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.

We've Heard It Before

The Readings for the Easter Day can be found here.

Easter Day – Year A

April 20, 2014

The Rev. Christopher Caddell

A few years back I spent my summer as a chaplain in a medium-sized nursing home in the middle of rural Tennessee.  It’s the summer that every first-year seminarian looks forward to with grand ideas of ministry outside the bounds of academic rigor, but it is also the summer everyone dreads because of the intense emotional toll it takes to be a chaplain in a health care setting.

For the first few weeks, I would go by rooms, introduce myself, spend some time talking, praying, holding hands.  I learned quickly there were to be good days and bad.  Some patients welcomed me, others were ambivalent, and still others were not at all interested, even hostile.  Depending on the day, any one patient could fall anywhere on that spectrum.

I still remember the day I met Amy.

Amy was delightful. She was cheery, upbeat, and seemed to be very interested in visiting with me.  I learned about her family, where she grew up, what she had done in life, how old her kids were, the names and ages of her grand children . . . On and on, I heard about Amy’s life. 

Then she started to ask about me.  When I told her that I was in seminary training to be an Episcopal priest, she said, “well I’m an Episcopalian.”

We talked about the church and what she loved about the liturgy.  We talked about my diocese and my bishops.  I told her what brought me to seminary, and how I looked forward to going home to my diocese to begin a new ministry there.

As our conversation came to a close, I prayed with her, and before I left, I asked if I could come back the next day and pray Morning Prayer with her.  She said that she would delight in that and look forward to it.

The next morning I arrived and headed straight for the dining room where we agreed to meet. When I got there, I couldn’t find Amy.  I waited for a moment, and then decided to go look for her.  I finally found her sitting in her room.

“Amy?,” I said.  “It’s me, Chris. We met yesterday, remember?  Do you still want to read Morning Prayer with me?”

She looked at me, a little puzzled, and nodded.

So I pulled up a chair beside her and began Morning Prayer.

I still remember the reading from that day.  It was from Matthew.  You know the story.  Jesus is teaching his disciples about the kingdom of heaven and he compares the kingdom to the vineyard owner who goes out to hire laborers for the harvest – he hires early in the morning, then again at midday, and again in the late afternoon.

About half-way through the reading, Amy stops me and with a little frustration and even some hostility in her voice looks at me and says, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I’ve heard this one before.” Then she proceeded to roll her wheelchair out of the room and left me sitting there holding my bible.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I’ve heard this one before.”

I wonder how many of us, once again, on hearing the story of the empty tomb, found ourselves saying that in one sense or another.  Of course, none of us would really say it in this setting, or I hope you wouldn’t.  I’m thankful that none of you walked out after hearing the gospel, leaving the church empty.  But I still wonder that if somewhere deep down inside we hear the story and think, even if it is for a very brief moment, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I’ve heard it before.’

Our familiarity with the Easter story can, ironically, strip the awe and wonder of what happens to be the central and most important claim of the Christian faith.  Without Easter, without the empty tomb, all that comes before can only be described as tragic and without meaning.  But just like reading a mystery novel for the second time, without the element of surprise, something is lost.

Yet what God did is the surprise ending.  No matter how familiar we become with this story, the basic fact is that God acted in a way that was unexpected, seemingly impossible, and in a place where all hope was lost.

There’s more.  In the weeks and years to come, the apostles began to see the resurrection not only as the surprise ending to the death of Jesus, but also the very way that God was working in their lives.  Things did not end with the empty tomb.  It was rather, quite the opposite.  Things began with the empty tomb.  Resurrection was not just the way God had worked that first Easter day, but the way God was working in their lives, here and now.

Their message was not because Jesus was raised from the dead, they would go to heaven.  Instead, their message was because Jesus was raised from the dead, they too have been raised to new life with Christ – not at some distant point in the future, but here, now, today.

The empty tomb was not something just to be witnessed, but also something experienced.   This is the new creation.  This is the way God acts.  This is the way God brings forth new life.

And just like that first Easter morning, it’s surprising.  It’s unexpected.  And it often happens in places where resurrection seems impossible and all hope is lost.

It is interesting to note that John does not say why Mary Magdalene went back to the tomb.  We tend to merge the stories and think that she had gone back to finish burying Jesus properly, but that comes from Luke and Mark.  In John’s gospel, Jesus has already received a proper burial – Joseph of Aramathea and Nicodemus had seen to that.  What makes Mary goes back to the tomb is unknown.

I like to think it was that in her grief, there was no place she would rather be.  She didn’t want to move on.  She didn’t want hide from the tragedy. 

Whatever the case, it was her choosing to be present in the place of deepest pain that made her the first to witness the empty tomb.  She saw resurrection because she placed herself in and opened herself up to the place where God was most likely to act.

I think the piece of us that says, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I’ve heard that before,” is the piece that doesn’t know resurrection.  It’s the piece that isn’t looking for God’s activity in our lives.  It’s the piece that tries to say, “Everything is fine.  I can do this on my own.  God couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything anyway.”  It’s the piece that doesn’t want to linger in those dark places.

But resurrection doesn’t happen in the middle of the beautiful city of Jerusalem, but rather on a hill overlooking the trash heap, where all hope is lost, and where death is all that can be seen.

There is another piece of us that knows this story to be true.  There’s a piece that remembers when we thought all hope was lost and were given new life.  A piece that remembers a time when we thought we would drown in our tears and were surprised to find joy again.  A piece that said tragedy and death has the final say, but found that to be a lie.

The truth is, to hear the story of the resurrection is to hear our story.  It is a reminder that it is our story that is being recounted to us. This is how God works again and again, surprising us in our darkest moments, lifting us up from the depths of despair, and raising us to new life.

Remember that story.  Remember that Jesus lives!  Remember that in him, we are raised to new life.  And remember that resurrection is not something that happened but something that happens, here, now, today, in my life and in yours.  Amen.

Where do you stand?

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

Palm Sunday

April 13, 2014

The Rev. Christopher L. Caddell

There is no getting around it.  

Of all the Sundays in the church year, today’s service is the most full service that we experience all year long.  From the blessing of the palms, to the procession, to the reading of the Passion, there is so much going on here that it is hard to take it all in.

Perhaps that is not an accident, and is rather by design.  We are, after all, entering into the most full week of the church’s year.  It is the one week of the entire year that is set apart – rightly named Holy Week – and it is the week in which we are expected to gather each day of the week for worship, prayer, and contemplation of the acts that surround Jesus’ passion, death, and burial.  Participating in this week prepares our hearts and minds for the resurrection and the fullness of joy that comes with Easter.

But we are not there yet, and Palm Sunday greets us with an invitation to jump in to the deep end of the pool, to be completely immersed in the week that is to come without placing our feet on the bottom, and waiting until that first Easter Eucharist to proclaim “He is risen.”

With all its fullness, Palm Sunday is not simply an invitation to begin Holy Week.  It stands on its own andflooding our senses with a series of images and words that overwhelm our emotions.  It is hard not to get caught up in the drama of what is happening in this service.

The excitement that surrounds Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is palpable.  Crowds line the streets.  Cloaks and palm branches are laid down in front of Jesus as he enters the city.  The noise of the crowd is deafening.

But in less than a week, that energy will turn.  

The shouts of “Hosanna to the Son of David” fade away as the picture becomes more clear.  This Messiah, this Jesus does not seem to be concerned at all with the Roman occupation, but rather with his own people.  Instead of marching to the governor’s headquarters, he goes straight to the Temple. This Messiah is not at all like David.  This is not a military leader who will drive out foreign occupation and unite the tribes of Israel under one kingdom.

This is a Messiah who is there to challenge his own people.  

A confrontation in the Temple.  

A plot is hatched.  

A late night arrest and a hasty trial.

Friends and disciples run for their lives.  

Others who were on the fence stand back and watch.

The cries of “Hosanna, save us, son of David,” give way to “Crucify him!” – Get rid of him.  We have no use for him.  

It is not enough just to drive him out; he must be dealt with once and for all.  And so to show what happens to those who challenge authority, who challenge the status quo, he is humiliated, beaten, and given the worst possible means of death.

What began with a triumphal entry into the city seems to end with the body of Jesus being sealed inside the tomb.

For those who have been engaged in the Adult Education class over the past four weeks, you know that the question that has been raised again and again by this trial narrative is “Where do you stand in the midst of this?”

Of course, our first reaction is that of the disciples around the table at the last supper.  “Surely not I, Lord!”

I would not do this.

If I had been there,

I would not have been one to desert him.  

I would not have betrayed.

I would not have denied.

I would not have yelled, “Crucify him.”

And yet, when it comes to us shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David,” or to put it more in terms that we use today, “Help me, God,” our answer is not quite so emphatic.

When our salvation seems to require something of us,

When it requires that we change,

When it challenges our ideas of what salvation looks like,

Or when it opens the possibility that God’s promises do not necessarily mean that we are comfortable and content or without hardship or suffering,

And worst of all, when it seems that our salvation is intimately tied to walking the way of the cross with Jesus, dying to the self, so that new life can be brought forth,

When the events that we have just experienced call forth a change in us, then that “Surely not I, Lord” does not have the same force or conviction.  When Jesus’ presence challenges who I am (or who I perceive myself to be) then it is all to easy to move away from him and to join the with anyone else in this narrative.

The invitation of this day, indeed all of Holy Week, is to enter into the trial and death of Jesus asking ourselves, “Where do I stand?”

Do I choose to stand with Jesus, or do I choose to stand with where I am comfortable, unchallenged, and unchanged?

Will I choose God’s vision for me, or simply accept the normative vision that the world gives? – this is power, this is authority, this is who I am in that system.

One thing is sure, choosing the latter moves us no closer to that salvation that we so deeply long for.

Standing with Jesus at his trial is the place where we learn both who Jesus is and who we are, and it brings us into contact with a God whose imagination is much broader than our own, whose ideas for His creation are much bigger than what we could ever imagine, whose plan for salvation might be much different than we ever expected.

The fullness of this day and week are an invitation.  And it is one worth taking.  It is one that opens us to the possibility of new life, life that is lived in abundance now and eternal.  But it requires that we stand with Jesus first.

May the fullness of this day and of the week to come be a blessing – not a comfort, but a blessing – in helping you move closer to Jesus, the Messiah, the one who chooses to save us with God’s vision and not our own.

Amen.

So that ...

The readings for the Fourth Sunday in Lent can be found here.

Lent 4A

March 30, 2014

The Rev. Christopher L. Caddell

This morning’s gospel contains one of those passages that goes on my list of things that I hope Jesus didn’t say exactly like gospel writers recorded it.

“He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”

It sounds like something we might say when we are faced with unexplainable tragedy.  To say that a man was born blind so that God could be seen in him is in the realm of “Everything happens for a reason,” or “God never gives us more than we can handle.”

Of course, the problem with these statements is that it places God in the active role of causing suffering. 

In the case of the man in this story, that suffering is life-long. 

Having been born blind, the question that the disciples asked Jesus, “Who sinned, this man or his parents,” would have been his constant companion for his entire life. 

Who is at fault?

Why did this happen?

What did I do to deserve this?

His parents would have asked these questions.  Friends and family probably went home from a visit wondering the same things.  Strangers on the street might even point and stare, and either audibly or in their minds taken a position one way or another.  Even the disciples with genuine desire to understand the nature of loss and suffering, ask Jesus to weigh in on the topic.

This man’s entire life would have revolved around that question.

Then there’s the realities of the life he lived.  It’s a life that in his context would have been little more than just an existence.  Unable to see he would not have been able to provide for himself. 

His parents would have cared for him when he was young, but even that has its limits. Whether it was by choice or not, this man would eventually find himself without that support and have to find a new way to survive, and in his world begging was the normal way to carry on.

The stares, the judgments, the hardships, the questions…

All of this, so that God’s glory might be revealed.

It might be helpful to know that those words – so that – are hotly debated in the world of biblical studies.   While some want to stick to the literal cause and effect translation of Jesus’ words, many scholars tell us there is something lost in the translation.

Rather than offering an explanation to the disciples’ question, Jesus offers them an example of how God works.

Eugene Peterson translates that part of the conversation in The Message this way,

Jesus said, “You’re asking the wrong question. You’re looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect here. Look instead for what God can do.

In other words, simply because this man was born blind, God’s glory will be revealed.

Once we begin to understand it in that way this story opens up for us in ways like never before.

Here is a man that everyone assumes is beyond God’s grace, a man in whom God has abandoned.  He is a man who – either by the fault of others or by his own doing – has caused this.

And whatever conclusion you come to there, it is a man who is outside, on the fringes of society.  He is swept to the side, goes mostly unnoticed, with the preference that he would remain unseen or simply go away.

He is someone who has no voice, no power to change his circumstances, and probably has no expectation that anything will ever change.

This man and his life is the last place that you would look if your were wanting to see “God’s works revealed.”

And yet, this is where God chooses to act – in a blind man, isolated from the rest of the world, completely helpless, and without hope.

Simply because this man was born blind, God’s works are revealed in him. 

To give you a preview of this morning’s adult education class – this is the theme in which Rowan Williams will challenge us to consider.  God’s works, God’s transcendent reality is most evident in the outsider. 

God is present in and with those who do not have a voice, in and with those without power to affect their world, and in in and with those who believe they have lost any right the might have had in the world. 

Williams pushes us further.

It is in these persons, those whose place we cannot guarantee, whose welfare we cannot secure, who do not fit with the world around us – these are the persons who remind us of our own limits.

The reason that we sweep outsiders out of view is because in them we are reminded of our own poverty, our own blindness, our own inability to control our situation. 

Yet it is here that we meet God most powerfully, most evidently.

At the 10:30 service, we will sing “Just as I am.”  It is one of the Christian world’s favorite hymns.  It’s in almost every hymnal and if you find an album of Christian hymnody there is likely going to be a track that includes “Just as I am.”

It was also one of my professor’s least favorite hymns.  He always said people sing it as if the words were “Just as I am, because I’m not gonna’ change.”

That is, of course, not what the hymn says. 

Just as I am,

poor, wretched, blind;

sight, riches, healing of the mind,

yea, all I need, in thee to find,

O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

We come to God with the recognition that within us there is a bit of an outsider.  There are those places where we feel we have no voice, no power to change the circumstances of our lives, no hope for the future.  We bring all of that with us and carry it every single day.

And yet, in that is the good news.  Those are the places where God is most likely to be found.  Those are the places where transformation happens.  Those are the places where God seeks to heal.

May that be the prayer for us this day – that we come, just as we are, especially those parts of us that are blind, so that God’s works may be revealed in us.  Amen.