Acts 4:5-12; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18
The Reverend Paul D. Allick, St. George’s Episcopal Church, April 29, 2012

One of my favorite things to do with my mom when I was a kid was to go to a revival. Traveling Evangelists came to our small town quite often. It was great entertainment. They would play good old country music with words about Jesus. They would preach and get us all excited. It always ended with us giving our lives over to Christ either for the first time or as a renewal of faith.

I always left on a spiritual high but in a few days it would wear off. Life would start getting in the way and I’d lose that special feeling of security and joy.

This still happens to me. Every morning I try to give my day to the Lord. I’ve learned to be honest with him. I tell him, “Lord, I am giving you this day. I know that in about an hour I am going to take it back but give me the wisdom to turn back to you.”

It is hard to follow Jesus where he leads. When difficulties arise our first response is to take charge. This is good but we have to remember to let it go sometimes as well. Sometimes a little humility before the Lord goes a long way. We have to learn how to lay down our lives for Christ and each other.

We gather here today because generations of believers gave their lives to Christ. Peter and John were arrested for teaching about Jesus. They are out on mission: they are reconciling people to God and each other through prayer, healing and teaching. Even after they are arrested they don’t stop. How many of us could do that? How many of us stop praying, studying and working for reconciliation at the first sign of stress, boredom or conflict?

Our ancestors kept giving their lives over to Christ because they knew what Peter preached, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”

I do not see this as a divisive statement; a condemnation of unbelievers. I see at true for me. Jesus is the only truth for me. He is the one who has shown me how to live abundantly by following his way of humility, grace and sacrifice.

When I lay down my life for Christ and for you I find peace. As St. John writes in his epistle, “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us - and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.”

Our mission as a community of disciples is a hard road. Giving ourselves over to God and each other takes a lot of spiritual and emotional work. And so we, too, should be about revival.

We hold a revival here every Sunday. In Confession and Absolution we admit to our wrongs and ask for forgiveness. We ask for the strength to forgive others. Then we go to the altar and share in the breaking of the bread. Christ is broken for us so that we can live again. We join in his everlasting sacrifice of self.

Next month our Bishop will be here to confirm the youth from our joint confirmation program and three of our adult members. Usually at a confirmation service bishops will offer an invitation for anyone present to come forward and renew their commitment to Christ. This could be another opportunity for us to experience a revival.

We want to give ourselves to Christ because he has given himself to us. He is everything to us. He is our shepherd. He is the door to eternal life. He is the gate through which we enter the eternal pastures. He is the lamb sacrificed for our well being. Christ is both the priest and the offering.

St. Gregory the Great preached this about Christ the Good Shepherd, “Our Lord’s sheep will finally reach their grazing ground where all who follow him in simplicity of heart will feed on the green pastures of eternity…There the elect look upon the face of God with unclouded vision and feast at the banquet of life for evermore.”

Whenever we muster the strength to give our day to the Lord and leave it with him we enter that pasture. Whenever we have the grace to forgive ourselves and others our vision becomes a little less clouded. Whenever we are able to make it to the celebration of the Holy Eucharist we feast at the banquet of life.

We should never take what we have here for granted. We have a wonderful fellowship of prayer and support. We have this gorgeous tradition called Anglicanism with which to express ourselves through prayer, song, sacraments and beauty. And we can invite others here to enjoy the same.

As we leave here today and begin our week we don’t have to let the stress, resentments and conflicts of life rule us. We can remember what we felt today and revive ourselves in the Lord.

St. Gregory goes on, “No matter what obstacles we encounter, we must not allow them to turn us aside from the joy of that heavenly feast. Anyone who is determined to reach his destination is not deterred by the roughness of the road that leads to it.”
Reference: From a Homily on the Gospels by Saint Gregory the Great, pope (pp.753-754)

The Liturgy of the Hours Volume II

Catholic Book Publishing Corp.  New York 1976

Acts 3:12-19; 1 John 3:1-7; Luke 24:36b-48
The Reverend Paul D. Allick, St. George’s Episcopal Church, April 22, 2012

Washington Post Columnist Michael Gerson recently wrote about his experience with dieting. This Italian man is cutting out carbs: bread and pasta. He admits that his strongest craving is for peanut butter. He wrote, “Dieting is a reintroduction to the mind-body problem - a reminder that our pilgrim souls are fastened to a peanut butter - craving animal.” (Star Tribune, 4/18/2012, p.11)

This comment made me think of Easter. In this 50 Day Festival we are  confronted with the resurrection of Jesus. It is hard for some of us to accept this idea. We want to explain it away. We want to believe that Christ was resurrected only spiritually not physically. This makes sense because for now our pilgrim souls are fastened to a hungry animal.

Even those of us who say we believe in the literal resurrection of Jesus Christ must have to pause and think about it. Is it really possible?

In our physical life on earth we are constantly getting trapped in thinking only about the here and now. We can understand the themes of Lent: suffering, repentance and death. The theme of Easter is a little harder to grasp.

In our resurrected life through our baptism we no longer see the world split in two between physical reality and some far off distant future where we will go to heaven and everything will be different.

In Christ, heaven, the kingdom, is brought to us right now. Eastertide isn’t only about Jesus’ resurrection it is also about our resurrection.  Now that we are in Christ we are aware that we have an eternal soul. Eternity is now. This physical life is the beginning of the rest of our eternal life. The shroud of death has been lifted. Now we can see God’s Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.

In the Gospel today Jesus appears among the disciples. They have questions in their hearts; their physical natures cannot accept that he has risen from death. They think they are seeing just a ghost but Jesus tells them to touch his physical body. He is hungry and asks for something to eat.

In Christ God has fully joined the human and divine, the here and now with the heavenly hereafter. It began when God became incarnate in Christ in that manger in Bethlehem. In Christ’s life, death and resurrection God shows us a radical way of seeing our existence. We are at once both human and divine.

Christ has left us physical, tangible things so that we can understand eternity. He has left us the sacraments. These outward and visible signs draw us into the kingdom life. The Eucharist itself is both human and divine: the bread and wine are the physical signs pointing us to the presence of the risen Christ among us.

Christ has left us the Church. She operates as a physical institution but that is not what she really is. She is a great mystical body. The Church is not just about us present at this moment. She stretches throughout the world and then extends out beyond what we know as reality. The Church is the Communion of Saints: all believers, living and dead, bound together by sacrament, prayer and praise.

As we live as members of Christ we easily admit our human side, our failures and brokenness, but we must also remember our holiness. Holiness is not perfection. Holiness is the seeking to imitate Christ. We are not only a group of ragged broken people seeking the mercy of God. We are also a royal priesthood. We are empowered by the Holy Spirit to heal the world. We live our day to day lives in the glorious splendor of eternity.

St. John writes in his epistle, “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.

And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.”

This is the good news. Our struggles, stresses, doubts and hurts are only a piece of the story. We take great joy in knowing that through Christ God has consecrated the here and now. In Christ’s birth God named human life a blessing.  In Christ’s resurrection God reveals our true nature to us.  All things are now holy, powerful and redeemed.

As we follow Christ we are going to see new things everyday. Each morning is a resurrection; a moment to begin again. In Christ we are going to be challenged to move beyond the here and now to a better way of seeing.  Then in turn we will see the here and now in a whole new light.

Let’s live each day celebrating these sacred mysteries. Let us stand tall in our royal priesthood and go out and heal the world. We can begin with ourselves.

Acts 4:32-35; 1 John 1:1-2:2; John 20:19-31
The Reverend Paul D. Allick, St. George’s Episcopal Church, April 15, 2012

This past Wednesday evening our joint youth confirmation group met. We have 16 young people from four parishes: St. Edward’s, St. Alban’s, St. Nicholas‘, and George‘s. We are coming to the end of our classes. On the Eve of the Feast of the Ascension, May 16, Bishop Prior will be here at St. George’s to confirm the candidates.

It is decision time for them. It is time for them to decide whether or not they will own their faith in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. They will decide whether or not to confirm their baptismal vows.

I told them a story and gave them some advice.

I wasn’t confirmed until I was 19 years old. There was absolutely no parental pressure on me to do so. I was feeling called forward by the Lord. When I was confirmed it wasn’t that I absolutely believed or understood all of it. It was that I really wanted to believe and understand my Christian faith. I wanted to go on the journey with Christ within his Holy Church.

I am still on that journey. Intellectually I believe in the creeds but I am still coming to understand what they mean. I am still struggling to put all of my beliefs into action. I will be doing this for the rest of my life.

What is that we Christians believe in anyway? There are the simple points: We believe in God, in Jesus as his only son, in the Holy Spirit and in the Holy Church. This is only the beginning. What does it mean to believe in these things? What difference does it make for us and for the world around us? If we just believe it and hold on to it, huddled together in our Church buildings, what difference does it make?

What we believe in is what we prayed in our collect. God has established in the Paschal mystery the new covenant of reconciliation. We prayed that we who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ’s Body would show forth in our lives what we profess by our faith.

The Pascha is the passover we celebrate as Christians. Christ has passed through death onto eternal life. Through his blood we are now able to go through that passover. Belief in the Resurrection of Christ is the core of our faith.

This Pascha is a mystery. It is not based in rationalism because it cannot be fully grasped by human reason alone. When we stand and proclaim our faith we are at the beginning of a journey into a mystery.

The goal of the mystery is to live out the covenant of reconciliation. This is where our beliefs come into action. We are about healing the brokenness in our lives and in the world around us.

Knowing our scriptures helps us learn how to do this work.  As we read the stories we see how God is always reconciling things and how our ancestors learned to do the same in their own day.

Knowing our tradition helps empowers us to do the work. This is why we have a Book of Common Prayer so that we can all be on the same page. Our common prayer life teaches what we are to do after we share the Holy Eucharist.

The first disciples, after they hear that Jesus has risen from death, are hiding out. They have the doors locked. They are in fear of the government authorities. They are in fear of many of their family and friends. Who is going to believe what they are experiencing? How can they ever explain the mysterious events they have been through?

At least they have each other. They can stay in that locked room and support each other. It will be easier to be with others who think and act like they do.

And then Thomas messes it all up. Even he won’t believe them. He wants to believe. He forces them to explain what they believe. Once he can touch and see Jesus then he is convinced.

When the risen Christ comes through those locked doors he isn’t coming only to comfort those who are already inside. He is coming to send them out. He breathes the Holy Spirit upon them just as God breathed life into us at the creation. This is their rebirth. This is the when Christ begins to create his Holy Church.

He says to them and to us, “You can’t hide out here with each other. As the Father sent me into to this world to work for reconciliation now I am sending you.”

Each week at Eucharist we see and touch Christ. We taste him in the Blessed Sacrament. We hear and see him in each other. We experience him in our prayers, scriptures and music. And then we are sent out. We unlock the doors and banish our fears. We go out to bring others to this altar so that they also can experience his love through Word, Sacrament and fellowship.

We have nothing to be afraid of because Christ has given us his peace; he has breathed the Holy Spirit upon us.

Isaiah 25:6-9; Acts 10:34-43; John 20:1-18
The Reverend Paul D. Allick, St. George’s Episcopal Church, April 8, 2012

We humans have a need to label things with our language. Most often this is helpful. We all have to agree what word or phrase we use for certain things: a chair is a chair; a stop light is a stop light.

However, sometimes labeling things is dangerous because once we have labeled something we put all of our assumptions upon it and we stop growing. This is especially true as we label people. We use labels like black, Asian, gay, Indian, white, elderly, straight, liberal, disabled, and conservative. Our assumptions take over and without even knowing each individual we think we know what they are all about.

For example I identify myself as a Born Again Christian. How can that be I am an Episcopalian? Those two labels don’t go together. We all know what those labels mean.

If you are a “Born Again Christian” you are expected to vote a certain way and hold certain social views. I refuse to surrender meaningful language to social and political labeling. I am a Born Again Christian because I am a disciple of Christ. I have been converted through a series of mystical experiences. I have been baptized into his Church and sealed with the Holy Spirit at my confirmation. In fact the Episcopal Church is a Born Again Bible Based Holy Spirit Sanctified Church. (Read your Prayer Book you will see that it is true.)

In the third chapter of the Gospel according to St. John Jesus is talking with a religious leader Nicodemus. He tells him that unless one is born again they cannot enter the kingdom of God. The Greek term used here is anothen. It can mean literally “from above” or it can mean “from the top”, like take “let’s take it from the top.”

Jesus Christ comes from above. He descends to us so that we can “take it from the top.” Now we are born from the water of creation and the Holy Spirit.

After the Crucifixion the Disciples are living under a powerful label, “death.” We all know that if someone or something is dead it is gone. Forget about it. The disciples are hiding out organizing the Jesus Memorial Society. They didn’t understand the scriptures yet. He must rise from the dead. Their label “death” was about to be changed.

Mary Magdalene who was very close to Jesus doesn’t recognize him. She can’t. He isn’t fitting into his label: he is dead. Then he speaks her name. He knows who she really is and now she understands who he is. He has come to vanquish all of our labels. She is born again in that moment. She runs and tells the others. She becomes an evangelist.

Jesus tells us that unless we become like a child we can never enter the kingdom of God. (Mt. 19:13-15, 18:3; Mk. 10:15; Lk. 18:15-17) Children start with a clean slate. They do not know all of the labels and hang-ups they are supposed to be holding onto. This is why they are so blessed. This is why they are such good theologians.  Ask a child questions about God, Jesus and the Church and you will get some profound answers and some challenging questions.

The Good News is that we don’t know everything yet. This means we are free to be born again. We can wipe the slate clean and become like a child. We can play. We can  imagine different possibilities about Jesus, God, the Church, ourselves and even each other.

During Holy Week we walked the treacherous road of dying with Christ. Today we are raised. Today we come out of the tombs of our limited human understanding. We enter the mystery of eternity.

This is the first day of the fifty days of Easter. In this season we shout alleluia and re-think our lives. At the end this reawakening we may very well re-label most things as they were before. That is just fine. It makes sense. But the pieces we re-imagine will give us new life. We will escape the ruts we find ourselves in. We will enter the Kingdom of God that is all around us, within us, and is to come.

We will cast our weary eyes on the abundance God has prepared for us. Once we get out of our self imposed limits we will experience the vision that the prophet Isaiah shares with us: “On this mountain God will make for his people a feast! He will destroy the shroud of death. He will wipe away every tear and disgrace. We have waited for him and he has spoken.”

Reference for anothen:  Social-Science Commentary on the Gospel of John

                                       B. Malina & R. Rohrbaugh, Fortress Press Minneapolis 1998

Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Hebrews 10:16-25; John 19:1-37
The Reverend Paul D. Allick, St. George’s Episcopal Church, April 6, 2012

According to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke Jesus told us, “If you want to become my disciple you must deny yourself, pick up your cross, and follow me.”

I’ve never had to go looking for my crosses; they come to me. I run from them, blame them on others, and forget the Lord’s call to me. And then eventually I consent to the cross. I deny myself and ask Jesus how to carry it.

I will never forget the moment this became crystal clear to me. I was going through a very rough patch in my life. I was filled with anxiety and drowning in depression. I had very difficult decisions to make. I was on my bed in a fetal position crying to Jesus, “Can’t you just take this away from me?” Then I looked up to the crucifix hanging on my bedroom wall. I saw Jesus hanging on the cross. He asked me, “Can you suffer with me just a little bit longer?”

As with all of my crosses that one made me stronger in the end. And in my following through with the painful decisions that had to be made I helped others move on to where they needed to go.

In my years as a priest I have also come to learn that no one needs to go looking for their crosses. They come to us. I am constantly humbled by the stories of struggle and perseverance of the people I have served. So many children of God consenting to their crosses and living again.

“Can you suffer with me just a little bit longer?”

Following Jesus is not about escaping suffering. The world is broken. We suffer from sin. Some of our crosses are self-made. Jesus knows we are going to encounter them and he shows us how to carry them. He shows us that in the end some of these crosses can bring redemption.

In our lesson from the prophet Isaiah we hear of the Suffering Servant. This Servant can have many identities. The Suffering Servant is the people Israel. We Christians see the Suffering Servant as a prophecy about Jesus. We can also see ourselves, the whole Church, as the Suffering Servant. We like the whole people Israel and Jesus himself are the Servant of the Lord. The Apostles who built on Christ’s establishment of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church carried on the role of the Servant of the Lord. And they suffered.

Now in this age you and I continue as that servant. It is a service of blessing and joy and it is one of sorrow and suffering.

The Suffering Servant is exalted and lifted up in the same moment that he is oppressed and afflicted. Many are astonished at his painful appearance; who can even look at him? The Servant pours himself out to death.

“If you want to become my disciple you must deny yourself, pick up your cross, and follow me.”

None of us want to suffer; we shouldn’t. It is not healthy to go around looking for crosses to bear. Yet, we know that even when we aren’t playing the victim and feeling put upon the suffering comes anyway. How do we consent to the suffering and move beyond it? We follow Jesus.

We follow him through his anxiety and depression in the Garden of Gethsemane when he wants to escape his cross. We stand with him as he is unjustly convicted and scourged at the pillar. We wear the crown of thorns with him and face the humiliation. We carry the cross with him with our hurting bodies and injured spirits. We are crucified with him. We find peace through his cross. We find out who we really are and what we really need.

Our new life in Christ makes no sense without the cross.

The Church herself makes no sense without the cross. As we want to do with Jesus we are also tempted to domesticate the Church; to make her more acceptable to ourselves and to others. We desire everything about Jesus and His Church except the cross.

We name the Church as we try to name Jesus: a charity organization, a group of social reformers, a college of brilliant theologians, a place to find only comfort, an institution of social respectability. And all the while the Cross of the Suffering Servant stands before us.

Michael Ramsey a former Archbishop of Canterbury wrote, “The relevance of the Church can never be any easier than the relevance of the Messiah. He provoked questionings and doubts among many of the wisest and holiest of His race. He perplexed those who looked to him as a national leader, as a reformer, a prophet, a teacher and a healer, and even as a messiah; for he abandoned His useful and intelligent works in Galilee in order to bring God’s kingdom by dying on the cross.”

Today we remember his cross. We glory in it. We call it good not for the sake of suffering. We call this day good because we know that through Jesus Christ there is no cross we cannot bear.

Reference: The Gospel and the Catholic Church by Michael Ramsey (p. 4)

Hendrickson Publishing 2009

Exodus 12:1-14a; Luke 22:14-30
The Reverend Paul D. Allick, St. George’s Episcopal Church, April 5, 2012

I once served in a parish where some older members were very disturbed that young children were receiving communion. They were holding onto the tradition that children should first be confirmed before receiving the sacrament. They told me that young children didn’t understand what communion meant. I asked them if confirming 11 and 12 year olds, having them make their adult commitment at that age just so they could have communion, made any sense. I also asked them to explain what communion meant. After I asked these questions they stopped complaining.

Later I was with some Sunday School children. I asked them what communion meant. A second grader said, “It means I get to be in God’s world for a little while.” I’ve yet to hear a better explanation.

The Church’s teaches that the Holy Eucharist makes Christ’s death and resurrection present to us. Christ is truly present in the consecrated wafers and wine. In Holy Eucharist we are reconciled to God and each other through Christ.

But there are also our individual spiritual experiences with Holy Eucharist. It means so many different things to us. It will continue to hold several meanings until we reach our heavenly home and fully understand it. It is a sacred mystery hidden behind veil after veil of meaning. This is why we regard it as so holy. Dare we even speak in the true presence of Christ in his Blessed Sacrament?

The veils are being pulled back generation after generation.

In the 8^th Chapter of the Gospel of St. Mark we see a veil being pulled back. There is a crowd gathered around Jesus for three days. In that time they had had nothing to eat. Jesus is concerned for them. He asks the disciples to feed them. They reply, “How can one feed these people with bread here in the desert?”

What a strange question for people of Israel to ask. Their ancestors were fed in the desert with manna. They know God will provide. But perhaps they didn’t think that those old sacred stories applied to them. Maybe they didn’t  believe that God was as present to them as he was to the people of old. (We make the same mistake.)

Then Christ feeds about four thousand people with seven loaves of bread and a few fish. This is a foreshadowing of the Holy Eucharist. Christ takes, blesses and breaks the bread. What seems to the disciples as nothing becomes everything.

A veil is pulled back.

In the lesson from Exodus we are reminded of another curtain of meaning being opened. The night before the children of Israel escape slavery in Egypt God saves them through sacrificial blood. It is put on their door posts. They share a sacred meal to live into their relationship with the LORD. The blood of the lambs will be the sign to spare their first born males both human and animal.

In the Gospel lesson Jesus, centuries later, is sharing that sacred meal with his disciples. He gives them the cup of wine and tells them to share it among themselves. There will be enough. He gives them the bread which is his body, his very self. The wine is his blood poured out to create a New Covenant. Jesus is about to give up his body and blood on the cross. He invites his disciples into a new and holy mystery. Through his death, through our dying with him, through this one and eternal sacrifice, we will be redeemed.

The curtains continue to open for us. Each time we receive Holy Communion the meaning of our lives and the love Christ has for us is revealed in new ways. We know that this Holy Eucharist is happening eternally in heaven. Our ancestors are there with the angels celebrating the eternal act of reconciliation. We sing with them, “Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of power and might.”

The bread and wine which we now receive physically is yet another veil. They are the outward and visible signs of the inward and spiritual grace we are receiving through Christ.

St. Gregory of Nazianuzus wrote, “When the Word drinks the new wine with us in the kingdom of his Father, we shall be keeping the Passover in a yet more perfect way, and with deeper understanding.”

We approach the altar with great humility. We approach the altar only after confessing our brokenness and receiving the absolution offered through Mother Church. Only then are we worthy to enter through the curtain and experience these Holy Mysteries.

St. Gregory goes on, “We must pass through the first veil and approach the second, turning our eyes toward the Holy of Holies…we must sacrifice ourselves to God, each day and in everything we do, accepting all that happens to us for the sake of the Word, imitating his passion by our sufferings.”

Reference: From a Homily by Gregory of Nazianzus, bishop

The Prayer Book Office, edited by Howard Galley, pp.731-732

The Church Hymnal Corporation, New York, 1994

Christianity and Culture

In our modern life most of us say we seek and value diversity. What does this mean? Is diversity a value or is it actually a human reality which we have to learn how to live within? In this class we will review a theological classic, Christ and Culture by H. Richard Niebuhr. Niebuhr’s ideas can help us sort out where our cultural assumptions can get in the way of our Christian faith. How do we live in a diverse community while being grounded in Jesus Christ?

(Don’t be afraid of this topic if it doesn’t make sense right away. You understand it already because you are living in it.)

Sunday, May 6: The Enduring Problem: Defining Christ and Culture

Is Christ an American? Have we trapped Christ in our cultural context? What does Christ have to say about our different cultures?

Sunday, May 13: Christ against Culture,The Christ of Culture

Are we to run away from our culture to follow Christ or are we to adopt him into the best parts of our culture?

Sunday, May 20: Christ above Culture, Christ and Culture in Paradox

Are we to separate the “heavenly world” of Christ from our life here on earth?

Sunday, May 27: Christ the Transformer of Culture

Ah, now we are getting somewhere. The problem of defining Christ within our different cultures is really about re-imagining ourselves in the light of our redemption.

• There will be no Chapel on Palm Sunday or Easter (April 1, 8).  Please have children come by 10 am on Palm Sunday in order to help with the procession.

• We will have Sunday School and Easter party on April 15th following the second service.
• The last Sunday School will be May 13th (Mother’s Day).
• We will have our end of year Roller skating on Sunday May 20th. Last year there was a tornado!!!  Please let me know if you have questions or comments about anything.

Blanket Tying