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Current Sermons Archived Sermons "Do You Hear What I Hear?" January 15, 2006 An Incomplete Feast December 25, 2005 The Third Gift December 24, 2005 Nothing will be impossible with God December 18, 2005 Redeeming Holiday Cheer December 11, 2005 Comfort, comfort my people … December 4, 2005 Advent begins in the dark… November 27, 2005 Thanksgiving Day November 24, 2005 It's All About Respect November 20, 2005 The world is a better place because ... November 13, 2005 Holy Baptism and Festal Eucharist November 6, 2005 Promise and Presence October 30, 2005 This is Only A Test October 23, 2005 Made in the Image of God October 16, 2005 Finding Our Way October 9, 2005 Our Lives Are Based On A True Story October 2, 2005 It Is God Working In You September 23, 2005 Whatever Happened to our Security? September 11, 2005 Put on the Armor of Light September 4, 2005 Giftedness and Identity August 21, 2005 What about Respect? August 14, 2005 Dean Lane's Final Sermon July 31, 2005		Sermon Our lives are based on a true story Pentecost 20, Proper 22A Philippians 3:4b-14; Matthew 21:33-46 Cathedral Church of the Nativity October 2, 2005 Bill Lewellis Transformed in Christ Jesus A conclusion, Mark Twain is said to have said, is the place where someone got tired of thinking. Once upon a time… once upon a long time… I was a Roman Catholic seminarian of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Upon graduation from college seminary, I was given a fellowship to spend four years studying theology in Rome. In 1960, a naïve young man of 23 arrived in Rome. I sat in the lecture hall of a German Jesuit professor. It was moral theology, but far from what I was expecting. I was expecting to study the law… God’s law, church law, case studies, morality and legality… answers for every question. The Roman Catholic bishop on whose staff I served later used to speak, somewhat tongue in cheek, of “the Catholic’s ready answer.” I was primed for answers. Clear, sure, ready answers. Actually, I had begun collecting answers during college… on 3x5 index cards. On an upper corner of each card, I wrote topical words and phrases… representing things for which I thought people wanted answers. From my reading during college seminary days, I had marked many cards… with pearls… ready answers for life, for my priestly ministry. Only once did I question this system… when a 3x5 index card didn’t seem do it. I needed an upgrade… so I turned to… 5x7 cards. It’s not easy to abandon linear thinking. Armed with 5x7 index cards from America, I was ready for the clear answers of moral theology in Rome... ready for the law. During the first few weeks of class, however, Father Joseph Fuchs read and commented on the writings of St. Paul. Hello? Is this the moral theology class? There’s someone here reading the bible. So beyond my expectations, Joseph Fuchs journeyed through the letters of St. Paul, especially through those parts where Paul says we have been changed, transformed, reborn in Christ. In that transformation, he said, many times, we discover the defining moment and possibility for Christian living: the answer to “What must I do?” is contained in the question, “Who am I?” The Christian moral imperative is rooted not in law or in linear logic but in the person I have become in Christ Jesus. In his letters, Paul generally follows “You are a new creation” with “Therefore, be (who you are)!” Let the mystery unfold. Let the secret be told… be reconciled… be glad… be thankful… be compassionate… be who you are… be that new creation in Christ. Father Fuchs called this Paul’s Indicative-Imperative: You are a new creation in Christ. In Christ, you are raised. (Indicative) Therefore, be…(Imperative). Because we Christians are called to the impossible, to a life where the impossible becomes mandatory, it’s crucial that we acknowledge the priority of the Indicative. “Christ Jesus has made me his own,” Paul writes to the Philippians in the reading we heard earlier. The priority of the indicative suggests why prayer and worship come before everything else in our lives. For it is in the joy and wonder of mystery and sacrament – in our common celebration of Eucharist – where we gratefully remember that we have been transformed in Christ. In the Eucharist we are about to celebrate, we discover, stumble upon, get enveloped by, allow ourselves to be immersed in the mystery we are meant somehow to be… and to tell. I eventually trashed my index cards. Parables and Images I trust you’ve heard today’s parable of the vineyard before. I find it puzzling. That’s probably good. Parables don’t generally provide plain teaching. They are told to challenge those who hear them. The challenge will be different for 21st-century Christians than it was for first-century Jews. It will be different for members of the Cathedral Church of the Nativity than for Christians in Kajo Keji or for Christians gathering today in churches on the Gulf Coast. God’s word is a living word. If we never look at a parable from a different angle, however, it will die. However it may have been heard in the first century, this parable will die in our day if we presume that the landowner stands for a vengeful God who took the kingdom from the Jews and gave it to us. We do better to ask where our vineyard is. Where have we been called to produce the fruit of the kingdom? Who are we in this parable? I’ve wondered at times why parables were the central form of Jesus’ teaching. Why not just have plain teaching, marching orders from God? Actually, we do have plain teaching… elsewhere. The strong verbs of God’s word are the plain teaching of the bible. Repent, be, do, give, forgive, feed, clothe, go, sow, pray, judge not, fear not. Love God with all your heart. Love your neighbor as yourself. Love your enemies. Be reconciled. Take up your cross. Follow me. Find your life by losing it for my sake. Make disciples. That’s the plain teaching of the bible… plain, hard teaching. Then we have the promises of the baptismal covenant when we were sealed and marked as Christ’s own forever… pages 304-5 in the Book of Common Prayer. Mark those pages well. Ponder the promises. I’ve begun to make them part of my daily prayer. Why is it, then, considering that we have such plain teaching, that Jesus would teach with parables that mess with our heads? Why is the bible filled with puzzling parables and images? The Good Samaritan, the Forgiving Father, Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, an innocent man on a cross… and those many puzzling parables. I wonder. Might it be because parables and images invite us into the mystery of God’s mercy and compassion? Don’t they challenge us to imagine what is beyond ordinary imagination? I’ve been thinking during this last quarter of my life that the hardest thing to accept about God’s relationship with us is not any of the marching orders, not the strong verbs, not the gospel imperatives God has given us in Jesus. The hardest thing to accept about God’s relationship with us is that God loves us unconditionally. It is so hard to imagine. We hesitate to trust God in that regard. We hesitate to say that’s what we believe when we say we believe in God. Might it be that we don’t want unconditional love. The lingering grip the devil has on us – from which we need salvation – has not to do with any doubts we may have about the Trinity or the Incarnation or the indwelling of the Holy Spirit… nor with any sins we have committed through our refusal to make those strong verbs of God part of our lives. The devil’s last hope is that shred of pride that suggests we have done or can do something to earn God’s love – and so should others. We don’t want God to love us unconditionally. For, if God does, then we know that is how we will need to relate to others… loving one another as God has loved us. Our lives are based on a true story that cannot be captured on an index card. Not in orthodoxies. Not in human certainties. Not in laws. Not in sermons. We may discover a clue within a puzzling parable or an image of God who loves us beyond worth and measure, beyond understanding, beyond whatever we can imagine. The God who made us in his own image and likeness… and transformed us in Christ Jesus. Amen.