David and Bathsheba -- Little Sins Into Big Ones (2 Samuel 11:1-15)

                                                           Proper 12, 2015 (Year B)

                              2 Samuel 11:1-15;Psalm 14; Ephesians 3:14-21; John 6:1-21

Father Adam Trambley

July 26, 2015 St.John’s Sharon

  

The first reading today details King David’s adulterous summoning of Bathsheba and the subsequent killing of her husband.  In the coming weeks we’ll hear some of the tragic and disastrous results of these decisions that will echo onward for generations.  This morning’s passage shows us the smaller bad decisions that snowballed into these more monumental and more monstrous sins.

It begins: “In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel…But David remained in Jerusalem.”  Here’s David’s first mistake – he wasn’t where he was supposed to be.  When the Israelites demanded a king, one of the basic elements of the job description was someone to “go out before us and fight our battles” (1 Sam 8:20b).  David was on his couch all afternoon, instead of going out into battle against the Ammonites.  I’m sure he had a good excuse, but it wasn’t good enough.  Not only was he not at the battle where he was supposed to be, he was also back in Jerusalem, by himself, with all the soldiers wives, where he was not supposed to be. 

Then David goes up on the roof.  Lots of things happened on the rooftops of ancient Israel because air conditioned hadn’t been invented yet, and because people often had to keep their animals inside on the first floor.  If you wanted to feel the breeze, go on the roof.  Being King, David’s roof was probably higher than the surrounding houses, so he could see over curtains or other things that might have been set up.  Scripture tells us, “he saw from the roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful.”  Here’s David’s second mistake.  He does not practice what was called in the old days “custody of the eyes”.  Notice how scripture reads.  First, he saw a woman bathing.  Then it says the woman was very beautiful.  David could have seen someone bathing, decided to respect her privacy, do the mature things, and go to the other side of the roof to think about whatever matters of state he should have been dealing with.  He doesn’t.  He sees a woman bathing and decides to pay attention – a basic human instinct, but not necessarily a good one.  Remember when Jesus talks about looking at someone with lust as committing adultery in your heart?  Here’s where David’s heart commits adultery, soon to be followed by the rest of him.  He could have seen a woman bathing and thought, “How nice that my subjects appreciate good hygiene,” and moved on.  Instead he thought, “Oo la la, get me the royal binoculars!”  This point is important for us because we have entire sections of the entertainment and advertising industry today that are devoted to convincing us to look lustfully at whatever they are showing.  We’re losing a sense of why we should not be taking in as much eye candy as possible, but David here provides a good reminder.  Not only should people be able to bathe without being ogled, what begins with adultery in the heart can move into other areas of our lives all too easily.

Then, the Bible says, “David sent someone to inquire about the woman.”  He googled her.  Who is she? Is she married? Does she have a thing for royal war heroes?  Again, none of this is his business, or at the very least, once he hears that she is the wife of Uriah the Hittite, he should let the matter lie lest he has to lie about the matter.  

So David sends messengers to get her.  Obviously she has no say in this.  The King sends for you while your husband the soldier who works for the King is out of town.  David’s little sins have now cascaded into huge ones.

I can’t help but wonder here if Uriah being a Hittite instead of an Israelite mattered.  Did being a from a different group of people, even though he was a very loyal and good soldier, make David take Uriah’s marriage and his life less seriously?  Certainly everything David does could have been done to an Israelite. Still, we should be aware of the subtle ways that racism can placate our consciences when we are considering doing bad things.  Anything in our head or hearts that lets us see someone else as less than a full human being or a full child of God is a lie straight from hell that makes it easier for us to sin against them.  Would David have done the same to Judah the Israelite’s wife?  We don’t know, but we need to be extra vigilant in situations where racism could play a role in our own activities.

When Bathsheba finds out that she is pregnant, David’s tryst is in danger of becoming public. He calls Uriah home to provide cover.  Whether Uriah is such a straight arrow of military devotion that he refuses to go see his wife, or if he is shrewd enough to know exactly what is going on and so he refuses to go see his wife, we don’t really know.  David has to up the ante, trying to get Uriah drunk so that he can manipulate him more easily.  While seemingly minor compared to adultery and murder, both getting someone drunk and trying to manipulate them fall into the sin category, and David keeps piling on.  When Uriah still refused to go home for the night, David sends a letter to Joab telling him to have Uriah killed in battle.  If anyone needs me to preach more on that point, I can, but I assume you all know how wrong this order is on so many levels.

Now part of why I want to talk about this huge tragedy brought on by a person who is dearly loved by God is because the Body of Christ in this area has had our own huge tragedy this weekend.  For those of you who don’t know, Pastor Larry Haynes of Grace Chapel committed suicide on Thursday evening.  Pastor Larry has touched numerous lives in a number of area churches, and was instrumental in the Community Foundation and in helping numerous community projects ranging from Waterfire to West Hill Ministries.  He was a beloved child of God, a leader in the local Christian and wider community, and, like David and like us all, he was a man with his own demons to face.  I urge you to pray for him, his family, Grace Chapel, and our wider community at this time.

I don’t know what series of events led up to his tragic decision, but I would guess that, like we have seen with David, smaller bad decisions got made that led to worse ones.  Big sins start in small ones, in part because the devil could never successfully tempt men and women of God with big sins right off the bat.  But we can get lazy or covetous or envious or angry or any number of other things, and pretty soon we believe one half-truth that leads to a lie which leads to a huge self-deception and before we know it we are falling down a pit.  King David’s pit led him to adultery and murder.  Pastor Larry’s pit led to his suicide.  Many of us at various times have been in our own pits leading to our own particular tragedies.  I want to say two things about this cascading process of snowballing suffering.

First, we need to be obedient to God and pay attention in what may seem like small stuff.  Having a drink or two if we know we are driving home matters.  So does looking at a text while behind the wheel.  So does just having an on-line chat with someone that you don’t want your spouse to find out about.  So does the small dishonesty about a work issue, or the cheating on the test that everyone else is cheating on, or the white lie that keeps us looking good in some social group.  So does calling in sick when we’re not sick, or taking something because no one will notice, or being selfish when we could just as easily be generous.  Sometimes nothing bad will seem to happen from a small sin or minor omission.  Then again, sometimes we get a cut on our arm and it just heals.  But sometimes we get a cut and it gets pretty badly infected, especially if we don’t bandage and put disinfectant on the wound.  And if we get enough cuts and ignore them, we shouldn’t be surprised when our arms turn green.  If we ignore our little sins without the bandage of repentance and the antibiotic of forgiveness, we shouldn’t be surprised if things get worse for us.  

Forgiveness and repentance leads me to the second point I want to make, which is that God is always with us, and is always able to come and reach us no matter where we are, and he is willing and able to pull us out of any pit that we have dug for ourselves.  Whether we have made a minor mistake with a little sin or hurt a lot of people with a big one, we can always repent and turn back to God, and he will help us out.  We may have even made a huge wreck of things with seriously unpleasant consequences, but if we ask him, God will be with us and sustain us through even the worst situtations that we may need to face.

If we go through the King David passage again, we can see all sorts of places where David could have turned back to God and where God could have helped him if he had only stopped to listen.  Once he stayed home, David could have worked on battle plans to send to Joab.  Once he saw Bathsheba from his roof, he could have gone inside and invited one of the wives he already had to a nice romantic dinner.  Even after the adultery, he could have been honest with Uriah when he called him back from the front lines.  Certainly that would have been a very tight spot for David.  But maybe Uriah and he could have come to some sort of agreement on how to go forward that didn’t result in murder.  Even if Uriah refused, and David faced horrible consequences like losing his crown or being stoned as an adulterer, he probably would have preferred those outcomes to the tragedies and violence that played out in his own family due to his next decisions.  Certainly, nothing would have been easy for David, but he could have reached out to God and received the help needed to start over from where he was.  Eventually, he will reach out to God, but by then the situation will have gotten much worse for Uriah, for David, for David’s family and for David’s people. 

I cannot imagine how dark things looked for Pastor Larry, who had helped bring so many people to a deeper relationship with God and a trust in God’s grace.  I do know, though, that the enemy works really hard at attacking people who are doing God’s work effectively, and can make things seem much worse for them than they really are.  I wish that Pastor Larry had been able to find a way out of whatever pit he was in before it ended as it did.  But I also know that even death does not take us out of the reach of the love of the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ, and that even now God’s love can be surrounding Pastor Larry and bringing him healing and salvation.  And I know that God can always reach us, no matter how bad things seem, no matter what we have done, no matter how much suffering we have caused.  Every person looking at repentance in any of its forms, and repentance includes work like getting sober, or making restitution, or being honest with people we have hurt, every person looking at repentance can count on God’s help to get through whatever struggles will come next.  No matter how scary our future might be, we can always ask and receive God’s help to get through it if we want to follow his lead.  Sometimes we have great difficulty recognizing God’s hand reaching out to us, and God’s path may not be the easy one, but God’s path will always be better for us than wherever we have strayed.

To summarize: because the spiral downward can be so slippery and so tragic, we need to pay attention even to the little sins where we deceive ourselves and turn aside from obediently following God.  But equally important is the sure and certain hope that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, and no matter what we have done, God is always waiting for us to call to him for help so he can lead us safely home.  If we decide to follow him, he will get us home, however difficult the path before us.           

Jesus Teaching and Healing -- HOSA Recognition

                                                           Proper 11 2015 (Year B)

                        2 Samuel 7:1-14; Psalm 23;Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34; 53-56

Father Adam Trambley

July 19, 2015 St.John’s Sharon

HOSA Recognition

This morning’s gospel reading is particularly appropriate for our recognition today of student leaders from Laurel Technical Institute’s chapter of the Healthcare Occupations Students of America.  I didn’t choose the passage, but it came up for this week based on our church’s three-year cycle of scripture readings.  In it, we see Jesus teaching and healing, which speaks to the work of our HOSA students, as well as to what all of us are called to do in our own ways.

Saint Mark describes how Jesus was trying to get away on a retreat with his friends, but the crowds figured out where he was going and got there first.  Jesus was so charismatic, so amazing, so sought after, that he got into a boat on one side of a small lake, and people calculated where he was going and ran around the lake on foot to meet him on the other side.  Then, when Jesus arrived, he didn’t call for his security guards or get spirited away by helicopter.  Instead, he looked at the crowd that had just gone to great lengths to invade his space, and he had compassion on them.  He saw that the people surrounding him were like sheep without a shepherd, and he began to teach.

When Jesus saw this great crowd, his first impulse was to see them as children of God who were lost, and he wanted to help them get back on the right track.  He didn’t see them as annoyances that interrupted his “me” time with the boys.  He didn’t see them as obstacles to whatever his special evening plans were.  He didn’t see them as potential twitter followers or as consumers he could sell “Jesus Christ Palestine Tour 33AD” t-shirts to in order to fund his next ministry initiative.  Instead, he saw this loud, sweaty crowd, gathered hundreds of years before the invention of deodorant and dandruff shampoo, as people to love and to serve, so he loved them and served them.  They were like sheep without a shepherd so he decided to shepherd them.

What does it mean to be like sheep without a shepherd?   Without a shepherd, sheep don’t know how to find the grass the feeds them – they can’t make a living.  Without a shepherd, sheep don’t know how to find water that refreshes them – they can’t find real meaning in life.  Without a shepherd, sheep can’t figure out how to stay together successfully, so each one goes their own way where the young and the very old can’t be protected and the predators pick them off one by one – they can’t form healthy flocks.  But Jesus wants his sheep to have all of those things, so he taught them.    He instructed them on how to live a good life, how to live a holistic life, and how to live as part of a family and a community that is in right relationship with God and with each other, and with themselves. He taught them where the good grass is, where the streams of refreshing water are, and how to take care of each other.  He taught them the spiritual truths that provide the practical instructions on how not to get lost on any level.  He gave them the instructions of a good shepherd. 

At LTI and other schools at various levels we learn some important lessons to help us keep from getting lost, like the practical skills necessary to succeed in a chosen profession and how to make decisions that will assist those we work with.  We should take time every now and then to be grateful for the teachers and others who have formed us in ways that help us get to the green grass, and if we are studying now, we should probably pay attention. 

But we also know that some lessons can only be learned outside of an academic environment.  We all need wise mentors and other experienced shepherds to help us learn all of the lessons that Jesus would teach us.  Sometimes, if we are going to find our answers, we may even need to throw our lives into the questions, running around the lake on foot to be ready for Jesus wherever we can meet him.  Finding answers from the people who know and follow Jesus and then listening to what they tell us can take real work on our part. But I’m sure there were people who didn’t run around the lake to find Jesus that day, and when they finally got home they still didn’t know where the good grass was, where the cool waters were, or how to live a life that was good for their families, their neighbors, and themselves.  Finding and being found by the Good Shepherd is worth the effort.

After we hear that Jesus taught the crowds, we read about Jesus miraculously healing people.  Many of you are or are going into health care professions, and you know the importance of healing.  Jesus is the great physician, the ultimate healer.  In fact, he is so divine that when people even touched the hem of his garment they were healed.  I’m not sure how you code garment-hem-touching on an insurance reimbursement form, but that wasn’t really Jesus’ primary concern.  While today, miraculous healing still take place through prayer and the direct ministry of Jesus Christ in our lives, more often God brings healing through the wisdom and skill of healthcare professionals.  The modern medical work of healing remains a practical outworking of Jesus’ saving love, and the study of any healthcare discipline is a noble calling.

Healing, however, is goes beyond just medical treatment of physical cures.  In Jesus’ day, the sick were often removed from society in any number of ways, whether because of inadequate symptom management, or fear of contagion, or just plain old fear of people who were different.  By healing people, Jesus recognized that they were human and had the same dignity and were worthy of the same love as everyone else.  When Jesus healed people, they got better physically, but he also restored them to their families and their communities.  Where Jesus went, people were able to live the lives God intended for them.

Those of you in HOSA have been engaged in this deeper level of healing your community, even as you have been studying to provide specific medical care.  This commitment is really why we are recognizing you today.  You have helped poor people receive their first family Christmas portrait.  You have inspired the creativity of children and cared for them in other ways at Waterfire and the New Light Christian Education Center.  You have helped raise money for the local library so that people from all walks of life can have access to books and the internet and other means of education and betterment.  You have provided safe places to sleep at night for children lacking basic necessities like beds.  And you have assisted numerous other people in numerous other ways, some of which we will hear about later and some of which will probably never be known except to the people whose lives you’ve touched.  You have engaged in the divine work of healing, and it matters.  In a few minutes we’ll have a few formal presentations, but for now let me just say that on behalf of the wider community, St. John’s is very grateful for your work, and we are privileged to have worked alongside you and are honored to have you with us this morning.         

Four Degrees of Loving -- Bernard of Clairvaux

                                                           Proper 6 2015 (Year B)

                       1 Samuel 15:34-16:13;Psalm 20; 2 Corinthians 5:6-17; Mark 4:16-34

Father Adam Trambley

June 14, 2015 St.John’s Sharon

This morning’s reading from Second Corinthians has the following line: “For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you.”  Paul is in the midst of writing about life above and beyond the mortal life we have now, and he is throwing all sorts of metaphors together with the good news of what Christ has done in dying and rising from the dead.  One of the points that comes out in this very rich passage is a sense that he is mostly living in some sort of glorious, ecstatic spiritual place filled with love, joy and the nearer presence of God, but that he remains tethered to regular life by his great love for other people and his desire to help them however he can.  Paul says in Philippians “my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you.”  Paul is already focused on entering the eternal life that he is just skirting the edges of as he completes his earthly ministry.  Sometimes he must seem odd, maybe crazy, “beside himself”, as he says, as he fasts and prays and sings and speaks in tongues and maybe even dances around like King David did to the glory and praise of God.  But then for the sake of the new Christians he has brought to Jesus, he decides to focus on the pragmatic aspects of writing encouraging letters and making travel arrangements and sewing tents together and any number of other day-to-day concerns belonging to a first century church planter.

I want to unpack Paul’s sense of his desires by looking at four degrees of love developed by the eleventh-century monk and theologian Bernard of Clairvaux.  Paul’s words can be a discussion on the third to the fourth degree, but all four are helpful for us to think about.  The four degrees are:

• 1.      Loving oneself for self’s sake
• 2.      Loving God for self’s sake
• 3.      Love God for God’s sake
• 4.      Loving self for God’s sake

The first degree of love is Loving oneself for self’s sake.  This basic form of love might seem self-evident and maybe even a little bit un-Christian.  Many parents and Sunday school teachers have probably told us not to be selfish, and we really shouldn’t be.  But we do have to love ourselves and value ourselves for the sake of ourselves, in what could be considered a selfish way, or we will have a hard time growing into the love of God and others. 

So what exactly does loving oneself for self’s sake mean?  This first stage of love means that we do what is in our own self-interest because it is good for us.  We take care of ourselves because we value our own well-being.  We brush our teeth, we eat our veggies, we limit our recreational use of crystal meth.  We make choices about desserts and exercise to stay as healthy and pain free as possible.  We learn skills and save money and do the kinds of things that allow us to have a better life.  As Bernard writes, “This is the curb of temperance imposed on you by the law of life and conscience, to stop you following your own desires to destruction or becoming enslaved by passions which are the enemies of your true welfare.”[1] 

Not everyone has been able to get to even this first degree of love.  Too many people don’t love themselves.  They have never received adequate love from parents or others to believe they are really loved and lovable.  They get involved in any number of self-destructive behaviors because of a huge deficit of love in their lives.  One of the basic works of evangelism is to find people who cannot currently love themselves and are stuck in enormous amounts of pain and to share the good news of God’s unconditional love with them.  This sharing takes place in word, so that they understand, in deed, so that they feel God’s love through us, and in prayer, so that God will allow them to feel his love directly.  Just to get to this first degree of love, we need to know that God loves us so that we are able to value our own self and our own needs.  

The second degree of love is that we love God for self’s sake.  In this stage we value God because of what he has done and will do for us.  As Bernard says, “It is good for us to know how little we can do by ourselves, and how much we can do with God’s help, and therefore to live rightly before God, our trusty support.”[2]  If we want what is truly good for us, we can discover pretty quickly that we can live much better lives if we are in a relationship with God.  All Christians start their prayer lives here, and many also stop here.  When we need something, we ask God for it.  We are obedient to God and what he asks of us because we find things work out better for us when we do so.  At this degree of love we are like the little kid who cleans his room so that mom will give him dessert.  We tithe because we see how God blesses us when we do or we come to church because it really does help us get through the week feeling better.  When we need God, we turn to him and he answers. 

Now I am not saying that this kind of relationship with God is bad.  When we love God for self’s sake, our heavenly Father is pleased to be asked for help and to shower his blessing on us.  We hope, however, that once we develop this kind of relationship with God, that our relationship moves deeper.  As Bernard says, “realizing how good he is, we find ourselves drawn to love him unselfishly, even more powerfully than we are drawn by our needs to love him selfishly.”[3]   

This third degree to love God for God’s sake has to do with deepening our intimacy with God beyond any ways that he helps us.  We want to be with God and spend time in prayer and adoration with God the way lovers want to lose themselves gazing into each other’s eyes.  This degree of love is when we join our voices with Angels and Archangels and with all the company of heaven as they proclaim the glory of the Lord before his heavenly throne.  This degree of love is the desire to sit before an icon or a candle and repeat the name of Jesus until the room feels infused with the presence of the Holy Spirit.  This degree of love is the confidence Saint Paul had that nothing was better than to be as close to God as possible because God is so good, so holy, so beautiful, so majestic, so glorious, so altogether lovely, altogether worthy, altogether wonderful that to be home in the presence of God is more to be desired than anything else.  People loving God with their whole heart and soul and mind and strength tend to seem beside themselves and a bit disconnected from day-to-day life because they really are focused somewhere else. 

Of course, not many people can stay here for very long.  Sooner or later, most of us move from “Holy, Holy, Holy” to “How about a hand with this Lord God Almighty?”  Such petition is to be expected as we learn how to develop a deeper relationship with God, and, as always, God is patient with us.

Even beyond this degree of love, however, Paul talks about Bernard’s fourth degree of love, loving self for God’s sake.  Here we give our whole selves to God.  Bernard doesn’t think such love is possible until we have achieved our immortal bodies on the other side of the resurrection, but Saint Paul certainly comes close.  He talks about no longer regarding people from a human point of view, but seeing everyone, including himself, as a new creation. 

More than that, however, Paul has entirely given himself over to be used by God for God’s purposes.  He loves himself because of the ways God can use him, even being willing to deal with all the parts of his ministry that force him to be in his “right mind” for the details of daily living instead of in the rapture of prayerful union with God.  He hasn’t stopped loving himself, but he no longer loves himself merely for self’s sake, but he loves himself even more deeply as a vessel for the work that God has given him to do.  Paul follows Jesus, who left the glories of being with his Father in heaven to live and die among us.  The greatest saints are those who have had the surpassing privilege of raptures of delight in the worship and praise of God, but who then do the often dull, practical work of loving their neighbors joyfully and even sacrificially.  This degree of loving is when we die to self, take up our cross, and follow Jesus, not because we think so little of ourselves that we are willing to throw our lives away, but because we think so much of ourselves that we can imagine no higher purpose for ourselves than to lose our life for Jesus’s sake.  As Paul says, “whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please [our Lord].”

So let us grow deeply in the love of ourselves and of our God, moving from one degree of love to another.  Let us share the depth and riches of God’s love with those who do not know it, and let us immerse ourselves in the love of God through prayer, reading of scriptures, and meeting together to encourage one another.

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[1] https://www.christianhistoryinstitute.org/study/module/bernard/

[2] https://www.christianhistoryinstitute.org/study/module/bernard/

[3] https://www.christianhistoryinstitute.org/study/module/bernard/

Trinity Sunday 2015

Trinity Sunday 2015

St. John’s Episcopal Church

Rev. Adam T. Trambley
Lessons for the day are here

This morning is Trinity Sunday, a time when we celebrate the incredible life of God who has been revealed to us in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  The good news of God being a Holy Trinity allows us to understand God as a loving community, a community that we are invited to be a part of.  God is not primarily all-powerful or all-knowing or all-anything, although God is also those things.  The primary attribute of God, as Saint John tells us, is that God is love.  We’re going to explore this understanding of God as love in a community of three persons who invite us to join in that love.  But first, I want to look at other ways people have thought about God, and their limitations.

We start long ago, in the time when pagan gods ruled the landscape.  God had not yet revealed himself to Abraham, or made a covenant with his people.  Most of the ancient gods were violent and capricious, filled with anger, lust and pride.  They had to be propitiated to bring fertile harvest, prevent diseases, and bring victory in battle.  They were limited, assumed to care for particular people in particular places, jostling for control in territory and spheres of influence.  Paul calls these gods nothing more than demons, spiritual forces of questionable goodness that pale in power before the living God.  These gods are still worshipped in various parts of Africa, Asia and Oceania in isolated tribes that have never heard the good news of Jesus Christ, They are also regaining a foothold in the United States as many people seek some benevolent force in nature since too many Christians have done a poor job in stewarding creation and loving their brothers and sisters.

Many wise and learned people, rejecting the chaos and lack of ethics found in paganism, turned to a philosophical understanding of a God who created the universe and set things in motion.  These early monotheists rejected the rule of petty spiritual forces in their daily life, but they also believed that God must be impossibly distant to us.  This belief has been common throughout Western Civilization, from the Greek philosophers, to the deists at the time of the American Revolution, to those in many mainline churches today who believe in a relatively impersonal God that has more important things to do than be in relationship with us or care for our particular needs.

About the same time the early philosophers were asking their questions, God began to reveal himself to the people of Israel.  The God who came to Moses in the burning bush was a different kind of God altogether.  This God, who intentionally created heaven and earth and everything in it out of love, was a God who cared about justice and righteousness and heard the cry of the poor.  This God entered into relationship with people and created covenants with them.  This God gave people instructions for how to live, and could be trusted to keep his promises.  This God brought the children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt and brought them into the Promised Land, while also allowing them to go into exile when they were disobedient. 

The people of Israel came to know their God as all-powerful and all-good, and also above every other god of the pagan people around them.  God was not distant, like the philosophical God, but was experienced by them through God’s Spirit and in other direct ways. 

Then came Jesus.  Jesus was the eternal Word of God, the Wisdom of God, the only-begotten Son of God.  Jesus revealed God the Father in who Jesus’ was, in his teaching, in his miracles, in his passion, death and resurrection.  Jesus was the image of the invisible God, so we could know God in an even more personal way than we had before.  Then at Pentecost, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit down on his disciples.  Through the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son to us, we had a particular glimpse into the eternal life of our Trinitarian God.  Even more gloriously, through the Holy Spirit, we received an invitation into that Trinitarian life.  

The men and women of the early church prayed their way into experiencing the life of God.  What these mystical theologians came to understand was that God the Father is the fountain of all being and the source of all love.  The love is given eternally to his Son Jesus Christ, who receives everything that is the Father and gives it back.  The way that God the Father and God the Son give that love back and forth is through the Holy Spirit who is also God and love.  But this eternal loving in the heart of God’s being is not some unapproachable distant process.    The early mystics of the church described this Trinitarian life of God as a dance.

What better way for us to understand the loving, dynamic, passionate interaction at the very heart of God than as a dance.  The three persons of God eternally express the depths of their love for each other in a way that is beautiful and expansive.  Even more importantly for us, this dance does not stop within the life of God.  God invites us to join in the divine dance. 

God invites us into relationship with God the Father through the life and death of God the Son and the power of God the Holy Spirit.

God invites each and every one of us to enter into the very heart of our relational, loving, Trinitarian God.  We learn God’s eternal dance as we come to love God and our neighbor more deeply.  Our joyful praise to God and our loving service to each other are how we balance and swing, promenade and pirouette, twist and shout our way more deeply into the divine life of the Trinity. 

The Kingdom of God that Jesus promised is nothing more than all creation entering into the midst of this Trinitarian life of God.  Learn God’s eternal dance of love of God and neigbor, then pass it on.

Mother's Day 2015

                                                           Easter 6 2015 (Year B)

                                     Acts 10:44-48;Psalm 98; 1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17

Father Adam Trambley

May 10, 2015 St.John’s Sharon

In this morning’s reading from the first letter of John, we hear a rather bizarre passage.  The Bible is full of things that make us go “hmm” at first, and we get one of them today.  After talking about loving the children of God and keeping his commandments and our faith conquering the world, we read:

This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood.  So just what is John trying to tell us here?

In John’s day, some people disagreed about just how much of Jesus’ life and death were actually part of his work as the Messiah and to what degree he was the Son of God.  Apparently some of them were arguing that the most important part of Jesus work was done at his baptism.  We don’t know precisely what they were thinking because nobody bothered to spend the time to copy what they wrote over and over again for the past two thousand years, but they may have believed that God left the human Jesus before he suffered and died, or they may have felt like once the incarnation happened that nothing more was necessary, or they may have believed any number of things that belittled the importance of Jesus’ passion and death.  They believed somehow that when Jesus showed up, the important work was done.  Such ideas continue to show up from time to time today.

John, however, didn’t agree with that line of thinking in his day, nor would he be sympathetic to it now.  John points back to Jesus death on the cross, and reaffirms that Jesus came by the water and the blood.  We remember the scene described in the Gospel of John when a soldier came to make sure that Jesus was dead and thrust his spear into Jesus’ side.  Water and blood flowed out of the wound, and Gospel writer says that he himself saw the blood and the water.  The blood and the water are important to John.

Why are the blood and the water important? Because the blood and the water flowing out of Jesus side are tangible signs of just how far Jesus was willing to go out of love for us.  The blood and the water show the lengths that Jesus suffered and sacrificed to bring us eternal life.  As the reading from John’s Gospel says this morning, No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  Jesus’ love for us was so great, that he laid down his life for us. 

I want to take a detour here to talk a bit about Mother’s Day.  Mother’s Day is an incredibly joyous day for many, and an incredibly hard day for others.  But what John says today about Jesus coming can also speak to mothering.  Just like Jesus’ saving work was not accomplished only by water, so, too, Christian mothering is not really about creating a child, but is truly brought to fulfillment in the love that really does lay down one’s life for a child, whatever their age or whatever the biological relationship between a mother and a child.

In many cases, the sacrificial love of mothers starts in the act of pregnancy and giving birth.  I myself cannot describe more than second hand the kinds of care and concern that many expectant mothers feel or the changes in behavior to ensure their unborn child’s safety.  The very act of giving birth is difficult today, and in years past the numbers of deaths during childbirth made delivering a baby one of the most loving and potentially self-sacrificial acts outside of Jesus’ passion.  Yet, delivering a baby is but the beginning of what really makes a mother, and in many ways it is not a prerequisite for being a mother.

Just like Jesus came in the water and the blood, motherhood really comes in its fullness as mothers die to themselves in countless ways out of love for their children.  I’m sure we can all think on times that our own mothers gave something of themselves that went beyond anything we deserved or could reasonably ask for.  My guess is that most of those times we didn’t even know it until much later.  Many of you who are mothers can also point to times when your children pulled a level of love out of you that you didn’t even know you had until that very moment, when you were able to put aside your own wants and needs in ways that surprised yourself, or when you let go of something that had been central to your self-definition or your life up until then but just wasn’t so important anymore.  Mothers, too, we know share the sufferings and griefs of their children, just like Jesus bore our sorrows and walked with us even into death and hell.  Mothers’ sacrifices are not salvific in the way Jesus’ atoning sacrifice is, but the love poured out in them is profound and their prayers are heard on high.

Of course, none of the profound love in action that defines true motherhood is limited to biological childbearing.  In fact, even the fiercest of natural affections pales before the power of Christian love enacted by carrying out Jesus’ commandment to care for his children.  In some cases, that love is all the more powerful when it comes from non-biological mothers.  Should anyone doubt the importance of these arrangements, Jesus himself created a non-biological family on the cross when he told his beloved disciple, likely John who wrote both the letter and the gospel we hear today, that Mary was now his mother and that John was now her son.   The real work of motherhood, the day-in, day-out almost unnoticed acts of love combined with the occasional incredibly difficult or extravagant actions, can be done by many people who are not biological mothers but who step in officially or unofficially to change children’s lives.  Some might be legally adoptive moms, but others are the women who step up consistently because a child of God needs a mother in some way, and they are willing to do the hard and Christ-like work of loving mothering. 

John tells us that we know God by loving the children of God.  In many ways, then, mothering is not only a commission to love someone who is dear to us, but also a path to God.  As we, whether mothers or fathers, grandmothers or grandfathers, aunts or uncles, brothers or sisters, or in whatever other role we might have, as we give of ourselves to care for one of God’s children, we will come to know God through the love that we share.  What we do for God’s children, we do for him, and loving God’s children is actually loving God.  Offering our lives for one of God’s children is offering our lives for God, and God honors those sacrifices.  As we love a child deeply, we will find the face of God in that child. 

So on Mother’s Day, we honor especially those who come not only with a Hallmark Card, but we honor those mothers, in whatever capacity, who came following Jesus and continually offering their lives for the  love for God’s children. 

The Ethiopian Eunuch (Acts 8:26-40)

                                                           Easter 5 2015 (Year B)

                                Acts 8:26-40;Psalm 22:24-30; 1 John 4:7-21; John 15:1-8

Father Adam Trambley

May 3, 2015 St.John’s Sharon

In this morning’s reading from Acts, Philip has been preaching the gospel in a city of Samaria.  Philip, you might recall, was one of the first deacons.  The apostles commissioned the deacons to help ensure that the widows were got their meals on wheels on schedule, whether they spoke Aramaic or Greek.  Instead, the deacons we know about, Stephen and Philip, end up engaging the very practical and essential matters of evangelism.  We assume that everyone kept getting fed, but the deacons start doing a whole lot more

After successful ministry spreading the good news in Samaria, which is north of Jerusalem, an angel of the Lord tells Philip to take the road south of Jerusalem toward Gaza.  Philip has to walk back to Jerusalem and then keep heading southeast toward the Mediterranean coast through a wilderness area.  As he’s walking along in the middle of nowhere, he hears a chariot coming from behind him.  The chariot was probably something to see, both because it was foreign and because it was huge.  Philip didn’t see one of the Roman racing chariots we think of from the movies with one or two guys standing up and holding on.  This chariot was big enough for an important official to have a seat where he could read a scroll that was probably a couple of feet high, while another person drove and Philip still had room to jump in.  We’re talking the Hummer of chariots, probably with the state seal of Ethiopia on it, being pulled by at least two or three good sized horses decked out in whatever colorful accessories horses of high-status sported in those days.  Philip is probably starting to step back off the road to get a good look and to keep from being run over, when the Spirt tells him to “Go over to the chariot and join it.”

So Philip runs up beside the chariot.  Gratefully for Philip, the chariot had a long way to go before they got home to Ethiopia, so the horses were probably walking and not galloping.  Philip hears the Ethiopian reading from Isaiah and asks if he understands what he’s reading.  The Ethiopian says, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” and invites Philip in.  The scroll is open to one of the suffering servant passages and the eunuch asks who the passage is written about.  That question gives Philip the opening to tell the Ethiopian all about Jesus, beginning with the scripture open in front of them.

They come across some water, and the Ethiopian eunuch asks, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?”  That question could be answered a number of ways, that we’ll come back to in a minute, but Philip’s answer is that nothing prevents it.  Philip and the Ethiopian go down into the water, the Ethiopian eunuch is baptized, and then the Spirt of the Lord snatches Philip up and drops him at Azotus, which is on the Mediterranean Coast north of Gaza, while the Ethiopian goes home rejoicing. Great story!

I want to unpack some aspects of this narrative that I think are important for us. 

The first is this question of the eunuch’s, “Look, here is water!  What is to prevent me from being baptized?”  Actually, any number of things might have prevented him.  Most importantly, he was a eunuch, and Deuteronomy 23 says that eunuchs will not be able to enter the assembly of the Lord.  Other Jewish groups, like the Essenes at Qumran, refused to allow eunuchs to join them.  On top of that, he was a foreigner.   We don’t know for sure if he was a gentile or an Ethiopian Jew, maybe a descendent of the Queen of Sheba who came to visit Solomon hundreds of years earlier.  Either way, he worked for the Candice, which was what they called the Queen in Ethiopia, so he probably participated in any number of official religious ceremonies.  We don’t know for sure, and Philip may not have known either.  On top of that, this guy, who was treasurer of Ethiopia, was probably not leaving his job to move to Jerusalem or Samaria where he could join the local church and bring his pledge in every week.  None of these issues matter to Philip – or maybe they did matter to Philip, but the Holy Spirit told him not to worry about them and baptize him anyway. 

Then, when Philip baptizes the eunuch, the Ethiopian is sent out on his own as a new Christian to live out the Christian life.  Here, I think, is where things get really interesting.  Philip is taken away by the Spirit and the Ethiopian has to respond to his baptism in his own way, in his own place, guided solely by God.  Scripture doesn’t tell us what he did, but church history does.  One of the earliest Christian churches is found in Ethiopia.  Ethiopian translations of scripture are some of the earliest translations that we have.  The Ethiopian church traces its foundation back to this eunuch baptized along the road by Philip.  We have no reason to doubt that this man of importance and learning, who sought God enough to drive a chariot hundreds of miles to Jerusalem and back while reading the scriptures along the way, and who was baptized by one of the first deacons, was exactly the type of person God would use to convert a nation to faith in his Son Jesus Christ. 

We should have the same trust in God’s Spirit to work through people that we baptize.  I work with a pastor who instructs everyone who he baptizes to tell the story of what God has done for them to as many people as they can in the next week.  Since the newly baptized usually have a lot of unbaptized friends, on the next Sunday some of them usually show up to be baptized, too.  That’s how churches grow.  Instead of ensuring people get the right theological understanding and doctrinal niceties before giving people permission to talk about their faith, we need to have everybody witnessing to the very straightforward story of what God has done in our lives to anyone who wants to hear it.  When the Ethiopian eunuch did that, a nation was converted.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the conversion of Ethiopia was prophesied in the Old Testament.  Isaiah 11:11 says that the Lord will reach out his hand to reclaim his people, and mentions Ethiopia (also known as Cush).  Zephaniah 3 mentions people calling on the name of the Lord from beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, and Psalm 68:32 says, “Let Ethiopia stretch out her hands to God.”  Noteworthy, too, is that Isaiah 56 says that foreigners and eunuchs who do what is pleasing to the Lord will have a place in his temple and a memorial better than sons and daughters.  So everything that began with today’s reading was spoken about hundreds of years earlier in scripture.

We might also take note that the Ethiopian eunuch is reading the scripture in his chariot even when doesn’t understand it and doesn’t have anyone to teach him.  We might think, “Why bother?”  But if he didn’t take the step of seeking God, he wouldn’t have found him.  If he didn’t do the hard work of trying to understand the scripture, he wouldn’t have been able to formulate the questions he needed to ask so that he could understand.  If he didn’t do all of his own work, he might not have been given Philip to lead him the rest of the way. 

So, too, we need to pick up the Bible and read it.  Sure, some parts are difficult and some parts are boring and some parts aren’t particularly pleasant.  Some parts even challenge what we think we know about God and the church and Christianity.  But if we prayerfully read and come up with questions, God will bring people beside us who can help offer answers.  You can call me anytime with a scripture question, and I’m happy to answer it if I can, or I’ll go find an answer.  But there are others around who God might just send to help, too.  The truly amazing thing might be how much we will understand and be encouraged if we just start reading. 

This story also serves as a reminder that we can use our travel time for God.   We can listen to scripture or hear inspiring music on the radio or on CDs.  We can read the Bible or say our prayers while someone else is driving, maybe even reading them out loud so that the driver can join us.  (Here I means prayers beyond the ones we say for safety when we get into the car with certain family members – and parents of 16 year olds know what I’m talking about.)  

Also noteworthy here is that the story goes nowhere if Philip isn’t willing to go anywhere and do anything to accomplish Jesus’ work.  An angel says leave this city and walk through the wilderness. Philip says OK.  The Spirit says run up to a chariot, which had to seem like a really bad idea, but Philip did it.  Philip baptizes a guy with a national treasury at his disposal, and before he can even say thank you, God picks Philip up and drops him somewhere else, and Philip walks up the coast and just starts proclaiming the good news wherever he is.  Are we willing to do that?  Do we trust God enough to drop everything and follow his lead?  Would we be willing to risk going way out of our comfort zone for the opportunity to share what God means to us with some random stranger in a way that could lead thousands of people to a new life?  The lesson of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch is that one divine appointment can have a ripple effect in countless lives, so we want to be open to every encounter God wants to give us anytime, anyplace, anywhere with anybody.

Finally, I want to mention how much hope there is for the church in all of the stories in this eighth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles.  At the end of chapter seven, Stephen is stoned as the first martyr and a general persecution of the church begins in Jerusalem.  Everyone but the Apostles scatters to other places.  But that very scattering leads to the gospel being proclaimed from Jerusalem throughout Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth according to Jesus instructions.  Philip has to leave Jerusalem, so he goes to a city of Samaria and heals people and casts out demons and preaches the word of God and there is much rejoicing in that city.  Then he is instructed to go down this wilderness road and meets the Ethiopian eunuch and the good news spreads further. 

We are in a time when the church has some difficulties.  While the church in America is not facing persecution, we can look around and realize that things are not quite what they once were.  I have been working with a number of folks from throughout the Episcopal Church who actually believe that this is an opportunity for God to begin a new dynamic phase of growth and evangelism.  This group, called the Acts 8 Moment, is looking at how we proclaim resurrection in the Episcopal Church through prayer, evangelism, and effective communication and social media strategies.  Some of us were in Columbus last week to prepare for General Convention this summer, and drafted a number of resolutions, including a call to the church to refocus on the core components of Christian discipleship and a proposal for church planting and for existing church revitalization.  I’ll give you all more details as we dot the i’s and cross the t’s over the next month.

I also believe that we have a similar Acts 8 Moment here at St. John’s.  I truly believe that God has been laying groundwork for the coming season to use us for the revival and renewal of this community.  To do so, we might get scattered a bit, and have to follow the Spirit down some wilderness roads and approach dudes in some very strange chariots.  Nevertheless, if we are prayerful and faithful and willing, we will have incredible opportunities for fruitful ministry.  I don’t know the details, and almost all of it will come from you faithfully taking the next right step and not out of any brilliant plan from the priest.  But if we are willing to follow, God will lead us where he wants to use us. 

When they came up out of the water…the eunuch saw [Philip] no more, and went on his way rejoicing. May all whom God calls us to encounter, go on their way rejoicing because they know Jesus more deeply.