The Sunday after All Saints’ Day Sunday, Nov 7 2010

The Sunday after All Saints’ Day (RCL Proper C27)
Haggai 1:15b-2:9; Psalm 145:1-5, 17-21; 2Thess 2:1-5, 13-17; St. Luke 20:27-38.
© 2010 Rev. Matthew L. Whitehead

On our American calendar, there are several significant dates that fall in the last week of October and the first week of November. If we were to take a poll, no doubt people would list Halloween and Election Day, and some would observe that Veterans’ Day is coming up, too. Some might even mention Reformation Day, a celebration of Martin Luther kicking off the Protestant Reformation in Europe. Yet, I doubt that very many would mention the important date on the Church’s calendar: November first is All Saints’ Day.

All Saints’ Day is important to the Church. It is reckoned as one of the holy days of obligation, when we ought to be in Church. It is one of few holy days that we are allowed to move on the calendar so that we can celebrate it on Sunday.

To understand the significance of All Saints’ Day, we must first answer the question: ‘What is a saint?’ Are saints a class of super-Christians, who live among us as examples of true piety? Turn on any religious television program and you are bound to see somebody setting themselves up as just such an example. Certainly there have been some examples of true piety – people like Billy Graham and Mother Theresa come to mind immediately. Nevertheless, sainthood is not meant to be some kind of spiritual caste system that separates the über-holy from the not-so-holy. We can talk about Saints in two different ways. In the most specific sense, saints are deceased Christians whose intercessions have proven effective for the living.1 In the most general sense, all Christians, whether dead or alive, are counted as saints, having been made holy by virtue of Christ. Still, when we refer to a Saint, we usually mean someone who is no longer living.

Sainthood is something that operates outside of our definition of dead and alive; Sainthood is something that bridges the divide of death, and unites God’s Church across space and time. The Church is about two-thousand years old, which means there have been many generations of Christians, and most of them are now dead. And yet, through this concept of Sainthood, we celebrate that even those who die are never too far removed from us. This sentiment underlies all of the Scripture lessons we read today:

The Psalm proclaimed that “One generation shall laud [God’s] works to another [generation]”.2 And when we celebrate the lives of the saints we are letting them do just that – we are listening to the testimony of those older generations in Christ.

But Sainthood goes beyond simply hearing. In our New Testament lesson, from Paul’s letter to the Christians at Thessalonica, he told them to “hold fast to the traditions that [they] were taught” by the apostles.3 For hundreds of years the Church has honored tradition because we understand that Christian traditions have been tried and proven by many generations of Christians before us. One author put it this way: “Tradition means giving votes to… our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant [number] of those who merely happen to be walking about.”4

Whether we celebrate their memory or keep the traditions they have passed on to us, the Saints would still be limited to the past. But our understanding of Sainthood goes beyond history. Jesus himself made this point in our Gospel lesson: To acknowledge God as ‘the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob’ is to implicitly acknowledge that the Saints continue after death, for “he is not God of the dead, but of the living; [and] to him all of them are alive”.5

Death separates people from one another, and that is the great tragedy of it; But death cannot separate people from God, and that is the great hope of the Gospel! The Bible does not answer all of our questions about life after death, but we are told that we, the living, are surrounded by ‘a great cloud of witnesses’, which are those saints who have died.6 So, even though they have died and gone from this world, they have not died to God, and they are not gone from us entirely. When we gather in the Church to worship Christ and to be fed by his eucharist, we understand that the countless number of Saints in glory are also gathered before him to worship him and receive his grace.

It is a pity that All Saints’ Day has faded from our calendar, lost between trick-or-treating and watching poll returns. A proper celebration of All Saints’ Day would steer us away from Halloween’s candy binge, and direct us to join the Saints in receiving the eucharist; A proper celebration of All Saints’ Day would steer us away from the anxiety of election returns, and direct us to join the Saints in worshiping Christ the King, who offers eternal hope, who changes our souls. “The Feast of All Saints’ drives home the point [that] we have evidence of our hope in the continuing lives of the saints who have gone on before [us]. We acknowledge the memory and impact of those heroes… of the faith who continue to live, not only [in our memories, but who live in God’s presence]. We hold fast to the reality that the path to Heaven has been well-established by our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ and has been followed by countless others – known and unknown [to us] – [the saints beckon us to follow them] to the everlasting kingdom of the Almighty.”7

1 See “Catechism of the Catholic Church”, paragraphs 828, 946-62, 2683-84.
2 Ps 145:4.
3 2Thess 2:15.
4 Chesterton, GK. “Orthodoxy” Accessed electronically here. The original stated “oligarchy”, which was replaced by “number” for sake of vocabulary.
5 Lk 20:37-38.
6 Heb 11-12.
7 Sermon by the Rev. Lawrence Womack, from “Sermons that Work”. Accessed electronically here.

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Upon Assuming Responsibilities at Old Post Chapel (Fort Sill) Sunday, Oct 24 2010

Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost +22 (RCL Proper 24C)
St. Luke 18:9-14
© 2010 Rev. Matthew L. Whitehead

I must admit that when I received my orders for Fort Sill, Oklahoma my first thought was, “Fort What, Where?” I am a Southern boy, born and raised, and moving here marks the first time I have ever had to move beyond the borders of my beloved ‘Dixie-land’. Needless to say, my first reaction was not elation. But as I began to research this old frontier post, my disappointment gave way to excitement! Where would my family and I live? In a neighborhood on post with plenty of playgrounds, and lots of other families like ours; On the edge of the prairie, with a world-class wildlife preserve nearby. Where would I work? Field artillery! My battalion, the 3-13th Red Dragons, launches rockets; like any other man in the world, rockets and explosions are exciting to me! Then came the question, Where would we worship? I learned of an Episcopal worship service that met in a beautiful historic chapel! I visited here, and I fell in love with this place – this sacred place where God’s praise has been constantly proclaimed from the Prayer Book since about 1870!1 While I was at the Chaplain School this summer I met Chaplain Barbee, who told me many good things about the people of this worship service. My family and I have been attending here since we arrived on post, and we have found all of those good things to be true! I am delighted today to begin my duties as a priest in this congregation.

I thought the Gospel lesson to be particularly appropriate for this occasion. The way people handle religion has not always been in the most helpful ways. Today’s Gospel lesson is a parable which addresses that problem as it was experienced in the days of Jesus, and it can help guide us as we seek to be faithful Christians in our own day. A Pharisee and a Tax-collector each went to the Temple to pray; One left having justified himself, the other left justified by God.

Pharisees were people who were fanatical about their religion and holiness. In our parable, one particular Pharisee went into the Temple, found a place by himself, and began to pray. Nothing about this scene would have been shocking to anybody who saw him. They knew him to be a Pharisee, probably because of some special clothing he wore, and they expected to see him praying in the Temple. He was standing by himself – perhaps in a place of honor – which was also expected, not only because the Pharisees were highly respected, but also because Pharisees feared that coming into contact with other people might make them ritually unclean. When he prayed, he gave thanks that he was not like evil people, and he gave thanks for the good works he did; Though we might think that him to be arrogant, he was not entirely wrong in either point.

It was customary in Biblical times for someone to give thanks that they were not like the evil people around them;2 And when we see evil people it is a good thing to remind ourselves that “There, but by the grace of God, go I.”3 But our Pharisee was not acknowledging how God had kept him from sin, he was comparing himself to others.4 Holiness is not measured against other people, it is measured against God’s holiness; We are not holy simply because other people are more sinful than we are; We are made holy by God’s work within us.

In his prayer, the Pharisee reminded God about his rigorous spiritual discipline: He fasted twice a week, far more than was required by religious law;5 He gave away ten percent of all his income, above and beyond what was required.6 Fasting and charity are both good and necessary spiritual disciplines, so what could be wrong with the Pharisee’s prayer? He prays as if those acts will justify him before God. But spiritual disciplines are not done to earn God’s grace, they are done in response to God’s grace. We fast for a period of time to show our sorrow for our sins, and to thank God for the forgiveness that comes from Jesus Christ; We tithe our money to acknowledge that everything we have belongs to God.

The Pharisee had put the religious cart before the horse. He was trying to work his way to God by being better than others, and by doing more than others. His own efforts proved inadequate, and our Lord says that he left the Temple without the justification he so desperately sought; because of his arrogant pride in this life, he would be humbled in the next.

The tax-collector, on the other hand, did everything right. He was painfully aware of his own sinfulness: He stood “far off”, not in a place of honor, but far away from the centermost Holy Place in the Temple. He was so ashamed and sorrowful that he “[dared not] even look” toward heaven.7 He beat his chest – a gesture of penitence. And when he prayed he neither compared himself to others, nor bragged about his own works. His prayer, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” shows that he knew himself to be a sinner, and knew God to be the merciful savior of sinners. For his humility he would receive everlasting salvation.

The Kingdom of God often works the opposite of how we think it should: “the last shall be first, and the first [shall be] last”8; If you want to be great you must become a servant9; And, as we read today, “everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled, but he who humbles himself shall be exalted.”10 Those who think themselves worthy of God will find out that they are not worthy, and those who humble themselves before God will receive His mercy.

And here is where the parable meets us in this sanctuary this morning. Like the Pharisee and Tax collector, we come into this sacred place to pray; Like them we will leave this place either justified or not. The obvious question before each of us is, Which one will you pray like?

Like the Pharisee, each of us could probably find plenty of things to set ourselves apart from others and to puff up our own egos.11 We could pride ourselves in our particular style of worship; But we should remember that God does not love us more because we have a Prayer Book. We could pride ourselves in our devotional lives, looking down on our friends who might not be as devout as ourselves; But we know that God will not judge us in comparison to them. We could go on and on, but we have learned today that if we try to convince God that we are good enough for Him, or that we are at least better for Him than others, then we will not find the mercy that we so desperately need.

I should hope that we would each pray like the Tax-collector; That we would each have such an awareness of our own unworthiness before God, that we do not even bother thinking about someone else’s unworthiness; That we would be so mindful of confessing our own sins, that we do not pause to think of someone else’s. This is how the words of our worship service direct us to pray: We gather and we sing together, we confess our common faith, we receive the Eucharist together, but before all of that we confess our sins together.

I am happy to be a part of this congregation, and I look forward to worshiping together – learning to pray more like Tax-collectors and less like Pharisees. We will not only honor God by our worship, we will receive His mercy in our humility.

1 Beebe, Milton O. “The Old Post Chapel at Fort Sill.” The Field Artillery Journal; 659.
2 Friedrichsen, Timothy A. “The Temple, a Pharisee, a Tax Collector, and the Kingdom of God: Rereading a Jesus Parable (Luke 18:10-14a).” Journal of Biblical Literature 124/1 (2005); 93-94.
3 Attributed to “the English Martyr, John Bradford (1510-1555), who” would express this sentiment “upon seeing criminals led to execution”; see footnote in Friedrichsen, 94.
4 Evidenced most clearly in his expression “or even like this tax collector”.
5 Lev 16:29-34; 23:27-32; Num 29:7-11. Friedrichsen, 110.
6 Friedrichsen, 110-11.
7 Friedrichsen, 112-13.
8 Mt 19:3-; 10:16; Mk 10:31; Lk 13:30.
9 Mt 20;27; 23:11; Mk 9:35; 10:44.
10 Lk 18:14; See also Mt 23:12 Lk 14:11.
11 Lindemann, Fred H. Trinity Season, First Half. Vol. III. The Sermon and the Propers. St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1959; 181.

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Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost Sunday, Aug 8 2010

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost (RCL Proper C14)
Gen. 15:1-6; Heb. 11:1-16; Lk. 12:32-40
© 2010 Rev. Matthew L. Whitehead

We live in a world saturated with advertising and marketing, so us common people have become accustomed to being on the bad end of broken promises. Sometimes it is very serious, like a bank that hooks you with its reputation for using money wisely, but then your banker spends your money to buy his mansion! Other times it can be amusing, like the As-Seen-on-TV infomercials for things like the Sham-Wow and the Snuggli. When my wife and I were first married, we bought those Miracle Blade knives from Chef Tony. Now, Chef Tony promised us that his knives would never lose their sharp edge. And even though we knew that promise was too good to be true, we were suckered anyway. The knives were sharp at first, but the blades quickly dulled, and we have been unable to cut anything since then. Now we have to bludgeon our food until it is in pieces about the right size!

It is easy to pick on the advertising industry about their broken promises, but I would bet that each one of us can think of times when a close friend or a family member broke a promise to us. Perhaps we have even felt as if God has broken promises to us.

In the Scripture Lessons for today we see God making and keeping His promises to Abraham, although not in the way Abraham was expecting; Just as He kept His promise to Abraham, God will keep His promises to us – to save us from our own sinfulness, and to restore us to everlasting fellowship with Him.

In today’s Old Testament Lesson God promised that Abraham would have many descendants. You must understand that family was everything in the ancient world; To have many children was understood as a sign of God’s blessing, and to have no children was understood as a curse. Abraham and his wife, Sarah, had grown very old; They had no children from their marriage, and now they were both beyond child-bearing age. Abraham had left everything to follow God, but it seemed that God was cursing him! Now God shows up and tells Abraham that his descendants will outnumber the stars. Put yourself in Abraham’s shoes. If I were him, I think I would have been more than a little bit skeptical – It is an impossible promise!

But isn’t that how God works? He does not promise us things that are easy, He promises us the impossible! To the childless Abraham it was a promise that his family would outnumber the stars; To Joshua it was a promise of victory over an entrenched enemy; To David it was a promise of an everlasting kingdom1; To all Christians – to you and me – it is a promise that our sins will be forgiven, and a promise of everlasting fellowship with God. All of these things are impossible apart from God’s work.

In the New Testament Lesson, Saint Paul recalled Abraham’s faith, how Abraham trusted God’s promise for many descendants. Abraham lived about two-thousand years before Paul – they were about as far apart in time, as we are from Jesus. The Old Testament tells the story of how, in that time, Abraham’s descendants grew into a nation of millions of people.2 God’s promise was kept, but Abraham never never lived to see it; when he died he knew only his son, Isaac, and maybe his two grandsons, Jacob and Esau – that is only three; a far cry from ‘as numerous as the stars in heaven’.3 God’s promise to Abraham was fulfilled, but it was not in a way that Abraham could ever have appreciated in this life. There is a good lesson here for us. We tend to think that God has to make good on all of His promises to us right now. Abraham’s example shows us that God’s promises are fulfilled in His timing and in His way.

But there was another, more significant promise that God made to Abraham about his descendants; He said to Abraham “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed”; Saint Paul taught us that the ‘seed’ refers specifically to Jesus Christ, and that by faith in Christ we become the spiritual children of Abraham.4 This, by the way, is why we can sing that children’s song “Father Abraham had many sons…” You know it… “I am one of them and so are you…” I bet you know the motions, too: Right arm, left arm; Right foot, left foot; Chin up, chin down… As silly as it is, that song is based on the Bible teaching that all of God’s children have become Abraham’s children, not through blood-lines, but by faith in Jesus Christ. Abraham’s family has grown in ways that he never could have imagined!

The promise that God made to Abraham was not about blessing only Abraham, it was about blessing all of Humanity. Likewise, God’s promises to us are not just for our own benefit, but for the benefit of all His people. God has blessed each one of us with unique gifts and abilities; We should not be using those gifts just for ourselves, we should be using them to bless other people, and to bring them to God. This is especially important when you are struggling. God has placed people in your life who have the ability to help you make it through that struggle – it might be a friend or family member, or someone in your unit; maybe even a sergeant or an officer, as much as you might not want to believe that! As a chaplain, let me tell you that we are here for you; helping soldiers is our bread and butter – it is what we love to do. When you are struggling, let the people around you use the gifts God has given them to help you. And make sure that you are using the gifts God has given you to minister to those in need around you. The gifts that God promises to each one us are for the benefit of all His people.

Salvation is the greatest promise of all. But, Salvation is not promised to us just so we can feel good about our own eternal security, it has been promised so that God might enjoy life with us in His Kingdom. This brings us to the Gospel Lesson for today. It was not just a nice story about servants waiting for their master to return, it was a parable; We are are those servants in the parable, and we are waiting for our master, Jesus Christ, to return to us just as he promised.

Abraham had to to show his trust in God’s promises by following through with actions. We have been promised that Jesus will return and establish his Kingdom forever, and we have to show our trust in that promise by following through with actions. In the Army we do a lot of training, all in the name of readiness; But, what kind of readiness training do we do for God’s Kingdom? Worship is readiness training for God’s Kingdom – there is no better way to prepare ourselves for the promised return of Christ than to pattern our lives around the worship service. We read and study Scripture because it is the word of our Lord, Jesus Christ; We confess our sins so that we might remain in right standing before our Lord; We pray, giving thanks for the good things and asking for our Lord’s help with the bad; We feast with our Lord in Holy Communion, which is a proclamation that we trust him to return in glory just as he promised5. Everything we do in worship is an action that demonstrates our trust in God’s promises.

{Conclusion} Today’s Scripture Lessons teach us about trusting in God’s promises. We read from the Old Testament about Abraham, who trusted God’s promise against all the odds. We read from the New Testament how the promise God made to Abraham was kept. We read from the Gospel that Jesus Christ has promised to return and establish his Kingdom forever, and we now proclaim through our worship that we believe this promise will be kept. As our worship continues this morning, think about how you approach God. Do you demand something from Him, or do you wait patiently for His blessings, like Abraham did? Are you here, just going through the motions of worship, or do you worship to demonstrate before God that you trust and love Him? Before you leave chapel this morning, think of one simple way you can show your trust in God’s promises, and try to do that before the week is over.

1 Josh 6; 1Sam 16:1-13; 2Sam 7.
2 Gen 46:1-27; Num 1; 2Kings 24:1-9.
3 I have deliberately chosen to avoid the issue of Ishmael, as it would distract from the focus of the sermon.
4 Gen 22:18; Gal 3:16, 29.
5 1Cor 11:26.

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