Category: Sermons

Categories
2010 Sermons

Pentecost 6 July 4, 2010

Galatians 6:1-16                                                                 

Luke 10:1-11, 16-20                                                          

In the parish I served in St. Charles, Illinois, the custom was to begin meetings of the city council with prayer led by one of the local clergy. I was always asked to perform this duty at the meeting closest to Independence Day because, as the city clerk explained, “the Episcopal Church is so historic.” I never had the heart to tell her that although many, even most, of the Founding Fathers were Anglicans, the Episcopal clergy were mostly loyalists to the British Crown.

Continue reading “Pentecost 6 July 4, 2010”
Categories
2010 Sermons

Pentecost 5 June 27, 2010

Galatians 5:1, 13-25                                                          

Luke 9:51-62                                                                      

I buried a woman once who’d grown up in Holy Cross when it was in East Weare village. Among the people who came forward to speak at her funeral was a grandson, a young man who is mildly retarded. I was a little nervous about what he might say, but his words about his grandmother were beautiful. “She called me her little tagalong,” he said. “I was always trying to follow her. I had trouble keeping up, but then she would turn and wait for me.”

I thought about what that young man said as I prayed with the gospel passage this morning. It is the beginning of the long central section of Luke’s gospel, where Luke departs from the structure of Mark’s gospel which he’s been following to this point and gives us a series of sayings and wonders set in the context of Jesus journeying to Jerusalem and his final destination on the Cross. “As the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up,” Luke begins, “he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”

Continue reading “Pentecost 5 June 27, 2010”
Categories
2010 Sermons

Pentecost 4 June 20, 2010

Galatians 3:23-29                                                                              

Luke 8:26-39                                                                      

This morning is an unusual one at little Holy Cross Church. This homily will be preached only at 8:00, the Eucharist that we add in the summer for a handful of people who want to go off and play for the rest of the day. At 10:00, the preacher will be the Reverend Mary Tusuubira. Mother Mary is from the Anglican Church of Uganda. She and her sister were the first two women ordained priest on the continent of Africa. Mother Mary’s husband is also a priest, her brother (killed in a tragic accident last winter) was a bishop. She founded a congregation of Ugandan immigrants in Waltham which grew to 500 and is now doing the same work in Lowell. She supports herself as a caregiver to an elderly woman, sending as much of her earnings as she can back to her husband in Uganda to support his work keeping the orphaned children of AIDS victims together in families in their villages.

So at Holy Cross we hear today’s gospel story of the healing of the Gerasene demoniac against the story of Mother Mary and the Anglican Church of Uganda. St. Luke took the story of the demoniac, like most of the rest of his gospel, from St. Mark’s gospel. Luke wrote 10 or 20 years after Mark, and for a different audience – Gentile converts to Christianity rather than the Jewish Christians for whom Mark wrote. Mark wrote in the aftermath of the Roman takeover of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, the scattering of Jewish believers, including the followers of Jesus. His gospel is urgent, a “gospel in time of war.” Mark has no brief for either the Jewish authorities or the Roman occupiers.

Luke wrote for people who had no quarrel with the Romans, who indeed wanted to live peaceably under the Empire. To Luke’s Gentile audience, the destruction of the temple was not of great importance. Luke was writing to set the story of Jesus in a broader historical context, to affirm the faith of a congregation that wanted to understand how their new Christianity fit into the Classical world view.

So in Mark’s account, the fact that the demons possessing this man were “Legion” linked the story to the Roman army occupying Judea. The fact that these demons were driven into swine had significance for Jewish believers, who understood that swine were unclean. And the fact that the story is set in Gentile territory, would have been a sign to Mark’s hearers that the Gospel of Jesus was a challenge to both Jews and Gentiles. But Luke smooths away what he saw as the rough edges of Mark’s account. He is simply interested in presenting a story of the power of faith to heal. His account of the Gerasene demoniac is set in a series of stories about faith, intended to affirm the faith of the new Gentile Christian community.

Christians in Uganda, or Ugandan Christian immigrants in Lowell, similarly stand in a different context from Christians in Holy Cross, Weare, New Hampshire. The Church in Uganda is an amazing story of the power of faith in the face of violence, persecution and martyrdom. Each June 3, the Episcopal Church calendar of saints celebrates the feast of the Martyrs of Uganda. These martyrs were a group of young men, pages in the court of the King of Buganda, one of the tribal groups which the British had put together administratively in their new colony of Uganda. The young men had been Christianized by Anglican and Catholic missionaries, who were allowed to operate among the court circles. Their new faith clashed with some of the cultural ways of their past, leading the King to demand that they recant. They refused and were burnt to death on June 3, 1886.

This martyrdom, however, had entirely the opposite result from what the King intended. The example of the young men, who walked to their death singing hymns and praying for their enemies, so inspired many of the bystanders that they too converted. Within a few years, the original handful of Christians among the elite had multiplied many times and spread far beyond the court. Uganda is now the most Christian nation in Africa, and the most Anglican in the world.

Persecution of Christians was renewed in the 1970s under the Muslim military dictatorship of Idi Amin. Among thousands of Anglican and Roman Catholic martyrs to Amin’s violence was Janani Luwum, Anglican Archbishop of Uganda. Luwum, a gentle and peaceable man, had protested Amin’s rule. He was seized at night and murdered, buried secretly in his ancestral village. But again, as the old saying goes, the blood of the martyrs proved to be the seed of the Church. Luwum was a revered and beloved figure, and his murder focused the world’s attention and led to the overthrow of Amin, further strengthening the Church in what remains a poor country, devastated now by a new enemy, AIDS.

Through history, Christianity (and other religions) flourish when believers call upon their faith to inspire and strengthen them in the face of opposition. The story of Jesus, his courage, his commitment, his willingness to die upon the Cross forgiving his enemies – is a story new in every age and place where violence, tyranny, injustice and oppression flourish. That is why Christianity is so vital today in places like Uganda. It is the seductive comfort of life in America that makes Christian faith seem unnecessary or even impossible to so many. We New Hampshire Episcopalians whine about our budget cut-backs and the inability to find clergy to serve part-time congregations. Mother Mary takes herself off to a distant country to minister for a pittance to her brothers and sisters in need, supporting herself with secular work, sending money back to help with the work of the Church at home.

And so, listening to this morning’s gospel, we must ask: Who in this story of two countries, two continents, two Churches, is possessed by demons? Who lives among the tombs? Who is bound in chains? Who is not in their right mind? Who is in need of healing and liberation? The Gospel of Jesus Christ speaks to all men and women. What does it say to us, in our place and time, here today?

Categories
2010 Sermons

Pentecost 3 June 13, 2010

2 Samuel 11:26-12:10, 13-15                                          

Luke 7:36-8:3                                                                     

My grandfather lived in a little coalmining town in Pennsylvania. Across the street lived a couple who never spoke to one another. They communicated through a married daughter who lived down the block. They’d divided the house between them: she had the kitchen, the back porch and a little room where she slept. He had the living and dining rooms, the front porch, and upstairs. They ate all their meals sitting on opposite ends of a table placed in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen, he on the dining room end, she on the kitchen end. They’d lived this way for years. My grandfather said they’d long ago forgotten what they’d fought about.

For most of us, most of the time, forgiveness when we think about it is probably just a little footnote in our lives, like saying please and thank you, excuse me, I beg your pardon. But for God and for Jesus, forgiveness is one of the center points of life.

Continue reading “Pentecost 3 June 13, 2010”
Categories
2010 Sermons

Pentecost 2 June 6, 2010

1 Kings 17:17-24                                                                 June 6, 2010

Luke 7:11-17                                                                       John L. McCausland

The Bible is peppered with poor widows. Like the two in the readings today, they are almost all nameless. Women in general in biblical society were without rights, including the right to own property. Indeed, they were themselves property, property of the men in their lives: first of their fathers, then of their husbands, then of their sons. And if they were widowed, they depended completely on their children, particularly their male children, to support and protect them. So these two stories tell us something important when they explain that in each case the widows had only one son, and that son was dead. Here we have two women utterly without earthly security, as good as without identity or meaning.

Why is the Bible so fond of these poor widows? I think it’s because you and I, all of us, are in reality just a few steps away from poor widowhood ourselves. Yes, of course, we have legal rights and a social safety net and material comforts beyond what all but a tiny few enjoyed in the time of Jesus. But for all of that, we really don’t have much control over our lives and the world. We have little idea what the world will be like in 50 years, whether there will even be human beings on the earth’s face. And in the shorter range, we don’t know about our own health five years from now, or the security of our children or grandchildren. So the poor widows of Scripture are Everyman, Everywoman, the human condition stripped of illusions — us.

Continue reading “Pentecost 2 June 6, 2010”
Categories
2010 Sermons

Trinity Sunday May 30, 2010

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31                                                        

Romans 5:1-5                                                                     

John 16:12-15

 

I have good news for you. You have inherited a magnificent mansion – in fact, a palace, a castle, an estate of enormous expanse and magnificence beyond your wildest dreams. It’s very old, filled with art treasures and beautiful antique furniture. But it’s also been renovated, brought up to date with new wiring and plumbing and all. You’ve been given the key to the front door; you’re free to wander and explore; there are servants eager to show you about and attend to your needs and desires.

I’m talking about the Holy Trinity, and with it the whole theological and ecclesiological edifice that we’ve inherited as Christians and Anglicans.

Continue reading “Trinity Sunday May 30, 2010”
Categories
2010 Sermons

Day of Pentecost May 23, 2010

Acts 2:1-21                                                                          

Romans 8:14-17                                                                

John 14:8-17, 25-27

Our celebration of the Day of Pentecost at Holy Cross today is one of our periodic “Come With Joy” Sundays. Six or eight times a year we do these, incorporating elements of art and drama into the liturgy, playing a little loose with the order of some of the parts of the service, involving members of the congregation (especially teenagers and children), and opening the homily time to discussion. Like most clergy, I’m pretty much a law and order guy myself when it comes to liturgy, so I’m always a little anxious about these occasions, but almost without exception they’ve come off well. We just have to understand that we can worship God in many ways, not just the semi-monastic, cathedral-style worship that Anglicans have traditionally been accustomed to.

Continue reading “Day of Pentecost May 23, 2010”
Categories
2010 Sermons

Easter 7 May 16, 2010

Acts 16:16-34                                                                      

Revelation 22:12-14, 16-171, 20-21                                       

John 17:20-26

“I just had a general question for you,” said the email I got last week. “Is it possible to not believe in God, but to believe in Jesus Christ and in good vs. evil?”

What a wonderful question – and always good to get questions from people, especially ones like this that go right to the heart of things. And a specially wonderful question for this Sunday, which I like to think of as “God has gone away” Sunday. This is the Sunday in the Christian year between the Ascension, last Thursday, and Pentecost, next Sunday. The Ascension celebrates Jesus going up to heaven after the resurrection, to “sit at the right hand of God,” as the Creeds put it. Pentecost celebrates the sending of the Holy Spirit of God to be with us here on earth. So, in between, God has in a sense gone away.

Continue reading “Easter 7 May 16, 2010”
Categories
2010 Sermons

Easter 6 May 9, 2010

Acts 16:9-15                                                                        

Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5                                                               

John 5:1-9

Last Sunday Jude Desmarais, our breakfast chef, was out of town, attending his daughter Carina’s graduation from the University of Michigan. So the whole responsibility for breakfast lay on Kourtney Williams, the high school junior who’s been working as Jude’s assistant. She was nervous, but she pulled it off beautifully.

Talking with her about it, I told her of a story that I’d read when I was little in a children’s magazine we got, Jack and Jill. The story was about a little girl who had to prepare dinner for herself because of some emergency absence of her mother. The girl had fixed dinner with her mother present, but never alone. So she went up to the attic and brought down a dressmaker’s dummy – something common back then when more people made their own clothes. She put one of her mother’s dresses on the dummy and pretended her mother was there, giving her cooking instructions. And she cooked her dinner all by herself.

 “Do you want to be made well?” Jesus asks the man in the gospel this morning. The man had been ill for 38 years and was lying by a pool in Jerusalem noted for its healing powers – powers attributed to angels who stirred up its waters from time to time. The problem the sick man had was that no one was there to carry him into the pool at the crucial moment, and when he tried to drag himself in he was always crowded out by others waiting to enter the waters. And what does Jesus do about this? He says to the man, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” Which the man does, and he is healed. Then comes the cryptic statement: “Now that day was a sabbath.”

Continue reading “Easter 6 May 9, 2010”
Categories
2010 Sermons

Easter 5 May 2, 2010

Revelation 21:1-6                                                                              

John 13:31-35                                                                     

  “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

— John 13:34

 “If you love me,” says the teenager in the parked car to his girl friend, “you will do what I want.” “Oh, I just love myself!” gushes the woman on the total make-over show as she admires her new face, new clothes and new hair in a mirror. “Love makes the world go round,” runs an old song. And of course, “Don’t you love those Red Sox?” Love, love, love.

Talk about love puts me in mind of the Supreme Court Justice who wrote in an opinion that he couldn’t define pornography, but he knew it when he saw it. I can’t define love, but I know it when I see it. We don’t see it all that often – not real love. But we see it in Jesus. “Just as I have loved you,” he says, “you also should love one another.” Church is not about a bunch of ideas, concepts, rules and regulations, even biblical texts. Church is about a person: Jesus. About learning to see ourselves, to see all life, in terms of the love we see in Jesus.

Continue reading “Easter 5 May 2, 2010”