Mount Calvary Sermons

SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 2013 LUKE 15:1-10

It was a solemn day on the hillside. It always was when this tragedy played out, as it did this time every year. The sheep were now fully grown, no helpless lambs for the predators to pick off at will. The year was ageing, leaving the wolves with less easy pickings. The carnivores grew more brazen in their hunting, more obsessed in their staring at the sheep from the margins. A moment's carelessness by a member of the flock could be fatal at this time of year. The more experienced sheep looked at each other with knowing dread. The human had stopped his work, placed his staff on the ground, eased himself onto a bolder, removed his lunch from his cloak, and mentally switched off. It wasn't really his fault, the sheep reasoned, after all he had been watching them closely all morning. They could forgive his lapse in vigilance. It was what happened next they could not forgive. The hard-nosed realism of economics demanded the shepherd accept his loss, don't throw good money after bad, swallow your medicine, and move on. That is what the prudent shepherds did. The one was gone, snatched by a predator. Nothing could now be done. Re-focus your effort at guarding the ninety-nine. But not this shepherd. Leaving the ninety-nine alone – alone, mind you – he picks up his crook, tucks the hem of his cloak into his belt and strides – all intensity and passion - up the hill and out of sight. Do you hear the bleating of the ninety-nine? Can you feel the panic, the distress, the fear of the flock? It was a solemn day on the hillside.

Of course, it didn't happen. First, it's a parable, a story made up by Jesus. And second, sheep don't think like that. But imagine if they did. What would they be saying to each other as they watched... (Read the full sermon here: Legends of the Lost and Found.pdf )

FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 2016 LUKE 14:1, 7-14 This morning I'm feeling loved. It's been a gratifying week. The reason for my burgeoning self-esteem and my blossoming self-respect is that I've received several invitations in the mail. It seems people are really interested in me. Legions want the pleasure of my company. They all seem to truly accept me and value me for who I am. I've brought a couple of these invitations this morning so you can share my joy. Here's one reassuring me that I'm special and have been chosen. It even says it on the envelope, "Duncan H Johnston," (that is how much they care – they even included my middle initial). "You are among a select group of drivers." I've been selected. Handpicked. I am a chosen one. So I tore open the envelope, and there is my invitation. "Dear Duncan H Johnston. (There's that middle initial again.) We don't want you to miss another chance to get the value you deserve (can you feel the love?) At Amica we specialize in providing good drivers like you (Hear that? I'm a good driver. They don't just love me, they know me) with better rates and award-recognized customer satisfaction for a better overall value." I'm profoundly moved.

This next one is not just an invitation. It contains a gift. It is addressed to 'our friends at 217 Fox Drive" – "Friends" plural. They are even including Oreo, my cat. The invitation begins "Dear Friend". That is the hallmark of true friendship isn't it? When you know and love someone so much that you don't even need to use their name when you address them - just the word 'friend' communicates all the affection you have for them. Then it continues "Nothing makes you happier than sharing special moments around your table with family and friends. When there's always plenty of food but very little elbowroom. We can help you create a lifetime of memories. And the savings start with this amazing membership offer. Right now get a 3-month BJ's membership for free!"

Invitations come in different shapes and sizes. (Read the full sermon here: Guess who's coming to dinner.pdf )

FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 2016 LUKE 13:10-17 Eighteen years. 216 new moons, 216 full ones. 940 Sabbaths. 940 walks of indignity; hobbling, shuffling to the synagogue to do her Sabbath duty, to worship the God of her ancestors, to thank the Rock of her meagre life, to beg for the mercy of Yahweh. The Lord of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, she repeated to herself, was gracious. The God of Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel, she tried to convince herself, would look with compassion on her. Yahweh, she argued against her better reasoning, loved her, treasured her, cherished her as a daughter. And so 18 Passovers came and went, 18 harvests were celebrated, 18 Days of Atonement passed through the fingers of her people. And still she kept the faith, still she stumbled her way to worship, and still she hurt.

No doubt at some point, maybe during one day of excruciating pain, perhaps one week of utter despair, she had accepted the permanence of her disability. She possibly relinquished all hope of ever standing straight again. Being bent double does more to you than disable your body. It distorts your vision of the world. It disfigures your soul. It crushes your spirit. You are sentenced to staring at the ground. You can't look the world or any of its inhabitants in the face. Your perspective is waist-high and not headhigh. You are small, unnoticed, humiliated. Your back is bent, but your spirit is broken.

Why today? What took God so long? 940 times she had stood in these same courts, and God had chosen to let her depart in the condition she'd arrived. But today, yes today, God's..... (read the full sermon here: Sermon: Donkeys or humans)

THIRTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 2016 HEBREWS 11:29-12:2 So, this morning I'm feeling pretty patriotic thanks to the performance of Team GB at the Olympics. You see, they are top of the medals table. No, not that medals table – the one that records, you know, medals, I mean the humility medals table, the near-miss medals table, the 'it's not the winning, it's the taking part' medals table. I'm talking about the table that records the number of fourth place finishes a nation achieves. This is really a thing, and the BBC actually features it on its website. How typically and infuriatingly British. And how typical and infuriating of Britain's public broadcasting service to actually keep a record of it. Compete hard, do well, allow people to think you are actually pretty good at your chosen sport, but don't do anything quite so vulgar as winning a medal. Coming first is so impolite. Such poor etiquette. So, well, American. (You know I'm being ironic, don't you? This is actually envy talking.) I mean, the last thing you want is to be accused of being a show-off, like that show-off Usain Bolt or that even bigger show-off Michael Phelps. How much more honorable and in-keeping with the Olympic spirit would it be if he had 22 fourth place finishes instead of 22 golds? That feat would surely send the British Swimming Association to Ancestry.com to pour over Phelps's genealogy to see if he somehow qualifies for Team GB. "Phelps, hmmm, sounds English." It might even get him a knighthood. My gold medal moment of Week 1 is the performance of American road cyclist Mara Abbott, who led the 137 km race for what seemed like hours, and with just 500 meters to go was caught and then passed by three other riders; but she still beamed her way through an interview. That's the spirit. That's what it's all about. Abbott. She must be English. Somebody make that woman a duchess. By the way, Usain Bolt is proof that there is a God. Think about it. The fastest human on the planet is called Bolt - it can't be just a coincidence.

If you like the Olympics you'll love the way of... (Read the full sermon here: Sermon - 08-14-2016 - Fourth Place Medal )

TWELFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 2016 LUKE 12:32-40 The cruise from Westminster Pier on the River Thames to the Tower of London only took half an hour, but the effects on me have lasted a lifetime. I must have been ten at the time of that school field trip. Although I lived only 30 miles from the capital, I had never been to the Tower. But I'd listened to my history teachers, I'd heard the stories of traitors and tortures, betrayals and beheadings, mayhem and murder. I looked over the side of boat into the unwashed face of Father Thames – the same brown water that condemned men and women stared forlornly at hundreds of years earlier, as they made that same journey I, in my schoolboy excitement, was making. We arrived at the Tower and in the way that hildren do, I gazed, transfixed at instruments of slow death, and instruments of fast, like the chopping block where Ann Boleyn bade farewell to her head, or should that be where she bade farewell to her body?

At the time, it was the gruesome stories and the bloody artefacts that caused me the most fascination. Of course, they did. I was ten. But there were other exhibits at the Tower that were less enthralling to a young boy, but which the teachers seemed quite keen to expose us to. They led us through a doorway and into some heavily guarded rooms. At each entrance there stood uniformed men looking austere and threatening. And there, in the center of each room, were glass display cases. Boring glass display cases. No iron maidens, thumbscrews, or other Tudor torture devices. No graphic drawings of people being hanged, drawn and quartered, or having burning coals placed on their chests, or experiencing their entrails being eaten by rats while still alive. In fact, nothing to laugh at all. Just glass display cases. Containing stones. Stones and hats. Stones and rods. Stones and crosses. Still, these stones and hats seemed to get the teachers quite excited. They were not your average, backyard stones, of course. These stones sparkled; they winked at you as you passed. They were transparent and pure; captivating - if you're into sparkly stones. We weren't allowed to get too close to them, not that we wished to. Some lad touched a glass case and one of the uniformed men appeared in an instant and rebuked him. It did the trick, probably because this was the Tower of London after all, where, no doubt over the centuries untold numbers of boys had been executed for touching the glass cases.

When I returned to the Tower, over thirty years later, the stones and hats were still there, untouched in the three decades since the first time I'd seen them. By now, though, my interest in the Crown Jewels had grown, and my time in the Jewel House was far more intriguing to me than it had been in my youth.

I guess as you grow your idea of.... (Read the full sermon here: What's in your wallet? )

TENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 2016 LK 11:1-13 I have a new best friend. I say, 'new', but actually they have been a close and intimate companion for quite some time now. They are the first place I turn when I need something, and they rarely let me down. Like any best friend, sometimes they surprise me, occasionally they frustrate me, but usually they give me the warm glow that comes from knowing I have profited from their presence in my life. It's Amazon Marketplace. Maybe it's the Scottish Presbyterian in me (thanks Mum), maybe it's coming from a small island which still had rationing just nine years before I was born, maybe I've just taken that whole Christian suspicion of extravagance a bit too far, but I buy an awful lot of things either second hand or at deep discounts. I can't remember the last time I bought a new book – at least a new book that was not a fraction of its original price. So, Last month I visited my best friend, asked for their suggestions for a good book on the topic I wanted to read about, and spent several happy minutes, reading excerpts online. I made my choice, a used copy in good condition, and felt modestly pleased with my purchase.

When the book arrived I opened the cover and unwrapped that joy you get from adoring a new purchase. To my surprise there was no name scrawled inside that identified the original owner, but whoever they were, it was clear, they had handled this volume with respect, had hallowed it even, with cleanliness and neatness. I flicked through it. Each page making that satisfying sound as it quickly slid past my thumb and flopped onto its neighbor. But as I flicked my eye was caught by some writing in the margins on one page, and only one page. That made me want to read it. It was in ink. Blue ink – quite unusual for scribblings in the margin, which in my experience are usually in pencil. As befitting this neat, clean owner, the words were beautifully legible and thoughtfully penned. They bore the elegance of a female hand. The care taken and the permanence of the writing led me to think this was a message not just to herself, but to the world. The author wanted this short outpouring to be read by future readers, to be pondered, to be taken to heart, to be absorbed in the soul. And so it was with me. Her words have stayed with me, for they tell a story. And not a story with a happy ending. A story of pain, of suffering, of love lost, of yearning, of regret. "Chris Chris Chris. I miss him like crazy. Like mad. I wish it would have been different. I wish it would have been real."

Who is (read the full Sermon here: Sermon - 07-24-2016 - Give us today our daily scorpion )

NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 2016 Luke 10:38-42 I know it's happened to you, because it happens to me to me frequently. You are in a meeting, and the subject matter is less than riveting and your mind wanders to something much more interesting, and you don't hear another thing. Now just let me say that this never happens to me in meetings in Mt Calvary, not even vestry meetings. But it does happen to me in local meetings of clergy. There's that blood-curdling moment when my thoughts are a thousand miles away – on a beach, or up a mountain or at a sports stadium and I am dragged shockingly back into the room by the words, "What do you think, Duncan?" Now I have developed some foolproof coping mechanisms in that stressful moment. And telling the truth that you find this conversation boring, is not one of them. So, when this happens to me a in a clergy meeting I usually say, "Well, I think we consider what Jesus says in John's Gospel." And this always does the trick because Episcopal clergy don't know their Bibles, and they're too embarrassed to admit it and so they all nod sagely and say, "Yes, of course, good point. Thank you for sharing that." It works no matter what the topic of conversation is.

I reckon there are four levels of listening. There's Level One which we can call Vague Listening. This is when you're not actually listening at all. You find it in homes all over the world. You say something to someone – often someone you live with, and they pay no attention at all. They carry on reading their book, watching their TV show, surfing on their laptop. But instead of saying, "Sorry, I'm not listening", they reply with some kind of sound, like 'hmmm', 'yes', 'absolutely, darling'. Now some ingenious people try to take ruthless advantage of this situation by asking for things which the listener would never agree to if they were actually listening. Like, "Dad, can I borrow the car?" Or, "Honey, can we remodel the kitchen?"

Level Two we can name Good Listening. This is where you.... (read the full Sermon here: Don-t just do something sit there )

SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 2013 LUKE 9:51-62 I really wanted a rug. A nice sandy-colored, modestly patterned, home-spun rug, the kind that adorned the camel I had ridden the previous day. But as I stood in the Tunisian marketplace my heart sank. There were so many to choose from, and so many vendors, each with pound signs in their eyes. They saw this out-of-his-depth British tourist nervously surveying their stalls, and assumed I was overwhelmed by the prospect of haggling over a rug. And they were absolutely right. I knew it was the done thing. They start absurdly high and I shake my head, make a face like I'm outraged, and begin to walk away. Then they call me back and make a new offer; I still play hard to get, so they keep coming down. I fake boredom and eventually they ask me what I want to pay. Then, when I tell them, they pretend to be deeply offended, and relate the story of their aged mother who made this rug by hand despite her failing eyesight and astronomical medical bills. And we end up meeting somewhere in between. So, I did my bit. I very self-consciously haggled, hoping I was putting up a good fight, but not wanting to rob him and deprive his sickly mother of her medical care. And it struck me that this bizarre transaction was the exact opposite of the shopping experience in the West. Here the seller tries to look happy, and so does the shopper. The shopping experience should be a pleasurable one for all concerned. But in the Tunisian market the seller pretended he didn't want to part with his rug and grudgingly took my money, and I pretended I didn't want to buy it and was doing him a favor taking it off his hands. So we closed the deal each trying to kid the other that we were unhappy. The truth, of course, was that he was delighted to shift another rug, and I was excited to take my holiday souvenir home to lovingly lay on the floor of my London apartment.

So when it comes to closing the deal, who is Jesus like – the Western shopkeeper talking up his product, extolling its unrivalled magnificence, promising unrealistic pleasures, and persuading you that you'll never regret this? Or is he the Eastern market trader, almost daring you to walk away?

In today's Gospel lesson Jesus is approached by.... (read the full Sermon here: Sermon - 06-26-2016 - Straight Talk )

FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 2016 LUKE 7:36-8:3 There's something about eating with people that opens up a world of beautiful things. It's no coincidence that when Jesus had his most intimate heart-to-heart conversation with his friends, he chose a meal as the setting. And it's no coincidence that in our Anglican tradition our worship is centered on a meal – the reenactment of that ancient supper. At dinner people lower their defenses, they let others glimpse their hearts. They let their hair down. The biggest perk of my job is that I get invited to lots of dinner parties. And sure enough, as we eat, so the hosts and other guests become relaxed, open up, and share things they probably wouldn't over coffee hour. This is where I get much of my sermon material. The sound of backpedaling is deafening. It's like the backwards Tour de France. People offer me more food and drink and even money in the hope that they won't become a sermon starter. So, if you receive an invitation to dinner from me just understand that I'm not being hospitable, I'm in need of new material.

She let her hair down. I was .... (Read the full Sermon here: Let_your_hair_down.pdf )

She teetered her way into the corner of my eye, juggling armfuls of luggage, flapping her summer dress, and rustling a sandwich. She apologized for nudging my leg with a small bag, which she was trying to push under the seat with her foot. I assured her it was nothing, and she sat down, letting out a sigh of relief the way flustered shoppers do on commercials for tea, as they arrive home and sink into an armchair with a cuppa in their hands.

It was last Tuesday, and we were on board the 5.10 from Penn Station, New York to Harrisburg. She told me she had been in the city for the Memorial Day weekend to visit her daughter and was now returning to Philadelphia. I had been at the World Stamp Show for the day and was now coming home, tired but happy, thinking about the postage stamps I'd seen displayed and wondering how it is possible that a tiny old square of paper can be worth millions of dollars. Being British I am not used to talking on public transport. Where I'm from it's frowned upon. No one has yet passed a law banning it, but it's only a matter of time. On those rare occasions when I have held a conversation on a train I have felt such guilt afterwards that I have almost... (Read the full Sermon here: The Living Dead )