When I read that Jesus once said, “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves,” (Luke 21:25-26) I took him literally and started looking for the signs in the sun, the moon and the stars. Because you know what? The heavens really do declare the glory of God! And I love astrobiology and planetary science. But honestly, I think Jesus was not talking about science. So what else can celestial objects tell us, and what are these signs so we can recognize them?

Sometimes I wonder if people used to be more sensitive to the signs through which the Holy Spirit communicates, but maybe we’ve grown unaccustomed to reading them. Maybe the continual bombardment of electromagnetic radiation from broadcast television, radio, satellite internet and cellular telephones has created interference that makes it hard to see signs and symbols that we humans didn’t create.

Advent is a special time to brush up on the language skills that help us to interpret the signs in the sun, the moon and the stars, not to mention the signs of distress on Earth among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. Because if we think about what kind of signs prompted Mary, Elizabeth and the still-in-utero John the Baptizer to recognize that the baby Mary carried was to be hope for all of humanity, you’ve got to think that they must have been really potent signs!

And one imagines that it was an equally special type of literacy that prompted Joseph to marry a young woman pregnant by someone else, or that threatened Herod to the extent that he was willing to kill all of the innocent babies that could possibly grow to challenge him. And what about the three wise men that set off to follow a star that would lead them to the new-born king of God’s plan for the redemption of all humanity?

Maybe these signs are common, and I wish I could read them. But I haven’t forgotten that I was off studying the stars and planets when the Holy Spirit grabbed me and said, now it’s time for you to come and serve my people. So I wonder: maybe my heart can read signs that my mind can’t interpret? What if we have to slow down the turning gears in our heads to see the signs that God places in our paths?

After all, if Jesus said, “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life,” (Luke 21:34), then maybe he was trying to tell us that things that affect the mind distract the heart from functioning so that it can’t see the language of holy signs. When we put our energy into trying to grasp incomprehensible things that cannot be understood with our minds, perhaps our hearts aren’t free to do the important work of interpreting the signs that only the heart can understand?

One of my favorite illustrations of this theory was illustrated in the 2002 science fiction thriller Signs by M. Night Shyamalan. While the film genuinely is a scary movie, with evil space aliens come to do harm to earthlings, it’s also a redemption story. The main character is a fairly broken man who has walked away from being an Episcopal priest, having been unable to resolve his grief and his anger at God over the death of his wife in a traffic accident. Now working as a farmer, Graham Hess is just trying to raise his two kids and hold it together. Completing the family is Graham’s younger brother, a minor league ball player who failed because of a propensity to “choke” under pressure.

The audience has the opportunity to eavesdrop on the cryptic last words of Graham’s wife, spoken to him as she died: “See Graham, see,” and a message for his brother, “Swing away Merrill!”

As the story plays out, Graham finds crop circles and other portents of an evil presence in his rural town, including an alien and ethereal figure hiding in his corn field. We learn that aliens with malevolent intent have appeared on the earth, and we see Merrill and Graham’s two children watching television coverage of a family video of a birthday party in Brazil where an alien figure is captured on camera, striding by in the background behind the partying.

Graham’s redemption comes in three parts. First, he visits the man who accidentally killed his wife in the auto accident, and he forgives him. The man also reveals that he has discovered the aliens do not like water, so he is heading to a lake to seek safety. As the invading aliens become a personal threat to Graham, Merrill and his young children, getting into their family home, we see Graham in absolute terror, struggling to save his family. His wife’s last words return to haunt him again, and in a flash of insight, he really does see, recognizing that glasses of water his little girl has left around the house may be their salvation. He tells Merrill to swing away with a baseball bat in the family living room, and Merrill, steps up to his most important “at bat” ever and smashes the glasses of water into the alien, killing it. That’s redemption part 2: Graham has learned to read signs with his heart, and not his head. And Redemption #3? Graham forgives God, realizing that the signs were God’s gift through his wife’s love for him and their family. Signs are spoken and heard in love. I’ll add that Graham’s act of forgiving the man who accidentally killed his wife also produced the information about how to best the aliens. Clearly forgiveness also paves the path to redemption.

Well that’s a very quick and drafty summary of Signs, the film, but it should be enough to make the point. Not everything that God has to say to us can be understood with logic. And just because God has offered us redemption in the person of Jesus Christ, it doesn’t mean that people won’t “faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world,” (V.26). What it does mean is that we can “Stand up and raise [our] heads, because our redemption is drawing near.” Not near as in soon– but near as in location: here. The kingdom of God is not out there– it is here. The signs are just like traffic signs on the road, and to see them you have to be moving, following the way of Jesus.

Hold your heads up so you can see the signs– the signs that can only be understood with your hearts.

If I were to compile a list of all of the things for which I am grateful, it would be a very long list. My life is pretty awesome, and as I contemplate that there are far fewer days before me than have already passed, I ask myself, what might I do differently to experience even more joy in the days that lie ahead?

While I’m inclined to say “nothing” because I feel so full, there is one thing: I’d worry less. After all, the Bible says about a zillion times that we should not worry, but habits form quickly, and they are so hard to break. One of the advantages of aging is that it offers the perspective of hind-sight so one can assess what worked and what didn’t. I can tell you that there has never been a single event in my life, good or bad, where worrying helped me a single bit. I can also report that there have been quite a few times where worrying actually made things worse. So when Jesus says, “I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear,” [Matt. 6:25] I know from experience that it’s as true now as when he said it. I’ll bet you know it, too. Worrying doesn’t prevent bad stuff from happening and neither does fear. So the good news is that you can let go of both.

The Holy Scriptures and life experience inform us all that neither worry nor fear are good for us, and the reason they are not useful emotions is because they cloud our judgment and prevent us from working together with the Holy Spirit to navigate the many challenges that we all face in our lives. It’s not that we should never feel concern—that’s something else. When Jesus said, “do not worry about your life,” he was saying worry would not help. He was saying, “hang on a minute—if you get your priorities right, that will help you face whatever you must face in this life.” Food and drink and clothes— of course you need them, but “strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well,” [Matt. 6:33]. The gospel message that directs us not to worry is a message that says, “do things in the right order, and the rest will more easily fall into place. Jesus was clearly telling us to be good systems engineers! Just kidding, but his advice is as good for navigating the vicissitudes of the Department of Motor Vehicles as it is for putting Thanksgiving Dinner together or for sending a spacecraft to Mars.

When you realize that our creator is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of steadfast loving kindness, then why would we worry or have fear? After all, “If God is for us, who is against us?” [Rom:31].

So what do we do to stop worrying ourselves into a long list of stress-induced illnesses? I offer the same solution that the Bible offers from the Old Testament to the New, again and again: be glad and rejoice. Be grateful. It won’t keep bad stuff from happening altogether, but gratitude will help you navigate big pot holes in the road when you encounter them, and help you recover more quickly. Gratitude changes everything.

OK, so maybe you’re thinking, ah, that’s just a bunch of biblical platitudes. She can’t possibly know what I’ve faced in MY life. Or maybe you’re from Missouri, and you’d like me to show you. OK.

Psychotherapist and author Amy Morin lists some scientifically based arguments on behalf of the beneficial effects of gratitude in a 2015 article in Psychology today. I’d like to share some of them with you. In a 2014 study published in the psychology journal Emotion, it was reported that gratitude paves the way to more and better relationships. It is also known that as people age, those who maintain a good network of relationships live longer and with better quality of life.

Gratitude is also found to improve physical health and fitness. In a 2012 study from the journal Personality and Individual Differences people who reported regularly feeling grateful had fewer aches and pains, were more compliant about preventative doctor visits, and were more motivated to exercise, which has its own benefits. A 2011 study that was published in the scientific journal Applied Psychology: Health and Well Being notes that people who keep a gratitude journal slept better and longer. Perhaps my favorite studies about gratitude show that it improves mental toughness and resilience. A 2006 study from the journal Behavior Research and Therapy showed that veterans of the Vietnam War with high levels of gratitude showed a statistically significant lower rate of post-traumatic stress disorder than veterans who did not feel they had much to feel grateful about. A 2003 study showed a similar resilience following the trauma of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center among those who recognized that they have much for which to be thankful.

I’m not going to go through examples of what worry and anxiety can do to your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health, because I don’t want you to hang on to that. Let’s just say that when I did a World Wide Web search in Google, I found over 7 million articles, 177,000 of which were scholarly publications. So back to our awesome God.

Jesus said, “I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.” Even if I hadn’t already lived a goodly number of years to know I could trust that advice on the basis of experience, why wouldn’t we listen to Jesus when he said, “your heavenly Father knows that you need these things”? It doesn’t mean sit there and do nothing to help yourselves or one another. It means go to God first. As Jesus said “Strive first for the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

Gratitude changes everything.

If someone asks, “Who are you?” Chances are good you will answer by offering your name. Or you might add, “I’m so-and-so’s cousin from West Who-ville,” describing yourself in terms of relationship to a person and a place that you presume to be known to the person who is inquiring. How you answer that question might change depending upon its context. Depending upon who is asking, you might even wonder who wants to know and why, before you provide an answer!

In my experience, the “Who are you?” question is the hardest to answer when  looking in the mirror. It’s one thing for someone else to look you in the eye after you’ve behaved unpredictably or reappeared after a long absence, saying, “Who are you?” It’s quite a different thing to ask your own self, “Who am I and why am I here?” Sometimes life throws you a big curve ball, and all of a sudden you might be forced to let go of who you’ve always thought you were, quickly redefining yourself by new circumstances. Other times, change can overtake you so slowly that you don’t notice it’s happening until you wake up one day and realize you are someone entirely different than who you were a few months, a year, a decade or perhaps even a generation ago. This has happened to me a few times, and it causes me to wonder– when did Jesus know who he was? In our culture, we tend to define one another in terms of what employment we’ve held.Did Jesus ever do that? We’re told he was a carpenter, so someone must have thought it an important detail to pass along to history. We are told the occupations of a number of biblical persons important in our faith history, soI wonder if it’s not just part of the human condition to think about who people are in terms of what people do. But Jesus was also so much more than a woodworker. At what point did he decide to let the carpentry go and hit the road preaching the Kingdom of God? Did he think of himself as someone else at that point?

Theologians have argued about when, or even ifJesus knew who he was. He did call the creator “Father” and taught his disciples to pray also addressing God that way. We all do that as well. In Jesus’ culture, it was considered presumptuous and a sacrilege to pronounce the name of God, and that’s how Israel came to use the reference “The Lord,” or sometimes just “The Name” when referring to God. And here’s Jesus calling God “Father.” That alone doesn’t seem to be sufficient evidence that Jesus knew his own identity, but look at how he responded when Pilate asked him “Are you a king?”  “For this I was born,” said Jesus. “And for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice” (John 18:37). Whoa!

Can you imagine how good it must feel to be able to say, “I was born to be this. That’s why I’m here!” But that was no ordinary guy– that wasJesus, and it makes sense that the Son of God knew who he was, whether it was a life-long knowledge or he came to it slowly. But what about the rest of us?  How do we learn why we are here and who we were born to be? 

I think there’s a relationship between who we believe Jesus to be and who we believe our own selves to be. If we believe that Jesus really was and is Christ the King, and we further believe that we are the Body of Christ on Earth, then by extension each one of us has a unique role in that Body. We may not know what that role is, but it is an essential and unique one that only one person– you– can fill. If we believe that Jesus is Christ the King; “theAlpha and the Omega,  who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty,” then that Body of Christ in which every one of us has a place is an enduring one, and we can count on Jesus’ promise that we each have a specific and important job to do in that body. If we believe the words you heard from the Revelation of John that Christ “made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his and our God and Father,” then you can know who you were born to be– once by birth in the flesh and again by the water of baptism. Or as our post communion prayer states, “that we are very members incorporate in the mystical body” of [God’s] son, the blessed company of all faithful people; and are also heirs through hope of [God’s] everlasting kingdom” (BCP p.339).

Everything we have and everything that we think we are in this world is temporary. However we define ourselves by the standards of success in this world, those criteria will ultimately cease to be ones we can meet.However important any one of may have been in the board room or the kitchen atone time, that time will pass, and some of you may be tempted to ask, “Don’t you know who I used to be?”

Who you are now in the Body of Christ will never be replaced by someone else who is faster, better or less expensive. There is only one of you. The prophet Daniel said, “to him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that ALL peoples, nations and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away.” Who you were born to be is a beloved member of that kingdom, and if you believe that Jesus is Christ the King, then you can count on his promise that you are all heirs to that kingdom. Who are you? A beloved child of God, yesterday, today and forever. Amen.

And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching (Heb. 10:25)

I wish I knew how to provoke others to love and good deeds, because if I could make it happen, I would. Who wouldn’t want to be surrounded by more patience, more kindness, more love? Why would anyone want to be surrounded by complaining, bitterness, and anxiety?

When you picture a “life of the party” person—a warm and funny person who seems to draw others to him or her like moths to a flame; do you wonder what that person is like when they are alone? Because it’s true that some people have one public persona and another private. Yet, the most attractive feature of any charismatic figure is their genuineness. That, above all else is what draws you into relationship with someone else—it’s that virtual certainty that when a truly authentic person is giving you attention, it is with his or her whole self, and you can feel the connection when you are in conversation.

I think that’s what Jesus wanted for his disciples. I think he was that kind of guy—why else would people have dropped everything to follow him? And this church idea? Its reason for being is an inheritance—the daughter of Jesus’ vision for his disciples—a group of authentic people who show up for one another day after day, in good times and in bad. Because if we don’t show up for one another when times are good, who would feel comfortable calling upon us when times are bad? So when people ask if the church is still relevant in the 21^st century, or if they ask, “Can’t I just be a good person without needing a church?” my answer is the same one: that is not the point of church. We come here to be a community of hope—a community of infinite possibility.

Hope should never be confused with desire. Desire is a wish for something, and it’s basically a passive state. Oh you might want something, so you go out and try to get it, but hope is another thing. It is seeing the possibility and then going out and making it happen. It’s active, and the Christian perspective on hope is that it is undergirded by faith. The author of Hebrews says “Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. Earlier in Hebrews (3:6), we’re told “Christ, however, was faithful over God’s house as a son, and we are his house if we hold firm the confidence and the pride that belong to hope.” So what this means is that we—the church—are God’s house, and to be faithful over it means that we firmly hold onto hope. We are the bringers of hope when we show up to one another on every occasion. How do we serve as the guardians hope if we come to church bringing our sorrows and not our joy—or if we come to the communion table for “pardon only and not for renewal,” (BCP p. 372)? The answer is, we can’t be the custodians of hope if we don’t have it ourselves, and that is why faith is so important. Faith is trust in action and it enables hope. This is precisely why the author of Hebrews asks us to consider “how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another.” We ask that question because we come to church not for our own self but for each other. Each one of us is here to reveal hope for the person beside you, because they might be struggling to see it! And that’s why we need church—not just so we can have a beautiful building in which we can take pride but so WE can collectively be God’s house—not the building. It’s great that our founders left us this beautiful building, but at some point in time, “not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down” (Mark 13:2b). That’s the nature of all creation; it is never static. But what is enduring is the Body of Christ, the awesomeness that emerges in relationship—the hope that emerges in faith. “So how do you provoke others to love and good deeds?” It’s not even a secret; it’s in the next line: “by not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another. This book is the open source code for becoming a community of love. Crack it open. And bring every gift you have and every gift you are, early and often, because YOU are God’s house, and it’s only you who can make it last.

Because we live together in community, it’s important to have a code of conduct that we all agree to follow so that we can preserve the safety and the harmony of the community. This code of conduct sets the expectations of the community for what constitutes acceptable behavior, and we call that code ethics. Ethics and morals are not the same thing, although some people use them interchangeably. Morals are internalized values whereas ethics are the externally imposed rules. Morals are the compass needle that we hope will keep our behavior pointing true north, even if the community agrees to a set of rules that we think are unjust.

When the community’s rules that we call ethics conflict with our sense of what is moral, it can be deeply disturbing to the degree of paralysis because we become uncertain about the right thing to do. And because all of us exist in more than one community grouping simultaneously, sometimes the rules for the different communities in which we exist can conflict with one another! Different families have different expectations from one another for acceptable behavior, and your family rules may be different than your school or workplace rules, and those may be different from the laws of the city and state in which you live. For a specific example, the code of conduct within the church is distinctly different from the code of conduct on the football field, even though some football players are Christian. That’s a sort of silly example, but at times I feel guilty that I love football because it is a somewhat violent sport. As much as I can’t keep from getting emotionally involved in it, I do recognize that at its heart, it’s essentially a war game, and at the end of the 4^th quarter, one team will be a victor and the other the vanquished. I want my favorite team to win and that means I have to deal with my desire for someone else’s team to lose. That makes me feel bad because wanting that win at the cost of someone else being a loser creates an ethical dilemma for me as a Christian. The code of conduct in the Body of Christ means that there are no winners and losers—we are all winners. Yet, on the football field, we want our offensive line to plow through the defense just to make a funny looking ball get ten yards further down the field. And while we don’t want to see anybody get injured, we do seem to tolerate that risk as a consequence of a game where the bigger and more beefy guys are trying to flatten their opponents. Why? My conundrum about the ethics of football conflicting with the ethical standards of a Christian is kind of an armchair philosophical exercise—one that has minimal consequence for me as a person sitting in my chair, watching the game on TV.

But there are desperately serious ethical/moral conflicts that some people have to face, and they are a matter of life and death. Such are the conflicts that a soldier faces in the theater of war. Most civilized people are taught to value life and to take care of their friends and family and our country. AND a soldier cannot always do both because he or she is faced with the uncertainty that winning may require killing and losing could mean being killed. Children and other innocent civilians may be inadvertent casualties, but failure to recognize that they have harbored a threat could mean that you or someone fighting beside you may not live another day. These are horrible choices and we ask our loved ones who serve to make them. These are the choices that tear up a person’s soul, leaving them questioning whether they can still recognize the difference between good and evil.

Those of us who have not had to wrestle with the choice will never understand the depth of its effects on the soul. We’re pretty sure we know the difference between good and evil, and right from wrong. But most of us have not been put to that test. And may we never have to be.

Fortunately not every veteran has had to experience the clash between the call of duty and the instinct to honor the Christ in all people. When someone agrees to serve, knowing they may have to make a split second decision to take a life, that person is not only offering up their own life in defense of yours, but they are also potentially offering up their sanity and their souls on behalf of yours. These veterans of war are changed forever, and while we can make the attempt to thank someone for his or her service, we can’t really understand what it is like to live in their skin.

And yes, of course there are others that put their lives on the line to keep us safe— but today we are talking about people who are willing to go far away, to experience the terror of war, traumatic injury or death and perhaps a lifetime fighting post-traumatic stress symptoms. So whether or not any given veteran has had to suffer these particular consequences of service, the point is, they were willing to do so. If you want to really thank a veteran for their service today, ask your own self what you are willing to do. We all carry the responsibility of keeping each other safe and we are to give all that we are and all that we have in that service. If you really want to thank a veteran, do everything you can to make sure they have jobs, housing, adequate healthcare and emotional and spiritual support. Carry the Veteran Crisis Line phone number in your wallet. They have been willing to offer up their own lives in the service of yours, not unlike Jesus did. And for the veterans that made it through their service without scars, thanks be to God!

May God protect all who serve and chasten us all to do right by them.

To contact the Veteran Crisis Line, callers can dial 1-800-273-8255 and select option 1 for a VA staffer. Veterans, troops or their families members can also text 838255 or visit VeteransCrisisLine.net for assistance.

“See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” –Rev. 21:3-5

And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end” (V.6a).

If the lectionary had included the second half of V.6, you would have heard, “To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.” Wow, most people think of Revelation as being the scary book of the New Testament, but what a powerful reassurance this is: “The home of God is among mortals! He will dwell with them as their God.”

The one seated on the throne is who? It’s Jesus! And he says, “See, I am making all thinks new.” And these words, we are told, “are trustworthy and true.” How amazing is that? Because some days are days in which we could really use to have all things made new. Especially when we’ve heard the 57^th nasty campaign ad on TV, or when we are trying to get a service technician for rapidly leaking hot water heater on Saturday night.

If there’s one kind of time that takes the cake for wanting things to be made new again, it’s the time we spend grieving over the death of someone we love. Young or old, expected or by sudden surprise; it’s so tough because the material separation between you and your beloved is final, there is no putting things back the way they were. There is only moving through the grief and discovering what else your life still has to offer until that grand day in which you meet again, utterly transformed in a spiritual realm that is so beyond our understanding, we can scarcely believe it exists.

And it is precisely for such a thin time as one in which we mourn that this breathtaking assurance from the Revelation of John is meant to bring comfort. It’s a no-brainer that God exists in the realm of God’s own self, and as Christians, we believe that those who have died in Christ also exist in the realm of God. However, to be reminded that God dwells with us mortals here in both sorrow and joy, making a home with us and wiping the tears from our eyes…now that brings a wholly different level of comfort to our struggles with grief. I’d like to address the issue of what happens to people who die who are not Christian. This is a very personal question for me because I spent a long time as teenager in a deep panic after the death of my great grandmother. We were very close, and when she passed, I was terrified that she would be either burning in hell or just be totally zapped from existence because she was not a Christian. It took me a long time to develop a mature understanding of who God is and what is likely to happen to people when they die. If our God is the God of steadfast love, can you imagine that anyone would be excluded in the realm of God? The question of who is a member of the Body of Christ is different, and a very important one to answer in a pluralistic world– in a world that is often not even humane. So I’d like to put this one to rest right now. Following the Way of Jesus is a roadmap for living well while we are on this side of the veil. Following the Way of Jesus if for making the Kingdom of God manifest on this world. Being a Christian is God’s way of redeeming human potential to serve as Christ’s hands and feet in the here-and-now of human existence. When we leave our bodies, we will be held in the arms of the ancestors who are gathered under the wings of The Almighty, All Loving Maker of us all. All of us! What happens in this world is a choice. My great gramma did not choose to follow Jesus because she was Jewish. But I have absolutely no doubt who my God is and that my great gramma was welcomed into the company of the Great Cloud of Witnesses, along with both the best and the worst that humanity has made of ourselves during the time we each have on God’s beautiful Earth. Once we become transformed, oh, we’ll get wisdom, and then we’ll understand the realm of God. But the gift of God Incarnate in Jesus– that is for us while we are here. That is why we are here in a church. I hope it’s not because of what you fear will happen when you die, but rather because of what you love while you live.

So what might that mean, that “death will be no more?” I don’t think it means that everyone ever born will live in the flesh for eternity. A basic understanding of ecology and the carrying capacity of the Earth would quickly make that implausible. I think God’s amazing assurance in Revelation means that death is not the final word, and it is not eternal separation from those we love. It means that there’s something else that God has in mind for us, and we are just not able to understand it on an intellectual basis while we live in our earthly flesh. So that’s where faith comes in. We are to trust that death is not to be feared but to be overcome, and we have God’s promise that we will overcome it, even though we have no clue what that will look like. And that’s why these words are so important: “Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” Those first things are the things that you are living now and they are going to pass away. And just to make sure we believe it, God says, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

So for now, here we are, and we‘re living in a world where God tells us to pay attention, “See I am making all things new,” And God is using us to do it: the Body of Christ on Earth!

 Death is not the final word and if you are willing to allow it, God will make all things new. And in due time, you will learn just how trustworthy and true these words really are,

Bartimaeus, a bind beggar and son of Timaeus knew who Jesus was and had such faith in him, that he called out, not only knowing that Jesus had the power to help him, but also knowing that Jesus was a son of David! How do you suppose he knew that?

Do you think it’s strange that Jesus responded by saying, “Call him here?” The guy was blind. I’ve always had questions about this story, and maybe it’s because the Holy Spirit is still prompting the, to teach me things from the story. So here are a couple more questions—maybe you wonder about these things as well: Marks tells us that, “Many sternly ordered him to be quiet,” so who are the many that were trying to shush Bartimaeus? Was it many of the disciples? Many of the bystanders in the large crowd? Whoever had tried to talk him down, once Jesus said, “Call him here,” they changed their tune and encouraged him to come to Jesus. How did he know precisely where to go? After all, Mark doesn’t say that anyone helped him to find his way to Jesus, but not only did he successfully go to Jesus, but also he apparently was so ready, so excited that Mark says “he sprang up and came to Jesus.” Don’t you think it’s amazing that he called Jesus “My teacher?”

The most amazing part of the story is what happens next. First Jesus tells him to go, and then he doesn’t tell Bartimaeus, “I’ve been merciful to you because you have faith,” but instead he hands Bartimaeus his own agency and tells Bartimaeus that he made himself well through his own faith. Bartimaeus possessed the power to become well, and that power is what we all have access to when we go to God with faith and determination to follow Jesus on the way.

“Bartimaeus immediately regained his sight and followed him on the way,” Mark tells us. And that was his own choice; Jesus had already given him leave to go. You see, given the choice to follow on the way of Jesus was a no-brainer, once Bartimaeus’ eyes had been opened by his own faith.

So what does it mean to be made well? It’s important to understand what makes us whole may be as much a matter of the heart as of the flesh. And some biological things reach a point that they cannot always be fixed. But that is not to say we don’t possess amazing capacities to heal our own bodies, because we do. And the role of our hearts and minds is to work in cooperation with our bodies. We are complete beings, and when we are not in harmony head, heart and flesh, it’s very difficult to reach our full potential to be whole– to be well. We can feel kicked down to the point that we lose the will to get up again. And that is when we need faith the most. So what the heck is faith? Because it may be something different than what you assume it to be. Religious institutions would have you believe that faith is belief in doctrine. And that is NOT what it is. Faith is trust or confidence in someone or something. The people who have trust and confidence in the power of God, spring up when Jesus calls, even if they can’t see where they’re going. It’s the faith itself that reveals the way. Do you see how counterintuitive that is? We plan the itinerary, make a plan and then set out, confident because we planned it out first. But it’s invoking that faith first that gets us to well in the first place. When you can summon up faith that God will help you to navigate whatever path it is you must follow, you WILL find your way there, and you will be truly well.

You may be thinking that no matter how much faith you have, God is not going to heal whatever serious illness from which you suffer. So I want to be very clear, that God never punishes us with illness or injury, nor is it God’s intention that we suffer, but rather it is God’s intention that we live fully aware of the abundance and mercy around us, just as we must also be wary of the evil and destructive elements that are also present in the environment. Being well is being confident—having faith– that there is a hard-wired source of power and peace that that you can draw upon and be made whole even if your body can’t do that for you.

There is a saying from my martial arts training that is deeply written upon my spirit. It’s a Japanese proverb, “Nana korobi ya oki,” and it means “fall down seven times, stand up eight.” Faith is the certainty that on the seventh time down there is a hand reaching out to help you up, so you can be on your way. The hand of Jesus is freely offered, and like Bartimaeus, you are not coerced to follow him once your eyes have been opened and you find yourself standing. But why wouldn’t you follow, springing to your feet when he calls?

A prophet isn’t a fortuneteller, but rather a person whose eyes have been opened to reality in ways other people may not see. The prophets can see danger ahead when others do not, and they are both brave enough to speak up in the face of injustice and compassionate enough to provide the words of assurance that keep hope alive when its light seems to be fading.

Prophecy is a gift that not everyone has, but prophets are a gift for all– they speak on behalf of God, which is a dangerous job. No wonder there are so few prophets these days, because while God’s mercy can be counted upon, our ability to be merciful is often pretty unreliable. To my reading, nowhere in the Bible is that message brought home more clearly than in Isaiah 53:4-12.

Most Christians are familiar with this passage from Isaiah because Handel drew from it in his famous oratorio, The Messiah. You have to read it with care because, like every author whose words are in our canon, Isaiah must be understood within the context of time and cultural location. It’s important to know that he lived during some pretty turbulent times when Israel was under threat from Assyria. The Assyrian king, Shalmaneser V conquered the northern kingdom of Israel by destroying its capitol, Samaria in 722 BCE. For twenty years after that, the southern kingdom of Israel, which we know as Judah, hung in there, but the Assyrians finally invaded, and Judah fell twenty years after that. Judah had made some unwise political alliances against which Isaiah warned vigorously, and these choices emboldened the subsequent Assyrian king, Sennacherib to invade Judah, and the people responded as humans often do when we are under threat– fell to their own baser and more violent instincts, essentially preying upon one another to gain whatever safety they could under the occupying Assyrians.

Isaiah’s prophecy is a wonderful example of the “both/and” nature of life in which there are both tough consequences for bad decisions AND hope to be found in the steadfast love of God. When you get a chance it is so worth reading the entire book of Isaiah, not only because of the stunning portent of what is to come with Jesus’ ministry, execution and resurrection, but also because Isaiah has so much to teach us so much about our own selves– the human condition– and the assurance of Gods loyalty if we can abide in God and keep covenant with our divine author.

Let’s focus on two take-away messages from this prophecy. First: “Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:4-5). Do you see how even back in Isaiah’s day, people blamed God for disease and affliction? “Struck down by God and afflicted.” But look how Isaiah reveals what really will happen to the servant of God in the next line: “But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.”

Over time, theologians to come to some ghastly conclusions that God punished Jesus for our sakes. We’ve used the language of sacrifice to try to understand the meaning of the cross, but why in the world would God demand a treasured son to be a sacrifice– a death offering to expiate our sins and to make us whole?

This take on the crucifixion of Jesus is precisely why it is important to understand the context from which a prophet is speaking. When you know the whole of Isaiah, you see that he prophesied repeatedly against violence. Listen to this from the very first chapter: “’What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?’ says the Lord; ‘I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more;’” –Isaiah 1:11-12

Isaiah was also the guy who said: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox… They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” – Isaiah 11:6-10.

No more predators, human or animal! We are talking non-violence here. And that is the same book that talks about the chosen servant who, “by a perversion of justice…was taken away.” It is that voice that paints a portrait of peace and hope who also warns against killing and scapegoating and sacrifice, who teaches us about the servant who will come to bear the sins of many “and make intercession for the transgressors.” – Isaiah 53:12. When we kill, when we pervert justice to our own ends, we end up destroying the very angel, or servant or prophet whom God has sent to help us.

The final point I hope you will take from this brief look at Isaiah is this: hope isn’t free any more than grace is cheap. The cost of both is our commitment to abide in God and walk away from sacrifice. In twenty-first century language, we have to stop throwing other people under the bus, however much we think it might protect us. Perhaps we’ve grown cynical in the twenty-first century and we might doubt that God is still speaking to us. But I imagine that God might want to say quite a few things to the Body of Christ today. Things like, “I don’t want empty ritual from you. The sacraments are to bring you closer to me– they don’t exist for their own sake. Don’t wound one another—rescue one another in my name. Salvation is now and forever– it’s not rescue– it’s the fulfillment of your destiny when you abide in me.” Rescue is what you do for one another, and justice is its name.”

God is not done speaking with and through us. Study the prophets, read their call stories and take note of how they responded to the challenges of their days. If we listen to God’s promise spoken through Isaiah, that “the righteous one, [God’s] servant shall make many righteous” and that Jesus’ shoulders are big enough to bear our iniquities, then we have the key to holding both the sorrows of our times and the promise of salvation in Christ Jesus now and forever.

“The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12). The author of Hebrews is not talking about the Bible here. The word of God, living and active is that very same word that was here in the beginning with God. The word through which “all things came into being.” The Gospel of John tells us “without him, not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:3-5). That light is the word of God living and active, and of course, we are talking about Jesus here.

If the word of God is living and active, why do you imagine that some people struggle to see the activity of the living word? You might reasonably ask, “Is the word in code that only some people can decipher?” Or you might ask, “Well, why would God keep secrets from us? Why would God use code?” Why indeed? Does that even sound like a God whose property it is always to have mercy? God has always been straightforward with us. It’s we humans who dissemble.

Maybe it’s easy for you to see the word living and active, but maybe not. Maybe in hard times it only seems like we can’t see it because it’s our own selves that are making the word seem dead and long inactive. Maybe the word of God is not only active but also interactive? After all, we enjoy interactive media, why wouldn’t God? The Word of God must be living and interactive. Look at how it changes everything it touches?

God interacts with all of creation…the sky and sea, the sun and moon, my awesome dog Comet… and with all of us. If God came to live among us clothed in the skin of a human being, then that word, the word that is Jesus, might not have been a word we could have understand had he not arrived as a man—as one of us. We might not have known how to interact with him. As the writer of Hebrews says, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are…” So we get Jesus, the word who was with God in the beginning, interacting with us on two levels first in the very human flesh that constituted his own body, and with other people in his own day and in our time with us. The word of God, Jesus Christ was living and interactive. So if you are willing to try out that idea and it fits, then perhaps we can ask: if we don’t see the word as living and active, is it because we are unwilling or unable to be the other half of the interaction with that word?

People and especially institutions like predictability. We like a God that we think we understand so we can please and avoid angering someone that is as powerful as our God is described to be. Our notions of who God is are often based more on the collection of stories that are two thousand years old than upon our direct experience—our interaction with God. Of course we want a dependable God—one whose property is always to have mercy and one we can love. But if the Word of God is living and active, it would be unthinkable for God not to be teaching us new things. And it would be just as unthinkable that we wouldn’t be eager and delighted to learn what God has to say to us.

These are turbulent times for many people, and one might be tempted to ask why God let’s them roll on. Why have we let them go on and on through the ages? Why do we let greed and violence, indifference and spite continue? Why does love of self so often dominate love for one another in this world?

Consider this: At the time of Jesus, the word of God was living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword. The religious authorities and local officers of the Roman Empire felt threatened by the word, so he was crucified, died and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. So where is that word, living and active and active now?

It’s right here. We are the Body of Christ now, so we are the word of God, living and active in our own day. If we don’t live and we don’t act, how will people come to know the word is still here? “…We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Because we are the word—living and active; we are the Body of Christ.

Justice is very expensive because it requires those who have resources to share them with those that don’t. And while there are saints among us, even here at Saint Alban’s, there are plenty of people out in the world who don’t want to share those resources with others in need. Not everyone recognizes that to hoard more than one needs for an imagined rainy day is a crime against humanity, but it is. It’s the worst kind of injustice, and it tears at the fabric that is supposed to be the Kingdom of God.

That’s the very injustice that ate at the soul of the wealthy young man Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone, later to be known as St. Francis of Assisi. He became so sympathetic to the plight of the poor that he renounced his wealth, his father and inheritance, living as an impoverished monastic.

The hoarding of resources that you may not even need causes terrible injustice against the people who actually produce material goods and services for people of means. And this kind of injustice has existed throughout recorded history. Our faith history is full of examples. That’s why the prophets arose to speak truth to abusive power, and to warn the powerful of the dire consequences of exploiting the poor. All of the prophets reminded Israel that their future was a function of how righteous they were, and righteousness, as we discussed last week, means acting in accord with divine or moral law. That’s what prompts us to seek justice, because abiding in love is abiding in God. And that is righteousness.

Jeremiah’s prophetic words back this up: “Did not your father eat and drink and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him. He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. Is not this to know me? says the Lord.” (Jer. 22:15-16a)

Francis understood at a deep level that justice and righteousness are inextricably linked. Everything in the universe is deeply entangled, from the material to the behavioral. As my favorite poet, Francis Thompson said:

All things by immortal power, near or far, hiddenly to each other linkèd are, that thou canst not stir a flower without troubling a star”                                      —The Mistress of Vision by Francis Thompson (1859 – 1907)

Everything you touch in the material realm propagates an effect that is felt everywhere else. The Earth and all of the other planets in their courses are affected by everything we do. It might not be over time and distance that you can observe, but what we do to one another and our planetary home matters in ways you cannot imagine.

Change is inevitable as both we and our planet co-evolve because evolution is, by nature, dynamic. But our changes don’t have to be destructive because we moved into the future thoughtlessly. We don’t aim to reduce dependence on fossil fuels because they’ll run out, or because we should be independent of foreign traders or because these fuels are too expensive to produce or to buy. We aim to reduce that dependence because their combustion has and will continue to change the chemistry of our atmosphere in such a way that temperatures will keep rising, and rain will continue to become more acidic. That has changed the way rock and soil weathers, pouring chemicals into our rivers that empty into our oceans and destroy their primary productivity.

These planetary changes are inextricably linked to the exploitation of poor and otherwise marginalized people who cannot fight back against the placement of toxic waste dumps, the abandonment of appropriate environmental safety precautions, and the deregulation of big agri-business whose primary goal is to make money off of corn by keeping people addicted to high fructose corn syrup—people of every economic stratum.

Our hunger for the latest and greatest products or the bling we expect as a token of love, has enslaved poor people, who stay poor, often working in back-breaking labor to mine or manufacture the things that people of means want to buy and the titans of industry want to sell, all so they can feel wealthy and somehow better about themselves.

It does not have to be this way, because if the people of means are willing to pay a little more for products and services and the titans of industry and agriculture are willing accept a little lower and fairer prophet, then the people at the bottom of the economic ladder can have a prayer of escaping the crushing weight of supporting the entire system that sits on their backs.

If we can really see the “Woe [that visits] … him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice; who makes his neighbors work for nothing, and does not give them their wages;” then we will understand what Jeremiah meant with his prophecy. When we really know, like Francis Thompson knew how we “canst not stir a flower

Without troubling a star,” on that day we can come to God in prayer as Saint Francis did, recognizing the relationship between righteousness, God’s amazing creation, and justice for all our brothers and sisters:

Praised be You my Lord through our Sister, Mother Earth who sustains and governs us, producing varied fruits with colored flowers and herbs.

Praise be You my Lord through those who grant pardon for love of You and bear sickness and trial

Blessed are those who endure in peace, By You Most High, they will be crowned. No second death can do them harm. Praise and bless my Lord and give Him thanks, And serve Him with great humility.                                          — Canticle of St. Francis