View Video GRACE EPISCOPAL CHURCH Sheboygan, Wisconsin The Third Sunday of Advent (C)  Zephaniah 3.14-20 Canticle: The First Song of ...

View Video Grace Episcopal Church Sheboygan, Wisconsin The Second Sunday of Advent (C) Baruch 5.1 The Song of Zechariah Philippians 1.1-11 Luke 3.1-6   May the Lord be in my mind, on my lips, and in my heart, that I may rightly and truly proclaim His holy Word. Amen. The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord ...” There’s another way to phrase this: Get ready to receive your God. Notice that John appears as a voice in the wilderness. He proclaims both repentance and the coming of the kingdom. It’s no accident that John the Baptist proclaims repentance in the midst of the wilderness. But first, let’s look at John’s title: “John the Baptist” is a bad translation of a title made up of a participle, “John the Baptizer,” or “John, the one who baptizes.” Perhaps it’s best to think of John using the title given to him in the Russian church: “John the Forerunner.” The Forerunner is the one who comes before He who was, and is, and is to come; the King who is to come into this wilderness of the fallen world, to inaugurate a new kingdom. Luke provides a lot of historical detail: what year it was; who was emperor; who was governor of Judea; who was ruler of Galilee; who were the tetrarchs; who were the high priests. We’re not dealing here with some mythological time, place and people, but real events in history; in history once for all time. As Forerunner, John appears in the wilderness. The wilderness setting gives us an im-mediate signal that God is revealing something. Throughout salvation history God reveals Himself in the wilderness. In Exodus, Moses encounters God in the “wilderness of Sinai.” In 1 Kings Elijah hears the “still, small voice” of the Lord in the wilderness of Mt. Horeb. The Gospels describe Jesus as retreating into the wilderness for forty days following his baptism, days in which he overcomes temptation before beginning his ministry. And here in the wilderness, John preaches the advent of the kingdom of God. How does John preach the advent of the kingdom of God? He proclaims a baptism of repentance; that God forgives us our sins. Note the parallel to our lesson from Baruch: those who have lived in exile are called to put on the “beauty of the glory from God,” the “righteousness that comes from God.” “[M]ercy and righteousness ... come from him.” Okay, so we as Jesus people recognize that God cares about us; God loves us despite our sins if we but turn to him. But how did we get to be people who sing, in the words of the canticle, that we “might serve [God] without fear,” people who proclaim the way of the Lord as the Way, the Truth, the Life in Jesus? We became those who confess Jesus because someone at some time in our lives cried out in the wilderness of this world that there ...

View Video Grace Episcopal Church Sheboygan, Wisconsin The Second Sunday of Advent (C) Baruch 5.1 The Song of Zechariah ...

View Video Grace Episcopal Church Sheboygan, Wisconsin The First Sunday of Advent (C) Jeremiah 33.14-16 Psalm 25.1-9 1 Thessalonians 3.9-13 Luke 21.25-36   May the Lord be in my mind, on my lips, and in my heart, that I may rightly and truly proclaim His holy Word. Amen. “To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul; my God, I put my trust in you.” Here we are, on the First Sunday of Advent, and we enter a season in which the gospel lessons will have a familiar ring. We’re used to hearing about judgment, in this season; hearing about John the Baptist pointing the way to Jesus; about Mary giving her “yes” to God. But in this time when we resonate with that which is familiar, I want to redirect our attention to the psalm, to the words I have just repeated, words that are very personal; for it is in the very personal relationship to which each one of us is called with God that we can, in fact, both wait upon our Lord’s coming and recognize His reign in the here and now of this life. I lift up my soul. In other words I open myself, I expose the deepest part of me to God. I do this knowing that God knows me, already, better than I know myself, but knowing, as well, that it is in the act of opening myself—in the act of offering myself to God—that the relationship is made more complete. It is made more complete because of the second half of that first line of the psalm, that I put my trust in God. I trust that God is who He reveals Himself to be—the God who counts me worthy of the infinite price of His Son’s life; the God who is faithful in all things; the God whose will it is that I might be saved. And when I open myself to God, when I offer myself to God, when I trust in God, then I find that it is not the season of the year or the season of my life that matters; what matters is eternity. What matters is eternity, and eternity is timeless, an “eternal present” of past, present, and future reflected in the Holy Name of God which He gives to Moses: I WAS, I AM, I SHALL BE. When we start recognizing that it is eternity that matters, we start looking at this life through God’s eyes. For example, in the strictest sense there is no future tense in biblical Hebrew. The verbs of the Old Testament basically either describe action which began in the past and is completed, or action which began in the past and is ongoing. This means that when a prophet or a psalm says (in English) what God shall do what is really being revealed is what God does.  “All the paths of the Lord are love and faithfulness …” The love and faithfulness of God is the eternal present, the ...

View Video Grace Episcopal Church Sheboygan, Wisconsin The First Sunday of Advent (C) Jeremiah 33.14-16 Psalm 25.1-9 1 Thessalonians 3.9-13 ...

View Video Grace Episcopal Church Sheboygan, Wisconsin The Last Sunday after Pentecost [Christ the King](Proper 29B2) Daniel 7.9-10 Psalm 93 Revelation 1.4b-8 John 18.33-37   May the Lord be in my mind, on my lips, and in my heart, that I may rightly and truly proclaim His Holy Word. Amen. “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice” (John 18.37). Jesus says these words to Pilate just before Pilate sentences Him to death. He is then scourged, mocked, and paraded before the crowd, bloodied. But first Pilate asks another question. Pilate responds to Jesus’ statement that those who are of the truth listen to their Lord. He asks “What is truth?” (John 18.38). The world asks this question, and asks it in the same sense in which Pilate asks it, not as a question looking for an answer, but as a statement intended to dismiss the possibility of real truth. It’s like saying “Whatever.” The world would have us believe that all truth is relative; that we each define our own truth in the “authenticity” of our experience. The focus becomes one of looking for the truth; it becomes a matter of process. But what Jesus says is that we are not seeking the truth; we have found it. This bothers the world (because it exposes the world’s experience to be self-referential only), and so the world asks with Pilate, “What is truth?” The world wants truth to be subjective. When truth is subjective, I can pretty much justify anything I want to do by measuring my belief and conduct against a standard which is no standard at all. I can claim to be a “spiritual” person because I claim to be seeking truth, seeking insight, while all I’m doing is justifying myself.  Let’s look at a popular example. Our culture tells us that sexual cohabitation is OK, as long as people are in love and committed to one another. But where do these “as long as” conditions come from? They come from an idea, a feeling, a belief, the common consent, that love and commitment between people are good things, and that physical intimacy without these good things is to be valued less. Well, how have we learned that love is good, or that physical intimacy that is casual or even anonymous is not good? Self-interest might counsel us that anonymous physical intimacy is dangerous–that there are diseases and not a few crazy people out there–but self-interest is not the same thing as deciding what is and is not good. To decide goodness we need a standard of reference, something that is true, and truth cannot ultimately be relative only. The necessary corollary to Jesus’ statement, “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice,” is “Those who do not listen to me do not know the truth.” How can this be? It’s because Jesus is in charge. He is the standard by which truth is judged, saying earlier in John, “I am the way, the ...

View Video Grace Episcopal Church Sheboygan, Wisconsin The Twenty-sixth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 28B) Daniel 12.1-3 Psalm 16 Hebrews 10.11-25 Mark 13.1-8   May the Lord be in my mind, on my lips, and in my heart, that I may rightly and truly proclaim His Holy Word. Amen. Apocalypse. That’s not a “friendly” word. When we think of an apocalypse, we think of an overwhelming event, of doomsday. For example, it is common in popular history to encounter references to the “apocalypse” of WWII. But, if you look up the word in a dictionary, that’s no higher than the fifth alternate definition of the word, as in “any universal or widespread destruction or disaster”. All the prior four definitions relate to what the word means from the Greek: “revelation” or “uncovering” or “disclosure”. That’s the way the word is used in the Bible, and this causes some confusion. For example, you’ll sometimes hear people claim that Catholic bibles don’t include the book Revelation. They’re ignoring (if they ever knew) the fact that in a Catholic bible the book is called Apocalypse, whereas in Protestant bibles the title is the same word translated into English. In our lessons today, both the prophet Daniel and Jesus start to talk about revelation, about “pulling the curtain aside” to describe what happens when the world does end, using words like “anguish” and “birth pangs”. Our lessons only start the descriptions, which go on at some length and are, of course, amplified greatly in Revelation. The end of the world is a popular topic, indeed. I wish I had a small fraction of the money that was made from books about how the world was supposed to end in December 2012. Back in 2012 I was standing in a book store at Bay Shore when a man about my age came up to me (I was wearing clericals) and asked whether it was true that the world would end in 2012. I asked him what made him think this might be true, and he showed me a magazine which said that the Mayan calendar predicted this as the date of the end of an age, an end in which the earth would be remade. My first thought was to wish I wasn’t then wearing a clerical collar. My next reaction was to notice that three other people had turned toward us, and were attentive on what I had to say. I told the man that I did not look to the Mayan calendar to reveal truth to us, particularly in how this calendar is “explained” by people out to make a buck, and so I wasn’t really worried about a particular date. I then went on to say that when the world ends doesn’t matter; that we are to live in such wise as to be always ready for our Lord to call us into another life. The man and the bystanders seemed happy with my answer (which I’ve abbreviated here), although maybe the cashier ...

View Video Grace Episcopal Church Sheboygan, Wisconsin The Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 27B] 1 Kings 17.8-16 Psalm 146 Hebrews 9.24-28 Mark 12.38-44 May the Lord be in my mind, on my lips, and in my heart, that I may rightly and truly proclaim His Holy Word. Amen.“Advanced poverty.” That’s the term used in sociology and economics to describe the life situation of the widow whom Jesus sees put her two small coins into the Temple treasury. A person who lives in advanced poverty is not utterly destitute, without any resources at all. Such a person is not necessarily homeless and starving, but has no resources available to her other than what is in hand. Once whatever is in her purse is gone, there’s no more; there’s no income stream, no asset that can be sold; nothing.  There are a lot of people who live this way. A lot of people in this town live in advanced poverty, except to the extent that a government program provides relief for some necessities. As a society we have taken the decision that destitution is not a good thing, and so we provide relief to try to keep most people from living without shelter or from starving. But such government programs did not exist in Jesus’ day. A widow was wholly dependent on charity. She could not inherit her husband’s estate. She was without assets, and in general no work was available to her. If she had grown children, they could support her, but without family support of some kind, her economic status was that of a beggar. Now, whether you think social welfare programs are good or not, don’t forget that we are commanded in Scripture to care for those who lack the necessities of life. Whether you think the government should do this or not, we can’t ignore that Jesus makes it pretty clear in Matthew 25 that we should. But the point here is not about giving; it is about faith. Elijah tells the widow of Zarephath, “Do not be afraid” (1 Kgs. 17.13), and the psalm reminds us not to trust in the worldly (Ps. 146.2), but it is all too easy to look at a dwindling bank balance and doubt whether faith will make a difference in paying an electric bill or in buying food. That’s the problem I commonly see in the church office. I see people who are in advanced poverty, and who do not believe that faith will make a difference in whether or not the power company cuts off their lights. And you know what? They don’t want prayer. They don’t want me to tell them about God’s love for them. They want a check, payable to the electric company, and if I can’t or won’t write that check, it’s all too easy for them to walk away from the church thinking that faith has no answers for them, at least not answers for this problem, here and now. Faith in God always has answers, ...

View Video Grace Episcopal Church Sheboygan, Wisconsin The Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 2B] Deuteronomy 6.1—9 Psalm 119.1—8 Hebrews 9.11—14 Mark 12.28—34 May the Lord be in my mind, on my lips, and in my heart, that I may rightly and truly proclaim His Holy Word. Amen.   If we were gathered today to worship in a synagogue, and if I was your rabbi, I might start the service by singing from today’s lesson from Deuteronomy, “Hear O Israel …”. I would sing Shema Yisrael, Adonai eloheinu, Adonai eloheinu, Adonai … to which you would respond Yahhad! If we were all good Jews, we would begin our worship with words taken from our lesson from Deuteronomy today, and in light of recent events in Pittsburgh I would hope that anyone of us could by God’s grace face evil and say, if necessary, “I’m a Jew”, just as for a good Jew these words are to be his or her last words. But more to the point of how our lessons speak to us outside of the ebb and flow of current events, in teaching about the law of God, Jesus makes clear that we are to love God with all of our being. The law of God is summarized in the love of God and the love of neighbor. In other words, when we are in right relationship with God we love our neighbor as we love ourselves, whether our neighbor be a fellow Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a pagan; whether our neighbor look like us or sound like us. Those whom God has placed before us are our neighbors, a point Jesus repeats in the famous parable of the good Samaritan, found in Luke’s gospel. The question becomes, therefore, how do we live and teach the love of God? For right after teaching the primacy of the love of God in our very identities, Deuteronomy then enjoins “Keep these words … Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.” In other words, whether we use the words of the Shema Yisrael or another confession of faith, we are to use words—to remind ourselves and those around us—that the love of God determines who we are, and who we are determines how we relate to our neighbor. If our relationship with God is out of order, then rather than focus on others we’ll focus on ourselves. Even if we strive to be “good” people and do good works, if our outreach is not founded in God, then we won’t be embodying the cross and our efforts will yield only worldly results, at best. The love of God and the love of neighbor meet at the cross, in the cross, the sign and symbol of our salvation and of God’s will for the world. The arms which reach out from the cross—the “horizontal”—must be in proper relation with the “vertical”, ...

View Video Grace Episcopal Church Sheboygan, Wisconsin The Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 2B] Deuteronomy 6.1—9 Psalm 119.1—8 Hebrews 9.11—14 Mark 12.28—34 May the Lord be in my mind, on my lips, and in my heart, that I may rightly and truly proclaim His Holy Word. Amen.   If we were gathered today to worship in a synagogue, and if I was your rabbi, I might start the service by singing from today’s lesson from Deuteronomy, “Hear O Israel …”. I would sing Shema Yisrael, Adonai eloheinu, Adonai eloheinu, Adonai … to which you would respond Yahhad! If we were all good Jews, we would begin our worship with words taken from our lesson from Deuteronomy today, and in light of recent events in Pittsburgh I would hope that anyone of us could by God’s grace face evil and say, if necessary, “I’m a Jew”, just as for a good Jew these words are to be his or her last words. But more to the point of how our lessons speak to us outside of the ebb and flow of current events, in teaching about the law of God, Jesus makes clear that we are to love God with all of our being. The law of God is summarized in the love of God and the love of neighbor. In other words, when we are in right relationship with God we love our neighbor as we love ourselves, whether our neighbor be a fellow Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a pagan; whether our neighbor look like us or sound like us. Those whom God has placed before us are our neighbors, a point Jesus repeats in the famous parable of the good Samaritan, found in Luke’s gospel. The question becomes, therefore, how do we live and teach the love of God? For right after teaching the primacy of the love of God in our very identities, Deuteronomy then enjoins “Keep these words … Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.” In other words, whether we use the words of the Shema Yisrael or another confession of faith, we are to use words—to remind ourselves and those around us—that the love of God determines who we are, and who we are determines how we relate to our neighbor. If our relationship with God is out of order, then rather than focus on others we’ll focus on ourselves. Even if we strive to be “good” people and do good works, if our outreach is not founded in God, then we won’t be embodying the cross and our efforts will yield only worldly results, at best. The love of God and the love of neighbor meet at the cross, in the cross, the sign and symbol of our salvation and of God’s will for the world. The arms which reach out from the cross—the “horizontal”—must be in proper relation with the “vertical”, ...