Sermons at St. Dunstan's

By St. Dunstan's Anglican Church

St. Dunstan's is a loving, welcoming Anglican church in Largo, FL, where Fr. Michael has been the rector since June 2018. For more information on St. Dunstan's, check out www.sdaclargo.com.... more

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April 07, 2019 Easter is Coming
A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, April 7, 2019
St. Dunstan’s Anglican Church, Largo, FL
The Very Rev. J. Michael Strachan
Philippians 3:4b-14; John 12:1-18
In our Gospel reading this morning,
Mary, the sister of Martha and the sister of the once-dead-now-alive-again
Lazarus anoints Jesus feet with perfume to prepare him for his coming death. This
is an appropriate reading for this Sunday, the fifth Sunday of Lent, because
today we turn our eyes more clearly to the cross of Jesus Christ. Even though
we are still in Lent, with the fifth Sunday in Lent the liturgy changes in
certain ways in order to draw our attention and our focus to the cross. From
here until Easter morning the liturgy will continue to do this. Next Sunday,
Palm Sunday, we will have two Gospels readings: first, the Palm Gospel in which
we here of Jesus’ entry to Jerusalem and second, the Passion narrative. On
Maundy Thursday we will share a meal with him as he prepares himself and his
disciples for his impending death. And on Good Friday, we will again hear the
Passion narrative and walk with him through his death on the cross.
In this way, the last week of
Jesus’ earthly life before his resurrection, liturgical time slows down, and we
walk with him one day at a time through this holy week, not only because the
events of Holy Week are the most significant events in all of human history,
but also because his story is our story. His death is our death and his
resurrection is our resurrection if we are in him, if we are his.
Have you ever thought about what it
is that makes you special? We live in a culture today where everyone is told
that they’re special, and some will say that if everyone is special, then no
one is. Of course, that’s obviously untrue. Just because some want to say that
everyone is special doesn’t mean that everyone is special in the same way. If
we aren’t here by cosmic or genetic accident, if we are here because God has
created us uniquely as individuals, then we should recognize that each of us is
unique, each of us is special, and each of us is created by God not randomly
but with a plan and a purpose.
Paul, in our reading this morning,
is laying out his credentials for what makes him so special. Even more than
this, Paul is laying out his unique claim to be to salvation, his claim to be
special in God’s eyes. And isn’t that the best kind of being special?
Most of us were raised on a version
of Christianity that was based on a mistake. Most of us who have heard and read
the Apostle Paul for most of our lives were raised with the belief that Paul is
contrasting his doctrine of salvation or justification by faith with a Jewish
works-based understanding of justification. It’s said that in the
first-century, Paul’s Jewish brethren believed they could earn their salvation
by keeping the law, and in contrast to that, Paul came preaching the doctrine
of justification by faith alone through grace alone. The Jews said you must
keep the law; Paul said you only have to believe in Jesus.
Except, it’s not clear that any Jew
in the first-century believed you had to or even could earn your salvation. So,
let me explain how this works. In first-century Judaism, salvation was always
something future. We speak of being saved now, but in Paul’s day they were
waiting for God to save them. They were waiting for God to act. If then you
were to ask, when God finally acts, who is he going to save, the answer would
be obvious: the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But then the question
becomes, who are the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and how do you
know? The Jewish people spent almost five centuries in exile. Only the southern
kingdom came back. Many Jews intermarried, adopted Gentile practices, language,
and customs, and what it meant to be a child of Abraham became less clear. And
if God’s going to act for this particular group of people, this particular
subset of humanity called the children of Abraham, then ho
...more
19min
March 31, 2019 Coming Back Home
The Fourth Sunday of Lent, March 31, 2019
St. Dunstan’s Anglican Church, Largo, FL
The Very Rev. J. Michael Strachan
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
Our Gospel reading this morning is
a parable, and parables are stories with a point. The so-called Parable of the
Prodigal Son, while we often consider it as an isolated story, is the last and
longest of three parables that Jesus tells to answer the objection of the
Pharisees that he was sharing meals with all the wrong kinds of people. We call
the first parable that Jesus tells the Parable of the Lost Sheep. A shepherd
has lost one of his sheep, so he leaves the rest behind, finds the lost sheep,
and throws a party to celebrate that was lost has been found. The second
parable is the Parable of the Lost Coin. A woman loses one of her ten coins,
searches for it diligently, and when she finds it, she invites her friends to
celebrate with her because what was lost has been found. The third parable, our
reading this morning, isn’t the Parable of the Prodigal Son; it’s the Parable
of the Lost Son—Lost Sheep, Lost Coin, Lost Son.
So, with that in mind, what I want
to do this morning is this: I want to tell you a story. It’s the story of a
Father, who loved his son so much, that when he saw his son enslaved in the
land of Egypt, he sent a prophet, Moses, before Pharaoh, and he told this
prophet to say to the Lord of all the land, “Israel is my son. Let my son go
that he may serve me.” And when Pharaoh refused, this Father delivered his Son
with power and might and with an outstretched arm. He freed his son from
slavery, washed him in the waters of the Red Sea, and he gave him food and
drink as he led him home with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by
night. This son’s new home was a land overflowing with milk and honey. There
the loving father provided everything that the son could ever need.
One day the son became rebellious.
He would not wait on his father, nor did he trust in him or listen to his
rules. The son wanted to go his own way from this father, and his father
obliged. He took the gifts his father had given him and went away into a
distant land. When he was in Babylon, the prophets promised that one day the
son would return home. No matter how far away the son strayed, no matter how
lost he got, the prophets said that one day he would return home. They said
that there was no where the son could go from which he could not return.
Interestingly, the prophets spoke about this return in terms of sheep.
Remember: Lost Sheep, Lost Coin, Lost Son. “I will gather the remnant of my
flock out of all the countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them
back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply” (Jer 23:3).
The son languished in the distant
land. He lost all that he had. One day he came to his senses, turned from his
ways, and came back to his Father’s house. What do you think the father did
when he saw his son approaching? What do you think this Father did, who had
freed his son from slavery, washed him, fed him, gave him a home, gave him
rules to live by to make his life successful, gave him everything he ever
wanted only to see his son turn his back on him and his way of life and on who
his son was called to be? Did his father ask him where he had been? Did his
father ask him what sins he had committed while away in a distant land or just
how bad things had gotten? No, there will be time for those conversations, but
not when your lost son has been found.
The father lived in a culture a
culture where only children ran. When you were older and more dignified, you
didn’t do such things. The father sees his son, and he runs to him. He grabs
him and drags him home. He lavishes gifts upon him. The throws a giant feast in
his honor. His son wants to talk about what he’s done. His son wants to talk
about his unworthiness, but the father, the father is nothing but unconditional
love. He “For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is
found.” And almost everyone around him began to celebrate (Luke 15:24).
This then is the answer Jesus gives
to those who ask why he eats and drinks with the wrong kind of person: there’s
a party going on. When people, whether they’re the right kind of people or the
wrong kind of people, whatever that might mean, repent and turn to Jesus, when
they take the long walk home, the right thing to do is to run to them, grab
them, embrace them, and throw a party in their honor. This isn’t the time to sort
out where they’ve been or what they’ve done. This isn’t the time to ask what
happened when they were off in the far country. There will be time for those
conversations in the days ahead, but now is the time to show the lost sons and
daughters of God the unconditional love of their father.
The God who made heaven and earth
and redeemed this world through his Son is calling the whole world back to
himself, all his sons and daughters, and if Jesus sets the agenda for the
church, and he does, then we should be throwing a party. We should be running
to meet his children as they return, just as the prophets said they would, and
meeting them with open arms of love.
But this isn’t just a word about
welcoming the lost sons and daughter of God. This is a word for us too. We too
like sheep have gone astray, we too sometimes feel lost, we too sometimes
wonder if our sin has pushed us too far away from the arms of our loving
father, we wonder if we can ever return. And today we hear from Jesus the
divine YES! Yes, you can. There is no place where you can go from which your
father does not call you home. There is nowhere in heaven and earth where your
sin can take you from which Father does how call you home. There is nothing you
can do and nothing you can say that will prevent your ever-merciful and
ever-loving Father from running towards you on the road as soon as he lays his
eyes on you.
With Saturate the City this year, we’re inviting God’s children to come home. We won’t know where any of them are in their journey. We won’t know their stories. We may get no new guests. We may get far more than we can handle. We have no idea what the Lord will do with this project. But we do know this. When they come, we don’t want to be standing to the side grumbling. We want to be having a party. We want to be ready to run to them and meet them on their way through those doors and help them to feel the mercy and love of their heavenly Father through us. We want it to be said of St. Dunstan’s that are far more welcoming, far more merciful, and far move loving than these people deserved, that we eat and drink with all the wrong kinds of people, so that we can say back to those who make that accusation, “Yes, yes, we do.”
Amen
The post Coming Back Home first appeared on St. Dunstan's Anglican Church.
...more
14min
March 31, 2019 Coming Back Home
The Fourth Sunday of Lent, March 31, 2019
St. Dunstan’s Anglican Church, Largo, FL
The Very Rev. J. Michael Strachan
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
Our Gospel reading this morning is
a parable, and parables are stories with a point. The so-called Parable of the
Prodigal Son, while we often consider it as an isolated story, is the last and
longest of three parables that Jesus tells to answer the objection of the
Pharisees that he was sharing meals with all the wrong kinds of people. We call
the first parable that Jesus tells the Parable of the Lost Sheep. A shepherd
has lost one of his sheep, so he leaves the rest behind, finds the lost sheep,
and throws a party to celebrate that was lost has been found. The second
parable is the Parable of the Lost Coin. A woman loses one of her ten coins,
searches for it diligently, and when she finds it, she invites her friends to
celebrate with her because what was lost has been found. The third parable, our
reading this morning, isn’t the Parable of the Prodigal Son; it’s the Parable
of the Lost Son—Lost Sheep, Lost Coin, Lost Son.
So, with that in mind, what I want
to do this morning is this: I want to tell you a story. It’s the story of a
Father, who loved his son so much, that when he saw his son enslaved in the
land of Egypt, he sent a prophet, Moses, before Pharaoh, and he told this
prophet to say to the Lord of all the land, “Israel is my son. Let my son go
that he may serve me.” And when Pharaoh refused, this Father delivered his Son
with power and might and with an outstretched arm. He freed his son from
slavery, washed him in the waters of the Red Sea, and he gave him food and
drink as he led him home with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by
night. This son’s new home was a land overflowing with milk and honey. There
the loving father provided everything that the son could ever need.
One day the son became rebellious.
He would not wait on his father, nor did he trust in him or listen to his
rules. The son wanted to go his own way from this father, and his father
obliged. He took the gifts his father had given him and went away into a
distant land. When he was in Babylon, the prophets promised that one day the
son would return home. No matter how far away the son strayed, no matter how
lost he got, the prophets said that one day he would return home. They said
that there was no where the son could go from which he could not return.
Interestingly, the prophets spoke about this return in terms of sheep.
Remember: Lost Sheep, Lost Coin, Lost Son. “I will gather the remnant of my
flock out of all the countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them
back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply” (Jer 23:3).
The son languished in the distant
land. He lost all that he had. One day he came to his senses, turned from his
ways, and came back to his Father’s house. What do you think the father did
when he saw his son approaching? What do you think this Father did, who had
freed his son from slavery, washed him, fed him, gave him a home, gave him
rules to live by to make his life successful, gave him everything he ever
wanted only to see his son turn his back on him and his way of life and on who
his son was called to be? Did his father ask him where he had been? Did his
father ask him what sins he had committed while away in a distant land or just
how bad things had gotten? No, there will be time for those conversations, but
not when your lost son has been found.
The father lived in a culture a
culture where only children ran. When you were older and more dignified, you
didn’t do such things. The father sees his son, and he runs to him. He grabs
him and drags him home. He lavishes gifts upon him. The throws a giant feast in
his honor. His son wants to talk about what he’s done. His son wants to talk
about his unworthiness, but the father, the father is nothing but unconditional
love. He “For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was l
...more
14min
March 25, 2019 From the Womb to the Grave
A Sermon for the Feast of the Annunciation, March 25, 2019
St. Dunstan’s Anglican Church, Largo, FL
The Very. Rev. J. Michael Strachan
Luke 1:26-38
March 25th may be the
most significant day in all human history. According to Jewish and Christian
tradition, March 25th was the date of some of the most significant
events in human history. Not only is it the day
that the Lord Jesus was conceived in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but
according to tradition it is also the day on which God created the world, the
day on which Adam and Eve fell, the day Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac, the
day the Israelites were set free from Egypt, and the day of the crucifixion.
It is also the day, according to Tolkien, that the Frodo destroyed the ring of
power in the fires of Mount Doom, and it is also the birthdate of Eleanor the
Fair, the firstborn daughter of Samwise the Brave.
Now the rationalists that we all
are will obviously scoff at the notion
that creation, the fall, the sacrifice of Isaac, the Exodus, the incarnation,
and the crucifixion all occurred on the same day. How does one even begin to
calculate the day on which God made heaven and earth? To our modern and postmodern
ears, this sounds like fiction, but of course,
these traditions developed not in the context of modernity but in premodern
times. The point of lining up these events on this day was not to make a
historical claim but a theological one. The events are arranged like this on
the calendar of some Jewish and Christian tradition (not all) because the
events are meant to interpret each other, or even better because they tell a story.
They tell a story of a God who
created this world and created humanity to rule over it. They tell a story of
human beings who rebelled and who now pay the price for that rebellion, namely
death. They tell a story of God’s plan to set his people free, to counter their
own instincts, and to `bring them to the
Promised Land of life with him once again. They tell a story of God loving
humanity so fiercely and with so much loyalty that he became one of us, sharing
in the full human experience. The preface to tonight’s Eucharistic prayer puts it this way: “From the warmth of her womb
to the stillness of the grave he shared our life in human form. In him new light has dawned upon the world, and
you have become one with us that we might become one with you in your glorious
kingdom.”
But let’s get back to Tolkien for a
second. What is that Tolkien, a good Roman Catholic, understands about the
Feast of the Annunciation that makes him line up such a crucial event as the
destruction of the ring with this Feast Day. Some want to say that Tolkien has
in mind not the feast day, but the crucifixion. And perhaps this is right. It
does make perfect sense for the defeat of evil in Middle Earth to have occurred
on the same day as the crucifixion, but this assumes that Tolkien expected his
readers to be aware of this tradition and focus on it more than far more
well-known feast day.
What I would suggest is this: in
Mary’s response to the angel Gabriel, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord;
let it be to me according to your word,” Tolkien hears the defeat of evil. The
first eve was greeted by a visitor, a serpent, who convinced her to choose her
will over God’s will. With her husband, her decision brought about the fall of
the human race. The second eve is now greeted
by a visitor, an angel, who tells her God’s will for her life. She’s unmarried.
She’s a virgin. And she’s going to be pregnant in a culture in which a woman
caught in adultery can be publicly stoned
for her sin. She doesn’t know what Joseph will say. She how she’s going to
explain it. But the second Eve places her life and her will in the hands of the
creator of heaven and earth, and because she does so, the life of the entire
universe is conceived in her womb.
Evil isn’t defeated at the Annunciation, but the second Eve’s “yes” to
God’s will is the spark that brings about the light of the world, and
ultimately the defeat of evil. Unlike the ringbearers before Frodo, Mary
chooses not to follow our ancient parents into the path of disobedience, into
the path of putting our desire for power and self-preservation over God’s will.
And in doing so, she casts the ring into
the fires of Mount Doom and begins to undo the curse that Adam and Eve brought
upon this world. Irenaeus puts it this way: “And thus it was that the knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by the
obedience of Mary. For what the virgin Eve had bound fast through
unbelief, this did the virgin Mary set free through faith” (Adv. Haer. 3.22.4).
Today Mary dies to self and becomes an example to us of obedience.
She dies to her plans, her will, and her desire, and so should we. Perhaps
Tolkien considered that Frodo died to himself at Mount Doom. Either way,
because Mary dies to self, because she chooses God’s will over her own, the light of
heaven that will scatter the darkness of the world begins to grow in her womb
as the God of the universe, the maker of heaven and earth, unites himself to
humanity forever. In doing so, his story becomes our story, and our story
becomes his story. As he shares in our life, from the warmth of the womb to the
stillness of the grave, may we too share in his resurrected life, now and
forever.
Amen.
The post From the Womb to the Grave first appeared on St. Dunstan's Anglican Church.
...more
9min
March 25, 2019 From the Womb to the Grave
A Sermon for the Feast of the Annunciation, March 25, 2019
St. Dunstan’s Anglican Church, Largo, FL
The Very. Rev. J. Michael Strachan
Luke 1:26-38
March 25th may be the
most significant day in all human history. According to Jewish and Christian
tradition, March 25th was the date of some of the most significant
events in human history. Not only is it the day
that the Lord Jesus was conceived in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but
according to tradition it is also the day on which God created the world, the
day on which Adam and Eve fell, the day Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac, the
day the Israelites were set free from Egypt, and the day of the crucifixion.
It is also the day, according to Tolkien, that the Frodo destroyed the ring of
power in the fires of Mount Doom, and it is also the birthdate of Eleanor the
Fair, the firstborn daughter of Samwise the Brave.
Now the rationalists that we all
are will obviously scoff at the notion
that creation, the fall, the sacrifice of Isaac, the Exodus, the incarnation,
and the crucifixion all occurred on the same day. How does one even begin to
calculate the day on which God made heaven and earth? To our modern and postmodern
ears, this sounds like fiction, but of course,
these traditions developed not in the context of modernity but in premodern
times. The point of lining up these events on this day was not to make a
historical claim but a theological one. The events are arranged like this on
the calendar of some Jewish and Christian tradition (not all) because the
events are meant to interpret each other, or even better because they tell a story.
They tell a story of a God who
created this world and created humanity to rule over it. They tell a story of
human beings who rebelled and who now pay the price for that rebellion, namely
death. They tell a story of God’s plan to set his people free, to counter their
own instincts, and to `bring them to the
Promised Land of life with him once again. They tell a story of God loving
humanity so fiercely and with so much loyalty that he became one of us, sharing
in the full human experience. The preface to tonight’s Eucharistic prayer puts it this way: “From the warmth of her womb
to the stillness of the grave he shared our life in human form. In him new light has dawned upon the world, and
you have become one with us that we might become one with you in your glorious
kingdom.”
But let’s get back to Tolkien for a
second. What is that Tolkien, a good Roman Catholic, understands about the
Feast of the Annunciation that makes him line up such a crucial event as the
destruction of the ring with this Feast Day. Some want to say that Tolkien has
in mind not the feast day, but the crucifixion. And perhaps this is right. It
does make perfect sense for the defeat of evil in Middle Earth to have occurred
on the same day as the crucifixion, but this assumes that Tolkien expected his
readers to be aware of this tradition and focus on it more than far more
well-known feast day.
What I would suggest is this: in
Mary’s response to the angel Gabriel, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord;
let it be to me according to your word,” Tolkien hears the defeat of evil. The
first eve was greeted by a visitor, a serpent, who convinced her to choose her
will over God’s will. With her husband, her decision brought about the fall of
the human race. The second eve is now greeted
by a visitor, an angel, who tells her God’s will for her life. She’s unmarried.
She’s a virgin. And she’s going to be pregnant in a culture in which a woman
caught in adultery can be publicly stoned
for her sin. She doesn’t know what Joseph will say. She how she’s going to
explain it. But the second Eve places her life and her will in the hands of the
creator of heaven and earth, and because she does so, the life of the entire
universe is conceived in her womb.
Evil isn’t defeated at the Annunciation, but the second Eve’s “yes” to
God’s will is the spark that brin
...more
9min
March 24, 2019 Overthrown in the Wilderness
A Sermon for the Third Sunday of Lent, March 24, 2019
St. Dunstan’s Anglican Church, Largo, FL
The Very Rev. J. Michael Strachan
Isaiah 55:1-9; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13
There is an inherent tension in the
way that we think about God. Given the fact that we are speaking about the
non-created creator of heaven and earth, the non-spatial, non-temporal creator
of space, time, and all human existence, given that we are speaking about the
one whose thoughts, as the prophet Isaiah says, are higher than our thoughts
and whose ways are higher than our ways, it should not be surprising to us that
there are tensions in the way that we think about and understand the God of the
Bible.
Because our human brains are small and our reason is simple, we do our
best to reduce God to simplistic terms and principles that we can understand.
There is nothing wrong with that. One could make the argument that the incarnation itself is God doing something
just like that. He comes to us in terms that we can understand and appreciate.
He stoops down to our level to make himself known. However, a problem arises sometimes when,
after we’ve reduced God and his ways down to our terms and our principles, we
try to put those terms and principles
together in an ordered way that makes sense to us. This endeavor is healthy and natural. The human brain is wired
in such a way to try and make sense out of what we perceive and know and to
move everything into its proper mental position. We were made to make sense of
the world and of what we know about God.
But then, on occasion, we read
something in our Bible, or we experience
something in the world, that doesn’t seem to fit with what we know about God.
It doesn’t meet the expectations that
we’ve created in our minds. In our reading from the prophet Isaiah this
morning, the people of Judah are experiencing something similar. They knew that
God had promised to restore them after their exile, but they had never imagined
that God was going to do so by raising up
a Persian King named Cyrus to bring them back to the land. Instead of recognizing
that God had come near to them for deliverance, and rather than acknowledging that his thoughts and his ways
were higher than their thoughts and ways, they preferred to argue and disagree with each other over whether God could
deliver them this way.
Similarly,
we struggle to understand the relationship between God’s judgment and God’s
grace. We have certain doctrines, sometimes called the Perseverance of the
Saints, that makes it difficult for us to read warnings like the warnings we
hear in the Gospel reading and the epistle this morning. Some go one direction,
others go another. Some say that if the warning passages in the New Testament
are to be real warnings, then we have no assurance of salvation. For those of
this persuasion, there is no such thing as the perseverance of the saints, and
we must all diligently watch over our salvation.
On
the other hand, some are so certain in the assurance of salvation and
the perseverance of the saints that they read the warning passages with almost a wink and a nod. For those of this
persuasion, it’s difficult to take the warning passages seriously. Sure, they
are reminders that we’re supposed to live a certain way as the people of God,
but ultimately God will not let his people stumble.
For many of us, if we were to find
such warning passages in the Old Testament, we would brush them aside. We would
think to ourselves that the cross of Christ has redeemed us and freed us from
the threat of such warnings. Except, here, in the New Testament, we find Paul
drawing on those Old Testament warnings to give a new warning to his New Testament church. It’s not difficult to work out
what Paul is saying to the Corinthians, and we need to listen seriously if we are to hear what it is that
Paul says to us today.
He says, “For I do not want you to
be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed
through the sea, and all were baptized
into Moses in the cloud and in the sea,
and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink.
For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was
Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness” (1 Corin
10:1–5).
For Israel, during its wandering
through the wilderness, the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by
night led them out of Egypt. It was for them the presence of God, what we call
the Spirit, who led them and guided them in their journey. They passed through
the waters of the Red Sea, which Paul describes as being “baptized into Moses.”
No one before Paul, as far as we know, described the Red Sea this way. Paul’s
point is obviously to make a connection between the wandering Israelites and
Corinthians, both of who were being led by the Spirit and both of whom had been baptized, one group into Moses, the other
into the Messiah. Once we see the connection to baptism, then the rest of
Paul’s comparison is obvious. Not only were the wandering Israelites led by the
Spirit and baptized, but they ate spiritual food and spiritual drink, which the
Corinthians also eat and drank at the
Lord’s table. Paul’s warning is simple. Despite all this, with most of them,
God was not pleased, and they fell dead in the wilderness.
The point Paul is making is that those
of us who are led by Spirit, have received the sacrament of baptism, and
regularly receive the sacrament of holy communion should not be overly
confident in those experiences of God’s grace. We sometimes make the mistake of
thinking that, because of what Christ has done on the cross, and because of the
New Covenant, and because we have the Spirit, and because we have the
sacraments, obedience is a secondary thing. We should do it, but if we don’t,
then what? If we don’t have a fitting
answer to that question, then we haven’t taken the
warning passages in the New Testament seriously enough.
Paul doesn’t give a precise answer
to this question in this passage this morning. Here he says, “Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.”
But the warning is real even if imprecise. To be New Exodus people, which is
another way of saying, to be a Church on the Way, is to be people who are baptized into the Messiah, led by Spirit,
and regularly participate in the spiritual food and drink of Holy Communion.
But if we use those gifts of God’s grace as a crutch, or even worse, as an
excuse not to be the people that God has called us to be, then we are missing
the whole point. God had freed us from sin, death, and the devil, baptized us
into the Messiah, leads us by the Spirit,
and feeds with spiritual food and drink not so we can go on living however we please but so that we can be the
people that God has called us to be. And if we’re not, then we should take heed
lest, like the Israelites before us, we too are overthrown in the wilderness.
Amen.
The post Overthrown in the Wilderness first appeared on St. Dunstan's Anglican Church.
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17min
March 24, 2019 Overthrown in the Wilderness
A Sermon for the Third Sunday of Lent, March 24, 2019
St. Dunstan’s Anglican Church, Largo, FL
The Very Rev. J. Michael Strachan
Isaiah 55:1-9; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13
There is an inherent tension in the
way that we think about God. Given the fact that we are speaking about the
non-created creator of heaven and earth, the non-spatial, non-temporal creator
of space, time, and all human existence, given that we are speaking about the
one whose thoughts, as the prophet Isaiah says, are higher than our thoughts
and whose ways are higher than our ways, it should not be surprising to us that
there are tensions in the way that we think about and understand the God of the
Bible.
Because our human brains are small and our reason is simple, we do our
best to reduce God to simplistic terms and principles that we can understand.
There is nothing wrong with that. One could make the argument that the incarnation itself is God doing something
just like that. He comes to us in terms that we can understand and appreciate.
He stoops down to our level to make himself known. However, a problem arises sometimes when,
after we’ve reduced God and his ways down to our terms and our principles, we
try to put those terms and principles
together in an ordered way that makes sense to us. This endeavor is healthy and natural. The human brain is wired
in such a way to try and make sense out of what we perceive and know and to
move everything into its proper mental position. We were made to make sense of
the world and of what we know about God.
But then, on occasion, we read
something in our Bible, or we experience
something in the world, that doesn’t seem to fit with what we know about God.
It doesn’t meet the expectations that
we’ve created in our minds. In our reading from the prophet Isaiah this
morning, the people of Judah are experiencing something similar. They knew that
God had promised to restore them after their exile, but they had never imagined
that God was going to do so by raising up
a Persian King named Cyrus to bring them back to the land. Instead of recognizing
that God had come near to them for deliverance, and rather than acknowledging that his thoughts and his ways
were higher than their thoughts and ways, they preferred to argue and disagree with each other over whether God could
deliver them this way.
Similarly,
we struggle to understand the relationship between God’s judgment and God’s
grace. We have certain doctrines, sometimes called the Perseverance of the
Saints, that makes it difficult for us to read warnings like the warnings we
hear in the Gospel reading and the epistle this morning. Some go one direction,
others go another. Some say that if the warning passages in the New Testament
are to be real warnings, then we have no assurance of salvation. For those of
this persuasion, there is no such thing as the perseverance of the saints, and
we must all diligently watch over our salvation.
On
the other hand, some are so certain in the assurance of salvation and
the perseverance of the saints that they read the warning passages with almost a wink and a nod. For those of this
persuasion, it’s difficult to take the warning passages seriously. Sure, they
are reminders that we’re supposed to live a certain way as the people of God,
but ultimately God will not let his people stumble.
For many of us, if we were to find
such warning passages in the Old Testament, we would brush them aside. We would
think to ourselves that the cross of Christ has redeemed us and freed us from
the threat of such warnings. Except, here, in the New Testament, we find Paul
drawing on those Old Testament warnings to give a new warning to his New Testament church. It’s not difficult to work out
what Paul is saying to the Corinthians, and we need to listen seriously if we are to hear what it is that
Paul says to us today.
He says, “For I do not want you to
be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all pas
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17min
March 17, 2019 Our Citizenship is in Heaven
A Sermon for the Second Sunday of Lent, March 17, 2019
St. Dunstan’s Anglican Church, Largo, FL
The Very Rev. J. Michael Strachan
Philippians 3:17-4:1
There
is a painting by the High Renaissance Italian painter and architect Raphael
known at the School of Athens. Raphael painted his masterpiece over 500 years
ago sometime around the year 1510. “The School of Athens” is considered by some
to be “Raphael’s masterpiece and
the perfect embodiment of the classical spirit of the Renaissance.”[1] The painting features at
least 20 different philosophers, who are recognizable either by items on their
person or by their appearance. At the center of the picture are two figures, and they are the focus on the piece. The person on the left is Plato, and the person on the right is Aristotle.
Aristotle and Plato appear in the painting to
be walking and conversing together. They are walking and walking, and each is
holding one of their books. The most interesting thing about how Raphael
portrays these two great philosophers of the Western tradition is how Raphael
positions their hands. Plato has his right hand
turned up, with his pointer finger pointing to the heavens. Aristotle has his
right hand turned down, his fingers and
his palms pointing down towards the earth.
This difference between how Raphael has
positioned the hands of Plato and Aristotle is a subtle allusion to the great
distinction that existed between these two thinkers. Plato has his hand and his finger turned towards the heavens
because in Plato’s thinking this world, which was ever changing and always in a state of decay, was nothing more
than a shadow of the higher, more authentic,
and eternal reality up in the heavens. Up there was the ultimate reality, and
the seat of all truth, beauty, justice, and wisdom. For Plato the stuff of
creation is bad, the forms up in the
heavens are good, and likewise our bodies
are bad, but our souls, which are eternal
and imprisoned in our bodies, are good and are set free upon our death,
released from the bonds to take their rightful place among the eternal forms.
Aristotle has his hand motioning down towards
the earth. Aristotle has his hand motioning down towards the ground because, for
Aristotle, the real world isn’t a world of eternal forms up in the heavens. The
only real world was the world that we can
see and experience by sight and tough. Aristotle is holding his book Ethics, which “emphasized the
relationships, justice, friendship, and government of the human world and the
need to study it.”
The philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, both of
whom predate Christianity by about four centuries, had a profound impact on the
Christian theology as Christianity left its home in Jerusalem and moved out
into the wider Greco-Roman world. This
mixing of a primarily Jewish religion
with Greek philosophy was inevitable but not without consequence. Much of
Christian theology today is essentially Platonism with Jesus as the savior.
There are reasons for this. It’s in our Bible translations. It’s in our
liturgy. It’s in the way we are all used to speaking to each other. It’s so
common to talk more like Platonists than
like followers of Jesus that we don’t even realize it’s happening.
Now you might be saying, “Father, didn’t you
pay attention to the readings this morning? Didn’t you hear what Paul said? He
said that our citizenship is in heaven. Plato with his upturned finger is
right. This world isn’t our home. Heaven is our home. This place is bad. And
when we die, we escape out of here, leave our bodies behind, and go up to
heaven because that’s our home. That’s where we are citizens.” The fact that I
know many of you are thinking like that shows just how pervasive this platonic
thought is.
Philippi, the letter to which Paul addresses
this letter, was a Roman colony. Many of the people at Philippi were Roman citizens,
and we must remember that citizenship in
Rome wasn’t a thing granted to everyone in the Roman empire. It was a special
privilege only given to some, and with that privilege came certain rights and
responsibilities. So, what did it mean to be a Roman citizen in Philippi? Did
it mean that you were to reject Philippi, say it was bad, and long for that day when you’d be free from this terrible
place and be able to go back to Rome? No. To be a Roman citizen meant that you
were to live in Philippi and work there as Caesar’s representative to make
Philippi a place more like Rome. It was your job to bring the culture, rules,
and life of Rome to Philippi. And there was always a chance that Caesar might
show up one day, or Caesar’s representative, to see how that task was going,
and if it wasn’t going well, then it
wouldn’t go well for you.
So, what does it mean to be a citizen of heaven
if you live in Florida? Is Paul advocating escapism? Is he telling us not to
care about this place because this place is only temporary, but heaven is
eternal, and heaven is our real home? No. Paul is reminding us that as residents
of Florida whose citizenship is in heaven, it is our job to work here to life,
culture, and values of heaven to wherever we live, wherever we work, wherever
we go to school.
And to make the matter even more apparent, Paul doesn’t say, ‘our
citizenship is in heaven, and won’t it be great when we leave this place and go
be with Jesus.” The movement is entirely the other direction. Paul says, “But
our citizenship is in heaven, and from it
we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to
be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all
things to himself” (Phil 3:20–21). Look at what Paul is saying. What Jesus the Messiah is doing right now is sitting
at the right of God and he is subjecting all of creation to himself, he is
slowly but surely bringing all created things under his authority and rule, and
one of the ways he does this is by having citizens of heaven working here to
bring his kingdom, the life, values, and culture of heaven, to this place here
and now. And our hope, the Christian hope at its core, is not going to
heaven when we die. That is part of our hope,
but it is not the fullness of our hope. The fullness
of Christian hope isn’t that we will go there to be with Jesus, but that he
will come here to finish his work of subjecting all things to himself and,
whether we are alive or dead, to transform our bodies to be like his
resurrected bodies.
Notice that the escapism, the dualism, the
platonism, which seemed so evident to us
at the start isn’t in this reading at all. And I hope you understand; this isn’t a philosophy lesson. This is about the core of what it means to be a
Christian. This is about rightly understanding
what our hope is as Christians and what our role in this world is supposed to
be. You are citizens of heaven, but the motto of citizens of heaven is simple: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is heaven.” The
movement is always this way. We are citizens of heaven where Christ sits at the
right hand of God, and he is in the
process of subjecting all things to himself. As part of this process he has placed
us here, and it is our task as citizens of heaven and therefore as
representatives of the world’s true Lord to work to bring the life, values,
culture, and kingdom of heaven to earth. And if we must look up to the heavens, let us not look for our home, but let us look for our savior, for he is coming,
and while we wait for that glorious day, let
us work for his kingdom.
Amen.
[1] History of
Art: The Western Tradition by Horst
Woldemar Janson, Anthony F. Janson (2004).
The post Our Citizenship is in Heaven first appeared on St. Dunstan's Anglican Church.
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18min
March 17, 2019 Our Citizenship is in Heaven
A Sermon for the Second Sunday of Lent, March 17, 2019
St. Dunstan’s Anglican Church, Largo, FL
The Very Rev. J. Michael Strachan
Philippians 3:17-4:1
There
is a painting by the High Renaissance Italian painter and architect Raphael
known at the School of Athens. Raphael painted his masterpiece over 500 years
ago sometime around the year 1510. “The School of Athens” is considered by some
to be “Raphael’s masterpiece and
the perfect embodiment of the classical spirit of the Renaissance.”[1] The painting features at
least 20 different philosophers, who are recognizable either by items on their
person or by their appearance. At the center of the picture are two figures, and they are the focus on the piece. The person on the left is Plato, and the person on the right is Aristotle.
Aristotle and Plato appear in the painting to
be walking and conversing together. They are walking and walking, and each is
holding one of their books. The most interesting thing about how Raphael
portrays these two great philosophers of the Western tradition is how Raphael
positions their hands. Plato has his right hand
turned up, with his pointer finger pointing to the heavens. Aristotle has his
right hand turned down, his fingers and
his palms pointing down towards the earth.
This difference between how Raphael has
positioned the hands of Plato and Aristotle is a subtle allusion to the great
distinction that existed between these two thinkers. Plato has his hand and his finger turned towards the heavens
because in Plato’s thinking this world, which was ever changing and always in a state of decay, was nothing more
than a shadow of the higher, more authentic,
and eternal reality up in the heavens. Up there was the ultimate reality, and
the seat of all truth, beauty, justice, and wisdom. For Plato the stuff of
creation is bad, the forms up in the
heavens are good, and likewise our bodies
are bad, but our souls, which are eternal
and imprisoned in our bodies, are good and are set free upon our death,
released from the bonds to take their rightful place among the eternal forms.
Aristotle has his hand motioning down towards
the earth. Aristotle has his hand motioning down towards the ground because, for
Aristotle, the real world isn’t a world of eternal forms up in the heavens. The
only real world was the world that we can
see and experience by sight and tough. Aristotle is holding his book Ethics, which “emphasized the
relationships, justice, friendship, and government of the human world and the
need to study it.”
The philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, both of
whom predate Christianity by about four centuries, had a profound impact on the
Christian theology as Christianity left its home in Jerusalem and moved out
into the wider Greco-Roman world. This
mixing of a primarily Jewish religion
with Greek philosophy was inevitable but not without consequence. Much of
Christian theology today is essentially Platonism with Jesus as the savior.
There are reasons for this. It’s in our Bible translations. It’s in our
liturgy. It’s in the way we are all used to speaking to each other. It’s so
common to talk more like Platonists than
like followers of Jesus that we don’t even realize it’s happening.
Now you might be saying, “Father, didn’t you
pay attention to the readings this morning? Didn’t you hear what Paul said? He
said that our citizenship is in heaven. Plato with his upturned finger is
right. This world isn’t our home. Heaven is our home. This place is bad. And
when we die, we escape out of here, leave our bodies behind, and go up to
heaven because that’s our home. That’s where we are citizens.” The fact that I
know many of you are thinking like that shows just how pervasive this platonic
thought is.
Philippi, the letter to which Paul addresses
this letter, was a Roman colony. Many of the people at Philippi were Roman citizens,
and we must remember that citizenship in
Rome wasn’t a thing granted to everyone in the Roman empi
...more
18min
March 10, 2019 Jesus is Not Superman
A Sermon for the First Sunday of Lent, March 10, 2019
St. Dunstan’s Anglican Church, Largo, FL
The Very Rev. J. Michael Strachan
Luke 4:1-13
In comic book cinema, which is all
the rage right now, one of the biggest problems in the DC Universe is how
powerful Superman is. If you’ve seen the latest Justice League movie, then you know what I’m talking about. The team of superheroes is assembled. There’s
Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg, and the Flash, and they have a villain
to fight that even with their combined strength, it seems unlikely that they
will be able to conquer. Then, when all hope seems lost, here comes Superman,
who is so much more powerful than an ordinary person, and so much more powerful
than even the other superheroes, that he can defeat the villain almost
effortlessly.
For many,
it kills the ending and ruins the movie because if someone is that much more
powerful than us, without any flaws and any apparent weaknesses, it becomes
very difficult to relate to that person. Many would say that the reason that
Marvel characters have been so successful over the past decade is that Marvel characters are inherently flawed,
and therefore there is something in those characters to which we can relate.
Now, if you’re thinking to
yourself, “he’s really excited about
Captain Marvel,” that is correct, but that’s not why I bring this up this
morning. You see, we tend to think of Jesus as something like Superman. He’s
stronger than us. He’s more powerful than us. He comes from a different place
to be our Savior. He looks like us and talks like us and even acts like us, but
he’s more than us, and we all know it. He’s the Super Man. He is more than we
could ever be. We might not put it in
those terms, but once we think about it like that the connections are obvious. In fact, the connection is intentional.
Superman was written to be a Christ-like character.
The problem is that if Jesus is
like Superman, then he’s not relatable. What would it mean for Superman to be tempted for 40 days, and if he passed that test, so what? What does that have to
do with me? He’s Superman. He comes from
Krypton. He’s stronger than me, more powerful than me, and better than me in
every way. Of course, he passed the test,
but I’m not him.
There are many ways in which the
New Testament writers try to make clear that Jesus isn’t like a Super Man. He
is fully God and fully human, so let me be clear before someone calls the
Bishop, but alongside that doctrine is the doctrine of kenosis, which in its
simplest form insists that when Paul meant what he said in Philippians 2 that
Jesus is God but emptied himself of his divinity when he became human. We can
debate forever what that means, but at its core,
it means that Jesus didn’t come to us as Superman. He came to us as one of us.
Luke makes this same point in his Gospel. Whereas Matthew begins his Gospel with the genealogy of Jesus, Luke doesn’t. Luke waits a few chapters. Matthew structures his genealogy to display Jesus as the climax of Israel’s story. As Matthew sees it, there are four high points in the story of Israel. He says in Matthew 1:17 after listing out the genealogy of Jesus, “So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations” (Matt 1:17). Again, don’t miss the importance the exile plays in Matthew’s understanding of the Old Testament, but that’s a sermon for another time.
Luke likewise uses his genealogy of
Jesus to make a point. Matthew begins with Abraham and works forward to Jesus,
but Luke begins with Jesus and works backward. Luke doesn’t divide his
genealogy into three successive series of fourteen generations. Instead, he says over and over that so-and-so was the
son of such-and-such, and he makes his way slowly but surely from Jesus to
“Adam, the Son of God.” Notice also (and you’d have to look at Luke’s Gospel to
see this) that Luke places the genealogy between Jesus’ baptism and his
temptation. So, in Luke’s Gospel, the narrative
goes baptism, where Jesus is said to be the beloved Son of God, to the
genealogy, where Jesus is said to be the son of Adam, the son of God, and then
to the temptation, where Satan’s first temptation is “If you are the Son of
God, command this stone to become bread” (Luke 4:3).
The question the text is putting
before us as Jesus is tempted is this:
“What does it mean that Jesus is God’s Son?” Does it mean that Jesus has access
to something that we don’t have access to?
Does it mean that Jesus is so much more powerful than us and so much stronger
than us and so much better than us in every way
that we can’t even consider emulating what he does here as he resists
temptation and defeats Satan? No, it doesn’t mean that because whatever it
means that Jesus is the Son of God, based on Luke’s genealogy, it must also
mean that he is the Son of Adam. Those two things are not distinct in Luke’s
mind, and so, if he is the Son of Adam, then he is just like us. And if he is
just like us, then he is weak like us, prone to stumble like us, prone to fail
like us, and yet he doesn’t. Hebrews 4:15 says, “For we do not have a high
priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every
respect has been tempted as we are, yet
without sin.”
So, if Jesus isn’t the Super Man, if he is weak like us, prone to stumble
like us, and prone to fall like us, how does he resist temptation and defeat
the Devil? Let me make a few points, and
we’ll conclude. First, he is baptized. At
his baptism, Jesus was anointed with the
Holy Spirit and declared to be the Son of God, so we also, at our baptism, are
given the gift of the Holy Spirit and declared to be children of God. A big
part of Christian faith and of conquering sin is believing that what the church
says of you at your baptism is who you are. You are a person who has access to
the Holy Spirit. You are a child of God. We forget those things so easily, but
if we can remember them and focus on them, we will be more equipped to face
temptation.
Second, Jesus is led by the Spirit. Not only was Jesus full
of the Holy Spirit because of his baptism but
according to v. 1 he allowed himself to be led by the Spirit. Being led by the Spirit takes a certain openness and willingness in
prayer to listen to the Spirit’s voice and follow where it leads. Third, Jesus
goes through a period of Lent. Of course, that’s anachronistic, but the point
is that Jesus’ big temptation, the one Luke and Matthew record, comes after the forty days of fasting. Jesus is tempted during this time, but it would seem
to be smaller temptations that he passed, and now Satan comes to test him as
thoroughly as anyone has ever been tempted
before. We need these forty days, these forty days of tempting where we show
that we can resist temptation in small ways
so that when the bigger temptations come along, we will be ready. Lastly, Jesus
knows his Bible. Every temptation from Satan is
met with a verse from Scripture. I could say more about this, but I don’t have time. Hopefully, you all know how passionate I am about Scripture.
So, how do we, fellow children of Adam
and children of God like Jesus using him as our model, resist temptation.
First, we remember what happened to us when
we were baptized. This is the first question of the Anglican catechism for a reason.
You were gifted with the Holy Spirit and made a child of God. Second, in
prayer, we must listen for and follow the leading of the Spirit. Third, we must
spend significant amounts of time in fasting and prayer, winning small victories
over temptation so that we’ll be ready to face the larger ones when they come
our way. And lastly, we must know our Bibles so that we can know what God has
said, who God has called us to be, and what God has promised. What should be
clear from this is that there’s no shortcut on the path to obedience, but
thanks be to God that Jesus has shown us the way.
Amen.
The post Jesus is Not Superman first appeared on St. Dunstan's Anglican Church.
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