Sermon

We shall fear no longer sin, death, or the stock market.

This is my sermon for this Easter morning.

Easter Sunday, Year B

Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Mark 16:1-8

We shall fear no longer sin, death, or the stock market.

Alleluia Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
This morning is a time to rejoice, a time of relief and joy. It feels as if even the weather has cooperated. Maundy Thursday and Good Friday were gray and cold, a pall upon the land befitting a time of mourning. And yet this morning the sun breaks through bright and clear. All creation seems to break forth in Hosannas!

And so this morning we rejoice in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ and we, like Mary and Mary, now should go forth and declare that Christ is risen! Isn’t that just what they did, go and tell the others that Jesus had been raised from the dead? No, not exactly.

So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. – Mark 16:8

Not really the ending you probably expected from this morning’s Gospel reading. They did not rejoice or thank the Lord, they didn’t even follow the directions of the angel but instead were scared out of their wits.

But who can really blame them? It is all too easy for us to imagine the grief and the anguish they had gone through. They had seen their friend and teacher brutally beaten and killed. Such a taking of life is always a tragedy, but they had hoped and expected so much from Jesus and it was all destroyed in a matter of hours, his life and their hopes and dreams. So when they arrive at the tomb they find it impossible to believe that Jesus has risen. How could it possibly be true? They want to believe and yet…they cannot. So they flee the tomb in terror, afraid to tell anyone of Jesus’ resurrection.

This year has been a time of great mourning and suffering for all of us. We have lost those we love dearly, have seen friends and family become seriously ill, and all of us have been effected by the economic crisis. Some of our hardships we brought upon ourselves, some are the result of the greed of others, all of it is because we live in a sinful and broken world. Like Mary and Mary we mourn those who are no longer with us and we fear our own future. This grief and fear can keep us from living, it can keep us from accepting and recognizing that the resurrection of Jesus changes everything, it changes sin, death… and even how the stock market should affect us.

The resurrection of Jesus changes everything because it affirms that he is the Christ, the Messiah sent from God to bring forgiveness of our sins and to heal this broken world. His resurrection is the triumph of life over death. Later in the same chapter of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians that was read this morning he declares

“Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Cor. 15.54-56)

The resurrection is our victory over death. Oh yes, someday these perishable bodies will crumble and fall. All too often we see the frailty of these bodies and weep, as people die far too young, as they suffer with disease, hunger, and war. And if this world is all that we have, then we would, we should despair. But this world is not the end and this body shall someday be replaced, “for this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality” (1 Cor. 15.53). The resurrection of Jesus is but the first, just as he has overcome death so shall we for we have died with Christ and so shall we live in Christ.

The resurrection of Jesus is our resurrection and that means that everything has changed for us as well. We mark that transformation in each of our lives through baptism, the symbol given by God of our own death and rebirth in Christ. This morning we will welcome a new child into the household of faith and renew our own baptismal vows. Notice how the imagery and our liturgy speak of our rebirth in Christ. This is the power of the resurrection in our own lives. Because Christ lived as an example for us and died to take away our sins now we are able to live a new, transformed life in him through his resurrection.
In Paul’s letter to the Romans he writes

Rom. 6:3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

This morning we celebrate not only the resurrection of Jesus but our own resurrection as well. If this new year is like all that have passed there will still be wars and poverty, disease and death, suffering and sorrow. But because of the resurrection of Jesus we know that none of this is the end, while these perishable bodies will pass away we will ultimately be raised eternal life with Christ. And we know that there is new life for us in Christ yet while we continue to live in this world for through baptism we have been born again and we are already being transformed by the Holy Spirit. Death has no sting, the stock market cannot rule our lives, illness may hinder us and death separate us from loved ones, but only for a time. In the words of the apostle Paul,

8 If we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Amen.

Alleluia Christ is risen!

Apr 11th, 2009

by Christian Brady.

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Happy Easter to all. I have not finished this year’s sermon, but someone just commented on last year’s. Perhaps others would like to read it again as well. Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us!

A new twist(ing) of John 8

Mar 29th, 2009

by Christian Brady.

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I was getting ready for church this morning and had the radio tuned to our local NPR. Unfortunately this is not a very good radio so every time I move over to the closet the radio starts picking up a Christian station. This morning the preacher (I have no idea who it was, suggestions are welcome!) was taking as his text the (in)famous passage from John 8. You know the one, where the woman is caught in adultery and Jesus stoops writes in the dirt (“the names of all those who had committed adulterer, perhaps” said the preacher) and so on. Here, I should just quote the salient part.

John 8:3 The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, 4 they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. 5 Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

Given all that follows I am morbidly curious to know what this preacher (hardly Qoheleth!) said, if anything, about the fact that this passage is a very late addition and of dubious origin. But to get to the portion that I heard clearly, so clearly, in fact, that it took me another 3 minutes to pick out a tie I was so stunned by the comments.(Paraphrasing, but I promise you the substance is as spoken.)

Jesus, who knew the Law so well since he was the one who had given it to Moses was not saying that someone caught in adultery should not be punished and stoned. Jesus is also not saying that anyone who is without any sin should cast the first stone, but merely that those who had not committed this sin, the sin of adultery, may step forward and stone the woman. Assuming, that is, that witness were brought forward, as required by the Law.

Wow. Look at that again. Jesus wasn’t saying that those without any sin should cast the first stone (in which case, of course, no one could cast said stone since all have sinned), but only those who had not committed this particular sin. I assume this preacher’s logic went on to assert that all those present had at some point enjoyed this sin since they all walked away, but I had chosen to eschew a tie all together and headed out to church at that point. But tell me, who comes up with stuff like this?

If I am generous I can only assume that the preacher was trying to push back against those who use this passage (as I have often heard it in my own church) to argue that we should not tell anyone that anything is a sin since, after all, we have all sinned and therefore should “cast no [metaphorical] stones.” (Matt. 7:1 is of course often brought in as well.) I am certainly sympathetic to such an effort, but this is just a remarkable twisting of the passage.

I cannot be sure, without hear the full sermon, but he seems to have ignored the context (“They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him”) and the fact that there is a fundamental shift in concepts of forgiveness that Jesus brings to the scene. Sure, developing an hermeneutic that takes in both the continuity of the Law and the transformation that comes from Jesus’ sacrifice “offered once, for all” is difficult, but just because it is hard does not excuse us from the work.

*shakes head* I would love to hear the full sermon. If anyone has a clue as to who it was, let me know. I think it was on WGRC but their program list only shows contemporary worship music from 9 – noon.

Has anyone heard a crazier sermon lately? Do tell!

Christmas Sermon – “From the creche we see the cross.”

Jan 5th, 2009

by Christian Brady.

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With the hectic schedule of the holiday I neglected to post my sermon for 3 Advent and Christmas Day. (Due to unforseen circumstances I ended up doing a LOT of services, roughly 1+ a week, that I had not expected. Thus the last two weeks were pretty crazy.) I will not post the 3 Advent sermon, unless asked, but here is my sermon for Christmas 2008. After all, the Christmas season is not over yet! Tomorrow is Epiphany!

Christmas Day (Service on Christmas Eve)

Selection I, RCL, All Years

Isaiah 9:2-7
Titus 2:11-14
Luke 2:1-14(15-20)
Psalm 96

“To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”

I wish you all a very happy and blessed Christmas! The weather today is ugly and cold, but within these walls there is light and warmth. At long last our period of waiting is over! Over this Advent season we have contemplated Christ’s coming again even as we have prepared to remember his first arrival as a small child. Even in these difficult economic times this season fills our lives with business and things. But tonight we take pause and worship God born as a child. This is, after all, Christ’s mass.

It is for many good reasons that Christmas is perhaps the best known of Christian festivals. That may be primarily due to the practice of giving and getting gifts, Christmas is now a major festival in China and its popularity is driven purely by commerce, but all the same Christmas is so familiar that we often forget that at its heart lies perhaps the most challenging and fundamental of Christian beliefs. The birth of Jesus is nothing less than the incarnation of God. This baby Jesus is the “indwelling” of God in the flesh. He is “Emmanuel,” God with us.

The Gospel of John opens with this simple and yet revolutionary assertion about the person and identity of Jesus.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Jesus is God. I spoke of this two Sundays ago and commented then that this is a mystery. It is a mystery in the sense not that it is a problem to be solved, like a murder mystery, but rather it is a truth that is only known through revelation. That we do not fully understand how this happens does not mean that we cannot appreciate and contemplate what the humanity of Jesus means for us tonight.

God becoming human is not just a theological concept for contemplation and debate, the incarnation is about God expressing his will directly to us through his son Jesus. The very notion of God’s humanity is about bringing to humanity those things that words cannot express. You could say that Jesus is God’s response to “don’t tell me, show me.” The fact that Jesus lived and walked among us, that he had friends and followers, that he was a child growing up with hunger and sleeplessness, weariness and pain, temptations and troubles conveys to us the relational aspect of God’s love. He is not only transcendent, completely other and beyond our comprehension, he is at the same time immanent, here with us, feeling and knowing what life is like for us human creatures.

Jesus’ presence on earth provides us with the living example of God’s will for us. Think about this as we go through the next year together. Listen to the Gospel readings each Sunday, read them on your own, and consider what example it is that Jesus has left for us, not just in his words, but in his actions. Jesus demonstrated what it means to love one’s neighbor as oneself as he sat at meals with those whom others would not even let in the door. He touched and healed those whom others would not even look upon. He fed the hungry and told his followers to be willing to give up their hoodies to those who needed clothes. (Well, the equivalent of hoodies.)

The day to day life of Jesus as seen in the Gospels shows us also the companion that he was to his disciples and is still to those who follow him. He lived, slept, and ate with those men and women. He cried with them and held them. Again, this is our example to follow, to hold and comfort those around us and to receive their comfort to us. Most of all, to simply be with them in their joy and grief, love and anger, hunger and feast. Jesus was their companion and he remains our companion even now.

“The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly.” That is how Paul described Jesus in his letter to Titus that we just heard read. Jesus provided the example of how to live in this world in a way that is “self-controlled, upright, and godly.” That is why Christianity at its heart can never been just a religion of contemplation, study, meditation, or learning. It is about being and doing, just as Jesus was and did.

Yet most of all, what Jesus was and did is something we cannot be or do. The Son became human to bring salvation to all the world. He was the Messiah who died for our sins. He is, as Paul said, the “grace of God,” the freely given gift of eternal life that could only come through his own sacrifice.
Birth necessarily reminds us of death and from the crèche we see the cross. When my wife was pregnant with our first child, our daughter Isabel, it was a hard labor. Izzy was two weeks over due and Elizabeth was in labor for over a dozen hours. After more than an hour of intense effort with two doctors and three nurses in the room they wheeled Elizabeth out to prepare her for a c-section. The nurse told me to put on my scrubs and booties and said, “Don’t worry, you will think we have forgotten you but we won’t. Someone will call for you.” It was the longest 15 minutes of my life. After all that activity there I was alone in that big open hospital room. I realized that I might lose not only the baby but my wife as well. I called Drew, our friend and priest, and we prayed.

Last week SH celebrated her birthday. A freshman in high school her birthday is always just a few days before the date when we celebrate the birth of Christ. This past Sunday morning her mother died from cancer. Our prayers continue to ascend for [this family] even as we mourn and praise God for the life of [the mother]. Even as we are all born, we all will die. Some of us may live long and happy lives, my grandmother’s 90th birthday was yesterday. We feel others are taken far too soon.

We are all born and we all will die, but Jesus was born in order to die. If we merely remember the baby in the manger or even the young man who taught us a good way to live, we will have some times of happiness and we may ease the suffering of others. But Jesus came to do far more than to be merely an example of good and right living. He was the Messiah who came to bear the sins of us all to bring salvation to all. And through his death comes our eternal life.

From the crèche we see the cross and we rejoice.

This is why the baby was born, why the Word became flesh, to show us what it really means to be human, created in the image of God, and to once again make us at one with God.

Amen.

2nd Sunday of Advent – Expectations & Preparations

Dec 8th, 2008

by Christian Brady.

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[This is sort of a "rough cut," intended as a detailed outline rather than a full narrative exposition. Still, feel free to read and comment!]

Second Sunday of Advent
Year B
RCL

Isaiah 40:1-11
Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13
2 Peter 3:8-15a
Mark 1:1-8

Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

We are just a few weeks away from Christmas Day and the children and perhaps more than a few adults are wondering what they are going to find in their stockings and under their tree when they wake up. What are you expecting? What are you waiting eagerly to unwrap and enjoy?

There is no doubt that anticipation is building. Even with our current economic struggles, people are pouring into the stores to snap up bargains. The ads on television and in the papers make even the most ascetic among us twinge with at least a bit of desire. As much as I would decry commercialism and the excessive lust that such advertisements induce, I think the anticipation and heightened state of expectation that it creates in us can and should serve as a reminder of what this season really is about, yearning for and expecting the coming of Jesus.

This is the season of expectation and preparation. As we discussed last week, advent, the Latin term means “coming,” denotes this season when we await the coming of the Messiah, God’s anointed one, who will bring us salvation from our sins, restoring our relationship with God. On the most obvious level we are, of course, remembering that Jesus the Messiah came to earth as a human baby born in a manger, but this season is also to be a time of preparation and looking forward to his coming again, as Christus victor, the conquerer of death. (more…)