St. John's Episcopal Church

Sermon for Thursday, December 24, 2009

The Feast of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ

And [Mary] gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. (Luke 2:7)

The Guest Rooms…

When we get to this part of the Christmas story, about there being “no place” for Mary and Joseph “in the inn,”  (Luke 2:7) we probably imagine some overworked innkeeper turning the Holy Family away, perhaps a bit gruffly, because all his rooms are taken and he is very busy.  “Sorry… no room here… you’ll have to look elsewhere.”  That’s how it’s portrayed in lots of Christmas plays.

I suppose many of us have had a similar experience — pulling off the road after a long day, wanting nothing more than a room and a meal, only to find “No Vacancy” signs lighted on every motel.  All you can do is drive on, hoping for better luck at the next exit or town.

It’s unlikely, however, that Bethlehem boasted a 1st century version of Holiday Inn Express, or indeed any hostelry whatsoever.  Our English word “inn” translates a Greek word, kataluma, which means “a place to loose one’s burden.”  A similar word in Hebrew means “a place to spend the night.”  No house or other structure is necessarily implied.  A kataluma might be a spare room in someone’s home, or a rude shelter, or just a campsite in the open.

Scripture records that Mary laid the newborn Jesus in a manger, a feeding trough for animals.  We assume, then, that the Holy Family stayed in a barn or cattle shed, which tradition has built up into any number of picturesque and commodious outbuildings, each awash in spotlessly clean straw, with lowing cattle and bleating sheep standing about, and maybe a few chickens thrown in just for fun.  In fact, it’s more likely that Joseph and Mary found space with a distant relative, and just in the nick of time.

We should note that Luke uses this same word, kataluma, to describe the “guest room” or “upper room” in which Jesus and his disciples celebrate their Last Supper in Jerusalem on the evening before our Lord is crucified.  And kataluma is also used in the parable of the Good Samaritan to identify the “inn” to which the Samaritan takes the injured man so that he can be nursed back to health.

Thus, in Luke’s gospel we have three “guest rooms” — one at Bethlehem, one on the Jericho road, and one in Jerusalem.  It seems to me that each of these borrowed spaces reflects a failure of hospitality, an unwillingness to welcome the stranger.  Without going deeply into the matter, let me just say that in the ancient Near East, hospitality was a primary moral obligation.  Travel was difficult and dangerous.  Therefore, if a stranger appeared on your doorstep and gave no indication of hostile intent, you were obligated to provide him, the people with him, and even his animals with food and shelter.  The wayfarer even remained under your protection for a period after he departed.  To fail to show hospitality was not just bad manners, but a great sin against God.

It’s hard to hear the story of Jesus’ birth without recognizing this discordant note, this lack of hospitality.  The Son of God is about to be born, but for him, even in the hometown of his ancestor David, there is no “place to spend the night,” no “place to loose one’s burden.”  Does the Holy Family find shelter from the elements?  Is there even a midwife to assist Mary with the delivery?  Luke does not elaborate, but it seems clear that the Holy Family must simply make do, finding some sort of kataluma among the animals.  Everyone in Bethlehem, except a few shepherds, is too busy to notice that the will of God is unfolding in their midst.

Roughly 35 years later, Jesus and his disciples share a final meal in another kataluma, this one in Jerusalem. (Luke 22:11)  The Son of God has come to the Holy City, but those in charge offer no hospitality.  Instead they plot to do away with Jesus because they consider him a troublemaker, a danger to their apple cart.  He is inconvenient.  The authorities are too busy with their own agendas to notice that the will of God is unfolding in their midst.

Between these two episodes of inhospitality we find the story of the Good Samaritan.  You know it well.  A traveling Jew is set upon by robbers and left for dead by the side of the road.  Priests pass by on their way to Jerusalem, but they do nothing, apparently fearing that if they have contact with a dead body, they will be rendered unfit to serve at the temple.  The Samaritan, however, sees someone in trouble and immediately renders aid.  He takes the injured man to a kataluma — an “inn,” a place to spend the night — and arranges for the man’s care. (Luke 10:34-35)  This man’s fellow Jews — his own neighbors — are unwilling to show hospitality.  They are too busy with their own affairs to see God’s will unfolding in their midst.  But the Samaritan sees the need and acts in faith.

Christmas is a very sentimental time.  I confess that I enjoy the sentimental side of Christmas as much as anyone.  What would Christmas be without cards, carols, decorations, and yet another showing of “It’s a Wonderful Life”?  But as we celebrate, I hope we will remember that in too many places around this world, too many children are born under, and into, the most difficult of circumstances; too many people are abused and injured and left by the side of the road, uncared for by their neighbors; and too many people lose their lives because, in some way, to some person or group, they are inconvenient.  Even we ourselves, weighed down with many burdens, may see the stranger among us as a distraction, and not as Jesus in one of his many disguises.  Too often, in too many places, the ancient obligation of hospitality is forgotten.

The story of our Lord’s birth declares that God’s will is unfolding in our midst.  It was to make God’s will manifest in this world that our Lord came among us.  If you and I allow Jesus to be our light in the darkness, then we will see how God’s will is unfolding, and how each of us is called to play a role in spreading God’s kingdom.  This is a work of hospitality!  It begins when we make room for our Lord — when we create a “guest room,” a kataluma, if you will — in our own hearts and lives, when we welcome the good news of God in Christ, and when we share this good news with neighbors near and far.  Merry Christmas!  And Amen!

…And the Poem

Now… a change of pace.  Our celebration of Christmas Eve calls to mind a very special Christmas gift created 186 years ago by a seminary professor in New York City.  In fact, he taught at The General Theological Seminary, where I studied for Holy Orders.

Clement Clarke Moore was born in 1779.  He was the only son of Benjamin Moore, President of Columbia College (now Columbia University) and the Episcopal Bishop of New York, and his wife Charity Clarke.  Moore entered this life at the family’s country estate on the west side of Manhattan Island, called Chelsea.  After graduating from Columbia in 1798, Moore joined the College’s faculty as professor of oriental and Greek literature.  Some years later, on the death of his parents, Moore inherited Chelsea.  In 1819 he gave a large parcel of this land to the Episcopal Church as the site for the Church’s first seminary.  Moore soon became General’s first Professor of biblical learning and classics, a post he held for nearly 30 years.

Moore was a poet as well as a linguist, and he especially enjoyed composing poems for his children.  In 1822, possibly on the seminary grounds, Moore wrote “A Visit from St. Nicholas.”  This little poem delighted his children, and then all of Moore’s relatives, one of whom had it printed in an out-of-town newspaper.  It was an immediate sensation.

However, for over 20 years Moore refused to take credit for his poem.  Perhaps he felt that a pious Episcopalian and dignified seminary professor ought not to be writing odes to a jolly, fat Christmas elf!  Only in 1844 did he publish “A Visit from St. Nicholas” under his own name, as part of a book of poetry.  This particular poem he dismissed as “a mere trifle.”

Trifle or not, “A Visit from St. Nicholas” made its author famous as “the reluctant poet of Christmas” and helped transform the way we think about this holiday.  It’s also fair to say that Clement Clarke Moore’s little poem is a wonderful Christmas gift from a child of the Episcopal Church to children across the generations.

A Visit from St. Nicholas

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
while visions of sugar plums danced in their heads.
And Mama in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.

When out on the roof there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
tore open the shutter, and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
gave the luster of midday to objects below,
when, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
but a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer.

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles, his coursers they came,
and he whistled and shouted and called them by name:

“Now Dasher! Now Dancer!
Now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! On, Cupid!
On, Donner and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch!
To the top of the wall!
Now dash away! Dash away!
Dash away all!”

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
when they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky
so up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
with the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
the prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head and was turning around,
down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
and his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
and he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.

His eyes–how they twinkled! His dimples, how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
and the beard on his chin was as white as the snow.
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
and the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
that shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
and I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself.
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head
soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
and filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk.
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
and giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

— The Rev. John E. Laycock, Interim Pastor

Readings for Christmas Eve, Year C: Lesson — Isaiah 9:2-7  •  Gradual — Psalm 96  •  Epistle — Titus 2:11-14  •  Gospel — Luke 2:1-20

Collect for Christmas Eve:

O God, you have caused this holy night to shine with the brightness of the true Light: Grant that we, who have known the mystery of that Light on earth, may also enjoy him perfectly in heaven; where with you and the Holy Spirit he lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting.  Amen.

Sermon for Sunday, December 20, 2009 (Year C, Advent 4)

He has come to the help of his servant Israel, for he has remembered his promise of mercy, the promise he made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children for ever. (Magnificat, BCP p. 119)

Promises, promises.  The world seems to run on promises.  “Earn big money working at home with this ‘free’ offer….”  “Lose 50 pounds in five weeks with our all-natural, doctor-approved pills….”  “Good for the life of your vehicle.  Some restrictions may apply….”  “Invest in complete safety….”  “Strong as the rock of Enron….”

Promises work, in this sense.  They are wonderfully attractive.  Just about a decade ago I heard a man extoll the virtues of his retirement fund managers, because these wise people had shifted the fund’s investments heavily into tech stocks.  Tech stocks promised investors a fortune.  A few months later the tech bubble burst.  As we have seen so painfully over the past year, a few people can make a lot of money making promises, while a lot of other people can lose their shirts.

But before we look too harshly at the checkered track record of commercial promise-makers, we should recognize that, at a personal level, promises are just as chancy.  In a few days we will be on the cusp of a new year.  It’s a moment when we like to make promises, or resolutions — to eat less and exercise more, to spend less and save more, to be more considerate of our loved ones, to not take the Lord’s name in vain when someone cuts us off in traffic.  Some of these promises we will keep; others, we won’t.

There’s an old saying: “Promises are like babies: easy to make, hard to deliver.”  The challenge, of course, is delivering on the promises we make.  If good intentions were all it took, none of our promises would go unfulfilled.  However, performing on our promises can be difficult.

As we begin the final few days of our journey through Advent toward the Feast of the Nativity, we might take time to reflect on this business of making and keeping promises, because at the very core of Christmas is a promise — a promise both made and kept.

The section of Luke’s gospel appointed for today doesn’t describe the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary — the appearance of the angel; or the famous greeting, “Hail, Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with you”; or the outrageous proposition; or Mary’s faithful acceptance of God’s offer.   Rather, this morning’s reading assumes the Annunciation and instead jumps forward to Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, who is probably Mary’s cousin, and who will soon give birth to John the Baptist.  Such a contrast!  Mary is a Galilean maiden, perhaps only 14 years of age, while Elizabeth is the aged and, until recently, barren wife of the priest Zechariah.  God’s will is already taking shape in both women.

It is Elizabeth who famously greets Mary, saying, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” (Luke 1:42)  Reflecting on her own experience of God’s favor, Elizabeth says, “And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” (Luke 1:45)  Mary responds by singing her praises of God in that hymn we know as the Magnificat: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.  Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed….”  (Luke 1:46-48)  Her song ends, “For he has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and his descendants forever.” (Luke 1:54-55, emphasis supplied)

The promise to which Mary refers is the promise given to a man named Abram and his wife Sarai, as they lived in quiet old age in the town of Haran, in Mesopotamia (or modern day Iraq).  Abram and Sarai were comfortably well off by the day’s standards, with flocks and servants and many possessions.  The one thing they lacked was children.  Sarai was barren — in that day a great misfortune, and in some eyes evidence of God’s wrath.  By now she and Abram doubtless were reconciled to their loss and assumed that any opportunity for having children had passed them by.

However, the Bible is full of the unexpected.  And unexpectedly, the Lord comes to Abram one night and makes him an offer: “Go from your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you,” God says.  “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great… and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Gen. 12:1-3).  In due course the nature of this blessing becomes more clearly defined.  God makes a covenant with Abram, promising that he and Sarai will have children — indeed, descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven — and they will have land, and a name that will never be forgotten.  God asks only that Abram and his children be faithful to this covenant and to the God who makes it.

Now, to us that promise may seem a small thing, a private deal between the Lord and this elderly Mesopotamian couple.  But that is probably because we tend to read the Bible in bits and pieces — a little Genesis one day, a fragment of the prophets another day, a chapter of the gospels on still another day.  However, if we step back and appreciate the sweep of scripture — or the “story arc,” as Hollywood people like to say — then we will see that this promise runs like a thread through the whole of the Bible — first from Abraham and Sarah (as the couple is more commonly known) to their son Isaac, then from Isaac to his son Jacob, and then down through the family we call Israel, generation after generation.  At each stage the promise is renewed, a reaffirmation of God’s mercy and loving-kindness, God’s willingness to forgive, and God’s commitment to his people.

This promise is directly linked to Moses, to whom God gives the task of leading the children of Israel up from slavery in Egypt.  At the time of his call, when God speaks to Moses from the burning bush, Moses asks God’s name.  After all, he has to tell the Hebrews who sent him!  God responds, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’” (Ex. 3:15)

Later, after the escape from Egypt, God renews his covenant at Mount Sinai, telling the people through Moses, “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.  Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples… [and] you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” (Ex. 19:4-6)  This covenant, with the promise it enshrines, becomes Israel’s charter, sustaining them not just through their forty years in the wilderness, but also in their new life in the promised land.  The promise has been renewed yet again.

Still later, in the days of King David, God gives a vision to the prophet Nathan, saying, “I will establish the throne of [David’s] kingdom forever… I will not take my steadfast love from him… therefore [his] house and [his] kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; [David’s] throne shall be established forever.” (2 Sam. 7:13-16)  The promise is renewed once more, and in time comes down to Jesus, whose father Joseph, as Luke explains, “was descended from the house and family of David.” (Luke 2:4)  It is in Jesus, the son of Mary, that the promise is finally and conclusively fulfilled.

This promise is the thread which runs through the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, binding everything together in a coherent whole.  For Christians, the story of the promise as it makes its way from Abraham to David to Jesus serves as a kind of overture, or introductory movement, to the main body of the composition, which is the story of Jesus and the Church.

If we are to understand how important this promise is, we must remember what Mary sang as she greeted her kinswoman Elizabeth: “He has come to the help of his servant Israel,  for he has remembered his promise of mercy, the promise he made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children for ever.” If we live by faith in Jesus Christ, then we too are children of Abraham and inheritors of the promise.  To us, across the generations, comes the assurance of God’s love, God’s forgiveness, God’s willingness to stand with us in evil times and good times.  And to us, also, come the obligations of the covenant — to be a holy nation, a kingdom of priests to serve our God.

As inheritors of the promise, we are called to make a difference.  As inheritors of the promise, we are called to share our Lord’s ministry and to spread the good news by word and deed.  It is this promise, made and kept, that we will celebrate on Christmas Eve.  Amen.

— The Rev. John E. Laycock, Interim Pastor

Readings for Year C, Advent 4: Lesson — Micah 5:2-5a  •  Canticle 15, Magnificat  •  Epistle — Hebrews 10:5-10  •  Gospel — Luke 1:39-55

Collect for Advent 4:

Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

Sermon for Sunday, December 13, 2009 (Year C, Advent 3)

Sing aloud, O daughter Zion!… [your God] will renew you in his love…. (Zech. 3:14, 17)

During the last presidential campaign, TV news anchor Katie Couric made bold to inquire of the Republican vice presidential candidate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, what she liked to read.  That question, in that context, caused quite a stir.  However, what Presidents and candidates for high office like to read says a lot about a person, at least to newspeople, university professors, and Washington tea-leaf readers.  I think the candidate who confesses he’s reading Machiavelli’s The Prince for the seventh time will raise some eyebrows.

In February 2008, long before Ms. Couric’s interview with Gov. Palin, TV journalist Bill Moyers asked his viewers to suggest “required reading” for the President or candidates for same.  Thousands responded.  The top recommendations ranged from historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, about Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet; to philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, her massive hymn to laissez-faire capitalism and individual self-interest; to Theodor Seuss Geizel’s Horton Hears a Who, Dr. Seuss’ reminder that “a person’s a person, no matter how small.”  For sheer intellectual and spiritual weight, Dr. Seuss leads the pack.

On this, the Third Sunday of Advent, with Luke’s gospel again focused on John the Baptist, I find myself wondering what John liked to read.  We don’t think of the Baptist as a reader.  The gospels portray him as a rough character, wandering the wilderness, living off the land, and immersing people in the Jordan.  But we must not judge the book by its cover.  John is no intellectual or spiritual lightweight.  He would have no difficulty with Ms. Couric’s question.  John had spent his life immersed in the Jewish scriptures.  As a latter day prophet, who saw himself as the forerunner of the coming Messiah, I expect he had, over the years, carefully read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested the scrolls of the prophets.  And I suspect he felt a special affinity for the words of Zephaniah — a portion of which we have as today’s Old Testament reading.

We cannot be sure exactly who Zephaniah was, when he was active, or even if the text is entirely one person’s work.  This short book, just three chapters long, begins with the claim that it dates from the time of King Josiah, roughly 600 years before the birth of Jesus. (Zeph. 1:1)  If that is the case, then Zephaniah was at work about 100 years after the Northern Kingdom of Israel had been swept away by the Assyrians, and perhaps 30-40 years before the Southern Kingdom of Judah fell to the Babylonians.  Zephaniah may have been a contemporary of the prophet Jeremiah.

Zephaniah opens with a prediction of God’s coming judgment on Judah, which will include a cleansing of the earth similar to that described in the story of Noah.  Creation will be disassembled, with God sweeping away humans, animals, birds, and fish. (Zeph. 1:2-3)  The Lord will take such drastic action because Judah has played the harlot by chasing after false gods — the Baals, which were various Canaanite deities; Milcom, an Ammonite deity; gods associated with the heavenly bodies; and so on. (Zeph 1:4-5)  “…I will punish all who leap over the threshold,” the Lord declares. (Zeph 1:9)  Apparently some people believed that demons lived under the doorways of houses, and one therefore had to leap over the threshold in order not to disturb them — a superstition akin to, “Step on a crack, break your mother’s back.”

Neglect of the covenant with God will set off a catastrophe, Zephaniah proclaims.  “The great day of the Lord… will be a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness… in the fire of his passion the whole earth shall be consumed….” (Zeph. 1:14-15, 18) Jerusalem comes in for special criticism.  Zephaniah declares that it is a “soiled, defiled, oppressing city [which] has not trusted in the Lord… The officials within in are roaring lions; its judges are evening wolves that leave nothing until the morning… its priests have profaned what is sacred….” (Zeph. 3:1-4)

In all this, Zephaniah and the Baptist sound a lot alike.  In John’s day the problem is not worship of foreign gods, but greed and ethical indolence.  Especially in Jerusalem, people keep the outward forms of the covenant, but neglect its inner demands.  They see others in need (of clothing, for instance), but fail to respond; tax-collectors cheat tax-payers; soldiers extort money by threats and false accusation. (Luke 3:10-14)  Their behavior demonstrates their lack of commitment to God’s covenant.  Therefore, John demands repentance.  He rails at “the crowds that came out to be baptized by him,” calling them a “brood of vipers!” and asking, “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” (Luke 3:7)  The great day of the Lord, predicted by Zephaniah, is coming.  “Even now” John declares, “the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree…that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” (Luke 3:9)

For all their fire and brimstone, the two prophets are also alike in sounding a grace note.  In his concluding song of joy, Zephaniah promises that God’s anger will not endure forever.  The fire of the Lord’s passion will consume the dross, leaving what is pure unharmed.  “Do not fear, O Zion,” says Zephaniah.  “The Lord, your God, is in your midst… he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love… [God himself declares,] I will bring you home, at the time when I gather you….” (Zeph. 3:16-17, 20)  John the Baptist preaches a similar message, declaring that “one who is more powerful and I is coming… His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing-floor and to gather the wheat into his granary….” (Luke 3:16-17)

So John and Zephaniah proclaim a very similar message — that God is unhappy with the present state of affairs, that God will act, yet in time God will offer renewal and restoration, gathering up and bringing home a faithful remnant.  And both are alike in that they demanded a change in behavior — for Zephaniah, that people turn away from false gods, and for John, that people live honest, caring lives.

If John read Zephaniah and took him to heart, I think Jesus read Zephaniah and listened to John, and took both of them to heart!  Jesus warned against the false gods of selfishness and greed.  He called on people to care for others just as they cared for themselves.  He challenged his disciples to give generously, trade honestly, and show respect for neighbors.  He warned that God was about to act, but also assured people that God would be faithful to his children.  Jesus “read” both John and the classical prophets, and shaped his ministry in the light of their work.

In this brief season of Advent, we wait in eager expectation for God to do a new thing.  Yet, in truth, this new thing — God’s gift of his Son — is better understood as a new approach to an old problem.  The people in John’s and Jesus’ day prided themselves on being children of Abraham, but they did not take seriously the demands of the covenant God first made with Father Abraham.  They did not believe God’s ancient promise that he would save his people, so they put their trust in themselves, or in material goods, or in political power, living as if their behavior today had no impact on tomorrow.

The Lord’s advent at Bethlehem, and his second advent at the end of time, is God’s fulfillment of the plan of salvation which reaches back to the very beginning of Israel’s history.  What we need to see is the continuity in God’s action, the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow — from Abraham to Zephaniah to John the Baptist to Jesus and then into our own day.  God’s plan of salvation continues to unfold, and our role is to conform our lives to that effort as we wait in joyful expectation.  In many ways you and I have inherited the work of Zephaniah and John.  We are to see what is amiss in the world around us, to proclaim God’s readiness to act, and to become — each in our own way — instruments by which the fulfillment of God’s promise is made real.

I think it was Jesse Jackson who said, “You can walk your way into a different kind of thinking faster than you can think your way into a different kind of walking.”  Jesus, in concert with Zephaniah and John, called for a change in behavior.  Are people in our society denied the necessities of life?  Don’t sit on your hands!  Do the powerful extort the weak?  Don’t turn your back!  Do the people suffer from violence and oppression?  Raise your voice!  God’s people ought to act like God’s people.  After all, a person’s a person, no matter how small.  Amen.

— The Rev. John E. Laycock, Interim Pastor

Readings for Year C, Advent 3: Lesson: Zephaniah 3:14-20  •  Canticle 9  •  Epistle: Philippians 4:4-7  •  Luke 3:7-18

Collect for Advent 3:

Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and for ever.  Amen.

Sermon for the Funeral of Kenneth Edward Sanders

Friday, December 11, 2009, at 1:00 p.m.

Providing a brief but adequate summary of a person’s life is never easy.  That’s especially true when the person lived just shy of nine-tenths of a century.  Today, as we pay our final respects to our brother in Christ, Kenneth Edward Sanders, I can only touch on a few significant milestones in this man’s life.

But that’s OK.  You know, we tend to think of grieving as a sad process, a heavy business.  Indeed, “heaviness” is the underlying meaning of our English word grief.  Grief, we think, must be a matter of tears and intense sorrow.  And truly, the loss of a loved one — a cherished husband, father, father-in-law, grandfather, friend — is the occasion for deepest sorrow.  But grieving, properly done, is also, and I think most especially, story-telling. As we remember the stories of Ken’s life, we call him to mind.  By our story-telling we make him present even now, we honor what he was for us, and we feel the joy of having been touched by a good man and a good life.

These, then, are just a few of Ken’s stories:

You know, of course, that Ken was born on October 19, 1920, in Laurium, north of Houghton-Hancock, in the Keweenaw Peninsula — which many consider the snowiest region east of the Rockies.  In the Keweenaw the last snow can fall in June and the first snow in September; and some years, in July, children can still sled on the hills of snow cleared from city streets.   Thus Ken comes from the part of Michigan where Grand Haven’s annual average snowfall of 100 or so inches would be considered just a good start.  It seems only appropriate, then, that this celebration of Ken’s life should be prefaced by a blizzard, even if just a modest one.

After graduating from high school in Calumet, Ken started college at Wayne State University.  There he was a member of the ROTC rifle club and a sharpshooter.  When, in December 1941, America found herself at war, Ken was drafted into the Air Force, but soon transferred to the Army Infantry, in time earning the rank of Master Sergeant.  A member of the 75th Infantry Division, he served in Belgium, France, Holland, and Germany.

Ken led an anti-tank unit consisting of a few men and an anti-tank gun towed behind a jeep.  From what I have been able to learn over the past couple days, the program was simple — find out where the enemy was going to be, get there first, set up your weapon, ambush 2-3 tanks, and then relocate before you could be fired upon.  From what I read, the most distinguishing characteristic of this fire team was an utter absence of protection — no armored transport… no body armor… no protection whatsoever.  If you survived, you did so on training, guts, and guile.  Many of Ken’s men did not survive, but somehow Ken himself got through the war without being wounded, at least not in ways you could see.  That’s not to say that the enemy didn’t try.  One day some German caught a lucky shot, badly denting but not penetrating Ken’s helmet and giving Ken the worst headache of his life, which lasted for days.

Ken participated in the Ardennes Campaign of December 16, 1944-January 25, 1945, popularly known as the Battle of the Bulge.  For people in my age group this is one of the last major battles of World War II in Europe.  For those who fought, it was the cold, chaotic, desperate effort by the Germans to break the Allied advance after Normandy.  More than 1,300,000 American, British and German troops fought for five terrible weeks through the Ardennes Mountains of Belgium.  In this one battle more than 19,000 Americans died, 47,000 were wounded, and 23,000 were captured or listed as missing in action, while the Germans sustained 100,000 casualties.  But Ken survived.  What he experienced led him, as it led so many others, to put away those memories after the war.  Only once, in order to help the daughter of friends with a college research project, did Ken speak at length about his wartime experiences.

After VE Day Ken did not have enough “points” to be sent home, and many of his comrades were being transferred to the Pacific Theater.  Ken was blessed by the intervention of a high-ranking officer whose task, it appears, it was to implement the ceasefire after Germany surrendered.  He invited Ken to be his driver.  Over the next few months, Ken traveled all over Europe, great swaths of which were in ruins.

In November 1941, just 15 days before the war began, Ken had married Shirley Brinkman.  That marriage was to last 68 years.  After his discharge from military service, Ken returned home, and he and Shirley took up where they had left off.  Their family eventually included daughter Betsy and son David.  In time Ken found a position in the tool and die shop of the Chrysler missile plant near Detroit.  After several years the missile plant closed, and Ken became a Chrysler purchasing agent, the job he kept until retirement.  His role was to determine what parts would be needed for cars scheduled to be built two years hence, and then to order all the parts now, so they would be in stock and available at the proper moment.  Now, for someone like me — who can’t remember if the church doors should be locked tonight, unless Cindi tells me — Ken’s purchasing work is as much a mystery as high energy physics.  To strike an analogy, imagine having to decide today what repair work you will do on your house during the summer of 2011, and then, this week, to order and schedule delivery for all the materials so they will be on the shelf, ready for use, the day they are needed.  Ken’s ability to plan was really awesome.

Ken was mechanically talented, too.  He especially loved flying, and he and Tom Trainer built three or four airplanes together.  According to Dave, one of these was a 2-seater, 37-hp plane in which he and Tom happily risked their lives.  Ken would tell Shirley that he and Tom planned to fly over the family homestead at such-and-such an hour, and that she should walk outside, look up, and wave as they flew by.  Sure enough, at the appointed hour, this little yellow plane and its builders would do a ceremonial fly-over — with the motor sounding like a lawnmower on its last legs.

Ken did all his own plumbing, electrical, and other repair work around the house.  To this end he liked to save things, lots of things, because you never knew what might be needed for some future project — and as I said just a moment ago, Ken’s role was to anticipate needs and have all the right stuff ready for use.  I’m told that Ken’s and Shirley’s basement is a little Smithsonian Institution of things “ready for use.”  My late father, who was just five years older than Ken, did much the same; a decade after his death, I and my brothers are still sorting through Dad’s retained treasures.  I think this habit reflects growing up during the Depression, before our post-war era of absurd abundance, planned obsolescence, and thoughtless disposability.  That early, formative experience of everything being in short supply, from food to medical care to repair parts, created a generation of pack rats, of which Ken and my father were both devoted members.

Having grown up in the UP, Ken loved the outdoors and passed along that passion to his son.  Ken was not a hunter.  In fact, he treasured life — so much so that if a moth wandered into the house, he would do a catch-and-release.  I suspect Ken had seen enough death; for him, life was precious, and a good walk provided the opportunity to enjoy the abundance of life with which God has blessed us.  Besides, as Dave discovered, you find such interesting things out-of-doors!  Over the years the Sanders porch played host to three orphaned ducks, christened Huey, Dewey, and Louie, whose namesakes were the celluloid sons of Donald Duck’s sister Della; a rooster pheasant; an assortment of snakes; and whatever other critters caught Dave’s eye.  Shirley was far more tolerant of Dave’s collecting than most mothers I’ve known, but she seems to have drawn the line at snakes.

Ken liked to travel, too.  Dave recalls that it was not at all unusual for the family to make weekend trips to the UP to see Ken’s and Shirley’s parents.  Here again, Ken’s organizational abilities were clearly evident.  On Friday, Shirley would spend the day readying provisions for the 12-hour journey back to God’s Country, and Ken would have the station wagon gassed up and ready to go.  After work Ken would arrive home and change clothes while Shirley packed the car and stowed Dave in the rear seat.  In a matter of minutes they would be on the road north, arriving in the Keweenaw early Saturday morning.  Late Sunday morning they would pack up and head south again.  Ken and Shirley did this several times each year, as easily as you or I might drive to Meijer.

This is only one of the ways that Shirley and Ken functioned as a team.  You learn a lot about a person when you live with him or her for nearly seven decades.  Their marriage is a remarkable commentary on the marriage vows.  This business of loving, comforting, honoring, and keeping your partner, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, until parted by death, is no simple thing.  Yet these promises, taken with integrity and kept with fidelity, are among God’s greatest blessings.

Few things test a marriage more painfully than the death of a child.  Sadly, Ken and Shirley and Dave experienced that terrible loss when Betsy died.  I suspect that is part of the reason why Ken so deeply loved and enjoyed being with his grandsons.  Cindi and Dave report that Ken’s customary greeting was not, “Hello, good to see you,” but “How are the boys?”  The boys — Matthew and Michael — were the apples of their grandfather’s eye.  Indeed, Ken and Shirley moved to Grand Haven in 1990 to be near their grandchildren — and of course, Dave and Cindi in the bargain.

Families have their Christmas traditions.  At the Sanders home that meant opening gifts on Christmas morning with Shirley and Ken there to enjoy the chaos.  In the early years the grandparents would spend Christmas Eve at Dave and Cindi’s, and be ready for an early start on Christmas morning.  But later on it was easier for Ken and Shirley to stay at their own home and then drive over to Dave and Cindi’s.  Accordingly, Michael and Matthew would keep watch at the front window in a state of growing anxiety, their unopened presents so near, yet so far.  That anxiety was never more intense than on one memorable Christmas morning when the boys’ joy at seeing their grandparents’ car pull into view soon turned to shock and dismay as Ken got stuck in a snowbank at the head of the drive.  That was the day Matthew and Michael learned that sometimes patience is really despair, disguised as a virtue.

For each grandson Ken had gifts in abundance to pass along.  When I asked Cindi and Dave what characteristics they think their sons inherited from their grandfather, they suggested Matthew’s love of nature and his people skills, and Michael’s flair for mathematics and his ability to organize a project.  Those gifts, among so many others, are one way Ken will always be with you when you need his companionship and counsel.  By telling and retelling his stories, you make him, even now, a living presence.

As many clergy have noted in their funeral homilies, grave markers typically list the dates of a deceased person’s birth and death, with those dates sometimes separated by a dash.  The preacher then notes that what is most important about the deceased is represented by that dash, by the years and experiences symbolized by that punctuation mark.

This past weekend Ken reached the end of his dash, his long, and yet all-too-brief, journey through this life.  Dave and Michael visited him on Sunday, and Michael leaned close to talk once more with his grandfather.  Ken knew Michael’s voice, listened intently to what his grandson said, and then responded, “OK, buddy.”  A few hours later, early on December 7th, Pearl Harbor Day, Ken began his next great adventure.

We cannot know with scientific precision what happens after we die.  And for that reason many believe that death is the end of everything — that we simply vanish back into the nothingness from which these people believe we came.

But that is not what Christians believe, nor what the Church has taught for two millennia.  In the Book of Lamentations we read: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end… The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him.” (Lam. 3:22, 25)  We believe that God does not carelessly create life, nor does he carelessly dispose of it.  We are God’s children, by adoption and grace — truly amazing grace — and for us God’s mercies are new every morning.  If our souls wait for him, the Lord will not fail us.  As assurance of this God gave us his Son, whom St. Paul, writing to the church at Corinth, described as “the first fruits of those who have died.” (1 Cor. 15:20)  As Paul asserts, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” (v. 26)  Jesus destroyed death when he rose from the dead.  What was perishable has now been made imperishable; what was weak has now been raised in power. (vv. 42-43)  So, when we die we do not vanish into the mists of history or into the vastness of the universe.  Rather, we move from this life to new life.  As the wonderful Easter hymn puts it:

[Christ] closed the yawning gates of hell,

the bars from heaven’s high portals fell;

let hymns of praise his triumphs tell!

Alleluia!

Kenneth Edward Sanders, full of years, has been gathered to his people.  Created by his Father, redeemed by his brother Jesus Christ, sanctified by the Holy Spirit, tested in war, challenged in peace, deeply loved by his wife, son, daughter-in-law, grandchildren, family, and friends, he has been gathered to his ancestors in that place where “sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life everlasting.” (BCP p. 499)  We affirm that at the end of their lifelong conversation, God whispered, “OK, buddy,” and led Ken into the land of rest.

His going forth leaves a sad void which only God’s abiding love and the stories of Ken’s life can fill.  But let us remember that, as Christians, we live and die in the hope of the resurrection.  This separation is only temporary.  In time God will whisper to us, and we too will stand with Ken before the throne of glory.

May his soul, the the souls of all the departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.  Amen.

— The Rev. John E. Laycock, Interim Pastor

Readings: Lamentations 3:22-26; 31-33  •  Psalm 23  •  1 Corinthians 15:20-26, 35-38, 42-44, 53-58  •  John 5:24-27

Sermon for Sunday, December 6, 2009 (Year C, Advent 2)

[John] went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins….” (Luke 3:3)

Few things are as emblematic of the Christian Church as its ritual of baptism.  And few things about the Church are as enigmatic, as mysterious, as this little ritual.  It really is something of a head-scratcher.

Most of us know, of course, that the roots of our sacrament of Baptism trace back to the work of John the Baptizer along the Jordan River around the year 30 of the Common Era.  By all reports, John was a rather scruffy guy, given to wearing animal skins and subsisting on wild foods, who rejected the comforts of city life in favor of the wilderness.  He looked, talked, and acted like one of the classical prophets.  This made John an anachronism, because prophecy had long ago died out in Israel, apparently a victim of the Exile in Babylon.  No longer did Israel produce men and women who spoke on behalf of the Lord.  No longer did kings and priests tolerate the kind of social and theological critique which the prophets had provided.

But I suspect it was that very sense of John being an anachronism — being out-of-his-real-time — which made him a fascinating and attractive figure for those who longed for God to come down and straighten out the mess God’s people were in.  That, indeed, was the burden of John’s message: “God is about to act, and you have to be ready.”  He was a kind of former day Billy Graham.  Apparently people came in droves from the villages along the Jordan, and even from Jerusalem, to hear him preach.

According to St. Luke, John “went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins….” (Lk. 3:3)  Scripture experts have had some difficulty connecting John’s ritual of washing with Jewish practice.  For example, one of the ceremonies required of Gentiles converting to Judaism was called “proselyte baptism.”  However, the people John baptized were already Jews, so any connection between proselyte baptism and John’s ritual is obscure, at best.

We know, too, that among Jews water was a very common symbol of, and mechanism for, purification.  When God and Moses spoke on the mountain for forty days and forty nights, God gave instructions about the making of the ark of the covenant, construction of a tabernacle to house it, vestments for the priests, and much else.  In addition, God required the making of “a bronze basin with a bronze stand for washing.”  With the water in this basin, God said, “Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet” whenever they come to serve at the altar.  This would purify them for the Lord’s service.  If they fail to wash, they will die.  (Ex. 30:17-20)  Ever after, water would play a major role in rituals for purification — for instance, the so-called “water for impurity,” a cleansing agent which was used to restore those made unclean by contact with the dead.  It seems reasonable, then, that John’s washing in the Jordan reflects this custom of using water to reestablish purity before God, but again, the precise connection between his baptism and Jewish purity washings is elusive.

Some biblical scholars speculate that John the Baptist was a member of the Essenes. a Jewish sect which drew apart from the main body of Jews and lived in an enclave on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, near the ancient settlement called Khirbet Qumran.  The Essenes are the group generally credited with producing the Dead Sea Scrolls, and they are believed to have washed themselves several times each day in order to maintain ritual purity.  Some connection is possible, since both John and the Qumran community lived in the wilderness, but we know so little about both John and the Essenes that we cannot be certain what relationship they had, if any.

Finally, and rather oddly, what makes John’s ritual of baptism difficult to assess is the fact that Jesus himself took part in it.  Luke is explicit in saying that John went about the Jordan wastelands “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins….”  Since we Christians believe that Jesus was without sin, he had no need to wash in order to be pure.  On this problem Luke doesn’t shed any light.  He simply notes that “when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying,” the Holy Spirit descended upon our Lord “in bodily form like a dove.” (Lk 3:21-22)  Why did Jesus decide to be baptized?  Luke is mum.

For my part, I believe that John’s ritual of baptism was, in essence, a prophetic act, a vivid symbolic demonstration of the will of God.  John knew that such symbolic acts were part of the prophet’s work.  For example, God tells Jeremiah to make a yoke of leather straps and wooden crossbars and to put this yoke on his own neck as a sign that God’s people would be led off into exile by the king of Babylon. (Jer. 27:1-7)  I can only speculate about what message John intended the people to get by his action.  However, we should remember that the Hebrews entered the promised land by crossing the Jordan.  Because John preached that God would soon take decisive action on behalf of his people, we could assume that John wanted the people to see themselves not simply as cleansed from sin, but also as standing on the verge of a new age, of a new “promised land.”

The ritual you and I know, our sacrament of Holy Baptism, has the outward shape of John’s ritual — a washing with water.  However, the inward and spiritual content of the ceremony is all about the death and resurrection of Jesus.  When you and I were baptized, we received forgiveness of sins.  But more especially, you and I were incorporated into a community formed by the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord.  By baptism, whether as child or as an adult, we were made part of the Body of Christ (to use St. Paul’s wonderful metaphor).  Or if we use Jesus’ image of the true vine, then by baptism you and I were grafted onto this holy vine, as a new branch might be grafted onto a grape vine.  So, whether as a member of the Body or a branch of the vine, by baptism we have been incorporated into the community which is the living presence of Jesus Christ in this world.

In the past, baptism was seen as a naming ceremony, a “christening,” or as making a baby part of the parents’ nuclear family.  Not so.  In the past people believed that if an unbaptized child died, the child could not go to heaven.  That is utter nonsense.  Rather, through baptism the Church cooperates with God in making a person part of the Body of Christ, in grafting a person onto the true vine.  By water and by invocation of the Holy Trinity, we witness to the fact that an unbreakable relationship has been forged between Jesus Christ and this person, a relationship which will endure throughout this life and into the next.  By baptism, we might say, a person experiences a new beginning.  He or she “crosses over” into a land of promise.

Wading through the waters of baptism can be risky business.  It may lead us places we never thought we would go.  So it was for Jonathan Myrick Daniels, a New Hampshire native and graduate of Virginia Military Institute.  Daniels sought ordination to the Episcopal priesthood, and enrolled at the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, MA, in 1963.  In March 1965 he and others responded to Dr. Martin Luther King’s call for students and clergy to support the march from Selma, AL, to the state capital in Montgomery.  Greatly moved by this experience, Daniels decided to take the rest of the semester off from seminary in order to help with civil rights work in the Selma area, which included integrating the local Episcopal church.

On August 20, 1965, suddenly, and therefore suspiciously, Daniels and about 20 other activists were released after spending several days in the Hayneville, AL, jail.  They had been arrested for picketing a whites-only store in nearby Fort Deposit, Daniels and three companions went to buy a cold soda and were confronted by one Tom L. Coleman, a highway engineer and special deputy sheriff.  Coleman threatened the group with a shotgun.  As Coleman prepared to fire his weapon at 17-year-old Ruby Sales, Daniels pushed her to the ground and took the full shotgun blast himself.  He died instantly.

Brought to trial, Coleman was acquitted of murder by an all-white jury.  He had claimed self-defense, testifying that Daniels had threatened him with a knife, although no knife or other weapon was ever found by the police who investigated the crime.  In the years after his acquittal, Coleman continued to play dominoes at the county courthouse.  He died on June 13, 1997, at the age of 86, at his home in Hayneville, apparently without remorse.  May God have mercy on his soul.

Daniels’ death brought home the reality of the civil rights struggle to the Episcopal Church.  Episcopalians throughout the country were deeply shocked by the murder of a seminarian who was defending an unarmed teenage girl.  “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13)  In 1991 General Convention declared Daniels a martyr, appointing August 14th as his feast day and as a day of remembrance for all other martyrs of the civil rights movement.

Clearly, Jonathan Myrick Daniels lived out his baptismal covenant in a way, thank God, most of us will never have to.  However, the form of evil which led to his death remains part of the American scene nearly 45 years after that infamous day in Hayneville.  Like a weed, racism grows up, still lush and vigorous, through the cracks in our middle class respectability.  I have a good friend who holds African-Americans in profound contempt.  We argue, but my friend grew up in a home where such attitudes were acceptable.  I have had parishioners in one church tell me racist jokes during coffee hour.  I have heard Episcopalians living in the Detroit suburbs declare that they are unwilling to drive south of Eight Mile Road, day or night, because they are convinced they will be murdered on the spot.  I’m sure you have heard racist comments from people living right here in River City.  The conflict between good and evil goes on today, as it has for millennia.  We live in a broken world.

If we search our hearts, we know that we partake of that brokenness.  But you and I partake of something else, something far more powerful than the messages we may have picked up from parents and school friends, or the attitudes formed by certain unfortunate experiences.  You and I, having been baptized and made members of the Church, share in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Baptism has created a permanent relationship between each of us and our Lord.  Having been “sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own for ever,” we can distort and denigrate and even deny that relationship, but we are powerless to destroy it.  We bear his mark upon our foreheads.  His good news is in our minds, upon our lips, in our hearts — and from time to time we even may find it stuck in our throats.  That good news is working in us a transformation more powerful than we could ask or imagine, steadily dissolving and washing away any impurity, and hopefully making us co-conspirators in the effort to subvert the forces and institutions of evil which afflict God’s children.  As Edmund Burke famously said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men [and good women] do nothing.”

John the Baptist was the forerunner.  He prepared the way, declaring that God was about to make a new beginning, and that “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”  There, in the Jordan waters, he helped people see themselves standing on the edge of a new promised land.  In this season of Advent, may we too gather at the river, wait in eager longing for the Lord’s arrival, and be ready to follow our Master into the land of promise.  Amen.

— The Rev. John E. Laycock, Interim Pastor

Readings for Year C, Advent 2:

Lesson — Baruch 5:1-9

Gradual — Canticle 16: The Song of Zechariah

Epistle — Philippians 1:3-11

Gospel — Luke 3:1-6

Collect for Advent 2:

Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.