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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 t

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 t