God of Sacrifice or God of Grace

The texts for the Third Sunday after Pentecost can be found here.

The Third Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 8, Year A

June 29, 2014

The Rev. Christopher L. Caddell

You get a choice this morning. 

I’m not going to embarrass you by asking you to raise your hand, but in your mind I want you to consider and choose.  

Based on the readings we had this morning, which God do you choose? 

Are you more drawn to the God of Genesis, or the God of Romans and Matthew? 

Do you prefer the God of sacrifice or the God of grace?

Do you want the God who asks for a child or the God content with the giving of a welcome and a glass of water?

Which God did you choose?  Is anyone brave enough to share his or her choice?

I probably don’t have to take a poll to find out.  I’m going to guess you picked Matthew’s God over the God of Genesis.

Well now that you’ve made your choice, perhaps it is a good time to remind you that last week it was Matthew that was the hard text with Jesus’ words of setting family member against family member and taking up one’s cross to follow Jesus (which, by the way, is the immediate context of today’s reading). 

And it was Genesis that presented a picture of Divine grace and love as God cared and provided for Hagar and for Abraham’s first son, Ishmael who had been cast away by Abraham and Sarah and left to die in the wilderness.

Don’t you hate trick questions? 

Of course, the question was a loaded one, and before you go home to email the bishop so that you can tell him your priest is teaching you to pick and choose which God you like, let me say emphatically that you don’t actually get a choice. 

The division of God into easy categories often thought of as the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New, is an ancient heresy, going back to the early second century and was soundly rejected by the fathers of the Church.

The God of the Old Testament IS the God of the New.

The God of Genesis IS the God of Matthew and Romans. 

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob IS the God of St. Paul, and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So, the hard reality is that we don’t get to pick and choose.  We must take both the texts that trouble us along with those that are comforting.  We are bound by both the texts that seem to point to an image of God that is harsh and demanding along with those that speak of a God full of grace and love.

And that is what we get today – two apparently opposing revelations of God – one that points to a God who desires an unthinkable sacrifice and one who rewards the seemingly simple act of hospitality.

Last summer I was in the back of the house taking a very holy nap on a Sunday afternoon when I heard the doorbell ring.  A few moments later, I heard Bryn answer the door.  I couldn’t make out exactly what is being said, but I could hear male voices talking to my wife and then my children.

As I woke a little more, I hear Bryn introduce these strangers to Hannah & Gus, and then I heard her say, “Would you like to come in?”

‘What was she thinking?,’ I thought to myself, inviting two solicitors into our house, introducing them to our children, names and all.  I had visions of these two men casing out the house, looking to return a few days later when we were not there – or schemes that were perhaps even worse.

Frustrated with my wife’s poor judgment, I walked out of the bedroom ready to save the day only to find two boys dressed in black pants, white shirt, and black tie.  Immediately I knew, these boys were Mormon missionaries. 

I was ashamed, both of my initial lack of confidence in my wife’s judgment and my knee-jerk reaction to someone who would ring my doorbell on a Sunday afternoon.

I watched as Bryn offered these two boys a glass of water and listened to a bit of their story. 

(By the way, one of the benefits of telling an evangelist you are a priest is that it usually puts an end to the high-pressure sales pitch.  Try it sometime; it might help.)

The boys were very kind and grateful for the water on a hot summer day, stayed only a few minutes, and continued on their journey.

So what do you think? Putting aside any debate about the Mormon religion, is that what Jesus was talking about?  Welcoming two strangers into your home?  Offering them a glass of cold water on a hot day?

Perhaps.  Then again, perhaps not.

There is a fairly wide gap between our notion of hospitality and that of the ancient world.  Hospitality in the ancient world was not the hospitality that we might offer -even in the south.  It’s not a glass of iced tea in a rocking chair under the shade of the front porch. 

The rules and codes that governed hospitality in ancient Palestine were rigid and well defined.  Hospitality was a moral issue with very specific roles and obligations.  Hospitality required providing shelter, water, food, and protection to any stranger who sought that hospitality.  And all of this in a world in which the vast majority of people had very little of those things to share.  Hospitality was a selfless act of love and of sacrifice.

To get a sense of what this might involve, think once again of Abraham.  Abraham who prepared a feast –a whole fatted calf, milk and cheese, and a lavish amount of bread – for three strangers wandering in the wilderness.  Or consider Rahab who to her own peril sheltered Joshua and his spies in her home before the battle of Jericho.  Or the widow who made Elijah a meal from the very last of the provisions that she had for her and her son.  Or the women, Joanna and Suzanna, who traveled with Jesus and provided for his needs out of their own resources.

This is the biblical understanding of hospitality, and this is what welcome looks like to Jesus.  It is costly, personal, even perilous to one’s self or the things that you hold most dear.  It can cost you everything.  It is a form of sacrifice.

And as sacrifice implies, it is also a form of worship, bringing that person into the very presence of God.  For Abraham, it was the Lord’s renewal of the promise of a son, or in today’s story the Lord providing a ram and sparing the child.  For Rahab and her household it was salvation from the coming destruction of Jericho as well as, being brought into the fold of God’s chosen people.  For the widow and her son, it was moving from a life of scarcity and certain death to a life of abundance.  And for the women, it was being in the very presence of salvation, incarnate in the person of Jesus. 

There is much more that could be said about any and all of these stories, but perhaps now Jesus’ words from last week’s gospel that immediately precede those from this morning might make a bit more sense.  Jesus says, “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

Hospitality, sacrifice, worship – all are deeply connected.

God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." He said, "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you."

God desires everything, even if it pushes us to the brink of danger, because absolutely none of it belongs to me – not the clothes that I wear or the food that I eat, not the roof over my head or the protection I enjoy, not even the life that I live or the lives of those that I love.  All of these things are grace, literally gifts from God, and it is only when we begin to recognize this that we can stop living in fear and anxiety and live lives of gratitude – which is, by the way, what we do and practice every week in the Eucharist, or Great Thanksgiving. 

Yet, to be sure, God does not need sacrifice.  We do.  God desires and is pleased by it because through sacrifice we are deeply formed and changed into who we were always created to be.

To answer “Here I am,” to God’s call to us is to live a life of sacrifice – to literally set a part of our lives and stuff aside and offer it to God in a way that is no longer retrievable to us. And by giving it back to the One to whom it belongs, we cannot help but come into closer contact with the God we seek.

This is the life of faith of Abraham.  This is what Jesus means to loose one’s life only to find it.  This is how we welcome God’s presence though sacrifice.

And there we will find the God of Genesis and the God of Matthew.  The God of Abraham and the God of Jesus.  Indeed, we will find the one God, our God, creator of all things in heaven and earth.  Amen. 

Made to be Fruitful

The texts for Trinity Sunday can be found by clicking here.

First Sunday After Pentecost (Trinity Sunday), Year A

June 15, 2014

The Rev. Christopher L. Caddell

What do you do?

It’s a question that I am trying to use less and less in the normal course of my conversations.  It’s hard, because the impulse is there.  Anytime I would meet someone new, it was early in the lists of questions to be asked.

What’s your name?

Where do you live?

What do you do?

It seems like harmless small talk – a way to get to know someone new – and it is probably harmless.  It is after all the socially acceptable questions that we ask in those situations.

But it also says much about what we think is important – particularly what men think is important.  Essentially we are asking, “What do you produce?”

We are a culture that is obsessed with producing something – and in many ways it is that question that reveals what we value.

Today is Trinity Sunday – a day in which we recall the church’s teaching regarding one of the things that sets us apart from other religions.

Today I am going to share with you the shortest sermon I can give on the Trinity.

One God, three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Any questions?

If there are, Fr. Larry will be glad to answer them for you following the service. 

Instead what I hope to speak with you about today is that which caught my imagination this week – the story we know so well, the story of creation in the Book of Genesis.

Light from darkness.

Waters from waters.

Land and seas.

Birds and sea creatures.

Cattle, and every living thing that is on land,

And finally, us, human beings.  Male and female. Created in the image of God. 

And when God finishes creating us, Genesis says, God blessed them, and said to them, “Be fruitful, and multiply.”

Be fruitful.

It is interesting to think about how the rest of this story unfolds.  Adam and Eve are in the garden.  They have all they could ever need.  They produce nothing – the garden, God’s creation, produces everything for them.

We know what happens next.  Adam and Eve eat the one thing God asked them not to eat and they are expelled from the garden. 

Adam and Eve have two sons – Cain and Abel.  Cain worked the land, and Abel was a shepherd.

All of the sudden, human beings, made in the image of God, are no longer focused on being fruitful, but rather on being productive.

Don’t get me wrong.  I am not saying that we shouldn’t be productive.  There are things that simply must get done.

The grass needs mowing, the laundry needs to get done. As individuals and as a society we need to be productive.  Someone needs to grow our food, build our homes, lay the pipes that bring us water.  And we, in turn, have our own ways of being productive and contributing to the common life we share as a society.

There are simply some things that require that we be productive.

Yet that is not the blessing and the charge that God gave us in creation.  Living into the fullness of what it means to be human beings, created in the image of God requires that we be fruitful.

Perhaps one way of looking at this is through our relationships.

If I were to describe my relationship with a friend as productive, that implies one thing.  It would probably point to a one-sided, selfish friendship.  But if that relationship were fruitful, that implies something totally different.

In the same way, it is doubtful that you would hear someone speak of his or her marriage as productive, but would not sound so strange to hear that same person say it was fruitful.

Our faith and relationship to God is not a productive relationship, but when it is truly lived, it will be one that is easily described as fruitful.

The point is, in a world that pushes us to be productive all the time, it is no wonder why we are depressed, stressed out, and burnt out.  As a general rule we are not living into that which God created us to be – fruitful bearers of the image of God.

The story of creation, of course, ends with the first Sabbath.  God saw all that he had made and he rested on the seventh day.  This will become a cornerstone of the Jewish faith, and one that we too as Christians will inherit through scripture and the Ten Commandments.

Every seven days, a time for rest.  A time set aside.  A time to be renewed.  A time to remember in whose image we were created.

I said I wasn’t going to preach on the Trinity, but I do have one more thing to add.  At the core of that teaching is not just One God, three persons, but rather the relationship between those persons.  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are relational descriptors of how we experience God (and as theologians would say, how God experiences God’s self).  The Trinity was not born out of thin air, but rather was how those first Christians were able to put words to their experience of encountering God – in the persons of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And if we are made in that image, then we too are made to be in relationship with one another.  Male and female he created them – to be in relationship, and to be fruitful.

And yet, when our focus is solely on being productive, we loose sight of those relationships.  But they are who we are created to be.

As we enter this one time of year where our society at least tolerates the fact that we will not be productive every moment of the day, perhaps we can reclaim some of that Sabbath.  A Sabbath that focuses on being fruitful, that focuses on what we were created to be, that focuses on the very nature of what it means to be human, in relationship with God, and with one another.  Amen.

Eternal Life

The readings for the Seventh Sunday of Easter can be found by clicking here.

Easter 7 – Year A

June 1, 2014

The Rev. Christopher Caddell

Right now is perhaps my favorite part of summer.  Early June – it’s not so oppressively hot that you can’t be outside.  The nights are still cool, the grass is still green, and the flowers are still in bloom.

It’s also a time of great anticipation.  A time when there is a lot to look forward to. 

High schools, colleges and universities are celebrating graduations with proud moms and dads looking on while those newly minted graduates see their dreams becoming reality.

This part of summer also seems to bring with it times of change.  This is the time of year, realtors will tell you, when those who are relocating from one place to the next will take that step.  My family was no exception, having arrived here in Dripping Springs two years ago this week.

This early part of summer also points to other exciting things coming – trips, and camps, and vacations that have been planned for months are finally coming close.  And even if those plans don’t include time away from home, at the very least this part of the summer signals a change of pace, a slowing down, a time for rest, recreation, and re-creation.

I wonder what you will do with this time. 

If you have been following along over the past few Sundays, you know that we have been reading what is known as the farewell discourses from John’s gospel.  This is a long section of that gospel in which Jesus takes his this last chance to tell his disciples those things that he would want them to know.

It’s after the last supper, after the foot washing, and the next stop is the Garden of Gethsemane and the arrest of Jesus.  Jesus knows that in just a few short hours his disciples will scatter and the opportunity to spell out some final instructions will be past.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled,” he says.  “Believe in God; believe also in me.”

“If you love me you will keep my commandments.”

“I will not leave you orphaned; Know that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.”

These are just some of the pieces of that farewell discourse that we have heard over the past few weeks, but this long monologue that Jesus shares with his disciples has many parts, many last words.

Jesus is looking to prepare his disciples for a world in which they will see him no longer.

And so, this morning, we come to the end of that discourse.  And in that Jesus offers a prayer.  It is a prayer both for the work he has left to do, as well as the ongoing work that his disciples will be engaged in after he is gone.

“Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son my glorify you.”

Jesus knows that all that is about to take place is the culmination of all that his mission has been about.  Making the Father known to all who would look and see.  Being the true reflection of the Father.  This is what Jesus was, and this is what Jesus was doing.

And at the very center of this prayer is Jesus’ desire for unity – not unity in the sense that all will be one monolithic block, but a unity that binds them together in the Father.

Jesus prays, “Protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

Curiously, Jesus’ prayer includes some language about eternal life.  Perhaps its not so curious – it is a major theme of Jesus words in John’s gospel, but it comes now at a place that doesn’t seem to fit.  Or at least it doesn’t seem to fit with our notions of what eternal life means.

Jesus says, “You have given the son authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.”

In a prayer that is aimed at giving the disciples those final instructions and preparing them for the days ahead when he is not present in the same way that he had been present, it seems strange that Jesus would be praying about eternal life for all whom the Father had given him.  These disciples still have work to do, there is the expectation that they will carry on the mission that Jesus has begun.

But Jesus goes on, “And this is eternal life, that they many know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

It seems for Jesus eternal life is something that he expects for his disciples now, not something that they can expect in the future.  Eternal life is knowing God so intimately that they become one with the Father, just as Jesus is one with him.

“I am in the Father and the Father is in me,” Jesus said.

Essentially, what Jesus means by eternal life is what we might call the spiritual life.  For Jesus, whether it is in the grave or in this very moment, unity with the Father is eternal life.

And this is the gift that Jesus has to give to all whom have been given him – his disciples and us.

Fairly soon, the Diocesan magazine Reflections will be arriving in your mailbox.  I encourage you to take the time to read it.  The title for this edition is “Spiritual Practices, Living the Gift,” and in it you will find several articles from clergy and lay people who speak of their own spiritual journey.

One of those articles was written by Dan Morehead, a former member of this congregation, and the head of the search committee who was foolish enough to call me to this parish two years ago.

Dan speaks about his own spiritual journey and how it was in his mid-thirties when he began to feel that something was lacking.  Though he was well read in both theology and scripture, went to church three times a week, said devotions and prayed daily, he did not feel a closeness to God. 

Doing what he knew to do, Dan read about it.  He moved from theology to spiritual books, and discovered the Book of Common Prayer.  He began to practice contemplative prayer and take on some other spiritual practices.

It wasn’t an instantaneous change.  Things took time.  But gradually Dan recognized that God had been there all along, and it was the practice that allowed him to grow into that unity with the Father. 

Recognize it or not, we are all on a spiritual journey.  We are all seeking eternal life, a life bound up with the Father in which we are in Him and He is in us.  It is an impulse that does not come from us, but rather comes from the Father himself.  Yet it is also an impulse that we can suppress if we so choose.  But it is also an impulse that can lead to the gift that Jesus brings to all his followers, being one with him and the Father.

This is the beginning of summer.  A time when we are accustomed to change.  A time when the pace shifts and life takes on a new normal. 

The tendency might be to slack off.  To waste the days away as we move into the long hot summer.  To let everything slip a little, including our life in God.

The alternative is to use this time to be recreated.  My challenge to us this morning, myself included, is to take this time to recommit ourselves to those spiritual practices – to prayer, reading of scripture and theology, active participation in worship and the sacraments – to seek a more perfect union with the Father who is with us where ever we go.

There is a gift there waiting to be received.  It is a gift promised to the disciples and to us. It is eternal life, a life bound up with the Eternal, life in the Spirit.  And it is there for the taking.  Amen.