SSJE Sermons

Feast of Irenaeus of Lyons

2 Timothy 2:22-26

“And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kindly to everyone, an apt teacher, patient, correcting opponents with gentleness” (2 Tim 2:24-25).

I’m not sure “gentle” is how I’d first characterize Irenaeus, the second-century theologian and bishop whom we remember today. In his great work Against Heresies, he sought to combat the heterodox versions of Christianity that surrounded him in a point-by-point refutation of their beliefs. At the same time, he laid out a Christian vision that affirmed the authority of the apostolic tradition and succession, the goodness of creation, and the relevance of the Hebrew Scriptures, a vision that would largely carry forward into the era of councils and creeds and orthodoxy of subsequent centuries.

The heresies Irenaeus faced are different than those that face us, but I think he speaks to us today in two important ways.

First, the truth matters, and it is worth arguing for and defending. We, like Irenaeus, live in an age of contested truth. Irenaeus makes clear his intent to address this head-on in the opening sentence of Against Heresies: “Inasmuch as certain men have set the truth aside, and bring in lying words and vain genealogies . . . and by means of their craftily-constructed plausibilities draw away the minds of the inexperienced and taken them captive, [I have felt constrained, my dear friend, to compose the following treatise in order to expose and counteract their machinations].”

But why we argue for truth also matters. Irenaeus makes clear his purpose: that, turning heretics into “the haven of truth,” his work may “cause them to attain their salvation.” This closely echoes our reading this morning from 2 Timothy: “God may perhaps grant that [opponents] will repent and come to know the truth, and that they may escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will” (2 Tim 2:25-26).

Irenaeus was relentless in his point by point, line by line refutation of the heresies he treats, and his defense of what he recognized as Christian truth. But, in his own words, the purpose was to free them from the captivity of false belief.

And this is important, because we are all captives, in some way or another. Maybe not captives to a heretical Christian sect, for sure, but captives to forces and narratives and patterns that largely lie outside our control, and therefore often beyond our awareness. We can too easily take these as given. We all have our own blinders and biases.

The lesson Irenaeus imparts to us is to be fearless in challenging these when we see them—but just as fearlessly to let ourselves be made aware of how susceptible we are to them. To be fearless in moving forward, together, into freedom and truth.

Amen.

Br. Jim Woodrum

Job 38:1-11

In 1947, a friend of the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein suggested that he write a piece of music based on W.H. Auden’s epic poem, “The Age of Anxiety.” Despite critics deeming the poem as Auden’s “one dull book, his one failure,” it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948. The poem’s subject is four strangers who meet in a New York bar during wartime and contemplate their lives and the human condition.[i] The title of the poem evokes a theme that permeates society, both ancient and modern: anxiety. Just saying the word can make your muscles tense up.

Two definitions of anxiety resonate deeply with me. First: “an apprehensive uneasiness or nervousness usually over an impending or anticipated ill: a state of being anxious.” We’ve all experienced anxiety of this sort, say, before a job interview, exam, wedding, or while awaiting a medical diagnosis and its implications for our future. For me, I remember the anxiety of preparing a meal for thirty people for the first time, my first sermon, or getting the call that my father had suffered a fall while I was away on mission in Texas—a fall that ended his life. What is something that has caused you anxiety in recent memory?

The second definition is derived from psychology: “an abnormal and overwhelming sense of apprehension and fear often marked by physical signs such as tension, sweating, and increased pulse rate, by doubt concerning the reality and nature of the threat, and by self-doubt about one’s capacity to cope with it.” Some of us may relate specifically to this definition, especially those dealing with anxiety that co-occurs with depression, PTSD, or other neurological conditions.

Our first lesson from the Old Testament is another epic poem, akin to Auden’s, that evokes the theme of anxiety. The Book of Job recounts the story of a righteous man named Job who faces severe trials orchestrated by Satan, with God’s permission, to test Job’s faithfulness. Imagine Job’s anxiety as he loses his wealth, children, and health—even though, through it all, he refuses to speak ill of God. Throughout the book, Job and his friends engage in profound theological discussions about suffering, justice, and the nature of God. Ultimately, God appears and challenges Job’s understanding, emphasizing His sovereignty and wisdom beyond human comprehension. God asks:

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?

Who determined its measurements—surely you know!

On what were its bases sunk,

when the morning stars sang together

This line of questioning, while beautiful and poetic, is intensely articulated. As God continues this dialogue for a significant period, one cannot help but take comfort in the overwhelming evidence of God’s competence in handling all that might make us anxious. In the end, Job humbly accepts God’s wisdom and is restored, receiving double the blessings he had lost. The book explores profound themes of suffering, faith, and divine justice.

In our gospel lesson, Jesus and his disciples are crossing the Sea of Galilee when a mighty storm arises, threatening to break their boat apart. The disciples exhibit textbook anxiety—they are terrified and cry out to Jesus in their desperation. And, what is Jesus doing amidst the chaos? He’s sleeping; sleeping like a baby. They wake him and he speaks a calming word that stills the storm. He questions them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”

In the Prologue to John’s gospel, Jesus is referred to as the ‘Word of God made flesh,’ present before time began and enduring beyond its end. Jesus, the Word of God, remained a calm presence amidst the storm and continued to be so after it passed. He was with his disciples ‘in’ the storm but he was not ‘of’ the storm.

Bernstein went on to compose his second symphony, titled “The Age of Anxiety,” which premiered with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1949 under the baton of Serge Koussevitsky. Bernstein described his symphony in this way: “The essential theme of the poem (and of the music) is the chronicle of our difficult and problematical quest for faith.”[ii]

Indeed, faith could be seen as an antonym to anxiety. If anxiety is “an apprehensive uneasiness or nervousness usually over an impending or anticipated ill,” consider this definition of the word faith: “complete trust or confidence in someone or something.” A quest for faith might thus be seen as a path toward release from anxiety.

Yet, at face value, I experience this as delusive. If we’re honest, we can never be entirely immune from anxiety. When we embark on our journey of faith in Jesus Christ, we expose ourselves to the assaults of Satan, who seeks to undermine that faith. What Bernstein referred to as the difficult and problematical quest for faith (or the anxiety that is produced in that quest) is actually where our intentional commitment to faith is tested. Anxiety does not necessarily indicate a lack of faith.

Sixteenth-century theologian Richard Hooker argued that while spiritual joy often accompanies faith, it isn’t essential, and its absence can even be beneficial. He writes: “Better it is sometimes to go down into the pit with him, who, beholding darkness, and bewailing the loss of inward joy and consolation, crieth from the bottom of the lowest hell, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ than continually to walk arm in arm with angels, to sit as it were in Abraham’s bosom, and to have not thought, no cogitation, but “I thank my God it is not with me as it is with other men.’ No, God will have them that shall walk in light to feel now and then what it is to sit in the shadow of death. A grieved spirit therefore is no argument of a faithless mind.”[iii]

Richard Meux Benson, the founder of our community, put it this way: “The fallen host, although they see us involved in the realm of death, know that we are inheritors of a hope which is not theirs. They come up in every form to struggle with us. We must not expect to walk in peace in our uniform through the camp of the enemy.”[iv]

So, what can we, who live in the age of anxiety, take away from all of this? First, reflecting on our gospel lesson, I find it ironic that Jesus questions the disciples’ faith. Considering that many of them were experienced fishermen and sailors, they concluded they couldn’t save themselves from the chaos threatening to capsize their boat. They called out to Jesus, who saved them with a calming word. Perhaps when Jesus questions their faith, he’s actually asking, “Why are you anxious?”

From the disciples, we can learn to turn to Jesus in prayer first when our emotions overwhelm us, rather than trying to manage everything on our own. When we face anxiety, apprehension, uneasiness, and self-doubt—assaults from “the fallen host”—we should instinctively call on Jesus. Jesus is Emmanuel, “God with us,” who brings calm to our chaos and prevents us from being consumed by anxiety.

Second, difficult and problematical as it may be, we must be bold in confronting the anxiety which tests our intentional quest for faith. When tested, the way we can keep from being consumed by the anxiety is to counter it with charity. Nothing diminishes Satan’s power than to do exactly the opposite. When Jesus was tempted by Satan after his baptism, Jesus countered each of the devil’s temptations by acknowledging the exact opposite: “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God”; “Do not put the Lord your God to the test”; “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”[v] In following Jesus’ example, we can quell anxiety. When tempted to hurl stones at those who challenge us, be true to the image of God within you and exhibit God’s compassion, mercy, and love.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta is attributed to have said: “If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; be kind anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; be honest and frank anyway. What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; build anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; do good anyway. You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God; it was never between you and them anyway.”[vi]

And last, when you’re feeling anxious, it could be that your simply hungry—or as we say these days, “hangry.” Ask God for nourishment. In a few moments, you will be invited to come forward to receive the sacrament of Christ. Bring your anxiety and offer it to God, and in return, receive a piece of bread and a sip of wine—the essence of God’s compassion, mercy, and love in the presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. Then, step out once again—without anxiety—not on your quest for faith, but on your quest in faith. Amen.

[i] “Leonard Bernstein at 100.” Works | Works | Leonard Bernstein, leonardbernstein.com/works/view/16/symphony-no-2-the-age-of-anxiety. Accessed 22 June 2024.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Rowell, Geoffrey, et al. Love’s Redeeming Work: The Anglican Quest for Holiness. OUP Oxford, 2003.

[iv] Benson, Richard Meux. A Cowley Calendar. London: Mowbrays, 1932.

[v] Mark 4:1-11

[vi] “A Quote by Mother Teresa.” Goodreads, Goodreads, www.goodreads.com/quotes/7969043-mother-teresa-s-anyway-poem-people-are-often-unreasonable-illogical-and. Accessed 22 June 2024.

Br. Lucas Hall

Feast of St. Alban

Today we mark the feast of St. Alban, the first martyr of Britain. In the third century, Christians were subject to various persecutions in the Roman Empire, and the story goes that the then-pagan Alban, living in Roman Britain, hosted a Christian priest in his home who was fleeing persecution. Impressed by the priest’s devotion to prayer, Alban joined him, and converted. When it came to light he was hiding the fugitive priest, Alban donned the priest’s robes and went to death for him. He refused to partake in a pagan votive offering, saying, “I worship and adore the true and living God, who created all things.” For this, he was beheaded on a hilltop at the town that now bears his name.

I must admit, I cannot speak solely of Alban today. Partially, it’s because this early Church martyr calls to mind the Church’s general age of martyrdom, when the experience of persecution necessitated developing a theological understanding of the concept. But it’s more personal than that. You may know that we brothers take initial vows for a  few years before taking life vows. Today is the anniversary of my initial vows. And earlier this week, the anniversary of my life vows, was the feast of Bernard Mizeki, another martyr. By happenstance, or something more, I cannot encounter these martyrs without thinking more broadly of their witness to the vocation of the Church, my own included.

Witness. That’s what “martyr” means, literally. There are many ways to witness, in the Church’s sense of that word. But it was those whose blood was shed, whose bodies were broken, who were elevated as the witnesses, the martyrs. You may recall the story of Cain and Abel, where Cain murders his brother in a fit of jealous rage. God describes Abel’s blood as crying out from the ground, and the ground cursing Cain. In the letter to the Hebrews, the writer speaks of a great cloud of witnesses, encouraging us in faith to resist sin to the point of shedding our blood, for we have come “to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.” Not a curse, but salvation.

I am moved by the realization that this ancient martyr, Alban, and this much more recent martyr, Bernard Mizeki, shed the same blood. I’m not speaking of family lineage, or ethnic heritage, or national identity; I am speaking of the blood of the Church, the body of Christ, commingled and sanctified in the holy cup. If martyrdom is a witness, it is a thoroughly sacramental one; the spilling of holy blood is very much an outward sign of inward grace. For in this libation, this poured out offering, we recognize our own offering within us, our own sacrifice. That same blood courses within us. Each cell, forged in the lattice depths of our very bones, rushing through a vast and intricate network, connecting every last corner of our bodies, this same blood participates in our own offering, day by day.

What has your offering been so far? Has it been good, and just, and holy? Then step forward, and join it in communion with the holy offering of the whole Church, in this and every age. Has it come up short, snagged and hampered by the wound of sin? Then step forward, and renew the consecration of your own life with the ever-living body and blood of Christ. Has it been distracted, confused, bored, or something else altogether? Then step forward, and behold, life and truth are ready to meet you once again in the sacrifice of thanksgiving.

Alban was martyred on a hill. Bede writes that this hill was “beautiful, as was fitting, and of most pleasing appearance, adorned, or rather clothed, everywhere with flowers of many colors…a place altogether worthy from of old, by reason of its native beauty, to be consecrated by the blood of a blessed martyr.” The martyrs’ sacrifice, the life of the Church, the body and blood of Christ, is a thing of beauty, a thing before you, a thing within you. Step forward. Be consecrated, that by your offering, you too may consecrate the world.

Br. Curtis Almquist

Matthew 6:19-23

At the beginning of the Gospel according to Matthew, we learn of the wise men who came from the East to pay homage to the infant, Jesus, predicted to be the “king of the Jews.” We read they bring with them treasure-chests of gold, frankincense, and myrrh as gifts for the newborn.[i] We are never told what happened to all that gold, frankincense, and myrrh; however we can infer something based on this Gospel passage we have just heard. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph did not keep these treasures.

This same Greek word for “treasure” is used by Jesus in the Gospel lesson appointed for today: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth… but rather store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.”[ii] A treasure is what we could supremely value in life. Many things could be treasured, not just tangible things symbolized by the gold, frankincense, and myrrh, but also the treasured intangible things that may come from our race or ethnicity, our gender, our education, our good looks, our age, our fancy title. Whatever. Treasures in life come in many forms.

Two things to remember about life’s treasures:

For one, to bear in mind the source of life’s many treasures: God being the source and we being the temporary custodians of these treasures. We are not the creators of life’s treasures and we have a terminal relationship with every thing in this life. Identifying the treasures in our own life invites our humility, not our pomposity.

And so, secondly, that we cultivate treasures on earth that have a kind of eternal value. Life’s priority is to claim and cultivate the treasures on earth that can follow us to heaven. Saint Paul gives his own list of earthly treasures which are heaven-bound. He calls these earthly-eternal treasures “the fruit of the Spirit”: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”[iii]

Another version of what to treasure in life comes from David Brooks, the New York Times’ columnist.[iv] Brooks makes the distinction between our résumé virtues and our eulogy virtues. Résumé virtues are the experiences, skills, and assets that we bring to the marketplace and that contribute to external success. The eulogy virtues are deeper. Eulogy virtues get talked about at our funeral, the virtues that exist at the core of our being and which are revered. Brooks’ list of “eulogy virtues” sound a lot like Saint Paul’s “fruit of the Spirit.”

And you? Consider making a list of your own treasures, of earth and heaven. How are you to be custodian of earth’s treasures, which are very temporary? And see your earthly treasures in the context of what has eternal value. Focus your life prioritizing, practicing, and praying these heaven-bound treasures.

[i] Matthew 2:1-12.

[ii] “treasures”: θησαυροὺς = thēsaurous.

[iii] Galatians 5:22-23.

[iv] David Brooks in The Road to Character (Random House, 2015).

Luke 12:1-12

We remember today the southern African missionary and martyr Bernard Mizeki. Born in modern-day Mozambique, he came to the Christian faith while a young man in South Africa, where he was baptized in 1866 by Father Puller of our Society. In 1891, he traveled to Mashonaland, in the northeast of modern-day Zimbabwe, to serve as a missionary to the Shona people.

In the year of his death, 1896, rebellion against the British South African Company spread to the Shona people, and Mizeki resisted orders to escape to safety. Resentment and violence served as a backdrop to Mizeki’s own death that June at the hands of one of his adopted kinsmen, the tension between traditional religion and Mizeki’s work spreading the Gospel message coming to a tragic head.

Martyrs capture our imaginations. We may read about the great martyrs of the early church who endured shocking, inhuman treatment, and we can wonder at their strength of conviction, at their fearless resolve, at their seeming superhuman capacity. They were very close, in time and culture, to Jesus and his words from our Gospel lesson: “do not fear those who kill the body, and after that can do nothing more” (Lk 12:4). As we read about these martyrs, it is easy for us to wonder at and admire them . . . and at the same time to handle them with a critical distance: then and now, them and us.

Bernard Mizeki challenges us to close this critical gap. Although marked by social and cultural practices different than our own, Mizeki’s world is also very close to ours. It’s a world of international businesses and family tensions, of empire and community, of fear and hope. Our exact circumstances may differ, but Mizeki shows us how martyrdom can happen in a world not too distant from our own—a response to forces that still surround us, and that are largely out of our control.

And this is because martyrdom is about who and how we are in the face of these larger-than-life forces. It’s not primarily about suffering or violence or perseverance or courage, or even death, really, but about a clarity of identity. Mizeki was only able to be found and killed because he had ignored orders to go to safety: he was caring for an incapacitated man, who, under cultural norms, would have been left helpless had Mizeki departed. “I cannot leave my people now in a time of such darkness,” he wrote.[1] The simple choice to care for one man’s life, in the face of unrelenting, irresistible forces—a metaphor for clarity in knowing who he was, who God created him to be.

And so martyrdom is not about death but life—life that makes present in the world God’s eternal kingdom. The martyrs do not inspire us because their courage or fearlessness in the face of adversity or pain or terror is exceptional, but because it is consistent with who they are and how they lived their lives, at important and unimportant moments. And that lesson is available to us—to discover who God is calling us to be, in this place, in this moment. To hew closely to that call, returning to it again and again in the unending and seemingly unimportant choices that face us, and so to be consistent and clear in our identity. And, at the end, to not be afraid, because we are of more value than many sparrows, and God will wipe away every tear from our eyes.

Amen.

[1] M. A. Noll, C. Nystrom, Clouds of Witnesses: Christian Voices from Africa and Asia (Downers Grove, IL, 2011), 29.

John 21:15-19

“How’re you doing?”

How do you usually answer this question? “I’m fine,” perhaps, or “I’m okay.” In our daily interactions we get asked seemingly polite questions like this over and over, and we are conditioned to respond politely.

They don’t want to know your whole life story.

Unless they do. But we can’t know their intention—unless they persist, unless they make known their intention.

“How’re you doing?” “No, really, how’re you doing?”

How do you feel knowing that someone else truly cares to know something true about you?

“Peter felt hurt because [Jesus] said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’” (Jn 21:17).

The passage is clear here that Jesus’s repeated asking is the cause of Peter’s hurt. But I think there’s something else going on beneath the surface. It’s not just that Peter is hurt because he is being doubted, but rather that there may be some basis for this doubt.

I think Peter’s hurt at the questioning reveals something true about him: that he has been hurting, that he has been grieving, grieving this whole time—grieving his failure, his cowardice in denying Jesus. Perhaps, that he has been questioning his own love of Jesus—or, rather, his own worthiness for that love.

But this repeated questioning is, I think, Jesus saying, “No, really.” Jesus invites Peter to be real, and it is important that these three repeated questions yield the same answers: “Yes, you know I do.”

“You know I do.”

Peter is raw, pleading, and unequivocal—“Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you” (Jn 21:17).

The questions—and the answers—aren’t for Jesus. Jesus already knows. They’re for Peter, who may need that repeated invitation to be real, to bring to the surface his own grief, to know assuredly not only that he loves but that he is loved. And to hear—also, repeated three times—the way that this love will be lived out in the world: “Feed my sheep.”

And these questions are for us, our own invitation to dig deeper, to be real, to be assured in our own claim. To be able to answer the question “Do you love me?” with our own “Yes, Lord; you know I do.” And to live that love out in the world.

Amen.

1 John 5:9-13

As your preacher on this seventh Sunday of Easter, I must confess I struggle with a key concept found throughout the gospel and epistles of John.

“The world” in these writings is a multi-faceted term. Its meaning shifts and accumulates layers of meaning every time it appears.

Sometimes the world is simply the material reality around us, the created order. In John’s prologue we hear: “He [that is, Jesus] was in the world, and the world came into being through him.” This meaning aligns with the most ancient usage of the Greek kosmos, which means “a harmoniously ordered arrangement” or even “adornment.” It is a fitting term for creation as Christians understand it, the material expression of God’s love. This kosmos finds its order and beauty in Christ the Word and exists only through him: “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.”

At other times, it seems as if “the world” is a character in the gospel, a personification of all that opposes Jesus as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. It is the complex web of circumstances, influences, false narratives and outright lies woven by sin and our captivity to sin. It is darkness, the dominion of the Evil One, or even chaos – the antithesis of kosmos in its first meaning.

At still other times, the world as our natural condition of existence is closely aligned with the flesh, which Jesus teaches is incomplete without “being born from above.” It is the two-dimensional life of merely existing here below, skimming the shallows. It is eating bread, drinking water and breathing air that will all perish, without knowing Jesus as true Bread, the one who offers living Water and life-giving Spirit.

Finally, the world is often represented in microcosm by “the Judeans,” the Jerusalem religious authorities who function as the collective antagonists to Jesus and his Galilean disciples. They do as a group what the world does as a system: react to Jesus with hostility and hate, try to kill him, and eventually succeed.

All of those meanings are a lot to hold, and either choose between in context, or read in conversation with one another. This requires knowledge, wisdom, love, and the mind of Christ. What I struggle with most are the ways Christians have often crossed the wires of these meanings. In the process, they (we) have fabricated unholy machines to suit very unchristian agendas.

Christians have often conflated life on earth and life in the world. In that vein, Jesus is interpreted as denigrating the created order or material existence when he says: “I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.” “Not belonging” to the world in this vein has too often meant rejecting the body, sensory pleasure, or sexuality; shunning political or civic involvement; dissociating from non-Christians; or engaging with any form of culture deemed “secular.” The story that “earth is not our true home” and “we are bound for a better place” has left us alienated from the soil beneath our feet.

How does this square with wholehearted belief that God became flesh for our sake, and sends us to the world?

Christians have often projected all evil and untruth in the world onto people who do not profess Christ as Lord. In that vein, Jesus is interpreted as placing narrow and exacting conditions around the love he offers, or even forsaking whole segments of the human family as beyond the scope of that love, when he contrasts his disciples with the world: “They have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours.”

Faith in Jesus is sometimes portrayed in John or the Epistles of John as automatically and permanently shifting the behavior of Christians onto moral high ground. I have simply not found this to be true, in other followers of Jesus, or in myself. In our Epistle reading, we heard, “Those who believe in the Son of God have the testimony in their hearts. Those who do not believe in God have made him a liar by not believing in the testimony that God has given concerning his Son.” I argue with this text, the same text which proclaims: “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.”

How does this square with the world of my experience, and perhaps yours, in which atheist friends often show astonishing love, and Christian neighbors use their testimony to propagate hate speech?

I don’t have easy answers to these questions.

If I did, that would probably be artificial consolation, which is not why we are here.

We are here for the good news of Jesus Christ.

All I can share that fits that description this morning is a pair of stories.

When I was seventeen, in the late nineties, I was holding hands with my first boyfriend while we walked down the sidewalk in Birmingham, Alabama. I was from the suburbs, but my boyfriend was from a rural town known mostly for peach farms and Bible churches. His father, a Southern Baptist pastor, had disowned him for being gay. He had huge grey eyes, a talent for music and foreign languages, and deep courage.

At the end of the block stood a man with a placard around his neck and a bundle of tracts under his arm.

I knew what the placard said from the opposite end of the block:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

I knew that it would not include John 3:17: “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Verses I had memorized in (Southern Baptist) Vacation Bible School, and treasured.

I suggested we cross the street, but it was too late.

The man looked us in the eyes and said, “If the two of you died tomorrow, do you know where you’re going?”

We kept walking, as we heard the man answering the question for us in no uncertain terms until we were well out of earshot. A man whose words did little compared to what we had endured. A man who knew nothing about either of our hearts and did not ask.

“If you died tomorrow, do you know where you’re going?”

I heard my interviewer ask the question, and I had to stifle my flashback.

I should have seen this question coming. It was 2009, and I was in my mid-twenties. I was in a second interview for a position at a small, faith-based, non-profit organization. I was inspired by the work the organization was doing, offering non-religious educational and social services to new immigrants. I was a recent graduate from Harvard Divinity School, and I was hungry for a job doing work I could believe in.  I was hopeful that, with some skillful, interpersonal ecumenism, I could stand on common ground with these evangelical followers of Jesus.

I knew that there was a “correct” answer. It is: “Yes. I know that I’m going to heaven because I’ve been saved by Jesus Christ.” I could have said yes. But I knew that for me to say yes in that moment would be to shrink the untamable God I had come to love after years of seeking down to the contours of a theological shoe-box. To accommodate myself to a vision of salvation that strikes me to the core as too easy, too transactional, and too triumphalist. To cast my vote for doctrinal certitude over the transfiguring love I have seen and touched in Jesus, but that far surpasses my understanding.

The Word of God emblazoned on the man’s placard flickered through my mind. For a moment, I desperately wished I could turn back time, sit down with that man, and answer his question in the words that finally came to me.

I took a deep breath, and heard myself say, “I don’t know.”

I continued, “I don’t believe that I can know the mind of God in that way. But I do know that I love Jesus Christ with all my heart, and I trust that nothing can separate me from that love.”

The energy in the room shifted, softened, and opened. My interviewer, who would become my boss, co-worker and sister in Christ, gently closed her eyes and said, “Amen.”

I’d venture that in the final estimate, “the world” is everything that insinuates, intimidates, threatens or pretends to separate us from the love of Jesus.

That is the world to which we do not belong – whose hate has no claim over the mystery of our hearts. That is the world from which we are called, given by the Father to the Son,

and sanctified by the Son in the truth. That is the world to which we are sent. Over and over again. In others and in ourselves. Not to condemn but to love, in Jesus’ name.

Br. David Vryhof

I Corinthians 3:10-14

When I was in seminary – now, quite a few years ago – I took a course in preaching.  Whether or not it did me any good, I’ll let you decide.  One of the things I remember from that class was the professor’s admonition to first seek out the tone and intention of the text, and then craft a sermon that reflects that same tone and intention.  In other words, consider the author’s purpose and follow it.  If the text is written to encourage its readers, your sermon should be encouraging as well.  If the text is hopeful, your sermon should reflect that hope.  If the text is condemning of a certain attitude or behavior, you should translate that into a similar warning that modern-day hearers can hear and understand.

The two texts we have before us today seem to share a common tone or intention.  They seem to be cautioning us that our choices and our actions, our work and our personal interactions, have consequences that are long-lasting.

The first text, taken from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, uses the metaphor of building.  Paul claims he has laid a foundation, which is Jesus Christ, and that others, including us today, will be building upon that foundation.  What we say or do matters, because by our words and deeds we will be contributing to the strength of the building or detracting from it.  Paul promises that each person’s work will, at some point, be tested by fire.  If it is strong and pure, it will survive.  If not, it will go up in flames.

Paul’s words are an invitation to us to look at our lives, to examine ourselves whether our lives and our work, our interactions with others, the values we hold and perpetuate, are pure enough and worthy enough to withstand the day of testing.  Consider your own life.  Will your words and deeds be strong enough and pure enough to survive?  Do they build up and encourage others?  Do they strengthen the communities of which you are a part?  Is what you speak true and honest, loving and uplifting?  Do your words and actions have lasting value?  Or are you building with straw?

Our second text, drawn from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew, is a warning against the misuse of wealth.  Jesus had a lot to say about money.  He was very aware of how easily money could become an unhealthy attachment and how easily it could turn us away from things that were truly valuable.  He is very clear here: “No one can serve two masters” because either they will hate the one and love the other or be devoted to one and despise the other.  Serving God and serving wealth at the same time will simply not work.  Our hearts will be divided in a way that will cripple us and limit our effectiveness.

Money is only one thing among many that can capture our attention and distract us from what is good and valuable and right.  Once we have set our hearts on something – whether it be wealth or popularity or physical beauty or social status or material possessions or whatever else – our desire for that thing controls our decisions, our interactions with others, our life’s direction.  We are storing up treasures on earth, and while they are no doubt enjoyable for a time, they will not and they cannot last.  These things are passing away.  When we stand before God, our wealth, our popularity, our physical beauty, our social status, our material possessions, will not matter in the least.  God looks on the heart and God will see whether we have been loving, compassionate, faithful and true.  God looks for the “heavenly treasure” that will not pass away.

As Paul says elsewhere, “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is an excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, thing about these things.” (Philippians 4:8)

Only we can know where our true treasure lies.  Where our treasure is, there will our heart be also.

Take heed, then.  Build strong.  Build to last.  Store up heavenly treasure.  Pause frequently to examine your heart, your intention, your motivation, your goals, your purpose.  Choose carefully what you do.  “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

For your homiletic dessert I have whipped up 500 words about one word. The word is nīké, if you enjoy New Testament Greek; or Nike, if you have ever heard of basketball. “To conquer.”

The word “conquer” makes me uncomfortable generally, and even more so when it appears in Scripture. But for those of us who place the Johannine witness at the center of our discipleship, it is a word to be reckoned with.

In our reading from the First Letter of John, we heard: “And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” (1 John 5:4-5)

Do you think of yourself as a world-conquerer?

This isn’t an isolated use of that word. In John’s gospel, we hear Jesus at the Last Supper say, “I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world, you face persecution. But take courage: I have conquered the world!” (John 16:33).

This adds shadows and highlights to the basic meaning of “conquer” in these writings. What is conquered? The world: not the earth, but the complex web of circumstances, influences, false narratives and outright lies woven by sin and our captivity to sin. Who is the conquerer? First and foremost: Jesus, the only one whose trust in God and love for us sinners was strong enough to create away forward, through, and out of the tangle and mangle of sin and death.

I’ll add one further nuance, this time from the Revelation to John, whose author makes clear use of John’s gospel. The Christian prophet John hears Jesus promise: “To the one who conquers I will give a place with me on my throne, just as I myself conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.” (Rev. 3:21). Whatever else our world-conquering may mean, it is at heart a participation in Christ – in his divine freedom, his agency, his sovereignty, his love. It is a gift, not a possession.

Who is it that conquers but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

The world teaches that to conquer is to know, to be in the know, and to be known to be so. To possess a self-righteous certitude in our own ideological posture and the way of life that flows from it. Its modus operandi in the face of opposition is: double down; admit no fragility; captivate those who will like, follow, and subscribe; and cancel the rest.

For us, to conquer is to believe. We are told that the Beloved Disciple “saw and believed, for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.” (John 20:8-9). To believe is not to first comprehend and then assent to a reasonable claim. To believe is always an act in which understanding is provisional. Believing requires the vulnerable and continual choice to place our trust in a divine Person, rather than a proposition or a posture.

 To believe is to risk yielding all that we have, all that we do, all that we are to Jesus. To make this continual choice for Him a way of life until we pass through death and see him as He Is: this is what it means to conquer.

Isaiah 44:1-8

The summer after I graduated from college, I received a phone call. The caller introduced himself as Agent So-and-so, of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

I was struck silent for a moment or two. Not least because I was having a mild panic attack: “What did you do, Lain?!”

After I recovered, I learned that a college friend had listed me as a reference on his application to the FBI. I don’t recall what I said during the phone call, but I do remember two emotions. Profound gratitude—for being thought worthy of this, for being trusted. And a profound sense of responsibility—my testimony, in however a small way, had power.

Testify, witness, confess—these words recur throughout our readings this morning, as does the underlying sense of revealing some truth about God. “You are my witnesses!” God tells God’s people through the prophet Isaiah, after the promise to restore God’s blessings: I will pour my spirit upon your descendants” (Is 44:8, 3). “It is a good thing to give thanks to the LORD,” the psalmist sings, “to sing praises to your Name . . . to tell of your loving-kindness” (Ps 92:1-2). And two millennia later, these words by Robert Herrick, whose poem we sang before the service: “All these, and better Thou dost send Me, to this end, That I should render, for my part, A thankfull heart.”

Each of these texts can stand for countless others in the power of our words to testify, to bear witness, to shout out with thanks and praise the truth of God’s goodness and mercy. We can, with the power of our words, give God an absolutely glowing reference.

But our responsibility goes deeper than that. And the beloved disciple shows us how. Running to the tomb with Peter, and seeing the linen wrappings, he went into the tomb, “and he saw and believed” (Jn 20:8). He saw and believed.

Many, many words will come later, in the writings attributed to the beloved disciple. But here, in the early morning of that first Easter Day, the beloved disciple bears witness to the truth without words, without praise or thanks or even understanding. He bears witness to the truth of Jesus’ resurrection by simply believing, by an act of faith. It is the witness, the testimony, of a human life utterly transformed by God’s loving, saving action in Jesus Christ. Belief is his response to God.

We too are transformed—or rather, are transforming, becoming. This is an ongoing, incomplete process in this life. And a first step—a first step in our own cooperation, our working with God’s transforming us—a first step in a lifetime of first steps—is to stand silent. To stand silent in awe, witnesses to a love that cannot help but strike us silent. Words will follow—but here and now, we can do no better than the beloved disciple did: to stand silent, and believe.