I forget. It is as simple as that. I forget. Maybe you do to. I forget names, events, appointments. I forget. I also forget God, which is a terrible mistake to make. After all, we Christians make a public declaration with our baptisms. We say very clearly to the world who we are and what we do. We renounce Satan, we accept Jesus, and we declare to follow him as our savior and Lord. Except when we forget. Which is easy to do. I forget and when I am reminded, it hurts to know how much I forgot.
The Christian life is just that, a life. When we embark on the journey we accept a few fundamental propositions about the life we are to lead. For me, growing up in Waco, Texas these propositions were more about the rules and the rules revolved around St.Paul and his words in Galatians 5.19-21.
Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Ouch. I forgot to not do these things often. It is a part of the living to forget. And it is a part of the living to be reminded.
Of the things in Paul’s list of “do nots” my personal favorite is the phrase, “things like these.” To say, “things like these” is as if Paul ran out of adjectives and went for the short hand. “Things like these” leaves the imagination wide open for all of the things that these could be, these works of the flesh. Things like these might be J-walking, parking spot stealing, sacristy bread eating, choir music plagiarism, new car envy, office cleaning product pilfering, things like these. You can hear Maria’s voice, “These are a few of my favorite things,” these.
The list that Paul makes, these works of the flesh, are actually a few of our favorite things. They are things we love to do. If we didn’t like doing them we wouldn’t do them. Some of them are fun. Ouji boards are fun. Who doesn’t want to know the future? Who cares if it is sorcery? Envy is fun. Who doesn’t look around at what other people are doing and want to do the same? If not more? I caution us to not go holier than thou, because envy is fun, come on admit it. I am not trying to tell you it is necessarily good, but being envious is fun. If it wasn’t fun we wouldn’t do it. Getting shots in your arm is not fun, we avoid doing that. Chores are not fun, we put them off. Walking through poison ivy is not fun. We do not ask to do that everyday. Oh, but envy, and quarrels, for some people envy and quarrels are like breathing. Some people would rather have envy and quarrels than eat. People love a good fight. We do. Fighting is fun. Especially the game where we “watch you and him fight”. Setting up a situation where we can get others to fight so we can watch, we love that. We relish it. We talk about it. The baseball game was boring until the benches cleared. Did you see that? Those grown men acting like boys. I am going to write a letter and demand they do not do that again until next time. I wish I got paid millions of dollars to do that. Oops, there I go again being envious.
And by now you are well aware of the word that I am avoiding. Church is not the place for that kind of conversation. It is easy to talk about how much we love a good fight or how much fun we have being envious or the enjoyment we took being over served with margaritas at Chili’s last night. But we all heard the word when I read the list, and we are all waiting to see if I will address it, say it out loud, go into it at church so you can write the Bishop and start a good church fight. Well here it is, and I am not afraid to say it, I am, get ready, here it is, the big word of the Sunday, your ears will melt.
Impurity.
Oh, I hate to disappoint you and not go into a length discourse about fornication. I think we all know that one, and its brother pornography. They are so obvious. We like them too. Otherwise we would not spend billions of dollars on them. We do.
No fornication is not the word, impurity is the word. We love to be impure the most. It is the one we are the most comfortable with because as long as we stay impure we can use it as an excuse to act anyway we want to behave. We just blame it on our impurity. We love the actions on Paul’s list. If we didn’t he wouldn’t have needed to make the list. And if we didn’t the list would not still resonate with us two thousand years after Paul wrote it. We are human beings, and a part of us loves fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing… and things like these. We do.
The list is jarring, and it is meant to be. So are the words in the Gospel of John,
Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.
They are jarring, shocking, demanding. Eat Jesus? Cannibalism? Is this a metaphor? A symbol? Those who heard these words in that synagogue in Capernaum were confused. Rightfully so. What is this Jesus teaching? Who can understand it? Who can do it? Maybe it means the bread and wine of Eucharist. I do not know.
We forget. We need to be reminded. We need to be jarred from our complacency and be set back in our right minds. The works of our flesh, our flesh, is easy to spot. The works of Jesus’ flesh are being revealed. Our flesh and Jesus’ flesh are two different natures. Our flesh leads us to those things we love. And when we overdose on them we destroy ourselves and we destroy those around us. We electrocute the church we love with fighting. We get drunk with envy and fornicate with anger and steal souls with reckless abandon. We yell and scream and gossip and hate and atrophy our hearts because we love to. We stay impure because it is comfortable to our human selves.
Jesus flesh is the opposite. And in a very shocking statement Jesus says we have to eat and drink him. We need to ingest him. To receive eternal life we must consume him. We are to take Jesus completely into ourselves otherwise we will die. And we will, we have, we are, everyday we forget ourselves and get lost in the love of impurity. We forget, it is our weakness, our flesh, we forget, and we need to be reminded. Paul reminds us when he writes
By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.
The hard work for us is to go against ourselves, the core of us, and reorient ourselves to a new way of living. We fully consume Jesus and in doing so we fully rework who we are and what we are about in this world. Fully consuming the Son of God into our lives infuses us with a new love, a new joy, a new peace, a new patience, a new kindness, a new generosity, a new faithfulness, a new gentleness, and a new self control, and new things like these. When we do this consuming of Jesus we are no longer forgetting, but we are now living past our human frailties and into a new purity. We break with our human self and unite with the divine through the body of Christ. Now we are guided by the Holy Spirit, who does not let us forget whose we are, and what we are called to do. We become reminded. Paul’s word for that was Metanoia, other minded. We take on the fruits of the spirit of God, reminding ourselves of our baptismal self, and we act on them, and things like these. Amen
John 6.35,41-51
You followed him over there because you were sick, and all of the cures the others had tried did not work.
You followed him over there and he fed some five thousand people in one day.
You followed him over there after he went across the sea in a boat. When you got there he told you he was the “bread of life.” Life is what you were seeking. New life. Life without disease. Then he tells you it is not this life, the life with all of the pain, that he is talking about. It is eternal life. The body perishes, he says. This age will pass away, he says. You are apart of the one who sent him, he says.
The others around you think he is crazy. He is just a man. He is Joseph’s son. How can he say these things? They walk away. You stay. Curious.
The people of St. Mark’s are a part of a religious movement that takes its roots by the Sea of Galilee in the ministry of a man named Jesus. The ministry of the parish of St. Mark’s is a direct extension of these stories in the Gospels. This ministry listens to the conversations in the letters of St. Paul and the other Epistle writers and then we look at our own current Christian community and try to discern our behavior and our mission. We are bearers of a tradition that started very simply as a man walked through the towns and proclaimed that God was doing something different. God was doing something new. Healing and feeding people so that their bodies might be strong was only half of the equation. Healing and feeding people so that their souls might be strong became a different conversation. Bread by the shore and bread for the soul become the two nourishments that raise people up. They are nourished enough to rise and follow Jesus. And they are nourished enough to be raised up with Jesus.
Healing and feeding is who we are. It is what we proclaim. It is our mission as the new generation of proclaimers. The poetry of the words in the Gospel of John pushes us to ask a question. Who is Jesus to you? Who is Jesus to us? What is Jesus calling you to do? What is Jesus calling us to do? Once you and I have that figured out, we do it. In discerning what we are to do, I bet Jesus’ calling involves healing and feeding people. I bet it involves forgiveness. I bet it involves love. But you and I live in a constant state of discernment, interrupted by moments of calm. These moments are fleeting, as the Holy Spirit never stops working, and the world never stops changing. We are always on the move. Never satisfied. Who is Jesus? What is your call? How are you living that out? These are our three fundamental questions as the people of St. Mark’s. Questions we ask ourselves all the time. We ask them in our prayers. We ask them in our vestry meetings. We ask them in our marriages. We ask them of our children. We ask them in our offices. We ask them of our church, our diocese, our faith. Who is Jesus? What is your call? How are you living that out?
Many of you know that I just returned from the Holy Land. I promise to temper my preaching from here on out to limit the anecdotes that begin, “When I was in the Holy Land.” But since I have just returned, here is an anecdote from “when I was in the Holy Land.”
In one day I went from the Church of the Beatitudes, to Capernaum and Peter’s house. Then I went to the Church of the Loaves and Fishes and a Eucharist by the Sea of Galilee. Then I had lunch. Then I went on a boat ride in the Sea of Galilee. Then I got off the boat in Tiberias and got on the bus to go to the River Jordan to renew my baptismal vows. It was suppose to be a climatic moment to a day of seeing all the places where Jesus’ earthly ministry started. It is amazing to be on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. It is amazing to look out over that water and think about how the topography has not changed all that much in two millennia.
The one down side to being on the shore of the Sea of Galilee in July is that you are on the shore, not in the water. It was hot. By the afternoon, after being on the shore, or on a boat, or is a bus, all you wanted to be was in the water. You learn to appreciate full immersion baptism after standing in the heat all day. I am sure that is how many people were converted. “Yes I will be baptized as long as I get to go under water, three times is good, anything to beat the heat.”
Do to military issues you are not able to go into the River Jordan where they believe the baptism of Jesus took place, which is further down the river near where it enters the Dead Sea, closer to Qumran. But to help out the faithful Pilgrims who come to the Holy Land to be baptized, a section of the Jordan near the Sea of Galilee has been dammed to provide enough water for full immersion. Along the banks small stadium chapels have been erected to allow groups to come and have semi-private ceremonies. A curved ramp descends from each chapel bay into the water. A railing has been added so the faithful can have something to hold on to as they enter the water. To get to that spot you have to pass through the Christian gift shop, where you can buy a commemorative white robe and some other bric-a-brac to take home with you. You can stop and get a coffee on the way to your assigned area. You can even stop, and for one shekel you can use the bathroom, or change into your commemorative white robe. I personally found the commercialism amusing, Jesus mugs, Jesus crosses, Jesus place mats, commemorative white robes. I especially liked the idea of paying a shekel for the bathroom. There is some sort of irony to paying a shekel to go to the bathroom near the River Jordan. Couldn’t they have made that free? Or, at least free with the purchase of a commemorative white robe?
Our chapel bay had been sitting in the sun all day, and its concrete was hot. I was hot. The railing was hot. As we renewed our baptismal vows, I noticed people dressed in white commemorative robes who kept wandering into our area and then immersing themselves in the river in front of us. After we said our vows, we were then directed to roll up our pant legs and amble down the ramp holding onto the iron railing, submersing ankle deep into this section of the Jordan River. We were sprinkled by the priest. And there we stood. Stoic Anglicans, while the other people enjoyed the water.
After we were done and reminded about the coffee shop, and after we had declined the commemorative photo, I held back. I was hot. So hot that I jumped into the Jordan River with my clothes on. I found myself floating next to a person in a white commemorative robe. We were two believers floating the murky waters of the river. We were two swimmers at the baptism theme park. One believer had jumped in out of curious devotion. The other jumped in because he was hot.
And there are the two sides of the Christian coin. Why do you follow Jesus? Are you curious? Curious about this faith. Curious about this message. Curious about this tradition. Willing to don a white robe and get into the water and see for yourself what this Christianity is all about? Or are you hot? Just seeking comfort from the day, comfort from the living. Cool water, a comfort in the desert, simply tired after a whirlwind life. Do you come to this faith life out of necessity? Practical measure. Are you in the true River Jordan? Or one set aside to remind you? Does it matter? Do we need Jordan River water in our baptismal fonts to make it count? Do we need to go all the way to the Holy Land to see the face of Jesus? Why do you follow Jesus? Bread of life. Why do you follow this promise that you will never be hungry? You will never be thirsty. You will always be full.
The Christian life is about following faithfully. It is about not being hungry, both physically and spiritually. It is about not being thirsty, both physically and spiritually. And while we are promised to be full, we should never be satisfied.
The call of the Christian is to mission, an unsatisfactory mission where we will always be burning to get into that river again. Only this time we take someone with us. Maybe two. Maybe three. Maybe three hundred. The point is to take someone with you. Feed someone this bread. Heal someone with this water. Remind yourself who Jesus is to you through this church we share. Float a little while in your clothes and look over at the person to next to you and be full. Be full of the Holy Spirit. Be full of the mission of the church we love. Be full of the bread of life and the water of salvation. Be full, but do not be satisfied. Take a minute to look around at what else needs to be done to proclaim the message of salvation, maybe even take a nap on the shore. Maybe even take a few weeks off. Maybe go to the Holy Land. Maybe go to Camp Allen. Maybe go to sleep. But afterwards, when you get back, full of the bread and the water, do not be satisfied, but get ready to discern the call of God in this place. Discern it, and then go do it. Christian mission mixed with a fullness that is never satisfied. Amen
You followed him over there and he fed some five thousand people in one day.
You followed him over there after he went across the sea in a boat. When you got there he told you he was the “bread of life.” Life is what you were seeking. New life. Life without disease. Then he tells you it is not this life, the life with all of the pain, that he is talking about. It is eternal life. The body perishes, he says. This age will pass away, he says. You are apart of the one who sent him, he says.
The others around you think he is crazy. He is just a man. He is Joseph’s son. How can he say these things? They walk away. You stay. Curious.
The people of St. Mark’s are a part of a religious movement that takes its roots by the Sea of Galilee in the ministry of a man named Jesus. The ministry of the parish of St. Mark’s is a direct extension of these stories in the Gospels. This ministry listens to the conversations in the letters of St. Paul and the other Epistle writers and then we look at our own current Christian community and try to discern our behavior and our mission. We are bearers of a tradition that started very simply as a man walked through the towns and proclaimed that God was doing something different. God was doing something new. Healing and feeding people so that their bodies might be strong was only half of the equation. Healing and feeding people so that their souls might be strong became a different conversation. Bread by the shore and bread for the soul become the two nourishments that raise people up. They are nourished enough to rise and follow Jesus. And they are nourished enough to be raised up with Jesus.
Healing and feeding is who we are. It is what we proclaim. It is our mission as the new generation of proclaimers. The poetry of the words in the Gospel of John pushes us to ask a question. Who is Jesus to you? Who is Jesus to us? What is Jesus calling you to do? What is Jesus calling us to do? Once you and I have that figured out, we do it. In discerning what we are to do, I bet Jesus’ calling involves healing and feeding people. I bet it involves forgiveness. I bet it involves love. But you and I live in a constant state of discernment, interrupted by moments of calm. These moments are fleeting, as the Holy Spirit never stops working, and the world never stops changing. We are always on the move. Never satisfied. Who is Jesus? What is your call? How are you living that out? These are our three fundamental questions as the people of St. Mark’s. Questions we ask ourselves all the time. We ask them in our prayers. We ask them in our vestry meetings. We ask them in our marriages. We ask them of our children. We ask them in our offices. We ask them of our church, our diocese, our faith. Who is Jesus? What is your call? How are you living that out?
Many of you know that I just returned from the Holy Land. I promise to temper my preaching from here on out to limit the anecdotes that begin, “When I was in the Holy Land.” But since I have just returned, here is an anecdote from “when I was in the Holy Land.”
In one day I went from the Church of the Beatitudes, to Capernaum and Peter’s house. Then I went to the Church of the Loaves and Fishes and a Eucharist by the Sea of Galilee. Then I had lunch. Then I went on a boat ride in the Sea of Galilee. Then I got off the boat in Tiberias and got on the bus to go to the River Jordan to renew my baptismal vows. It was suppose to be a climatic moment to a day of seeing all the places where Jesus’ earthly ministry started. It is amazing to be on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. It is amazing to look out over that water and think about how the topography has not changed all that much in two millennia.
The one down side to being on the shore of the Sea of Galilee in July is that you are on the shore, not in the water. It was hot. By the afternoon, after being on the shore, or on a boat, or is a bus, all you wanted to be was in the water. You learn to appreciate full immersion baptism after standing in the heat all day. I am sure that is how many people were converted. “Yes I will be baptized as long as I get to go under water, three times is good, anything to beat the heat.”
Do to military issues you are not able to go into the River Jordan where they believe the baptism of Jesus took place, which is further down the river near where it enters the Dead Sea, closer to Qumran. But to help out the faithful Pilgrims who come to the Holy Land to be baptized, a section of the Jordan near the Sea of Galilee has been dammed to provide enough water for full immersion. Along the banks small stadium chapels have been erected to allow groups to come and have semi-private ceremonies. A curved ramp descends from each chapel bay into the water. A railing has been added so the faithful can have something to hold on to as they enter the water. To get to that spot you have to pass through the Christian gift shop, where you can buy a commemorative white robe and some other bric-a-brac to take home with you. You can stop and get a coffee on the way to your assigned area. You can even stop, and for one shekel you can use the bathroom, or change into your commemorative white robe. I personally found the commercialism amusing, Jesus mugs, Jesus crosses, Jesus place mats, commemorative white robes. I especially liked the idea of paying a shekel for the bathroom. There is some sort of irony to paying a shekel to go to the bathroom near the River Jordan. Couldn’t they have made that free? Or, at least free with the purchase of a commemorative white robe?
Our chapel bay had been sitting in the sun all day, and its concrete was hot. I was hot. The railing was hot. As we renewed our baptismal vows, I noticed people dressed in white commemorative robes who kept wandering into our area and then immersing themselves in the river in front of us. After we said our vows, we were then directed to roll up our pant legs and amble down the ramp holding onto the iron railing, submersing ankle deep into this section of the Jordan River. We were sprinkled by the priest. And there we stood. Stoic Anglicans, while the other people enjoyed the water.
After we were done and reminded about the coffee shop, and after we had declined the commemorative photo, I held back. I was hot. So hot that I jumped into the Jordan River with my clothes on. I found myself floating next to a person in a white commemorative robe. We were two believers floating the murky waters of the river. We were two swimmers at the baptism theme park. One believer had jumped in out of curious devotion. The other jumped in because he was hot.
And there are the two sides of the Christian coin. Why do you follow Jesus? Are you curious? Curious about this faith. Curious about this message. Curious about this tradition. Willing to don a white robe and get into the water and see for yourself what this Christianity is all about? Or are you hot? Just seeking comfort from the day, comfort from the living. Cool water, a comfort in the desert, simply tired after a whirlwind life. Do you come to this faith life out of necessity? Practical measure. Are you in the true River Jordan? Or one set aside to remind you? Does it matter? Do we need Jordan River water in our baptismal fonts to make it count? Do we need to go all the way to the Holy Land to see the face of Jesus? Why do you follow Jesus? Bread of life. Why do you follow this promise that you will never be hungry? You will never be thirsty. You will always be full.
The Christian life is about following faithfully. It is about not being hungry, both physically and spiritually. It is about not being thirsty, both physically and spiritually. And while we are promised to be full, we should never be satisfied.
The call of the Christian is to mission, an unsatisfactory mission where we will always be burning to get into that river again. Only this time we take someone with us. Maybe two. Maybe three. Maybe three hundred. The point is to take someone with you. Feed someone this bread. Heal someone with this water. Remind yourself who Jesus is to you through this church we share. Float a little while in your clothes and look over at the person to next to you and be full. Be full of the Holy Spirit. Be full of the mission of the church we love. Be full of the bread of life and the water of salvation. Be full, but do not be satisfied. Take a minute to look around at what else needs to be done to proclaim the message of salvation, maybe even take a nap on the shore. Maybe even take a few weeks off. Maybe go to the Holy Land. Maybe go to Camp Allen. Maybe go to sleep. But afterwards, when you get back, full of the bread and the water, do not be satisfied, but get ready to discern the call of God in this place. Discern it, and then go do it. Christian mission mixed with a fullness that is never satisfied. Amen
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