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2010 Sermons

Last Epiphany February 14, 2010

Exodus 34:29-35                                                                

2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2                                                      

Luke 9:28-43

Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness, not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing [on God’s glory]. — 2 Corinthians 3:12

This is one of the central themes in the New Testament, indeed in Christianity as a religion: that with Jesus Christ no longer is God veiled, a terrible presence before whom we can only cringe in fear, whom we  can only approach indirectly, through observing a code of complex rules and through the rituals of a sacred priesthood. No, our God is the God revealed in Jesus, a human being like ourselves. Jesus who knows our weakness, our doubts, our confusion, our sins. But Jesus who has saved us from ourselves, who loves us and calls us to be with him.

It is a very powerful idea. We make a mistake if we treat it as simply a contrast between Judaism and Christianity. The contrast between the veiled God and the transparent God runs through all religions.

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Epiphany 2 January 18, 2009

1 Samuel 3:1-20                                                                 

1 Corinthians 6:12-20                                                       

John 1:43-51

 

One Sunday, after I’d left St. Matthew’s in Evanston, Anne and I went to the Quaker meeting. Quaker meetings aren’t large. Some, like the Weare-Henniker one, are very small. The Evanston meeting was about the size of Holy Cross, but in a smaller room, simple, beautiful, full of light. The meeting lasted one hour and during that hour not a single word was spoken; no music; no movement. For the first half hour the children were with us, even the youngest ones, and they too were silent and still.

 

There is something profoundly holy about being in a group like that.