; they belong to the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.

Which brings us back to the strangeness. How can one person be ordained to do what only the whole church can do? Understanding this means recognizing that the church can do nothing except through the actions and example of particular Christians. Paul attests to the diversity of gifts given to God’s people by the Spirit. Ordination is a recognition and expansion of that fundamental insight. The Church recognizes that we need individuals to serve in specific ways so that the Church as a whole can fulfill its mission. A Bishop is ordained to exercise oversight within the body of Christ, to offer teaching, exhortation, and occasionally correction, because this is a service and obligation the church owes to itself corporately and to its members individually. A presbyter is ordained and celebrates the Eucharist by virtue of being in fellowship with the Bishop, and preaches, teaches, and upholds tradition because it is a responsibility that the Church owes to itself.

Christians are called to love our neighbors sacrificially and to work for the good of our communities. We are all called to serve, in imitation of Christ. And yet we need both examples of this love and service, and people especially equipped to encourage us in its fulfillment. So we have the order of Deacons. In each case, the order exemplifies a call, an obligation borne by the whole church, that must then be exercised by specific people within the church in order for it to be fulfilled. These are people called to it, their ministries recognized and affirmed by the people of God.

A former professor of mine once said that he sometimes thought that those called to ordained ministry were called because God knew we needed a little extra help. Personal experience suggests that may be so. But those called to greater intentionality are called to serve the church that needs a witness and an encouragement. So your ordination is a gift to you and to the whole church. Your ministry is your offering. Your call is to greater personal faithfulness, for the greater faithfulness of God’s people.

Be dressed for action, and have your lamps lit, Jesus tells us. In this service, you will be dressed in the garments of a deacon, and you will fulfill the liturgical functions of a deacon for the first time. It is an honor. The work in the liturgy is symbolic of the work to which you are called in the world and in the church. As a Deacon, you will be tasked with searching out and interpreting the needs of the world and of the people of God. You will also have particular opportunities to interpret the Gospel to people in the world. Proclaiming the Gospel, preparing the Altar: these are important acts, and also illustrative of the way your ministry should be carried out beyond the liturgy. More fundamentally, they are examples of Christian service that, when reflected in all of our lives, can draw us to greater faithfulness as baptized people.

Be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. All Christians are called to be spiritually awake, to live in anticipation of Christ’s return, and to be observant of opportunities to follow Jesus. And yet, as human beings, we need reminders and encouragement to do what we know we ought. So it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to the Church that there would be Christians called to do just that. One of my favorite analogies for the priesthood comes from a little book by George Sumner, now Bishop of Dallas, in which he likens the priest to a giant finger pointing people to Jesus. I’d like to expand that analogy. It is one that properly fits the witness of every Christian; we should all be pointing others toward Jesus. In a narrower sense, it fits the call of those who are ordained. We are called to point others to Jesus, and to point our fellow Christians toward one another and their neighbors.

It could be tempting to be trapped by the imagery of the household, thinking that Jesus' knocking is just about him coming to where we are, passively waiting, and opening the door to let him in. But we can expand the imagery of hearing Christ knocking: perhaps it’s hearing Christ knocking in our hearts. Perhaps it’s hearing or seeing Christ in other people who are in need, or who are highlighting some needed action by the Church. Perhaps the knocking is our willingness to discern the eagerness with which Jesus hopes to encounter those who have never heard the Gospel, or to understand their need to hear it. In each case, it is our task to seek out the places where Christ is knocking, where the Holy Spirit is at work, anticipating our engagement with what God is doing.

Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes…

We must be alert in our lives of faith and in the exercise of our ministries. But I want to share a thought for you in particular, Charlie. Because you will be moving toward ordination as a priest and because your vocational path lies in military chaplaincy in the US Navy, I think it’s fair to say that you could face the temptation—looking ahead at schedules, requirements, and tasks—to allow this season of your direct diaconal ministry to pass by in a blur. I want to encourage you not to let that happen. Take time to explore this new ministry. Listen to what the Holy Spirit and the People of God are telling you. There is much more to alertness than simply being awake; to be alert is to be truly aware.

Take the time to be aware: to be aware of the people you are called to serve, to be aware of what God is doing in their lives and yours, to be aware of the work of God in your community and how you can share that with your parish and with the neighbors, Christian and non-Christian, you encounter.

If you can do that…If we can all take the time to hear and see what God is doing, to discern where Jesus is knocking, we will be faithfully fulfilling not only our vocations as ordained people, but as the baptized. And if he comes in the middle of the night, or near dawn, in the Sunday liturgy, or the Wednesday bible study, the committee meeting, or the neighborhood gathering; in the hospital room, the family supper, or in the prison—or anywhere else Jesus might show up—and finds us so engaged in the ministry with which he has entrusted us, then we will all, indeed, be blessed.

Yet for Marie, I know that God was not distant. She spent her life hoping and trusting in the return of Christ, and, failing that within her earthly lifetime, her return to him. So when I think about this word of hope, it strikes me that we have to acknowledge that the prophet is talking about the day of the Lord. Now, that is different from what Christians will often mean when they say “the Lord’s day,” referring to Sunday. When we talk about the day of the Lord in scripture, that is a day discussed in various — some might even say conflicting — ways. In one passage it might be described as the sky being rolled up like a scroll and the sun looking red like blood. In another, it is a feast. What accounts for this difference in perspective about the day of the Lord, the day when the Lord is going to set all things right?

Well, the difference, I would say, is simply one of perspective. As my ethics professor told us in seminary — and I wish I knew who originally said this, as I know it only secondhand; he was a Jesuit, but there are a lot of Jesuits — the quote is: “In the end, God will be all in all. Whether we experience that as mercy or wrath is up to us.” In the end, God will be all in all. Whether we experience that as mercy or wrath will be up to us. From talking with Marie, I know that her hope and her trust was in that mercy, and in this vision of joy—of people being brought into the feast in the kingdom of God. When Marie thought of the day of the Lord, whether the day of the Lord with Jesus returning, or the day of the Lord for her when she went to be with Jesus, I believe she understood Jesus—she understood the God upon whom she waited for, let us just go ahead and say, 102 years—as the good shepherd. That is why we heard that passage from the Gospel of John today.

Marie trusted that Jesus loved and loves her, that Jesus loves others, and she showed it in her interactions and in her passion and joy for her faith and for the people that she knew. There are a number of stories that I think illustrate this. I know I have heard some from you all, so I am going to share just a few — some funny Marie stories — including one I heard just today. I mentioned this last Sunday: when Marie sang in the choir here at St. Joseph’s, we would gather in the choir vesting room, what some people call the “everything room” — because it is the cry room, the choir vesting room, all those things, the family room before a funeral — where I prayed with you all on Sunday mornings. I would go in, and my practice is to pray with the choir before the second service. Marie, of course, would be there as long as she was able. I would ask for prayer concerns, and I would be standing there, and all of a sudden I would feel something tugging at my chasuble or my stole. I would look, and there would be Marie, muttering to herself as she straightened my vestments. And I know I was not the only one who received this sort of attention from her. Part of it — and we are not going to make her totally sainted, okay? — part of it was that she simply wanted folks to look right. But she helped. She encouraged people. If she saw something she thought should be different, she helped.

I was talking with Shelly this morning, just in the sacristy. Shelly would sit close to where Marie sat, and she would sing and then compliment Marie’s singing, even after Marie was no longer able to sing in the choir. Marie would say thank you, and then Shelly would say, “Well, I wish I could sing like you,” and Marie would say, “Don’t sell yourself short.”

Think about the experiences Marie had over 102 years — the experiences she had in her family. I just heard there were nine boys and four girls, or something close to that, growing up. The life of faith they led in her household. Being born in 1916, think of all the things that were going on that today seem so separated from where we are. World War One was raging, and Woodrow Wilson was president, just about to be elected to his second term. Consider these things. The Battle of the Somme ended on November 18 of that year with over a million casualties. In December of that same year, America’s first board-certified doctors of ophthalmology were awarded their degrees at the University of Memphis Medical School after passing their exams — how often have you gone to an ophthalmologist? In 1916, that was the first group to be board certified in the United States. The Russian Revolution began during her first year of life, in 1917. The United States entered World War One. Twenty thousand women marched in a suffragette parade in New York City that year.

Consider the changes she saw. As a woman, to go from the way things were in 1916 — when she could not vote — to the point where she could. From not being able to have her own checking account, to the point where she could. In the Episcopal Church, from not being able to serve on a vestry to the point where women were eventually able to. She saw that happen during her life and ministry in the church. So many changes: the formation and dissolution of whole nations — Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, even the Soviet Union, which for such a large portion of her life I am sure people thought of as an enduring counterpoint to the United States. She saw its beginning and she lived quite a while after its end. So many things. And through it all, what I gather from talking with you, and what I encountered in talking with her, was a deep and abiding faith, and this sense of waiting patiently on the Lord.

Marie is no longer waiting. Her wait is over. Her hope is now fulfilled. She is with her Lord, and she stands as a witness to us. From talking with you all, I know that through her life she cared for her family in ways large and small, for her children, and I am thankful to know the care that she took for you all.

In our gospel text, Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away.” The good news that Marie held to, I believe, was that even in the worst times of her life, Jesus — the God whom she believed in, the God that she knew she would encounter in a feast and not in weeping and gnashing of teeth, in a celebration and in joy and not in fear, in a reunion and not in judgment — that God is the good shepherd. The one who was with her throughout her long life. The one who gave her the ability to joke as she did. When you would ask her how she was doing in her late nineties, as she turned one hundred, and she had had some knee problems, and you would say, “How are you doing this morning, Marie?” she would say, “Oh, pretty well for 98.” “Pretty well for 99.” “I am here; I am making it.” She was frustrated at times by the changes she experienced physically, but what I encountered was, for the most part, a deep sense of thankfulness, trust, and joy.

Now, I know there were times that other things came through — and don’t they always, for all of us, come through at times? But I think we would all do well with our trust in the God who is revealed as a good shepherd, who cares for and lays down his life for his sheep, who is with his sheep, who knows their names even as they know his voice, even in the worst times of their lives, even at the end of this earthly life — because of whom we know the end of this earthly life is not the end of our lives at all.

Amen.

Transcript

The Sermon as delivered

May the Holy Spirit impart grace upon us to have clarity of insight and thought, and more especially, to have clarity of heart. In Christ’s name. Amen.

I was not sure how to begin this sermon until I ripped it up and threw it out and started over last night, and worked until one o’clock to finish up a new one. I want to start by talking about what made me rip up the old one, and that was the attack at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh yesterday.

It’s a tragedy, at least that’s the word that many of us have used, and the news has often used to describe it. But I wonder if by tragedy what we mean is something unavoidable, something like a hurricane or a flood, what I think unfairly insurance companies would call an act of God. Or if what we mean is something like somebody randomly dying unexpectedly of a heart attack. I wonder if tragedy really encompasses what happened in Pittsburgh, what happened in Long Island, Louisville, what happened in Newtown, what happened in Las Vegas, what happened just down the road in Antioch.

If that is what we mean by tragedy, then I don’t think the word fits. I agree with Bishop McConnell of Pittsburgh, who wrote yesterday to his diocese: “The newscasts sickeningly are referring again and again to this horror as a tragedy. There’s no such thing. A tragedy is inevitable. This was not. It was murder, murder of a particularly vile and poisonous kind. Human beings,” he writes, “have moral agency. Someone chose to hate and chose to kill, and now we are forced to the choice as well: to do nothing, or to reject this hatred in the strongest possible words and actions, and to refute in every way and every forum the philosophical foundations of anti-Semitism wherever they have gained a foothold in our churches and our society.”

I happen to agree with Bishop McConnell. This is an appropriate response. We have a choice as to whether we will uproot this sort of hatred, or whether we allow it to take root and to grow.

But I think there’s a first step that has to occur, and we need help with that first step. We need guidance as to how to take that first step. And that first step is: how do we recognize such insidious evil before it takes on such clear and unavoidable form? How do we recognize it in our society? How do we recognize the ways in which we might contribute? And not just anti-Semitism, but many other forms of hatred that seem to be flourishing today. How do we recognize it?

And so it is that I think we are blessed today to hear a reading from the book of the prophet Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, and to have Jeremiah as an example of someone who looked squarely at evil, at disappointment in his own people, at the evils of his own people, and wondered why God would not act, and yet chose to bear witness instead of looking away or taking an easier way out. And we are blessed in this situation, as in all others, to have Jesus as our Lord, who gives us not only an example of the way we ought to act, but gives us the grace and the power to do so. And so we have our first reading from Jeremiah, we have our Gospel text, and I believe that together they will show us a way that we can go.

Jeremiah is known as the weeping prophet. And why not? Because his time of ministry, his time of activity, was a tumultuous one in the life of the people of Israel. He was active at first during the time of King Josiah, which was a sort of pinnacle point for the people of Israel. Josiah was a strong king. He was instituting religious reforms. And then he went down to Egypt and got into a fight that he couldn’t win and got killed. And so Jeremiah also sees the ramifications of Israel’s attempts at fighting against the Babylonians and against the Egyptians, and eventually he witnesses not one, but two deportations of the leadership of Jerusalem to Babylon.

And in the midst of it, he offers the word that the Lord gives him, his laments. He challenges God, and he cries out that God has ravaged him at certain points, and God’s people. But he never turns away, and he never turns away from God, and he does it all because of a vast faith and hope in God.

And so when I heard the news of what had happened yesterday, these words rang in my mind: “Thus says the Lord: A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children, and she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more” (Jeremiah 31:15). Of course, we know that as a quotation in the New Testament, in the Gospel of Matthew. But it was Jeremiah who uttered these words later on in the very same chapter that we heard from today.

This passage illustrates a facet of Jeremiah’s work that is so essential. As Ellen Davis, a professor of Old Testament at Duke, put it, “The prophet speaks for God in language that is literally visceral: ‘My guts, my guts, I writhe’” (Jeremiah 4:19) as we hear in chapter four. “My guts yearn for Ephraim” (Jeremiah 31:20). “Although the visceral character of Jeremiah’s words is regrettably obscured,” she says, “in most translations, this feature of his poetry is an important indicator of his distinctive place within the prophetic canon. For Jeremiah,” she writes, “is a witness to horror who never looks away, and thus he may teach us something of what it is to speak and act on God’s behalf in the most grievous situations.”

And that’s the key thought there. Jeremiah is a witness to horror who never looks away, and so he may teach us something of what it is to speak and to act as agents of God, on God’s behalf, in the most grievous situations.

So the first step is for us to see. But in order for us to see what is wicked and hateful in our own society, and even in ourselves, I believe, as human beings, we have to have some sort of support, some sort of assurance. And Jeremiah had that, and we hear that in our reading today. Jeremiah had hope and faith in God, and we hear that in the words that he uttered prior to Rachel weeping for her children, and what we heard earlier this morning:

“Thus says the Lord: Sing aloud with gladness for Jacob, and raise shouts for the chief of the nations. Proclaim, give praise, and say, ‘Save, O Lord, your people, the remnant of Israel. See, I am going to bring them from the land of the north, and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labor together’” (Jeremiah 31:7-8).

In other words, the weakest, most vulnerable people. I’m going to gather them up. The Lord promises to gather them up from wherever they are and to bring them home, to give them home and safety again.

“Together a great company, they shall return here. With weeping they shall come, and with consolations I will lead them back. I will let them walk by brooks of water, in a straight path in which they shall not stumble, for I have become a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn” (Jeremiah 31:8-9).

So this is the promise that upholds and undergirds Jeremiah’s laments. He has hope that God will act. He has hope, in fact, that God has not abandoned God’s people. He has hope in the midst of the evil that he sees that there is goodness, and that God is active. And this is the hope that we have to hold onto and be certain of in order to be willing to look at the evil and the sin in our society and in ourselves. But that’s the first step, to be able to take that step and to see. Because God is faithful to us, we are free to be faithful, and to let go of the fears that prevent us from taking on this work.

The day before he launched his attack on Tree of Life, the man responsible wrote on social media, “HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, likes to bring invaders that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered.” I’m going to paraphrase, because I don’t want to say this word in church: “Forget your optics. I’m going in.” Earlier, a few days before, while posting a screencap of this refugee resettlement agency’s website, he had written, “Why, hello there, HIAS. You like to bring in hostile invaders who dwell among us. We appreciate the list of friends you have provided,” ominously referring to the list of organizations that supported that ministry.

So yes, this man was driven by a virulent form of anti-Semitism, which at its most basic form is ascribing a sort of puppeteering role to the Jewish community, power and influence to them, and nefarious intent. So he was certainly doing that, but in this instance, that gave direction to his anger that was driven by hatred as well for refugees and immigrants.

And it struck home for me in both instances. I have Jewish friends. I have a friend from college who’s an Orthodox rabbi in Connecticut. And I know how politically without a home he feels today, because he feels alienated from both our right and our left in America’s political context. And I also have friends who work in refugee resettlement, and I know how difficult that has been over the past few years for them.

So here’s the thing. Some folks may say about this man, “Well, he’s obviously insane.” Might say the same thing about the guy who was building those things that he was putting in the mail last week. Obviously insane. Someone said to me, “Did you even see his van? You know somebody driving something like that is lost.”

Well, I can see where that idea comes from. And if by insane or crazy we mean that somebody has gone off the rails and left the norm, then sure, we can use that term. But if we mean somebody who’s actually diagnosably mentally ill and therefore different than us in a way that is significant enough to separate us from their acts, some of the folks who’ve done things like this have been mentally ill, but far fewer than are not diagnosably mentally ill. There are other forces at work in this sort of thing.

Well, first let me say, not only in this instance, but also you can see this at work. He had constructed this paradigm in which the Jewish community was nefariously working as a cabal, that immigrants were part of this and refugees were part of this, to somehow disrupt and overthrow America as he thought it ought to be. And while his is an extreme case, is that rhetoric all that foreign?

When I read particularly the first part of his first post about this refugee resettlement ministry, and saying that they’re bringing people in to kill our people and disrupt our nation, I’ve heard a lot of that from a lot of different places. It is not extreme if by extreme we mean uncommon. It is a thought that is out there. I’ve heard it, and I know if I’ve heard it, and people rein themselves in around clergy, then I expect that some of you have heard it as well.

So that is something that’s going on. His version of this hatred incorporated the longstanding demon of anti-Semitism. But there are other ways in which people can go off the rails in constructing this enemy for themselves that is unassailable, that is in the shadows, that is impossible to confront except through means of violence. And so on the one hand, maybe a step along the road is the sort of rhetoric that says that all immigrants or refugees are violent or criminals. Or maybe one step along the road is saying that George Soros is paying everybody to do whatever they’re doing politically.

But another step along the road on the other side might be a listserv where people complain all about the Koch brothers and say they’re behind everything, and then they go and they shoot up a congressional baseball practice and shoot a congressman, which has also happened. So the issue is this sort of rhetoric and narrative that allows us to justify the sort of violence and hatred that can be in our hearts. And it really shouldn’t surprise us that if this is the sort of rhetoric that’s out there, that there are people who could act on it.

After all, we live in a society in which people might shoot somebody at a gas station for their music being too loud, or somebody in a movie theater because they’re texting before the movie starts. There are lots of people who are on edge. It shouldn’t surprise us that for some folks, this sort of rhetoric is all it takes to set them on a path to this sort of thing.

In 2011, there was a man named Anders Breivik who attacked some communities in Norway. And at his trial, it was very interesting: the prosecution started out by saying he’s insane. But during the trial, the court eventually found, no, he is sane. And in addition to lifting a restriction on the amount of time he could serve, it highlighted a problem.

And there was a commentator, a Norwegian commentator, who published an article in the UK’s Guardian newspaper in 2012, sharing what I think are some incisive thoughts. They wrote, “This verdict is also the end of a long trial process far too focused on Breivik’s persona and too little on the social and political climate that created him. By prosecuting on insanity, the state asked, ‘Who is Anders Behring Breivik?’ And to answer that question, every little piece of his personal history became important. But in a political and social context, this is an indifferent question. People such as Breivik have always existed, but the actions they take and the way they are formed differs from society to society.”

The author goes on to say that it’s not who Breivik is, but who he became, that is important. And then they write, “If Breivik had been from Afghanistan, Iraq, or Nigeria, we wouldn’t have asked what it was within these countries and cultures that made him a terrorist.”

Now, I think you could insert in Breivik’s place names like Roof, for example, in Charleston, perhaps a man in Louisville. Take your pick. I’ve written before in other places about the lengths that we’ll go to to separate ourselves from being implicated in these sorts of evil acts, because they are so extreme, and yet there is a clear step, there is a clear path from what is common to what is horrendous.

I well recall going every year, one or more times, to the Gun and Knife Show in Nashville when it would come, growing up. And not only did I commonly see sellers selling AR-15s and pitching them to folks by saying, “Well, all you gotta do is get a little kit and you can turn it to full auto, or as close as you might want to get it. Take this spring out, put this here, do that.” I recall the rack of literature there that was there without fail in some corner of the convention hall with little pamphlets that the author had seemingly done a sort of control-replace thing with, where he had taken the pamphlets that talked about the Jewish banking conspiracy and published one about the Catholic banking conspiracy, or the Masonic banking conspiracy, or the Illuminati banking conspiracy.

This sort of stuff is out there. And when we think that evil is sort of this book of magic that requires special knowledge to open up and decipher, it’s just wrong. It’s not something that is alien to us. It is a random email forward from a friend or family member that’s just taken one step too far. That’s what we’re seeing.

So it pays for us to look at ourselves and our communities. It pays for us to think about how we as a society have contributed to the things that these people have done or may do, and what we can do as individuals and as a church to combat it.

So this brings me back to 2012. Some of you who have children in Sumner County Schools will recall 2012 as the year that there was a postponement to the beginning of the year. It had to do with a conflict between the county commission and the school board about funding. Now, after that, there was a meeting that I was invited to as part of the Pastors Association. It was held nearby. And the person who invited us was a person that worked for World Vision, which is an evangelical refugee resettlement agency.

Now, if you look at a map of Nashville today and you think about the immigrant communities that are here, the Karen down at All Saints in Smyrna, if you think about the Sudanese down in Nashville and up in Gallatin, if you think about the Kurds from Iraq, all these communities came, brought here by World Vision partnering with churches and by Catholic Charities. That’s how many of them made it to our state.

So World Vision contacted the Hendersonville pastors, and the person was thinking, he said, “You know,” (this was in 2012, maybe into 2013) “We have a huge global refugee crisis. We need to find new places to resettle refugees. Nashville and Davidson County public schools are inundated. We think Hendersonville would be a good spot, and it’s because there’s a good economy, good schools in Sumner County Schools, and a lot of churches.”

And so the pastors talked about it. We spoke about it. And you might notice that you never heard anything about this. And it’s because when we talked about it, the consensus amongst the pastors was, “We can’t do that.” We can’t do that because we saw the fight over funding in our schools, and the rhetoric about people moving in here who are American citizens, and why should we pay for that, because we don’t have kids in schools. And we said, “We can’t do that because the minute we move a refugee family in here, they’ll have a target on them.”

There’s a path toward this sort of hate, and it can begin in places you don’t expect. And it should sadden us, I think, that the consensus of our pastors in 2012 was not that people might disagree with the refugee resettlement program, not that people might disagree or have policy differences about funding school, but that it could actually be dangerous, that there could be enough hate directed at refugee families that we wouldn’t want to put anybody in that situation at that time.

Lest you think that the pastors were misguided in that, in June of 2016, I went to visit my mom. She lives in the other Hendersonville, by the way, Hendersonville, North Carolina. And I was visiting her, and in the news I kept seeing St. James Episcopal Church, which is where I go when I’m there. I said, “Why is St. James in the news for?”

Well, it turns out that St. James’s vestry had invited somebody from Episcopal Migration Ministries to come and present to them about their ministry. Just an informative presentation. Happens all the time. We bring people into the vestry in our churches at different times to talk about all sorts of things when we’re thinking about what we might do in the future.

Well, word got out, and suddenly, rather than it being an informative session for the vestry, according to some people in the community, St. James was going to bring in all sorts of Syrian terrorists and settle them in Hendersonville, North Carolina. There were people sending threats. There were people protesting. And eventually, the county commission of Henderson County, North Carolina, passed a resolution to say, “We don’t want any refugees resettled in Henderson County, North Carolina, and we’re going to send this resolution to our statewide county meeting so that other counties can do the same.”

Now, of course, it’s not legally binding. The county government can’t stop that. But it shows what was going on.

And so if in 2012 we had started in Hendersonville a ministry to resettle refugees, and at some point in the intervening period St. Joseph’s vestry had invited somebody from Episcopal Migration Ministries to talk about it, it very well could have been our senior warden having to write letters to the newspaper to try to calm the frustrations and keep people from picketing on a Sunday morning or from sending nasty emails and letters, all because they say something very similar to what that man wrote before he went to that synagogue.

It’s hard to look, but we have to look. We can’t look away. And it’s not just looking at other people. It’s not just looking at other communities. We have to look at ourselves.

So if we hope to do that, as I said, Jeremiah shows us the only way. The only way we can do that is through faith in God. The only way we can do that is through the presence of Christ.

So we have this example of blind Bartimaeus, whose name, by the way, means son of honor. Bartimaeus is there on the street, begging. That’s all he can do. He hears Jesus is coming, and he cries out, “Son of David, have mercy on me” (Mark 10:47), using the messianic title. When people try to get him to shush, he yells out even louder, “Son of David, have mercy on me” (Mark 10:48).

Jesus invites him over, and Bartimaeus, when he hears he’s been invited, casts off his cloak, which may very well have been the only possession he had, and he runs to Jesus. And Jesus asks him, “What would you have me do for you?” (Mark 10:51). He says, “Lord, let me see again. Let me see again” (Mark 10:51). Jesus tells him, “Your faith has made you well” (Mark 10:52).

So the first step is to see. But in order to see, sometimes we have to ask for Jesus’ help. In order to really see, in order to see the things that we can’t see just by looking, in order to have the sort of sight that we don’t just have through our eyes, in order to have the sort of vision that isn’t just physical, we need to ask Jesus to give us our sight.

So Jesus tells Bartimaeus, “Your faith has made you well. Go on your way” (Mark 10:52). And so Bartimaeus, who’s the first person in Mark’s Gospel who addresses Jesus by a messianic title and isn’t corrected, the first person who’s healed and isn’t told to keep it quiet, because, by the way, Jesus is transitioning. In Mark’s Gospel there is a transition coming, and he’s going to the cross. No need to keep it quiet now.

Bartimaeus decides that his way is following Jesus on the way. So if we pray that God would give us sight, and if we pray that Jesus would give us strength, then we know that Jesus will walk with us on the way. And that is the only way that will allow us to rid ourselves and our communities of the sort of hate and rhetoric that is all some folks need to flip a switch and go out and do something evil.

Amen.

Sermon Notes:

The notes written before hand

It was difficult to know where to begin this sermon. I suppose I’ll just begin with what made me throw out what I’d written earlier in the week and start over. Yesterday a tragedy occurred in Pittsburgh at Tree of Life Synagogue. At least, many of us instinctively call it a tragedy. But that may not be the best or most accurate word. Hurricanes are tragedies. Floods and other natural disasters are tragedies. A sudden death from a heart attack is a tragedy. These are forces of nature out of our control, or even if influenced by our actions, several steps removed from them.

The event at Tree of Life (and I’m using a circumlocution for the benefit of the younger ears among us), the earlier events in Louisville, in Los Vegas, In Charleston, in New Town, in Antioch just down the road–these were not tragedies, if by that we mean something that just happens. These events did not happen on their own. As Dorsey McConnell, the Bishop of Pittsburgh wrote yesterday, in response,

“The newscasts, sickeningly, are referring again and again to this horror as a “tragedy.” It is no such thing. A tragedy is inevitable. This was not. It was murder, murder of a particularly vile and poisonous kind. Human beings have moral agency. Someone chose to hate, and chose to kill. And now we are faced with a choice as well— to do nothing, or to reject this hatred in the strongest possible words and actions, and to refute in every way, in every forum, the philosophical foundations of anti-Semitism wherever they have gained a foothold in our churches and our society.

The Rt. Rev. Dorsey McConnell, Bishop of Pittsburgh

I agree with Bishop McConnell, but I think there’s a major step that we have to take in order to properly reject this particular hatred, and so many others: we have to see them, recognize them for what they are, and refuse to accept easy explanations or soothing platitudes that remove any hint of our own culpability–as individuals or as a society–in allowing or even fomenting hate and evil.

If this is what we need to do, then we could have no better example than the prophet Jeremiah, and as usual, no greater Lord than Jesus. Jeremiah teaches us what it is to look at what is, Jesus shows us how to live once we’ve seen it. In saving us by grace, Jesus frees us from the repetitive cycle justified by the logic of a world turned inward that fuels hatred and discord, and makes us citizens of the kingdom of God, meant for all people, which is always turned outward (you should know from the biblical descriptions, the gates of heaven are always open, it is the gates of hell that are closed, which cannot withstand the assaults of the church).

After the I read the news reports yesterday, these words came to mind:

“Thus says the Lord:
A voice is heard in Ramah,
lamentation and bitter weeping.
Rachel is weeping for her children;
she refuses to be comforted for her children,
because they are no more” (Jeremiah 21:15).

This passage illustrates a facet of Jeremiah’s work that is essential. As Professor Ellen Davis puts it: “The prophet speaks for God in language that is literally visceral: ‘My guts, my guts; I writhe!’ (Jer. 4:19); ‘My guts yearn for [Ephraim/Israel]” (31:20). Although the visceral character of Jeremiah’s words is (regrettably) obscured by most translations, this feature of his poetry is an important indicator of his distinctive place within the prophetic canon. For Jeremiah is a witness to horror who never looks away, and thus he may teach us something of what it is to speak and act on God’s behalf in the most grievous situations” (Davis, 144).

It is that last bit that is so significant for us. It is so easy to look away. To turn the channel, literally or figuratively (caveat lector: ok, if your little kids are watching the news and see something come on that they shouldn’t watch, turn the channel or turn it off, “shield the joyous” as the prayer says). The point is not to do what is comfortable at the expense of facing the truth or doing what is right.

Jeremiah could shoulder this burden because he was faithful and followed God, delivering the word of God to the people in a time of military defeat and literal and figurative captivity, receiving God’s words of faithfulness and love, even as he railed against the evils and injustice he observed. The Prophet did not hesitate to challenge God or to lament his situation, or that of his people, but he did so in the midst of proclaiming hope based on God’s fidelity. Jeremiah was able to unflinchingly look at what was happening to his people, and to record the word of their trials and even their destruction, because he did so in the context of God’s ultimate faithfulness. So it is that the lament of Rachel losing her children–a poetic way to talk about actual death and destruction–takes place within the context of the earlier passage we heard this morning:

Thus says the Lord:
Sing aloud with gladness for Jacob,
and raise shouts for the chief of the nations;
proclaim, give praise, and say,
“Save, O Lord, your people,
the remnant of Israel.”
See, I am going to bring them from the land of the north,
and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth,
among them the blind and the lame, those with child and
those in labor, together;
a great company, they shall return here.
With weeping they shall come,
and with consolations I will lead them back,
I will let them walk by brooks of water,
in a straight path in which they shall not stumble;
for I have become a father to Israel,
and Ephraim is my firstborn (Jeremiah 31:7-9).

Because God is faithful to us, we can be freed from the anxieties and fears that prevent us from looking at ourselves and our society with clear eyes, and from responding to our neighbors with love. When set them aside and look at ourselves, we might be surprised what we see.

The day before he launched his attack on Tree of Life Synagogue, the perpetrator wrote on social media “HIAS (The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) likes to bring invaders that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.” Earlier he had written, while posting a screen cap of their web site, “Why hello there HIAS! You like to bring in hostile invaders to dwell among us? We appreciate the list of friends you have provided…” ominously thanking the organization for sharing a list of their supporters.

But here’s the thing. Some folks will want to say about him, as with the recent bomb maker, that they’re crazy, and shouldn’t be taken as indicative of any greater trend. But let’s be honest: how many of you have heard family, neighbors, friends, say similar things about the work of World Vision or Catholic Charities around Middle Tennessee? How many of you can point out similar phrases used to describe the Islamic center in Murfreesboro? I know I can. And if I’ve heard it given the way people often hold back around clergy, I know some of you have heard it.

Some people who perpetrate attacks are clinically mentally ill. Most aren’t. Paranoia and conspiracy theories are popular because they have explanatory power that is attractive to rational people given certain prior convictions and commitment to fear-laden worldviews, fostering different sorts of confirmation bias. Was every Nazi clinically insane? Every Soviet citizen who transported former comrades to the Gulag? As philosopher Hannah Arendt convincingly argues, evil is much simpler and more frightening than that. It’s most frightening because it is banal, ordinary to the point of being boring. It’s not a magical text that takes a special tool to decode. It’s a random off-color email forward from an eccentric relative taken a step too far.

If people can shoot folks in a gas station parking lot for their music being loud, or for texting in a movie theater before a movie starts, or pull guns on each other on the interstate, is it really that surprising that there are folks on the fringes–we hope they’re fringes–who only need the slightest permission to act on hate founded on fear and often willful ignorance?

In 2011 Anders Breivik, as self-styled Christian Nationalist from Norway carried out an attack in that country. Initially, prosecutors treated him as insane. But eventually he was found fit to stand trial and the time limit on his incarceration was lifted as a result. A Norwegian author writing in the UK’s Guardian newspaper in 2012 shared these incisive thoughts:

This verdict is also the end of a long trial process far too focused on Breivik’s persona, and to little on the social and political climate that created him. By prosecuting on insanity, the state asked “Who is Anders Behring Breivik”, and to answer that question every little piece of his personal history became important. But in a political and social context, this is an indifferent question. People such as Breivik have always existed.. But the actions they take and the way they are formed differs from society to society.

The author goes on to say that the is not who Breivik is, but why he became who he became that is important:

If Breivik had been from Afghanistan, Iraq or Nigeria, we would have asked what it was within these countries and cultures that made him a terrorist.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/aug/24/anders-breivik-verdict-norway

I have written before about the lengths we will go to to distance ourselves from the perpetrators of these attacks, but the reality is, for the most part, they aren’t that removed. Growing up I used to go to Gun and knife shows a few times every year. I heard the pitch of folks selling AR-15s by talking to buyers about how easily you could convert one to full-auto. I saw the pamphlets that were inevitably at at least one literature rack where the same author seemingly published the same booklet over and over, only swapping out the word Jewish/Catholic/Masonic/Illuminati banking conspiracy. I recognize the similarity of those well-worn bits of rhetoric to claims that church-based refugee resettlement agencies are just in it for the money and are doing it all–willingly or as dupes–at the behest of the UN or the Vatican in order to weaken the United States.

Which brings me back to 2012. Some of you who had children in school that year, or who worked in Sumner County Schools that year. If you were around and remember, we had some difficulty starting school that year. There was a conflict between the School Board and the County Commission over funding. Eventually schools were started and there was a political shift in the county so that we haven’t had another issue like that.

About a year after that, a representative from World Vision asked if they could present to the Hendersonville Pastors Association. It turned out that they were looking for new communities in which to resettle refugees, and they thought Hendersonville met the criteria: good local economy, available housing, lots of churches. You never heard anything about this initiative from me, because the pastors collectively decided it wasn’t a good idea given the politics in the county at the time. You see, the rhetoric had gotten so heated about the cost of education, and how the children of people “moving in here” were driving up costs and possibly property taxes, that, as we put it to World Vision: we wouldn’t want refugee families to come into a situation where they’d immediately have a target on their back.

Another way in which this cuts close to home. As you know, there’s another Hendersonville. Hendersonville, North Carolina. In the summer of 2016 we were visiting my mom who lives there, and heard some rumblings in local politics.

What do we do once we’ve faced up to the wickedness abroad in the world, and the wickedness within? When we’ve looked squarely at the suffering and injustice in the world, and the wounds inside ourselves? That’s where Bartimaeus comes in. Mark includes his story in our gospel text as an exemplar–and a more direct exemplar would be difficult to find.

“For Mark, giving sight to the blind is the beginning and the end of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem” (Bryan, 104) but the stories are not exact echos of one another–for one thing, Bartimaeus addresses Jesus two times by the clearly Messianic title “Son of David” and is not corrected for it. Nor does Jesus tell him to remain silent. Jesus knows where he’s headed and there’s no point in encouraging silence now–the time approaches. And in the midst of this, Bartimaeus has his blindness–often a metaphor for idolatry–lifted, receiving his sight, a metaphor for faith, and not incidentally having left everything behind when he threw his cloak aside, begins to follow Jesus on the way, that is, the path of discipleship.

When we have faced the truth about the world in its specific sins, in which we and our society are implicated, will we turn away? When we have discovered that we have been blind.

The sermon begins at 2:46

Let us pray.

Almighty God, in Christ Jesus you have appointed a great high priest familiar with our weakness, who shares our humanity without sin, defeating it by bearing it, making hell, death, and the devil, captivity itself, captive. Surround us in barren times with the water of his love and unceasing intercession. Help us to put our trust always in the One who, like Melchizedek, has neither beginning nor end, but uniquely is beginning and end. Through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who, one with you and the Holy Spirit, reigns, world without end. Amen.

Amen. Please be seated.

I think it’s a fair statement to say that James and John had no idea what they were asking for when they approached Jesus, as we hear in our gospel text today.

They go to Jesus and they ask, “Lord, we want you to do whatever we ask of you.” And Jesus, rather obligingly, asks them back, “What is it you would have me do for you?”

And they say, “We want to sit on your right and your left hand when you come into your glory.”

Jesus tells them, “You don’t know what you’re asking. Are you able to drink the cup which I will drink, to be baptized with the baptism with which I will be baptized?” And they say, “Yes, we will.”

Not knowing, despite Jesus’ repeated foretellings of what is going to happen to him, despite his predictions of his passion, two of which they have heard thus far, they jump in and say, “Of course we can.”

And Jesus knows what he’s talking about when he talks about the cup from which he’s going to be drinking, the baptism, the overwhelming that he’s going to experience. He’s going to drink from the cup of persecution and torture, and he will be overwhelmed and be baptized in death.

And so they jump in and say, “Of course. Yes, we will.” And he gives them what they’ve asked for. He tells them, “You will drink from this cup. You will be baptized in this baptism.” But of course, Jesus will have transformed both by the time they share it. But they don’t know that.

And then Jesus tells them, “But as to who will sit on my right or on my left in glory, that I cannot give, for it has already been prepared for someone.”

Now, there are a number of different traditional interpretations of this. But if you recall elsewhere in the Gospels, in the Gospel of John in particular, Jesus talks about how he will be glorified: “And I, when I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32).

The literal interpretation of that, and there’s more than one, one is just simply the proclamation of the gospel, lifting Christ up. But the literal interpretation is that when Christ is crucified, that that is his glory.

And so one traditional interpretation of this, who will be on his right, who will be on his left, and it has already been prepared, is that it is the other folks, the thieves on the cross, that that is who it has been prepared for: to be on Christ’s right and on his left, in his glory, as he’s glorified on the cross (cf. Luke 23:32–43).

This is how the logic of God defies the logic of humanity. We don’t think of glory as consisting in a cross. We don’t think of a place of honor as being on the right and left of a condemned criminal. We don’t think in these terms, and yet God transforms these things and works in the midst of human cruelty, defying it, transforming it, and somehow out of it brings the peace and the glory and the grace and the freedom of God, which is then offered to us.

So John and James don’t know what they’re asking for, but what they receive is salvation, and what they receive is the grace to endure whatever comes their way in life, the persecutions that Christ knows will come, because Jesus has endured it, because Jesus has freed them from sin, and because Jesus, the love of God revealed, God in the flesh, promises to be with them always.

So they get way more than they bargained for, both in the negative of what they will experience and in the positive of what God gives. And this is true for the early church. This is true for us today. But it is a lesson that we have to keep relearning.

And so I want to use Jesus’ exchange with James and John as a window to look upon the context for another of our readings today, and that is our selection from Hebrews. Because what seems to be going on in this text from Hebrews is that the author is dealing with a community that is wrestling with what it means to have faith in Jesus in the midst of persecution and suffering, what it means to hold fast to the faith, and not only to hold fast to the faith, but to actually move forward in faith in the midst of persecution, losing one’s status in society, and perhaps losing one’s life.

Now, you should know that we actually don’t know who wrote Hebrews. There’s a very interesting history and interpretation about the authorship. It seems to have been written, there’s debates about this, but it seems to have been written probably not as a letter, but recorded as a sermon. It’s referred to as an exhortation in the midst of the text, probably as a sermon to a mixed community of Jews and Gentile Christians, probably in Rome.

And what makes that context interesting is that the Western Church was the slowest to adopt Hebrews as a canonical text. Now, why might that have been? To me, that makes it seem likely that it actually was written to the community in Rome, because the author, the preacher, whoever it is, is challenging this community to whom they’re writing, to whom they’re preaching, to stand fast in the faith in the midst of persecution.

And so in the East, as the letter was copied and sent around, it became seen as canonical first in places where it did not represent the people that it had been written to. And it was also in the East that it was first ascribed to the Apostle Paul. But the earliest copies of it and the place where it seems to have been written resisted not only its canonicity, but also ascribing it to Paul. So probably it wasn’t Paul.

But what’s interesting about that is, within the text, we see echoes of Pauline theology. We see echoes of John as well. And so people have debated, “Who could this be?” Luther, I think, thought it was Aquila, of Aquila and Priscilla. Some people have suggested it could have been Priscilla. And one of the reasons to believe that as a possibility might be because of the fact that we don’t have a name ascribed to it. Some people say, “Well, if it was a woman at that time, perhaps they just conveniently lost the name.”

But we don’t know.

But what we do know is that whoever wrote it was very well versed in the Hebrew scriptures, in the Old Testament, and they had very good Greek. There are many scholars who consider the book of Hebrews to be the best example of Greek writing in the New Testament. And so they were very well versed. They were knowledgeable. But overall, they were concerned for the community to whom they preached, to whom they wrote.

They were concerned because people seemed to be giving up on the faith they had in Jesus in the face of persecution. And so at the heart of this text are two things: one is an argument about how Jesus is better than any alternative, and the other is an affirmation of the fact that Jesus’ love, that God’s love as revealed in Christ, continues with us forever.

It is out of the book of Hebrews that we hear the affirmation that we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, that this community brought together by the love of God in Christ will endure. So don’t give up on your faith. [Hebrews 12:1]

So what does the author do? Well, beginning last week, you heard these words last week in chapter four. The author says, “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).

So that verse is actually setting up the argument for today in chapter five of Hebrews, where the author, the preacher, gets into this comparison between Jesus’ high priesthood and the high priestly office as it existed prior to Jesus’ incarnation and ministry.

So you should know that first, the author talks about all the various other things that people might put their faith in. Angels. Maybe you want to put your faith in angels. Well, God made him but “a little lower than the angels” for a little while, but then elevated him, elevated Christ, and put a crown on him. That’s what the author’s saying, applying verses from the Psalms, saying that Jesus was, for a little while, made a little “lower,” you can put that lower in quotation marks if you want, than the angels.

In other words, the Word becoming flesh. But that was just what it appeared, and it was only temporary, because Christ was then going to be glorified and be given a crown. So Jesus is better than the angels. If you’re looking for somebody in your corner, it’s better to have Jesus than the angels.

Then the author goes and talks about Moses, and talks about all the wonderful things that Moses did, and says Moses was a faithful servant in the household of God. Then the author will say, “And yet Jesus is the Son who is head over the household.” Moses was a servant within, a faithful servant within the household. Jesus is the Son who is heir, who is over the household.

And then finally, we get this argument in the section today that we hear about Jesus’ high priesthood. That the high priests, as they had functioned, were just like you and me. They were chosen by God. They were sinners like us. And therefore, before they could offer sacrifice for the people, they had to offer sacrifices for themselves so that they could be pure. Jesus doesn’t have to do that, the author says.

And also, the people who are served as high priests, the office turns over and turns over and turns over. They serve for a set period of time. They’re term limited. Jesus is not. Jesus is high priest forever, and that’s where this reference to Melchizedek comes in.

You see, Melchizedek’s this really interesting figure in the Old Testament. He’s the priest of Salem, which is the old name for Jerusalem. And when Abraham’s wandering around, Abraham meets Melchizedek, and Melchizedek blesses Abraham. And then Abraham gives a tenth of all of his goods to Melchizedek (Genesis 14:18–20).

And so the author of Hebrews pulls that in and says that, in Abraham, all of Israel tithed to Melchizedek, and that Melchizedek, in blessing Abraham, is sort of fulfilling this role of fulfilling God’s intent by blessing Abraham. [Hebrews 7:1–10]

But Melchizedek is a figure who just sort of appears and disappears. We don’t know what happened to him before. We don’t know what happens to him after. So he’s a figure without a beginning and without an end.

So the author of Hebrews, the preacher, says Jesus is like a priest like Melchizedek, because Melchizedek, for all we know, Melchizedek’s still around. We don’t know. It’s not in the text. We know Jesus is around, because Jesus has no beginning. Jesus has no end. Jesus is going to be a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek, according to someone who has no beginning, no end, and is there for eternity.

And later, what’s going to happen is the preacher’s going to say, “Well, what is Jesus doing as a great high priest? What is Jesus doing at the right hand of the Father? What is Jesus doing in the heavenly temple?”

Well, Jesus is doing what a high priest does. Jesus is offering intercession for you and for me. But an intercession that doesn’t require any atonement on his part for his own sins, because he has none. Intercession that isn’t time limited, because he’s going to be doing it from here on out. Intercession that isn’t limited in its effects, because the one offering it is in no way limited. [Hebrews 7:25–28; Hebrews 8:1–2]

And so the message of Hebrews is really a message of hope. It is a challenge to the folks who are leaving their faith behind. Elsewhere in the text, the author challenges them and says that by rejecting their faith once they’ve received it, they’re crucifying Christ anew.

But while it’s a challenge, the challenge is backed up with hope. Don’t give up on what you’ve heard because this is true. Don’t give up on Jesus because Jesus is the only one who’s going to fulfill what you need. Jesus is the one who’s going to be with you through the times of trial and persecution.

Now, it may be difficult for us to identify with the congregation to whom the preacher was speaking, who received this letter, if indeed it was a sermon turned into a letter, because in America, we generally, as Christians, aren’t persecuted in the same ways.

But we can look around at the news and we can see places in this world where our brothers and sisters in the faith do suffer because of the name of Jesus, where they do take their lives in their own hands by going to church, where it is something that causes danger for them.

And so we could perhaps put ourselves in that situation, the fearfulness and the anxiety that we might feel. Would it not be easier just to let go, to be safe, to be protected?

I think we can understand the temptation that these ancient Christians felt when they were under threat, or even the threat of losing their status in society or their business deals. Because after all, what are all those things? We have responsibilities to our families, right? We want our kids to go to good schools. We don’t want them to suffer by association with us. We want to be able to provide for our families.

So maybe we could understand some of the anxieties they had if their persecution consisted of that, which it very well could have as well.

So the author is saying all these things you’re tempted to go toward because of this persecution, this isn’t going to solve your problems, not your real problems. Because if you’re looking for a patron, if you’re looking for someone to get you back to unity with God who created you, the angels aren’t going to be good enough. Moses isn’t going to be good enough.

Moses is great, but Moses was a servant in the household, not the heir. And if you want to be the heir, go with the Son. Go with Jesus. And the priests, these other priests, they’re just like you and me. But Jesus is like us, and so he can identify with us in our weaknesses. But Jesus is unlike us in that Jesus does not sin, and Jesus is eternal and intercedes for us always.

And so for us today, maybe we have different things that tempt us away from the faith, different things that challenge us. You can, I think, for much of this argument, insert whatever thing you would think might be better than Jesus, and I think the bulk of this argument would work.

But there’s one key temptation that I think is there for us today that was not really an option in the ancient world. People just didn’t conceive of it in those terms, and that is what we would call atheism today. That, I think, is probably the big challenge for those of us in our faith. When we endure tragedy, when we endure persecution of one form or another, whether it be by other people or just by circumstance, the thing that threatens our faith is losing it, not misplacing it necessarily in some other divine thing. It’s just giving up.

Now, there’s this old joke some of you may have heard. It’s about a person who moves to Ireland and is going to the office to get all their paperwork in order, and they have left blank the category on the form that says whether they’re Catholic or Protestant. They’ve left the religion blank. And so they go, and they hand the form to the person at the front, and he says, “Well, what’s your religion?”

They say, “Oh, I don’t have a religion. I’m an atheist.”

And the person says, “Yes, but are you a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist?”

So there is some truth in the joke, not only the satire about divisions in Ireland, but there’s this other truth that when we reject faith, it is always a particular understanding that we’re rejecting. And there are some authors, some Christian authors, who have written about the new atheists, as they’re called, Richard Dawkins and so forth, and have pointed out that they’re a particular sort of atheist. These are Christian atheists.

Now, this is what the author means by that. And I don’t want to sort of label folks with labels they might chafe at, so God knows they might chafe at being called a Christian atheist. So let me get underneath the terminology and what’s going on here.

Often amongst the new atheists, what you’ll hear in their arguments against God, well, of course, there’s a scientific side that says, “Well, you can’t prove the existence of God. We don’t need God.” Stephen Hawking’s posthumous book, right? He said, “There’s no need to posit the existence of God.” He does this thing I can talk to you about later, but his concept about the fact that if you can say pi doesn’t exist, then you can say that there’s no need for God. We can talk about that.

I think he misunderstands at least one of the major tenets of classical Christian theism, if that’s what he thinks God is about. But some of it is rejection based on science.

But at the heart of many of the arguments is really the problem of evil. If God exists, and God is a loving God, why do these tragedies occur? Why do people suffer? And this is argued, you can see it in The Brothers Karamazov, you can see it in Hollywood films, you can see it all over. This is really the big argument against belief in our culture.

And yet, it’s not really an argument against belief in a generic God. You already have to have decided that it is of the essence of God to be good. You see? There’s a prior assumption. You could be a theist and think that God is a souped-up version of some sort of pagan deity that is capricious and enjoys making humanity suffer in this or that way. And you can believe in a God like that. Humans have believed in gods like that. Just read Greek mythology.

And yet the argument is that, “I don’t believe because a good God, a loving God, would not allow this.” So what God are you disbelieving? So that’s why the term Christian atheist.

But if folks are rejecting a belief in God because they don’t see how God has acted or could act in a world where there’s so much hatred and suffering, well, then at least from a Christian perspective, the answer is Jesus. Because we believe, as followers of Jesus, that God has acted in the person of Christ.

And so what does that mean? Well, it should be comforting for us to know that in the midst of a world in which so much evil still exists and is still ongoing, that Christ is there, in the eternal presence of the First Person of the Trinity. Christ is there, humanity in the heart of God, interceding for us at every single moment, praying, interceding, asking that things would be better for us. And not only there, but here with us right now.

So the book of Hebrews is a challenge to losing one’s faith, but it offers a hope: our great high priest, eternal in the heavens, the pioneer who shows us what faithfulness to God looks like, and the perfecter of our faith, who gives us the ability to do what we could not do on our own.

And so I give thanks that whoever it was who preached this sermon, we call the Letter to the Hebrews, or wrote this letter, I am thankful that they did it, because we have it today, and it is still a message we need to hear: that Jesus, as the incarnate Word of God, the love of God made flesh, shows us the character of God as one who loves us and wants to be with us, and wants us to be with God.

Amen.

Scriptures: Amos 5:6-7,10-15 · Psalm 90:12-17 · Hebrews 4:12-16 · Mark 10:17-31

May the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

There are times when the phrases we use—the sort of stock phrases that roll off our tongues—carry more freight than we imagine, more background behind them than we usually understand. One phrase that stands out in my mind does so because of a particular memory. I was in the third grade and was called up to the teacher’s desk during a quiet work time. I walked up and saw her looking at a note, then looking at me over her glasses, and she said, “What possessed you to throw a rock at a school bus?”

As it happened, I hadn’t really thrown a rock at the school bus. I had been throwing a rock at my cousin, who was leaning halfway out the window. But nonetheless, that was the phrase she used, and it struck me quite hard at the time. I had only ever heard “possessed” in the sense of ownership, not in the sense of something taking control of you. I remember being taken aback by that phrase, and reflecting on it even while I was in trouble—because that’s the sort of kid I was. I remember thinking, even before I got called up, “That was dumb. Why did I do that?” And so: possession. That’s what it means. When someone asks, “What possessed you to do that?” it means you’ve done something out of character, unexpected, perhaps irrational.

Behind that phrase, though, there is a long history of what we might now most often associate with Hollywood depictions like The Exorcist. There is this idea that something outside of oneself can take hold. The exorcist Gabriele Amorth, who died in 2016, has a concise way of distinguishing what we might call spiritual possession from more mundane problems. He says that spiritual possession, if we are willing to use that term, is something that does not respond to medical treatment but seems to respond quite well to blessing. That is an interesting way of looking at it: something that does not respond to medicine, but does respond to blessing.

I want to talk about possession in a different, more mundane way—not so much possession as a spiritual oppression from outside of us, but possession by something very physical, very ordinary, and no less fraught: the way our possessions, our things, can take hold of us and direct our actions. What makes me think of that is our gospel text today, where Jesus encounters the rich young man.

This young man comes to Jesus in a very interesting way. Mark tells us that he runs up to Jesus and kneels before him. His urgency is very similar to that of people seeking healing from disease. He runs, he kneels, and he asks, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responds, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.” In other words, “You know what you have to do.” The young man replies, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.”

Mark then says something striking: “Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’” Mark goes on to say that when the man heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, “for he had many possessions.” One of the consistent witnesses of scripture about wealth and possessions is that while we often think of ourselves as owning things and doing what we like with them, scripture warns that we can just as easily be owned by them. We can be possessed by our possessions, as much as we possess them. Our actions can be directed or misdirected, guided or misguided, by the things we own. That, I think, is the challenge of today’s gospel for all of us.

Jesus goes on to explain this encounter to his disciples. He says, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” and then, with that vivid image, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” This is a difficult saying, and so people have come up with all sorts of glosses over the years—talking about city gates supposedly called “the eye of the needle,” and camels being unloaded to squeeze through. But many scholars challenge that explanation and say it’s wishful thinking. The challenge Jesus gives is real.

The disciples are astounded and ask, “Then who can be saved?” In the ancient world they, like many of us, often assumed that wealthy people might have an inside track with God. They had the means to offer sacrifice, to support religious and public works, to do all the things religious people were supposed to do. There was also a persistent belief that material prosperity might be a sign of God’s favor. So when Jesus says how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom, they are understandably shaken. Jesus answers them, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.” To me, that is a far more hopeful line than any attempt to imagine a camel squeezing through a tiny gate. The point is not that we can solve the problem with cleverness or effort; the point is to depend on God. That is where our hope lies.

This passage about the rich young man has intrigued me for a number of years. In the past I’ve tended to read the young man as being sincere when he says he has kept all the commandments from his youth, and perhaps that is why Jesus looks at him and loves him before speaking the hard word. Recently, though, I came across an intriguing interpretation that puts a different spin on the passage.

If you pay close attention to Jesus’ list of commandments, you’ll notice he adds—or at least expands—one item. He says: you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, and then, “you shall not defraud.” “You shall not defraud” is not part of that particular section of the Decalogue as it appears in Deuteronomy. Scholars debate where Jesus might be drawing it from, whether from another scriptural source or simply as his own insertion. Some suggest it might be an expansion of “you shall not bear false witness,” since defrauding someone often involves deception, a kind of false witness against your neighbor.

This becomes especially interesting when you compare this scene with Jesus’ encounter with another wealthy man: Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus is a tax collector. He climbs a sycamore tree to see Jesus. Jesus calls him down and says, “I must stay at your house today.” The people grumble because Jesus is going to eat with a “sinner,” a collaborator who, they assume, must have enriched himself by squeezing his neighbors. When Jesus comes to his house, Zacchaeus stands and says, “Half of my possessions I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” Jesus responds, “Today salvation has come to this house.”

People assume Zacchaeus is a sinner because of his wealth and his profession, whether or not he has actually done anything illicit. Perhaps something similar is going on with the rich young man. Perhaps he has not kept all the commandments quite as faithfully as he imagines. Jesus’ insertion of “you shall not defraud” may be more than a random addition; it may be an opening for the young man to recognize and make amends for hidden or unacknowledged sin. Some scholars note that this section of Mark echoes themes from the prophet Malachi, especially Malachi 3:5, where the Lord says he will draw near for judgment against sorcerers, adulterers, those who swear falsely, those who oppress hired workers in their wages, the widow and the orphan, and those who thrust aside the alien and do not fear God. There we see concerns about adultery, about care for the vulnerable, about justice in economic dealings—all themes that show up in Jesus’ teaching in this part of Mark.

So perhaps in inserting the command not to defraud, Jesus is doing what he so often does in the gospels: displaying an intense insight into people’s hidden sins, and giving the young man an opportunity. “You lack one thing. Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” But the young man cannot hear that word as liberating. He cannot receive it as a cure. Mark tells us he is shocked and goes away grieving, for he has many possessions. He is possessed of many things, we might say, and he becomes the one person in the gospels who receives a direct, explicit call to follow Jesus and refuses.

What is the lesson for us, and where is the hope? As I said earlier, we usually talk about possession in cultural terms of spirits and exorcism, and it has largely become a matter of entertainment rather than belief. But we can be possessed by very mundane things as well, and perhaps those things are more dangerous than “the spirits of the air,” because we are more likely to be on guard against the spectacular and the strange, and less on guard against what feels normal and everyday.

Amorth’s observation about medicine not working reminded me of a song I’ve quoted before, so I hope you don’t mind hearing it again. It’s by the Avett Brothers, from North Carolina, and it’s called “Ill With Want.” Their grandfather was a Methodist preacher, and sometimes I think a bit of Augustine sneaks into their lyrics, whether consciously or not. In that song they sing:

I am sick with wanting
and it’s evil how it’s got me.
How I let everything I cherish lay to waste.
I am lost in greed this time, and it’s definitely me. 
I point fingers, but there’s no one there to blame.

I need for something. 
Now let me break it down again. 
I need for something, but not more medicine. 

I am sick with wanting, 
and it’s evil how it’s got me. 
Every day is worse than the one before. 
The more I have, the more I think I’m almost where I need to be, 
if only I could get a little more. 

I need for something. 
Now let me break it down again. 
I need for something, but not more medicine. 
Something has me acting like someone I don’t want to be, 
like someone I know isn’t me. 
Ill with want and poisoned by this ugly greed.

Then comes the explicitly Augustinian turn:

Temporary is my time, 
ain’t nothing on this world that's mine 
except the will I found to carry on. 
Free is not your right to choose; 
it’s answering what’s asked of you, 
to give the love you find until it’s gone.

I love this imagery, especially that line in the chorus, “I need for something, but not more medicine.” The speaker recognizes that all the things he is grabbing for are merely band-aids. They are medicine, not cures. What he needs is a cure.

The rich young man needed a cure, too. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” he asks. Jesus offers him the possibility of a cure, but it is a cure he cannot bring himself to accept. The question for us is: what are the things that are possessing us? What are the things that are deforming our actions, that are keeping us from hearing the word that leads to our salvation, the word that would help us live the life God is calling us to live? For some of us it may indeed be material possessions. For others it may be any number of other things that haunt us, court us, or distract us. What are the things that have directed our actions away from what God has called us to? Those are the things we need to be rid of, in order to be faithful and to embrace the hope Christ offers.

Because in the end, it is not actually dependent upon us. It is dependent on God. God has given us the cure we need. The challenge is real, but the hope is just as real. Can we hear the word Christ offers—the word of hope that “for mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible”?

And yes, this is a challenge for us, and I would even submit that there are times in the church when we preach against wealth in a somewhat hypocritical way. We can sound as if all wealthy people are automatically wicked, and then we turn around and send out a stewardship letter. But the lesson of scripture is that whatever we are given—whether we are talking about financial resources or about gifts and talents—whatever we are blessed with, we are encouraged and in fact commanded to use that blessing to bless others. So whether we can invite someone who is hungry over for a hot dog or for a filet mignon, it is the same command: to be generous, to love one another, to give what we have, to be a blessing by that with which we have been blessed—to give the love we find until it is gone. Amen.

Background notes:

The text below consists of my sermon notes and some of the background research I did, but it is not itself a manuscript.

Sometimes our language can reveal more than we intend. Certain phrases carry more weight than we realize, more historical and intellectual freight. Unfolding it all can be an interesting exercise. And sometimes spoken phrases can catch us up short, like the written word that stands out strangely on page or screen even though it is spelled correctly, taunting us with its alien nature, its out of shape edges.

One such phrase that stands out for me is “What possessed you…” The first time I heard it used–or at least the first time I remember hearing it–was when I was in the third grade. My teacher had called me up to her desk during a quiet moment in class, when we were all working on something or other at our desks. She was looking down at a note, and then she looked at me over her glasses and said “What possessed you to throw a rock at the school bus?”

Now, as a matter of fact the afternoon before when I’d gotten off the Bus I had thrown a rock, but not at the School Bus precisely. I’d thrown it at my cousin who it happens was on the School Bus at the time. He had been irritating me the whole drive home and was at the moment the rock left my hand, leaned out one of the rear windows making a face or shouting some taunt. In one way, I knew very well why I had thrown the rock. I was angry and I’d had enough. Cousins that you grow up with, like other close friends and relatives, often know just the buttons to push, and this was an example.

But in another sense, as soon as the rock left my hand, I’d wondered why I’d done it. The phrase “what possessed you…” was an appropriate one, though at the time I was confused by it. I remember being a little offended by the phrase, though I didn’t know why. Nothing, I thought, had made me, at least, nothing except my loving cousin.

But of course, something had possessed me. I acted without reflecting. I was impulsive. Anger had me in its grip. I gave myself over to my baser instincts and, well, my action was an indication that my faculties had indeed been possessed by them. I wasn’t in control.

The language of possession that holds on in such a seemingly innocuous phrase is intriguing. What do we really mean when we ask what possessed someone? Of course we can mean something rather mundane–what emotions drove them to act out of accord with rationality? But we can also mean something beyond the normal parameters of this world, something mysterious or even something founded on the evil powers of this world. The phrase can, in other words, be a sign that we are looking for some explanation where no reasonable explanation exists.

And when no reasonable explanation exists, it can be a sign to look beyond what we normally think of as reason. Father Gabriele Amorth, late Vatican Exorcist (d. 2016) has written for example, that “one of the determining factors in the recognition of diabolic possession is the inefficacy of medicines while blessings prove very efficacious” (Amorth, An Exorcist Tells His Story).

Lest you think I’m going to slip into a reflection on the unseen powers of this world, and how our post-enlightenment rationality can coexist with a biblical view of the unknown–if indeed it can–that is another conversation. Instead, I want to emphasize that sometimes the things that possess us appear to be far more mundane, far more this-worldly than other worldly. Our gospel text this morning invites us to consider that our possessions may be the source of our possession. In other words, the things we own, the things we covet–they may control us; control our thinking, feeling, and acting in a manner as diabolical as any spirit of the air.

As Jesus was setting out on a journey he is respectfully approached by a young man who asks him “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus tells him “You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.” Things get more complicated when the young man, who is quite wealthy, claims to have kept all these commandments from his youth. But it is possible that Jesus knows otherwise. Commentators debate whether the rich young man is depicted in a positive or negative light. Sometimes it is suggested that the man’s wealth itself calls into question his claim to have kept all these commandments–and the pairing with Amos in the lectionary might lead us in that direction. But before we write the man’s claim off, I think we need more evidence than his wealth. Remember that when Jesus interacts with the wealthy, he doesn’t tend to condemn them for their wealth out of hand, but he does have a tendency to push against the possibility that any of their wealth may have been ill gotten, and to encourage their hospitality. Consider the case of Zacchaeus as an interesting parallel. Jesus sees Zacchaeus and invites himself to supper. Zacchaeus obliges and does not protest (though the crowds grumble, for he is known as a sinner because he is a Tax Collector). But Zacchaeus says something interesting:

Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:8-10).

Did you notice something about Jesus’ summary recitation of the commandments? It’s not point for point from Deuteronomy, instead, Jesus imports a command or interprets and expands the commands to include the statement “You shall not defraud.” It is possible that Jesus is gently challenging the Rich Young Man, knowing that his wealth may not have been accumulated by entirely just means. When the man says that he has kept all these commands from his youth, Jesus looks at him, and we’re told he loved him.

One commentator makes a good argument for the intertextuality of portions of the Gospel of Mark and Malachi 3. Here, intertextuality is defined as the “embedding of fragments of an earlier text within a later one.” In this sense then, this section of Mark may have portions of the book of the Prophet Malachi lying behind it. Specifically, Malachi 3:5 may be in view, and could bolster the view that the young man’s sin of defrauding others in order to gain wealth is in view:

“Then I will draw near to you for judgment; I will be swift to bear witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the alien, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.”

(Mal. 3:5)

And yet, it should encourage us that Jesus doesn’t chastise him, correct him, say “surely you could only say you’ve kept all of this if you’re deceiving yourself.” No. Jesus looks at him and loves him. Just as Jesus has looked at people and felt compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd, here Jesus looks at this man and loves him, and gives him an opportunity to be a disciple. Come. Follow me. If we believe that he has defrauded others and is deceiving himself about his culpability, it is an opportunity for repentance and amendment of life. If we believe that he is being truthful and Jesus accepts his statement, then it is an opportunity to enter more deeply into discipleship. But it is more than the man can handle. Mark tells us that when “he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.”

In reflecting on this passage we should remember the context that we have talked about for several weeks in regard to this section of Mark. It’s all about right relationship. As my New Testament professor wrote about this section, it moves from sections dealing with right relationship to the vulnerable or powerless, represented by children, to our appropriate relationship to other disciples, particularly those who don’t follow our plan (we’re meant to realize that Jesus’ plan and our plan–particularly when it comes to others–may not be the same), our relationship to “little ones” (both literal children and believers in Jesus), to each other (have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another), relationships to wives who were the vulnerable partners in marriages of the period (and by extension, between spouses in general), to children again, and to possessions today.

“In all these passages the underlying emphasis, in vivid contrast to the disciples’ concern as to who shall be “greatest,” is on the strong yielding to the weak, the privileged transferring privilege to the underprivileged, the very wealthy foregoing the fruits of wealth for the sake of the gospel. It is striking that at the climax of this the disciples do seem, momentarily, to see the point. ‘Then who can be saved?’ they ask. The answer, Jesus tells them, lies not in their attempts at obedience, but in God for whom ‘all things are possible’ (10:26-27). Is it then the case that those who attempt obedience are wasting their time? By no means: they will receive their recompense–with suffering! (10:28-30). the summary of it all is, ‘Many that are last will be first, and the first last’; in the context, a splendid paradox, threatening to those who seek to claim to be ‘greatest,’ yet full of promise for those who seek (but do not claim to be very good at) obedience”

(Christopher Bryan, “A Preface to Mark” 102-103).

“As is made clear in the story of the rich young man, Mark is aware of the danger of those riches that make it ‘hard’ for us to enter the kingdom (10:17-22; compare 4:19); but even that sequence has some of its sting drawn. ‘Hard’ it may be for the rich to enter the kingdom, yet ‘all things are possible with God’ (10:23, 25, 27). Indeed, the conclusion to that particular conversation implies that willingness to abandon all for the sake of Jesus is not followed by a life without human ties, even ‘now in this time,’ but rather by its opposite (10:30). While it may be conceded that this passage in particular refers to the believer’s new ‘family’ in the Church (compare 3:31-35), still the followers of Jesus in Mark are made powerfully aware that ordinary human marriage remains a lifelong commitment, precious in God’s sight (10:1-12), and that children, the natural fruit of marriage, are not to be ‘hindered’ (10:14; probably a baptismal phrase: compare Acts 8:36, 10:47) in their relationship with Jesus.”

(Bryan, 157-158)

All of this raises the question: maybe these concerns aren’t so mundane. Maybe they are spiritual after all. Amorth’s definition, that possession is defined by something that won’t respond to medical treatment–to medicine–but will respond to blessing reminds me of one of my favorite songs by the North Carolina band, the Avett Brothers. I’ve quoted the song before, so I hope you’ll bear with me as I reference it again. The Avett’s grandpa was a Methodist pastor, and sometimes they seem to be channeling a sort of Augustinian perspective, whether intentionally or not. In it they express the concern that “medicine” isn’t cutting it–what they need is a cure. What the Rich young man needs is a cure. What we need is a cure. Jesus offers it to us, if we’re willing to receive it.

I am sick with wanting
And it’s evil and it’s daunting
How I let everything I cherish lay to waste
I am lost in greed this time, it’s definitely me
I point fingers but there’s no one there to blame

I need for something
Not let me break it down again
I need for something 
But not more medicine

I am sick with wanting 
And it’s evil how it’s got me
And everyday is worse than the one before
The more I have the more I think,
I’m almost where I need to be
If only I could get a little more

I need for something
Now let me break it down again
I need for something
But not more medicine

Something has me (Something has me)
Oh something has me (Something has me)
Acting like someone I don’t wanna be
Something has me (Something has me)
Oh something has me (Something has me)
Acting like someone I know isn’t me
Ill with want and poisoned by this ugly greed

Temporary is my time
Ain’t nothin’ on this world that’s mine
Except the will I found to carry on
Free is not your right to choose
It’s answering what’s asked of you
To give the love you find until it’s gone.

The background information about Malachi in the Gospel of Mark was brought to light in the following Journal article:

Hicks, Richard. 2013. “Markan Discipleship According to Malachi: The Significance of Μh̀ Αποστερήσης in the Stroy of the Rich Man (Mark 10:17-22).” Journal of Biblical Literature 132 (1): 179–99. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a6h&AN=ATLA0001984130&site=ehost-live.

Scripture: Mark 9:30-37

May the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

It is fairly common in reading criticisms of our culture and our day and age to hear people say that we’re looking out for ourselves and that we’re only interested in others based on what they can do for us. And while it may be true to say it about our day and age, I don’t think that we are unique in having this affliction. In fact, our Gospel lesson today is bound up with questions of status and questions of what people can do for us.

The Second Passion Prediction

Jesus is giving what’s called the second of his passion predictions in the Gospel of Mark—the second time he has predicted what’s going to happen to him as the Messiah. You’ll recall the first prediction he made. That’s the one right after Peter confessed him to be the Messiah, the Christ. Jesus then told Peter and the other disciples what that meant, and that’s what prompted Peter’s response: “God forbid that this should ever happen to you, Lord,” which then prompted Jesus’s rebuke.

So you would think that they would have remembered Jesus’s explanation after the first passion prediction. But nonetheless, they hear Jesus teach this again—that the Son of Man will be betrayed into human hands and would be put to death, and that after three days he would rise again. And they don’t understand it. And perhaps as a sign that they do remember what happened previously, they’re afraid to ask. They don’t want to be rebuked like Peter was rebuked. So they’re afraid to ask what Jesus means.

The Dispute About Greatness

And so he’s moving on to another teaching. He asks them—they’re gathered at the house there at Capernaum, probably Peter’s house. They’re gathered together, and Jesus had noticed something during their travels. The disciples seemed to be having a dispute amongst themselves. And so Jesus asked them, “What were you arguing about on the road?” And they confess, “We were arguing about who was the greatest.”

And Jesus decides he’s going to teach them a lesson. So he tells them that if they want to be part of the kingdom, the first in the kingdom of God will be servant of all. They must first become servants of all. And then to illustrate that, there’s a child running around the house, and Jesus invites the child and comes and sets the child in the midst of the disciples and says, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives not me but the one who sent me.”

The Wordplay of Child and Servant

Now, I’m told—and I read that the Aramaic word (just so you know, I don’t speak or pretend to read Aramaic)—but I’m told that the Aramaic word for “child” is the same as the Aramaic word for “servant.” So Jesus had just told them that they must become servants of all, and then he takes a child—so there’s some wordplay going on here—and sets the child in the midst of them and says that they need to receive the child. “Whoever receives one such child, one such servant, in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives not me but the one who sent me.”

Now this context, I think, highlights the fact that Jesus, in talking about the child, is not highlighting innocence like we might think of naturally in our context, or highlighting even childlike faith, again as we might think of. In fact, those associations with childhood were not really present in the ancient world. Those are actually products of the early church and how the early church came to think about children.

And so for Jesus to then take up a child and put the child there and say, “Whoever receives one such little child receives me”—Jesus is saying, “This child is my representative.” And when you receive me by receiving this child, you receive not me but the one who sent me, the Father.

Assumptions About Status and Representation

So Jesus is playing with a lot of assumptions here. The first being that the assumption of the ancient world was not about children as innocent, children as having faith. It was about children as people who couldn’t do a thing for you—children as the lowest on the totem pole, so to speak. It was a very different concept. So who’s a servant of all in the household? The youngest. The youngest is the servant of all because they’re the lowest on the totem pole. So Jesus is telling them something really about humility.

And he’s telling them this, and then he’s telling them something else—something that has to do with representation. The ancient world was full of assumptions about patronage and about representation. And for a representative to go somewhere, that means you would receive them like they were the very person they were representing.

When people would send letters, for example, when Paul sends his letters to the churches, many scholars think it would have been likely that not only did Paul dictate the letters, but that whoever took the letter and delivered it would have talked to Paul ahead of time, read it, probably memorized it, and would have known what things to emphasize when they spoke. And they would have actually spoken the letter, spoken the message to the church that Paul had sent, emphasizing the very things that Paul said. This was an extension of the idea that in sending the letter with the representative, Paul was sending someone who was to be received like him, like Paul himself.

So Jesus is highlighting this and saying, “Whoever receives one such child, one such servant, one such person that you assume cannot do anything for you—you receive me. And in receiving me, you receive not me but the one who sent me.”

Finding Jesus in the Least

So Jesus is saying, “If you want to know who represents me, who represents Jesus, look for the one who can’t do anything for you. Look for the one that doesn’t offer advantage. Look for the one that doesn’t offer you higher status. Look for the one that is only in need of help and offers only themselves.” And then you will know what it means to welcome Jesus.

And in welcoming Christ, we know who we welcome when we welcome Christ. We welcome God in the flesh. We welcome not only the Son but the Father who sent the Son, because Jesus is the messenger. Jesus brings God’s word. Jesus is God’s word. So in receiving Christ, we receive God.

A New Economy in God’s Kingdom

So the lesson for us extends beyond this. If we want to find Jesus, we look for the one who can give us nothing. The other side of it is that as followers of Jesus, not only should we not be concerned with status in the way the world is concerned with status, not only is Jesus flipping upside down the assumptions of the world about who matters—the last shall be first and the first shall be last, all of this teaching Jesus does on this—Jesus is also, I think, trying to teach us a lesson. Because Jesus has said, “You should become like a servant of all.” In other words, become as one that cannot offer anything to anyone.

Now, that doesn’t mean we don’t have any skills or care or love. We don’t have things to offer. Doesn’t mean we don’t have gifts—that word betrays it: gifts. The idea is that unlike the way people were thinking about things in that day and age, which is, “I’m going to help someone who can help me somehow, and I’m going to help someone in the hopes that what I give will ingratiate myself to them so that they can sort of lift me up”—instead of that, Jesus is teaching his disciples and teaching us about a whole new economy in the kingdom of God. One that isn’t concerned with what others can do for us, and one that gives freedom, where we give freely to others because we have received freely from God.

So we are going to welcome others regardless of what they can do for us, and we’re going to give freely to others without regard to the idea that somehow what we give belongs only to us, but instead remembering that what we have and who we are is all gifts of God. And therefore, in order to love our neighbor and to demonstrate our love for God, we share with others freely, without expectation of return.

So we receive the servant, and we become the servant. We receive the child, and we become like the little child in the kingdom of heaven—free of all the expectations that society builds and all the desires that otherwise rule.

Good News for All

This is good news, not only for people back then who were hidebound in their own expectations about society, but it’s good news for us too. Because it demonstrates that in the kingdom, what God is bringing into reality is something where people are valued because they are beloved by God. And there is neither any need for any other reason to love, nor is there any way that we cannot come to this call to love one another, because God has first loved us.

So the lesson for us is, I think, to think about in our own day the people who are not conceived of as being able to be any benefit to us—people who are pushed to the edges, pushed to the margins. You might think of the elderly, you might think of the disabled, you might think of those who are sick with chronic illness. People who are forgotten, not necessarily because they’re hated, but because they make us uncomfortable.

I think oftentimes the people who are pushed to the margins in our society are often the people who remind us of precisely that lesson that Jesus is trying to teach us: the fact that our worth is not based upon what we can do and what we can offer others, but only and solely based upon the fact that God loves us.

Measuring Worth

And we would a whole lot, I think, rather it be the case that we can measure our worth based upon what we can do, the list we can make of what we can offer. And we can apply that most harshly to ourselves. We can also fall into the habit of applying it to others as well. And this, I think, is what Jesus is warning us about today as his disciples.

Who are we willing to welcome, knowing that we will welcome Christ? What are we willing to offer to others, knowing that we will be serving Christ in them? This is what we should be considering. This is the message that Jesus offers us.

And in telling it to the disciples, he’s telling them, “Don’t argue over who has the most status. Don’t argue over who’s the greatest, because in doing that, you’re holding on to this old way of thinking that’s going to pass away.”

And Jesus is telling us the same thing. This old way of thinking has continued, and it’s still there in our society. It’s changed shape, it’s changed form, but it’s still there. So for us, we are to embrace the reality that our worth is summed up in the fact that Christ came and died for us. And so is everyone else’s.

Amen.

Remember that my sermons tend to vary somewhat between services, both because I try to keep the 8 AM sermon slightly shorter, and because I preach without a manuscript.

The 10:30 AM service is above. The sequence hymn and gospel reading are included. To go directly to the sermon, start at 3:18.

The 8 AM Service is below. The gospel reading is included. To go directly to the sermon, start at 1:23.

Image Info: Carving of Three Faces with four eyes, Llandaff Cathedral

Image Info: Christ the Judged, Byzantine

Image: Procession of Virgin Martyrs, c. 6th Century.